Champion in Love (bxb)

CHAPTER 31. The Young Gladiator

In the first days of autumn, Fidelium celebrated the good fortune of our ancestors with the Miraculous Harvest Festival. Messalina Augusta outdid herself. She opened Imperial granaries to the city's poor to make up for the decidedly pauper harvest. She spent generously on the annual festivities and extended the Great Games to thirty days from two weeks.

I sensed something sinister behind the Empress' relentless drive to immerse the city into fake jollity, beyond calming the populus ahead of Claudius Caesar's return from the frontier. Knowing her, Messalina Augusta could have been eager to seize her last chance for fun, but I just couldn't shake the feeling of dread. It clung to me like a mantle.

Unlike me, Fidelium didn't worry about Messalina Augusta's reasons to treat them. The citizens responded with enthusiasm, unaware that merriment wouldn't stop the winter from coming. They just didn't want to think of it yet.

Our school was profiting and Rufius Fulgentius shone like a freshly minted sestertius. We qualified both main quads for the Great Games, twice as many men as I had hoped. To my secret relief, and his chagrin, Quintus lost an early qualifier, so that left us with seven, which was plenty.

As Victor had promised me, he won everything. He shone in quads, in doubles and in personal combat. His fame spread like a wildfire through the partying city. He was powerfully built, young, and, after his about-face, insatiably hungry for fame. The crowd couldn't get enough of him.

He also kept his other promise, avoiding me like I was a curse. If he thought I would ignore him as well, he was drinking his wine undiluted.

I watched him train; I watched him from the stands whenever I could, to make sure he didn't slip up. The pride I took in his triumphs was almost enough to stave away my apprehension. Almost. I still didn't understand what his plan was, but his zeal, his devil-may-care attitude, this sudden change in him... I lay at night thinking about it, my fears chasing Morpheus from my side.

Messalina Augusta planned the grand final of the Games to celebrate Claudius' return, but Victor beat my winning streak from the year I had become the Champion of Champions well before that. Don't let the fact that this year's Games were larger, so to make up the numbers, Messalina Augusta had recruited many more gladiators, not all of them elite fighters, take away from Victor's achievement. He was magnificent.

Still, a suspicion gnawed on me with a renewed force on the day Victor beat my record.

The matches weren't done, and the jester was doing his best to shorten the mid-day break, when a gray-veiled bodyguard appeared next to me at the Colosseum, in the stands. Was it the same woman who scorned me on the day I had surrendered my rudis? I thought she was, although I had already mistaken a beggar for her on the night we had avenged Junius.

"Ave," I said to Augusta's bodyguard.

She only crooked her finger at me. With a shrug, I followed her to the Imperial box.

Rufius Fulgentius was already in attendance, brimming with cheer. His gut exposed it as a fake, however. Once protruding happily, his belly sagged into a prune, barely masked by his toga. I took my place behind him, after a quick prayer that the weight he'd lost came primarily from cutting out beans from his diet.

We didn't have to wait long for Victor to be brought in before the Empress, before he had time to wipe off the arena's dust and blood. I couldn't disagree with that presentation. Fresh from the fight, glistening with sweat over pumped muscles, Victor looked breathtaking.

Naturally, the Praetorian guards had confiscated his twin swords before admitting him to the Empress' presence. I couldn't ask if he fought in my favorite style to spite me or to show off his perfect body, that didn't just ooze danger and sex. Victor's body was a honed weapon. One word from me, and the Praetorians would open his marble-worthy midriff with his own blades... but I kept my peace.