I'm going to die.
The boy's gaze was fixed on the iron bars, his face being petrified. Behind the bars, the crowd was cheering for the men upon the sand, or at least for one of them.
The other was a prisoner.
He was the tallest man the boy had ever seen, with long, dark hair worn in thick braids, thighs like the trunk of a tree and broad-shouldered.
Six men were already lying dead to his feet.
The boy held his breath, both hands clinging to the iron bars, when the seventh followed them, blood spattering from the stump where his head had been. The air was filled with screams and a heavy, metallic scent all too familiar to him, with cheers and a name he did not understand.
Next to him, behind another set of bars, someone else was waiting.
He was about three or four years older than the boy himself, eighteen years maybe.
The cheers of the crowd caused no movement on his dark features at all; obsidian coloured eyes were fixed on the gladiators.
The boy gulped, quickly turning away his eyes.
Of course he was used to no one talking to him at all. No one liked talking to someone who already was as good as dead anyway, although basically everone in the ludus was; they didn't leave any doubts about how he was even more dead than others already, though.
"Don't die too quickly!" one of the others had hissed when they had left; one of the elder gladiators, Barcas, in his early twenties, easily recognizable through his long hair and sharp features, "Don't die too quickly, that'll spoil the day for them!"
He felt sick. Dark stains were dancing in front of his eyes, he was clinging the bars so hard his knuckles turned white.
His father had been a gladiator, too.
Of course he had never come to know him; his mother had told him, he had already died in the arena while she still had been pregnant. From what he knew, it had been an epic fight, because the crowd had still been chanting his name when he had long been dead already.
His hands were shaking; angrily, the boy clenched his fists.
As a child he had sometimes tried to imagine how his father might have looked like. It had never worked out, but he had always managed to imagine his last fight.
Outside upon the sands, the prisoner butchered his eight opponent.
Hoots of laughter were bursting out throughout the crowd, but the boy saw the prisoner's heavy breathing and the wounds covering his body already. It would be over soon.
"He fights with honor."
The dark-skinned boy's voice made him turn around.
"If he was a gladiator, he might win his freedom."
The boy pursuit his lips. "And then? What should a gladiator do with his freedom?"
Maybe his voice pinched a little higher than he wanted to; angrily he gritted his teeth again.
He was fourteen years old, the youngest gladiator of his ludus. The branding on his arm was only about three days old, his test had been a tie at its best, he was going to die, but at least he didn't want to wet himself in fear and have anyone drag him into the arena screaming like a toddler.
They hadn't even tried to make him think it would be a proper fight.
Violent uprisings in Thrace and Greece had made things difficult, and therefore it was good for the overall mood to slaughter some Greeks in the arena; unfortunately, he had been born on Crete and the romans did not exactly distinguish between Athenians and Spartanians and everything else…
His armor didn't really fit, his blades were blunt and he had never gotten used to a shield anyway.
He was going to die, and everyone knew it.
His opponent was a well-known gladiator whose name had been chanted by the crowd many times before almost as much as the name of the prisoner outside in front of the bars.
Of course, nobody knew the boy's own name; he had never been to the arena before.
The prisoner's final moments seemed to have come.
They had sent in two men at the same time this time; obviously the crowd became tired.
The prisoner had gone down on one knee, one half of his face covered in blood. His opponent's strike made him stagger and the blow forced his head to the side. For seconds, his eyes met the boy's.
The boy swallowed uncomfortably when he saw the smile on the man's face.
"He fights with honor and dies a glorious death, like a true champion of the arena" the dark-skinned teenager stated quietly.
Two slaves dragged in the corpses of the fallen, one half of the prisoner's face being a bloody mess of flesh and bones and broken teeth. He wore a strange necklace, two leather strings with roughly-carved pearls; the boy was close enough to catch a glimpse of the carvings.
They were celtic. His father had been a celt.
The sick feeling in his stomach had made way for emptiness and cold.
Quickly, he reached out to grab the necklace, attaching it to his own neck with a swift movement.
If the dark-skinned spectator had seen anything, he did not say anything about it.
He hardly felt his own legs when he stepped over to the gate.
His opponent's name flew past him as well as his own, the crowd's insults towards the weaker opponent or the creaking sound when the gate fell shut behind him.
The stolen necklace around his throat seemed to be heavier than the weights Doctore had them train with usually.
If his opponent had started laughing at the sight of the other gladiator being a teenager trembling in fear, he hid it well beneath his helmet.
"Fight with honor", the other one had said.
His opponent's first blow missed.
The boy was smaller and quicker, and he was aware of that; he managed to avoid the other's spear a second time, but this time the blade ran across his chest. The crowd cheered, something hot dripped along his skin and into the sand, the cut burning in pain.
He blocked the third and fourth time his opponent stepped forward, but that had made him end up in a corner; the spear hit his upper arm with deadly closeness and he could feel the blade slipping off the bone. The pain took away his breath for a time that probably was only a few seconds but felt like ages. His opponent, though, did not seem willingly to end their fight that fast – he obviously wanted to give the audience a show. He stepped back and allowed the boy to pick up his blade.
The blood on his skin felt sticky.
The crowd's cheers became louder when he managed to get back on his feet, his left arm dangling useless at his side, and that noise seemed to vibrate through his veins.
His gaze flickered over to the blood-stained sand where the prisoner had died.
He fought with honor and died a true champion.
He charged.
The gladiator effortlessly changed his spear over to his left hand and with brute force the man's fist hit his chest, then his head. He could hear his ribs cracking and it took him a while to realize that the screams he heard came from his own lips.
Behind the helmet, his opponent's eyes were smiling.
He fought himself back to his feet once more, clinging to his sword – strangely, his thoughts still were perfectly clear.
His position was disadvantageous. His opponent was taller, stronger and had him backed up in a corner, and his intact arm already tired from blocking the other's attacks.
Taller…
He had his back up against the wall, but it didn't have to stay that way.
He blocked his opponent's next attack, his ribs protested achingly and he used the momentum of the other's blow to push himself up and away from the wall in a turning movement that brought him out of the other's reach and caused his opponent to stagger forward. With all strength left he pushed his blade downwards, hitting the taller man at the gap between his shoulder and back armor, driving his blade deep into his back.
The gladiator made a sound that seemed almost surprised, his breathing suddenly having turned into a death rattle. He made an unsteady movement as if he wanted to grab the blade from behind his back, then fell and did not get up again.
Slowly, a puddle of blood spread under him. Surprised silence was hanging in the air.
Then, all hell broke loose.
The people in the crowd were jumping up and down, screaming his name as if they had all gone insane at the same very moment, cheering at him as if he was Mars himself, and he was standing there, right in the middle of the arena, halfway deaf from the noise and the blows he had taken, until he realized that the thundering sound in his ears was his own heart, beating along with the chanting of the crowd.
They love me. Fuck the gods, they love me.
He turned around to face the gate and caught a glimpse of the dark-skinned fellow gladiator behind it; they exchanged a grin.
The blade slipped from his fingers, his arms fell down and before he even touched the ground he had lost his consciousness.
When he woke up, everything was quiet.
Every muscle in his body was aching; he felt the rough fabric of bandages on his skin and could smell herbs in the air.
Somewhere far away, he could hear the noise of the daily exercises.
The ludus.
Slowly, a shadow formed in front of his eyes.
"Am I a gladiator now?" he muttered, his throat feeling sore.
Oenomaus laughed, showing brilliant white teeth.
"At least you fought like one" he answered, "With honor. I'm looking forward to facing you myself one day."
He quietly closed the door behind him when he left.
A barely visible smile flashed across the boy's face; he was hardly able for anything else, and even that hurt.
In his ears, the chanting of the crowd still echoed, his name ascending into heavens out of a thousand throats, while his eyes fell shut again.
Gannicus!
Gannicus!
Gannicus…