Forbidden To The Gladiator. Greta Gilbert

father. His eyebrows arched hopefully and his wrinkled old mouth was bowed up into a grin.

      Strangely, the gold-toothed man was smiling, too.

      That was when Satyr thrust his finger into the Beast’s chest wound. The Beast stumbled to the ground in howling agony and released his sword. The Satyr placed his hoof upon the Beast’s bloody chest, pausing above him for the death blow.

      Stunned, the spectators fell silent. The champion was about to lose, right before their eyes. Arria strained to believe her own. Something was not right. The Beast would never have lost control of his sword as he had done. Even Arria could see that he was too experienced to make such an error.

      The Beast raised two fingers—the traditional entreaty for mercy.

      Was it obvious to no one but her? The Beast had deliberately lost.

      ‘Mitte! Mitte!’ the crowd thundered. Spare him! All eyes turned to the governor, who gave a simple bow of the head. Mercy. His chest wound still leaking blood, the Beast lumbered to his feet and Arria found herself searching for his gaze. But he kept his head bowed as the ringmaster raised the Satyr’s hand into the air. ‘Romans, I give you Felix the Satyr, your winner.’

      Arria should have been relieved. The Beast’s life had been spared. For once this terrible night, mercy had triumphed over bloodlust. But injustice had triumphed, too, for the Beast had deliberately succumbed to the Satyr and Arria had been sold into slavery as a result.

      She gazed across the ring. Her new owner was already assessing her. His eyes scraped over her: her hair, her breasts, her arms. He was regarding her physical form just as the bettors had regarded the gladiators’. No, no, no. This could not be.

      Desperation seized her. ‘The Beast deliberately relinquished the fight!’ she shouted without thinking. ‘Did nobody see it? The outcome was fixed before the act! You have all been cheated! Robbed!’

      Now it was not just the gold-toothed man’s eyes on her. It seemed that every single man gathered around the Chasm of Death had turned his attention to Arria—including the governor.

      Oh, gods, what had she done? The governor gave a tight-lipped command, and soon his guards were pushing towards her from the left edge of the arena. From the right, her father and her new master were nearing, as well. The pit sprawled below her. The distance to the ground appeared to be three body lengths or more. There was only one direction in which she could flee—back into the bustling crowd.

      But when she turned around she was confronted with a large guard smiling down at her through a mouthful of wine-stained teeth. It was the guard from the entry. He had pursued her, it seemed, and now he had her trapped. ‘Now you really owe me a favour,’ he growled.

      She was surrounded on three sides, and there was only one option for escape. She closed her eyes, swung her legs over the edge of the pit and jumped.

      ‘Criminal!’ commanded the governor.

      ‘Harlot!’ hissed the entry guard.

      ‘Daughter!’ shouted her father.

      The shouts grew fainter and she knew that she was falling through the air towards a very hard end. And then it came. Thunk. Her legs buckled, her arms, too, and when she looked up she half expected to find herself upon the shores of the River Styx. Instead she was wallowing in the bloodstained sand. There beside her lay the Beast’s fallen gladius.

      She commanded her hands to seize the sword and, miraculously, they obeyed. Her legs obeyed her, too, and as she struggled to her feet she became aware of the riotous crowd. ‘Gladiatrix! Gladiatrix!’ they chanted.

      Above her, two of the governor’s guards were already straddling the arena wall, preparing to jump in after her. The crowd was taunting them, daring them to take the plunge, and out of the corner of her eye Arria could see more coins changing hands. The men were making bets. On her.

      The governor shouted down at the ringmaster. ‘Seize her, you fool!’

      The ringmaster stepped towards Arria.

      ‘Stay back!’ she hissed, slashing the heavy gladius through the air. The ringmaster stepped backwards. He turned to the Beast.

      ‘You heard the governor,’ the ringmaster shouted at the Beast. ‘You seize her!’

      Arria waited for the towering gladiator to make his charge, but he only stood and stared, a rueful smile twisting his lips. He shook his head, and glanced above them. ‘You would do well to run,’ he said.

      The governor’s guards were perched at the rim of the pit and preparing themselves to pounce. The tunnel loomed before her: dark, terrifying and her only hope. She dropped the sword, kicked up a cloud of dust and dashed through the iron gate.

      She found herself surrounded by a prison of stone. A long, dimly lit hallway stretched past several empty, iron-barred cells. There was the smell of blood and moss, and the sound of dripping water, though she could not determine whence it came.

       Drip, drip, drip.

      She heard a shout from the arena and a thud upon the sand. Doubtless the first guard had made his jump. Arria could hear him coughing and shouting obscenities while the crowd coaxed him on. Think, Arria.

      She seized the nearest torch, shaking it to extinction. She did the same with the other torches until she had plunged the barracks into complete darkness.

      Reaching the end of the hall, she pushed against a heavy stone door. Incredibly, it gave way. An exit. She felt a rush of fresh air and paused. The guards would expect her to escape through this door and they would come after her on legs faster than hers.

       Think.

      She left the door open, then stepped backwards.

      She could hear the slap of the guards’ sandals upon the stones now. They were moving down the dark hallway, getting closer to her by the second. They stopped suddenly, listening for her.

       Drip, drip, drip.

      * * *

      Cal heard a splash in the large water urn outside his cell. If he had not known better, he would have thought it a drowning mouse.

      ‘That was a remarkable show you gave us tonight,’ called Felix the Satyr from the adjacent cell.

      ‘Well, of course it was,’ Cal replied. ‘For I am the Empire’s finest gladiator.’

      ‘I am not talking about you, idiot,’ said Felix. ‘I am talking about the woman who has taken up residence in our barracks. Do you not see her there? You need only stand up and peer into the urn across from your cell.’

      Cal stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes. In truth, he did not care if Venus herself had taken up residence across from his cell. All he wanted was a little rest before the arrival of his promised reward.

      ‘I hope she knows that she will not escape this ludus by cowering like a kitten all night,’ Felix mused. ‘If she is going to escape at all, she must leave while darkness reigns.’

      There was a long silence and Cal was sure he heard another splash of water.

      ‘Why does she continue to conceal herself?’ mused Felix.

      Because she is a Roman woman, thought Cal. And thus nourishes herself on the melodramatic.

      Cal rubbed his bald head. When he had first caught sight of the woman that evening, he had half believed her an illusion—some vision of divinity foreshadowing his own death. In his three years at this ludus, he had never once seen a woman attend the pit fights and thus naturally assumed she had come for him—his personal escort to the Otherworld.

      But the fights had gone exactly as planned. He had killed his first two opponents, then taken the fall, just as Brutus, his owner and trainer, had instructed. The governor granted mercy, just as Cal had been told he would,