A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow - By Levkoff, Andrew Page 0,49
the end of your days, Velus Herclides.”
“That’s good, Mantis. Truly.” Herclides’ voice wavered just a fraction. “But if you keep needling me, who’s going to be around to tell him? Besides, I can always grow another beard.”
“You know I can’t allow this, Velus,” Malchus said in a low and steady voice, his weapons drawn. His hands had been empty, but now, as if by sorcery, pugio and gladius circled slowly in each hand.
“Why Camilla,” Herclides said to Malchus’ gladius, “aren’t you looking bright and shiny today.” He rubbed his roughly shaved chin with a hand fairly covered with coarse, black hairs. Tufts of the same sprouted from the back of his rough-spun tunic and climbed the front of his chest to the base of his neck. “I might spare you,” he said. “But you’ll have to wait. You shouldn’t have interfered, Drusus. As many as we are now, it’ll take hours to get these lovelies back to you. Think of the time you would’ve saved if you’d have let the Mantis hand them over back at the baths.”
Valens turned to Malchus and said quietly, “The road up the hill is narrow. Easier to defend.” Then he walked up to Herclides, his sword point two feet from his chest. “You sure your blurry eye is up for this?” he asked.
Herclides shrugged. “For what? Nodding my fucking head?”
Which he did.
“Valens!” Malchus yelled. The retiarius threw his net from Valens’ left. Minucius leapt right to dodge its iron entanglement, and stepped into the braced and waiting point of the hoplomachus’ lance, a trap the two gladiators must have planned from the outset. Valens made no sound that we could hear above the hiss of the rain. Minucius dropped his sword and grabbed the wooden shaft with both hands to try with all his might, his strength sapped by agony, to stop what he knew would happen next. The gladiator pushed and twisted, then yanked the weapon out from his body with a sickening tearing sound. Minucius Valens fell dead in the street.
Many things happened either in quick succession or simultaneously, I cannot remember clearly. Malchus bellowed, switched dagger and sword hands and threw his pugio into the neck of the hoplomachus. The gladiator had enough strength to pull the blade from his throat, gripping it as Minucius had held the lance that had killed him. Then he fell to his knees, pitched forward onto our fallen friend, his own blood spreading across the back of the man he had killed.
There were only two daggers in my belt. Now one of them lodged just below the neck of the villain nearest Malchus, the thrust of his sword aborted by my blade. It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man’s life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend’s life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me.
Brutal death is a thing unnatural, a foul insult to whatever order holds sway in the universe. Or a bloody argument that we are lost in the midst of Chaos. Valens was the first victim laid upon the altar of Crassus' revenge. A man I never knew was the second. So many would follow, I weep to think of it.
Drusus screamed for us to run. We turned our backs on our assailants and fled up the hill, knowing there was no hope of escape. Livia and I did our best to shepherd our small flock away from the wolves who loped confidently behind us. Fifty feet ahead the road narrowed. If we could make it that far, we could turn and defend ourselves. It would be the most logical place for us to fight and die. Only an instant before I had wondered what kind of man gives his life for those he barely knows? I wanted to hate Valens because I was unable to find another way to end this. Because I knew such pointless bravery was beyond my understanding, beyond my emulation. Valens had once joked that a hero is a fool too afraid to have the good sense to turn and run away, but his last act among the living gave that jest the lie.
They say in moments of great fear or desperation, a man will always make