with a snarl, swung his thin arm toward the ground. Before he could touch the earth, Madoc dropped to one knee, digging his right hand into the tossed soil.
The quake began instantly, cutting Fentus’s battle cry short. Madoc gritted his teeth as the ground dipped beneath his palm and rose up like a wave before him. The flying gravel was thin, not nearly as dense as Fentus’s efforts had been. Still, it surprised Madoc’s opponent. When the blast hit Fentus in the chest, it knocked him back three full steps.
Madoc lunged up, sprinting through the cloud of dust toward the other man. He might not have been trained in Xiphos, or have mastered the skills of arena fighting, but he’d been lifting rocks at the quarry since he was a child, and his back and shoulders could carry a weight twice his own.
Three more steps and Madoc had closed the space between them.
Fentus’s eyes, red from the dust, went wide just before Madoc arched back his elbow and punched him in the jaw.
Fentus fell like a rock, flat on his back, and did not rise.
Frenzied excitement squeezed Madoc’s chest. The crowd was quiet—no more calls of pigstock sounding out in the night. They’d finally seen his true intent, his strategy played out: wait until the other man tired, then attack.
If only they’d known that sensing Fentus’s weakness was all Madoc’s powers entailed.
Ten-to-one odds. They should be higher now; no one would doubt Fentus’s victory after all the falls Madoc had taken.
A shout built inside him. Petros’s hired thugs were falling, one by one. The senate’s corrupt master of taxation set up these matches knowing he’d win—the entry and attendance fees, the heavy bets, all of them went into a pot that he kept unless a challenger could take down his fighter. It was just another way Petros sucked the poor dry.
But Geoxus had smiled on Madoc, and tonight Petros would leave empty-handed.
“Cheat!” shouted a man to Madoc’s left. The bookmaker. One of Petros’s many employees. “No one beats Fentus! He must be a cheat!”
Madoc’s eyes narrowed on a blue toga surrounded by centurions in silver and black armor. Centurions policed the city, enforcing the senate’s rules with an iron fist. Of course Petros would have them standing by.
A few others around the bookmaker took up the call.
“Great.” Madoc held up his hands in surrender. He tried a smile, which drew even louder cheers from the crowd. He wasn’t the only one who wanted to see Petros’s fighter defeated.
“Arrest him!” shouted the bookmaker.
Madoc bit back a curse. It was a shame Cassia, Elias’s sister, couldn’t be here. Her life’s goal was to be a centurion, and she’d make a good one. She’d been telling on him since he was seven.
As three centurions moved into the ring, drawing rocks from the ground with their geoeia to hover above their ready hands, Madoc gave a weak laugh. He took a step back, then another. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed two more centurions coming up from behind.
“It was a fair fight,” he tried. “You all saw it.”
The centurions continued their steady approach, wariness curling their spines. They had Geoxus’s blessing to use lethal force, but Madoc made them nervous. Any fighter who could take down Fentus was to be approached with caution.
“Leave him alone!” shouted a woman from the edge. A rock slapped against the nearest solder’s breastplate with a ping. “You want to arrest someone, arrest that crook Petros!”
The soldier spun toward the edge of the crowd, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.
From the opposite side came another rock, then another. Soon shouts were rising into the night. Some came to Madoc’s defense, others to Fentus’s. Guilt panged through Madoc. Half these people were counting on tonight’s winnings to feed their families or cover their debts. The bookmaker’s shrill call for order was brushed aside as a fight broke out to Madoc’s left.
That was his cue to run.
He sprinted into the crowd, gravel flying behind him. More fights broke out, shouts ringing into the night, as Madoc bounced off bodies blocking his way.
“There he is!”
“Get him!”
“Run!” called a man nearby as a flash of silver and black whipped behind them. Soon, people were shoving in all different directions, and the shouts turned to screams as the crowd stampeded back to the safety of the buildings.
Madoc charged on, keeping his head low and his shoulders slumped to hide the fact that he was taller than most full-grown men. The urge