The Taurus was barely a man at all—nearly seven feet tall with the bulk of a bull. His skin was mottled and scarred and looked almost monstrous in the light of the midday sun. Bleached bone horns erupted from the crown of his helmet, and he eyed Xanthus with an eager, hungry expression.
Xanthus recognized his kind—the sort of godforsaken animal that actually relished its enslavement, that saw its chains as adornment and its task of destruction as a giddy pastime. He immediately despised him.
In one hand, the Taurus raised a long spear, and in the other, he gripped an impressive double-sided axe. His fierce, bellowing roar echoed against the walls of the Coliseum.
Sheathing his swords, Xanthus put his hands together in slow, sarcastic applause. “Impressive,” he said. “I thought only livestock could make a sound like that.”
The Taurus narrowed his eyes. Confusion and irritation warred across his face before settling into scorn. “They call you the Champion of Rome, but you’re only a pup,” he taunted, loud enough for the crowd to hear. They booed in response, but the Taurus didn’t falter. “Have you even been weaned yet, boy?”
“We should salute the Princeps now, even if he’s not here,” Xanthus said. “Custom, you understand.” He turned to the veranda at the end of the arena and inclined his head. The Taurus grudgingly followed suit.
The morituri—that’s what they called those who were about to die. After so many years, Xanthus knew the Romans’ language as though it were his own. He still had the slight accent of a boy who had grown up speaking a foreign tongue, but these next words had been carved into his very bones.
“We who are about to die salute you.” Even the words tasted like blood.
When he faced the Taurus again, he reached for his swords before pausing. “Do you prefer Jupiter or Mars?” he asked.
“What?”
“I’m curious.”
“Stop talking to me!” the Taurus growled.
“I only ask so that I know which god to send you to. A courtesy between … men.” Xanthus followed the significant pause with a taunting, lopsided grin—the kind of cocky expression that had charmed so many drunken patrician ladies and infuriated so many opponents.
The Taurus reacted precisely as he was meant to. He snorted—literally, as though he was the bull he was named for—and charged straight at Xanthus.
Xanthus stood perfectly still, entirely unfazed as he watched three hundred pounds of death hurtle his way. Then, at the last possible moment, he stepped aside and lightly smacked the back of the Taurus’s helmet with the broad side of his sword.
The Taurus was so shocked he nearly lost his footing. Humiliation made him turn a bright, blistering red. The crowd’s roaring laughter only infuriated him more, and he wasted no time before charging again.
Again, Xanthus used the broad side of his sword to slap him away. He couldn’t help it. The Taurus was too foul not to play with. Just for a little while. Besides, Xanthus wanted the man to put some effort into the kill.
Their epic battle soon became a violent comedy. The Taurus would lunge, and Xanthus would dance just out of reach until the whole stadium was alive with mockery. The laughter turned to jeers, and the jeers turned to taunts.
“Tame that bull, Xanthus!”
“Charge, Taurus, charge!”
“Lose your horns, you fat calf?”
“Xanthus! Stop playing and kill him!” That last voice caught Xanthus’s attention.
A tall, thin man with white hair was leaning over the marble railing of the veranda, one push away from falling straight onto the merciless ground of the arena. His name was Josias Neleus Timeus, but for ten years, Xanthus had known him simply as “dominus.”
Timeus’s bright blue eyes glared down at Xanthus. “You hear the crowd! Finish him!”
Like well-trained sheep, the people in the stadium took up the cry. “Finish him! Finish him!”
There was no avoiding it now. Timeus and the mob were growing impatient. It would have to happen soon.
The Taurus and the entire stadium went silent with shock as Xanthus dropped to his knees, letting his swords fall to the sand on either side of him. With closed eyes, he tried again to think of home: of the mist that surrounded the Tor, of chalk on the hillsides. Of his mother, his father, his baby sister, his older brother.
And Decimus.
The hated name wormed into Xanthus’s thoughts, but he pushed it violently away. He couldn’t think of him right now or else it would weaken his resolve. He’d rather the faces of his family be the last images in his head before—
“Xanthus! Xanthus, damn you! Get up! Don’t leave him to that blubbering heretic!” Timeus shouted.
Heretic? What heretic?
Xanthus grudgingly opened his eyes. The chained Christian from the hypogeum had entered the arena and was already strapped into huge, poorly fitted armor. He held a sword as though he’d never seen one before and gaped up at the crowd in open-mouthed horror.
Xanthus thought they’d send Albinus out next, or one of his other blood-brothers. He had no doubt that any of them would easily defeat the Taurus. But no. They hadn’t even sent out a real gladiator. Xanthus realized with a sinking feeling that once the Taurus was done with him, that terrified, untried Christian would be next. Xanthus squeezed his eyes shut and muttered under his breath. “Well, shit.”
The Taurus’s labored breaths and heaving pants grew louder, and Xanthus knew by the sound of the crowd the very second the other man raised his axe.
And his decision was made.
The Taurus launched himself forward with a great lurch and charged.
Xanthus waited until the Taurus was no more than a foot away before his eyes snapped open. Still kneeling, he grabbed his twin swords and thrust the deadly blades outward. The iron reflected the sunlight in a blinding flash.
It was the last thing the Taurus ever saw.
Dark blood sprayed hot and sticky across Xanthus’s chest as he buried both of his blades into the man’s thick neck. The massive gladiator fell to his knees, and Xanthus forced himself to look straight into his pale eyes until the moment when he pulled his swords free and let the Taurus’s head topple to the ground.
Just like that, it was done.
The crowd screamed his name with delight. “Xanthus! Xanthus! Xanthus!”
But Xanthus stayed on his knees afterward. His eyes focused on the blood drenching his hands and arms and chest. His shoulders bowed beneath an oppressive weight. His ears drowned in the deluge of the crowd’s cheers.
No one heard when he finally turned his face upward and whispered a prayer into the swirling dust.
“Please,” he said. “Please forgive me.”
CHAPTER 4
Even before Xanthus entered the great room of Timeus’s house, the gathered throng of lanistae and noblemen were shouting his name. It was like being trapped in the Coliseum all over again. And when the guests finally saw him—completely unharmed from his match with the Butcher of Capua—they broke into raucous cheers, a perfect start to the evening’s celebrations.