Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (44 page)

“Men and women of Rome!” The voice of Senator Otho could be heard resounding across the arena as he listed out their introductions—and the nature of the fight.

Caius snapped his helmet down. “Are you drunk, Lucius?”

Lucius shook his head slightly. The response was a barely-there slur. He stumbled and shambled from one tree to the next, barely upright. Caius felt fury enter his heart.

If he had the heart for it, the smartest thing to do would have been to cut off Lucius’s hand there and then and free him from the burden.

But he didn’t have such an act in him—a fact for which he was more grateful than not.

With another roar from the crowd, the beasts were unleashed on the other side of the arena. Their forms could be made out through the thick arrangement of trees. The tall forest was arranged neatly, with enough width between each tree to hold a man’s wingspan.

The chain between his wrist and Lucius’s was close to twelve feet long. It was plenty of room with which to maneuver, and were the two fighting on sand alone it might have even been a boon. But with the trees so close together, the chain was a liability. The danger of tangling up and tying themselves around a tree was very real.

Even more real with Lucius stepping blind drunk, no doubt in the midst of a black out. The retarius started shouting for the animals to come.

“Come and face the mighty Orion!”

How his words weren’t a slurry mess was beyond Caius.

The chain was attached to his hurt arm, the manacle positioned just beyond the armor there. As quickly as he could manage, he wrapped the chain in around his arm and tugged Lucius tight. With Lucius covering his back, at least there was a chance that the beasts would fall upon his trident if they attacked.

The middle of the forest was safer than anywhere else. Going there would create the most distance between himself and the beasts as they hunted from the edges. And maybe, if he was lucky, they wouldn’t find the gladiators both at once.

Going to the deepest part of the gathered trees also had the added benefit of making Lucius the hardest to see for the crowd. A drunk fighter would be heavily disapproved of, to say the least. Even so, the crowd's vision was at best delayed. In the circular arena, someone
somewhere
had a good seat at all times, and word spread like wildfire.

“Ho, cat. Hoooo....”

Caius spun with Lucius’s words, shoving the drunk man down. The tiger was a deep, beautiful orange, striped with black. It was strange, in that moment, to see something so glorious with such a murderous intent.

The tiger leapt toward them and Caius knelt and struck high. He felt that old, familiar crunch of the steel of his sica meeting bone.  The tiger landed, stumbling. Blood showed across its side in a crooked gash.

All around him, the crowd roared.

A normal man’s stomach would have gone sick. His tightened, coiling like a spring. First blood was his.

Concerns dropped from Caius like extra pots off a wagon. Lucius’s condition. His arm. Whether he would see Aeliana again. The fate of his daughter. His every last action in the arena until that point.

From that hot, unmistakable smell of blood, the knowledge he had hurt his opponent, all that was left was the present—the fight.

A wide, curious rumble broke Caius’s gaze to the right. The bear had arrived. It lumbered forward, smelling the blood too. All predators would smell it, would reach the same conclusions.

It began to charge. Caius yanked Lucius to his feet and snapped him toward the tiger. Maybe something good would happen.

A bear could run several times the pace of a man. So, Caius charged directly back at him. With every ounce of strength, he hoisted his shield up.

The collision sent a shockwave of violent pain through Caius’s body. Even his toes screamed in agony. When the white of pain faded from his vision, he saw that he was alive, and his shield was in the sand. He would not be able to pick it up again.

Positioned right behind his shield had been his sica, ready for thrusting. It found its home in the bear’s chest, sticking out there wildly. The bear seemed stunned still, shaking its head, and largely unaffected by the sword. Paws flapped at it dumbly.

With a yell, Caius tugged the blade out. A healthy dose of blood followed. The bear roared in pain and swatted him backward.

The bear pursued, somewhat more cautious now. But it pursued all the same. Caius scrambled. He had to stay on the attack.

The tiger, meanwhile, decided to strike. Incoherent yells banged out from Lucius’s mouth. He swung the net in his hands, and the tiger leapt at him with claws out.

Lucius fell, snapping Caius toward him with the chain. The tiger had slashed Lucius's shoulder to ribbons—but through the momentum of its leap, the beast had also been caught in Lucius’s net. Dragged down under its weighted surface, the tiger roared in frustration.

The bear snapped its jaw, inches from Caius’s back. Approaching fast and losing its fear.

Caius leapt through the air toward the tiger. With a furious thrust, he drove his sword into the heart of the fallen beast. But the force of his blow was so great that as he twisted to retrieve the blade, the hilt broke off, leaving him with only a handle.

The crowd erupted with wild pleasure—what a blow! Men in the stands clasped one another's hands in excitement. Women screamed with joy. Lucius was ever a favorite for the ladies in the crowd.

Still on the ground, the retarius had dragged heavily through the sand from Caius’s leap.

He made a tempting target for the still approaching bear. On the ground. Bleeding. Barely conscious if he was conscious at all.

Caius rushed and picked Lucius up and over his shoulders, taking his trident in one hand. He felt lucky that Lucius was lighter than himself—he did not think his arms were up to much heavy lifting.

Some time had been bought. The important thing now was to imagine a plan. He rushed through the trees, putting distance between himself and the beast.

After being hungry for weeks, the bear seemed satisfied to eat at the tiger now. That bought Caius only a little time. Heavily armored referees with flogs and hooks distracted the bear and carried the corpse of the great cat out from the sands.

Thinking quickly, Caius pushed the limp Lucius up against a nearby tree. As the bear clambered back toward them, Caius called out to it.

“Come on, you great big bastard. We’re right here!”

The bear was weary, but hungry still. Aggravated for days. Were it not death to let the bear live and try to leave, Caius would have done just that. But this was the arena, and mercy was a zero sum game.

The bear charged. Caius waited—and waited still. Lucius’s shoulder dripped, cut to pieces. He needed help, and soon, or he would die from the blood loss.

Working quickly, Caius wrapped around the nearby tree. He stood between that tree and the one where he posted Lucius. A clothesline of metal hung loose between them. The bear was at a full gallop. It looked as a giant cloud of teeth and claws.

At the last possible moment, Caius yanked hard on the chain and dropped down. With all its weight, the bear slammed on the chain. The links, unable to hold such weight, snapped in two. Likely that saved Caius’s wrist from breaking. But the tripping force was enough to send the bear gasping and roaring down and tumbling into another tree.

Caius swept up to his feet with Lucius’s trident. The bear rolled just before his blow hit home. With a heavy paw, it swept Caius off his feet. Caius's blow, sour now, bounced off the bear’s fat-padded shoulder, snapping the head of the trident right off.

In moments, the bear was on him, gnawing at his arm.

Armor on his bad arm kept the bear from eating his face, but the strength there faded fast. His fingers pushed through the sand, searching—searching. Finally, they landed on the trident’s head.

In one move, it was done. The prongs landed true straight into the beast’s skull. With a gurgle, the bear fell on Caius. All that weight, dead now.

It took him a minute to build the strength to push the bear off of him. When he did, the crowd exploded with pleasure. Slaves had already entered the arena, clearing away the trees to give the crowd a clear view of Caius and Lucius.

Dueling chants for Orion and Ursus filled the air—filled perhaps the city itself.

Caius wished their cheers filled him with nothing. But in that moment, hearing them call out his name with such approval, their riotous cries were the lifeblood of the world.

––––––––

A
eliana sat over Lucius in the back of a cleared wagon, attending his wounds. They were less than an hour out from the ludus, and she looked forward to sleeping in her own bed again and being back among her own possessions. Or at least, the appearance of her own possessions—nothing she “had” was truly hers.

During the fight, Conall had whispered the whole story of Lucius’s condition to her. So when the fight ended with Caius victorious, against all odds, she had been fully prepared to treat the slashed gladiator. There was no way in her mind he would leave the sands without being heavily wounded. The gashed mess of flesh and tissue on his shoulder now was as big of a wound as she had ever seen him take.

As a retarius, Lucius always was open for more wounds than most men. But his skill and speed, combined with a long streak of luck, had kept him relatively unmarked aside from a few nicks and bruises here and there.

She supposed, redressing the grisly wound on his shoulder, that his luck had run out. She changed the bandages every hour, hoping to keep him clear of infection. Lucius was her friend, and besides that—if she skimped on any possible effort, Porcia would have her head.

Aeliana was not without feelings of responsibility for his condition. He was supposed to be under her care, and that care did not stop before fights in the arena. She had not checked him thoroughly enough, and now he was hurt.

A little voice told her that no one had
made
him drink except himself, but still—Aeliana was tasked with the well-being of every gladiator in the ludus. Her misstep had almost killed Caius.

She didn't know if she felt worse about that—Caius nearly dying because of her failure to check Lucius—or about Lucius being hurt. Both were terrible weights upon her. With some mental effort, she tried to push them aside.

Guilt was a difficult area for Aeliana. One begat another. If she spent too long with one, then they all began to spill out—and all guilt for her led back to Aelianus.

She was
not
responsible for her brother's death. There wasn't a person in the world who would have thought so—aside from her father. And somehow that made all the difference.

Smoke was on the horizon. A not uncommon sight during travel. Fire was often uncontrollable, and the smallest spark could make even the most unlikely of areas burn uncontrollably.

Aeliana supposed she herself was an example of that. Never had she imagined that she would be in love. But her heart burned for Caius like nothing she could have imagined. The spark had been set off in exactly the right place, under exactly the right conditions.

Every breath she took belonged to him and him alone. With the knowledge he was alive—and that he would thankfully not have to fight for many moons yet—there was only joy in her heart. Soon, they would find one another in a hidden corner of the ludus. Perhaps while Porcia was away on one of her many gambling missions.

They would have time enough to sneak together, and finally she could feel the full expanse of that hard shaft she had been teased with for so long.

In the wagon, Lucius let out a long moan. Not his first, and definitely not his last. He had not yet been fully conscious, but when he was, she was going to give him a long talking-to. She suspected, upon their arrival and Lucius’s healing, that he would be heavily punished. It was not excusable to fight in the condition that he had.

And for once, Aeliana agreed with a slave owner's policy. It was
not
excusable. Let him fight however he wanted when he fought only for himself. But he had been fighting with another man’s life on the line—with Caius’s life on the line. Were it not for the hand of the gods, her love would have been slaughtered.

Her love?

Oh. She sat up from Lucius, searching the column for the sight of Caius's muscle-dense, dark-haired form. There, next to the other wagon with the injured, striding next to Conall. His arm in a sling. No doubt they were talking about their fights. Perhaps Conall was even looking forward to receiving his own brand, marking him officially as part of the brotherhood-in-arms of the House Varinius.

Seeing Caius there struck her deeply. Hearts didn’t just
flutter
of their own accord. Stomachs did not fill with butterflies. Knees did not become jelly.

And yet if Aeliana had not known specifically otherwise, she would have believed each and every sensation was some new metamorphosis of her being. She knew that she wanted Caius. She wanted him desperately. Wanted to feel those strong hands on her body again, pulling her tighter against his hard form.

But love...?

Did she love this man?

A great cry went up as the column caught sight of home. The smoke that had filled the air—it came from the smoldering wreckage of the ludus itself.

––––––––

T
here had been much chaos at their arrival. Officials from the city were already there, the local legionary garrison tasked with putting out flames and pulling survivors from any collapsed portions of the buildings. By the time the gladiators and their retinue returned, almost all of the work of stopping the fire’s spread and rescuing those in danger had been done.

The Governor of Puteoli had a great stake in the ludus and all the money it created, and besides, a fire spreading from the ludus would not take long to reach the walls of Puteoli.

Most of the damage done had been to the outer walls and parts of the house itself. Fully three-quarters of it was blackened and demolished. The cell blocks were left relatively untouched, but several horses had died from the fire spreading to the stables. Their bodies were covered with a long blanket and carried out with the slaves who had died.