The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(18)

Cai stepped back from his fallen opponent and glared defiantly up at the crowd in the stands. I shouted a Cantii victory cry, and Elka put her fingers to her lips and whistled loudly. Quint hollered with savage joy. I didn’t care that we three seemed to be the only ones in the entire place cheering Cai on. He’d won his bout, and that was all that mattered. He could walk out of the arena that day with his head held high and live to fight another day.

At least, he could have—if it was a fair fight.

It wasn’t.

The murmillo wasn’t getting back up onto his feet anytime soon, but he wasn’t the problem. As Cai turned away from the downed man and moved to take his place with the other bout winners, a retiarius fighter with a full face shield and an arm covered in vibrant blue tattoos stepped up out of the dugout and walked into the middle of the arena. He dropped into a ready crouch facing Cai.

The crowd murmured in confusion . . . and then the other bout winners stepped up beside the tattooed retiarius, fanning out in a half circle against Cai.

“Quint?” I asked, not taking my eyes from the ring. “What’s going on?”

“I’m . . . not sure,” he murmured.

I saw Cai’s fists go white-knuckled on his swords as he tightened his grip, and I glanced over at the games masters. There were two of them officiating that day, and they stood near the vomitorium—the tunnel entrance to the arena—roster tablets in their hands. Backs turned to the combatants.

They’re going to let this happen, I thought. They were going to stand by and let the other gladiators gang up on Cai and do nothing.

I heard Quint swear under his breath and felt Elka go stiff with tension beside me. That tension seemed to ripple through the watching mob as they realized what was about to happen. Three against one. Against the rules. Before I could stop myself, I was rising to my feet. But Quint reached across Elka and clamped a hand around my arm, stopping me before I could do anything foolish. I looked over at him, and he shook his head.

“No, lass,” he said, his brow darkening with an angry frown as he looked back at Cai and the gladiators circling him like hungry curs. “This is his fight alone. It has to be.”

I knew that. I knew Quint was right.

But then it was four against one. Then five . . .

Other fighters from the benches where the fresh gladiators waited for the next round stepped up into the ring to join the ones already standing there, ranged in a loose circle facing Cai. Maybe they had scores to settle, maybe they’d been paid, or maybe they just thought it would be fun. But there was no way Cai could win. He would be slaughtered where he stood, overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

The crowd went utterly still with gruesome anticipation.

From the corner of my eye, I could see the jackal-men—the arena attendants who wore dog-headed masks and dragged the bodies of fallen fighters from the sand with corpse hooks—milling about. Preparing.

Then the tattooed retiarius uttered a brief shout and swung his net toward Cai, snapping his wrist so that the weighted hemp ropes whipped viciously through the air. Cai dodged back a step, and the net whistled past his face. The other gladiators shifted and moved to flank him, and I felt myself rising up off my seat again and saw that even Quint was leaning forward like he was about to leap into the arena. But then, suddenly, there was a flurry of activity and another gladiator vaulted up from the trenches into the ring. He, too, was kitted out murmillo-style. One of the designated “heroes” of the arena.

Six against one, I thought, despairing.

But as he strode across the sand, the gladiator reached up and lifted off his murmillo helmet, dropping it to the ground behind him. Beneath his helmet, his hair was shaved on the sides, hanging in long bunches of thin coppery-hued braids from the top of his head down his neck. All over his torso he bore a multitude of scars—both fresh and long-faded—and he positioned himself beside Cai.

Facing the other gladiators.

He and Cai nodded briefly at each other and then, without warning, rushed forward, swords cutting the air before them, flashing sunlight like fire. The other gladiators clearly weren’t expecting even a slight evening of the odds. But two against five was a vastly different situation than one against five. Together, they swept through the line of their opponents, and the man unlucky enough to find himself at the center of that line dropped to the ground as they passed, bleeding from wounds on both sides of his body.

That left four others.

They split into two pairs as Cai and his newfound partner went back-to-back. Not so sure of themselves with their fellow lying, writhing on the ground, howling in pain, the four murmillo backed off, circling warily while the audience jeered and urged them on to attack. In truth, if all four had rushed Cai and his partner at once, that likely would have ended it. But it also, very likely, would have ended at least one of them. And they knew it.

Their betrayal of the rules of the arena meant that this was no longer just a fight. It was a fight to the death. Cai was a soldier before he was a gladiator. He was very used to that. And something about the man with the copper braids—whether it was his scars or his bearing—told me he was too. The mood of the crowd was balanced on a blade’s edge and about to turn ugly. But Cai was patient. He could afford to be. The crowd wasn’t nearly so sanguine.

“Get on with it, cowards!” someone in the stands yelled, and threw a half-eaten fowl leg at the combatants.