In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal (6 page)

Lucan reminded himself that he was this man’s slave now. Obediently, he tore his gaze away from the sight below. Setting the spyglass carefully on the table, he delved into the delicacies. The nutty burst of dates on his tongue was pure pleasure. He gobbled a handful and sampled the cheese. He found the harder bread not to his liking, but dipping it in a cup of summer-wine softened it. He tried to eat fast despite the heady taste, and cautioned himself not to gorge.

The screams and shouts of the crowd rose impossibly higher. The Empress had stepped closer to the edge of her balcony, her left arm outstretched. She was about to make her decision. Leaving off with the food, Lucan hastened back to the rail. Stratos came with him, a look of practiced interest on his face.

At the Theatre’s center, Hektor Actaeon stood over his fallen foe, bloodied and battered, all his corded muscles and predatory posture on display. Lucan could not help but wonder what kind of lover he would be—protective, gentle, loving, or swift and demanding, taking what he wanted. Perhaps a combination of the two.

Lucan hoped the heat would hide his blush.

Stratos’s smirk told him otherwise. “I am glad you seem to enjoy watching him. Soon you’ll do more than watch.”

His words were layered, the double meaning clear, and Lucan could not help but touch his chest, his left pectoral, where Alession had carved his dark spell. No trace of the strange ebon brand remained, only healed skin, fresh and fair. And yet, when Stratos spoke, a tiny pang of pain awoke inside Lucan.

It bloomed like a poisonous flower, throwing out tendrils inside his chest. Lucan told himself he was imagining it.

“Soon enough,” Stratos repeated.

Lucan’s heart raced beneath his fingers. More than watch? Hektor Actaeon was the primus palus. The odds-makers wouldn’t grant Lucan three turns of the water clock in the arena with that man.

Stratos must have seen the stricken look on Lucan’s face. He chuckled, not unkindly. “No, my friend. I mean, soon you will train with him.”

“Train?” Lucan looked at the quaestor with incredulity. “With Hektor Actaeon?”

“Yes,” Stratos said. He bit into a date and chewed with pleasure. “He is a primus palus and allowed to teach…for the proper incentives. I have arranged it with Agamemnon Actaeon of his House, for no small cost. Hektor will train you in the mornings.” He clapped Lucan on the shoulder a bit hard. “You’ll be a champion gladiator yet. You’ll make your name and bring honor to House Vulpinius.”

Lucan nodded, too dumbfounded to speak. He glanced down at where Hektor Actaeon stood victorious. Lucan’s heart jolted.

But this time it was for altogether different reasons.

BLOOD AND SAND and the lust for battle. These were Hektor’s elements, and in them he was a dark god, akin to the Doomsayer himself in power and potency. He raised the stolen polearm over his vanquished foe and preened. The masses rose, their fervor a thunder across the theatre, his name on the lips of every man and woman.

“Hektor! Hektor! Hektor!”

He glared up at the Empress. He knew the adoration, the accolades were meaningless.

The Empress had been the Empress so long no one remembered her name. But in the end, everyone obeyed her—everyone who did not want to die as an undesirable noxii in the arena.

Only a few had ever succeeded at defying her.

Looking down at his opponent kneeling in the sand, feeling the heat of the man’s hands around his knees, Hektor was struck with harsh memory—Leander kneeling, his golden hair fallen around his bruised face. Blood gushing onto the sand. So much blood.

Leander.
Hektor swayed as a wave of crippling pain assailed him. Three years. It had been three years, and yet he would not stop blaming himself.

Gladiators died in the arena all the time. But that time it had been Leander.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment before opening them. He looked anywhere but his fallen opponent. It hadn’t been fear on Leander’s face. It had been love. Love and acceptance when Hektor had—

“To the sky! To the sky!” The masses screamed for blood. They always screamed for blood.

I will not give it to them today.
Hektor stood ready to defy the Empress.

A small smile touched her lips. Somehow, she knew. She always knew. She tipped her thumb down.

Relief bloomed through Hektor. He thrust the polearm into the sand instead of into the flesh of his opponent. The crowd booed and jeered and then hushed as a sudden, stiff breeze blew through the arena, snapping the crimson canopy above them in a sound much like bones breaking.

The heatwave was over.

Hektor exhaled in relief. He raised his trident and shouted the traditional words of victory, “For the Empress! For the Empress!”

The masses roared approval and displayed their favor in the usual manner—cheering and clapping, screaming and shouting insults, spitting, the occasional desert flower thrown his way as the chariots entered the arena in the wake of the praetorian guard. He stepped onto the lead chariot and held his hand up, waving to the dirty, filthy, ignorant plebes as he passed.

Just another Spectacle for the glory of Arena and its blind Empress. He did not have to kill today. But he would have to plow tomorrow.

Fight or fuck, that was the decree of the Empress, and the way of life for her gladiators.

Chapter Two

FIRST DAY

It was tradition for veteran gladiators

To train the novices

And to bestow upon the worthy

Their skill and their seed

—Pia Lucia, House of Lucia, the Architects

Lucan awoke with a start, not knowing where he was. The gladiator stables of House Vulpinius were darker, set deeper back into the compound than those at House Pineus had been. And although the stenches of refuse and shit were absent, the humid darkness had a festering smell all its own.

Groggily, Lucan rose, the sounds of the other novices in his barracks spurring him into movement. His skin was clammy, the slight flickering of braziers and torches throwing ominous shadows as the novices awoke to their morning training. They would wash quickly and dress, and take their place with the novices of other houses at the Ludus Magnii.

Lucan would not be going with them.

His stomach churned in remembrance of the rich fare he’d partaken in yesterday, and he cursed himself for overindulging. He hoped the heaviness in his belly didn’t slow him down.

He stumbled to the basin and splashed warm water on his face and under his arms. Jostling in with so many other novices, he could not help but compare himself to them. He was the same in size and stature, but they carried themselves with a confidence Lucan did not have.

If he passed his trials, he would become a retiarii, valued more for his looks than his skill. The novices around him were likely to become secutors and myrmidon. A few—the best—might eventually become provocators, whose duty it was to incite the crowd with their showmanship.

Like Hektor Actaeon. The thought of training with the primus palus shook Lucan to the core. Dread and excitement filled him until he thought he would be ill. And yet, he had no choice. Quaestor Stratos wanted Lucan to become a champion gladiator, and so a champion gladiator he would become.

Else, he would die trying. Such was the way of masters and slaves in Arena.

Hurriedly, he washed his feet and grabbed his
caligae
by the straps. Slinging the sandals over his shoulder, he was filled with worry.

Hektor Actaeon, champion and primus palus.
What use has he for a boy like me?

* * * *

Hektor strode across the courtyard of the Ludus Magnii, ignoring the stares of the novices as they passed on their way to training. He was the primus palus. He could not be seen hesitating, but as he headed down the stairs to the Claim, his heart weighed more than the heaviest tower shield. These shadowy halls were all too familiar. In his youth, he had looked forward to the Victor’s Claim, to taking what was rightfully his by Arenian law.

That was before he fell in love. That was before Leander.

The shadows closed over him, and the latticework of the iron grates above afforded him a modicum of anonymity, at least from the prying eyes in the courtyard above. He reminded himself to close the privacy grate once he entered his Claim’s cell.

The mingled musk of sweat and blood and men was heady. It perfumed the air and scented his skin. He drew it deep into his nostrils. Despite his disdain for what he came here to do, he found his body responding with need. Uncomfortably, he palmed his cock, shifting it to a better position beneath his tunic.

Once, he had enjoyed coming here as the victor. Once, three years ago, with Leander.

The sound of heavy footfalls approaching made him temper his melancholy. He reminded himself where he was. How many cells he was passing. How many witnesses. If anyone glimpsed a lack of desire, if anyone informed even one of Hektor’s rich patrons—or, Doomsayer’s Abyss, the odds-makers—Hektor’s reputation would be dashed. A gladiator without a healthy appetite for fighting and fucking was considered a waste of denarii.

Hektor had worked too hard, given up too much to allow that to happen.

He fixed a lustful grin to his face just in time to see Remulon bustling through the gloom toward him, as much as a man with one leg could bustle. Captain of the Claim Guard, Remulon had been a champion in his own right, in golden days past. Never a primus palus but still a favorite of the odds-makers and many a lovely amatore.

As a boy, Hektor remembered him on the ballots.
I wanted to be just like him.

“Hektor, my friend!” Remulon’s beard split to reveal teeth that were startlingly white in his tanned face. He shifted on his crutch and clasped the primus palus’s forearm. “You have come for your Claim, have you?” His laughter boomed in the dingy, low-ceilinged hall.

Despite his grim mood, Hektor was genuinely glad to see the man. “Remulon.”

“Come, come.” Remulon jammed the crutch under his arm with a good-natured wince and turned in several short hops. “I made sure to put your Claim in the rear hall. Remembered you like your privacy.”

Huffing with exertion, he led Hektor through the darkened labyrinth of passages. The smell of man-musk and the bestial sounds of rutting, of men grunting and crying out—in pleasure, in release, in the pain of being taken for the first time—echoed off the humid walls and made Hektor feel too tight, too bound up in his skin.

His thoughts tumbled back to three years ago. His own first time taking cock. Leander behind him, coaxing him gently, the searing-slick, delicious agony of his rod sliding tight into Hektor’s needy hole. The satisfying burn. He hadn’t been filled up so well since that night. He’d never let another man have him.

No, Hektor Actaeon was the conqueror, not the conquest.

And he was no man’s Claim.

Hektor’s cock stirred again, and he cursed himself. These early morning sojourns to the Claim aroused him, but they could no longer satisfy him. What he truly wanted was to take a lover, and to allow a lover to take him in return. But this was Arena. This was the Empress’s Theatre. Love was scarce here.

The jingling of rusted keys brought him back around.

Remulon popped the lock on the cell and peeled back the heavy oaken door. With a smile at Hektor, he clapped him on the arm. “He’s a handsome one. Not a retiarius but still…not bad either.” His grin was leeringly white in the gloom. “Go, eh? Have fun, my friend. It looks like you need it.”

“Yes.” Hektor forced the word out of a dry throat. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Leaning against it, he waited for his eyes to adjust, for the
clump-clomp
of Remulon’s crutch to echo away down the hall.

At least these back halls had no exterior grates or windows. Yes, Hektor Actaeon preferred his privacy. He preferred no one knew how he disgraced Leander’s memory.

Shoving away from the door, he moved into the small cell.

Two greasy torches guttered on the far wall, and in the center of the chamber, doused in shadow, was a half-naked man chained to the ceiling. His arms had been dragged up over his head so his feet barely reached the ground. His struggles ceased when he saw Hektor, but the momentum caused him to revolve at the end of his chains, as though displaying himself for Hektor’s approval.

Like all gladiators, the man was well formed—muscular and broad, his skin tanned, his hair a dark mop around his face. He had been stripped of his tunic, and his loincloth barely hid his erection. He had been waiting.

Waiting for the great Hektor Actaeon to come and plow him.

Despite himself, Hektor came to half-hardness at the sight of an eager man. Licking his lips, he tore his gaze away. To the left was a small bench and a brazier. Atop the brazier, a crock of oil. Not all gladiators used it. Some liked to fuck their conquest dry, to make it hurt.

Cruelty was never against the Empress’s decree.

Hektor was a killer, but he was not cruel. He stepped up to his conquest and laid a hand on the man’s back to stop his slow spin. The feel of warm skin stirred his desire, and Hektor let his hand linger. The man’s wounds had been treated. Every house had healers and leeches on hand, and the Claim was no different. Some, it was rumored, still had the touch of Rilrune, Goddess of Green and Good, and were able to heal with a touch.

It looked like a similar healer had paid ministration to his conquest. Then again, he was Hektor Actaeon. Only the best for him.

A leaden dread filled Hektor’s limbs, and he let his hand fall away. He was tired of all the mindless, loveless fucking. He hated that his body yearned toward this man in chains. He wanted to pluck out his eyes at lusting after a helpless, willing piece of man flesh.

From the way the man writhed in the chains, from the way he thrust back with his ass, he had been taken before. And wanted to be taken again. He grunted and rolled his hips. “Gonna just stand there?” He thrust back again, and Hektor could see the man was stiff already, his ass cheeks clenched, sweat running down his back.

There was no choice. If he hesitated…