The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(19)

A swelling chorus of jeers from the mob prompted two of the murmillo fighters to attack Cai’s partner at once. But with their shoulders jammed up against each other, Cai must have felt the copper-braided man drop into a sudden crouch and, without hesitation, he spun in a circle, slashing with both his blades at full extension over his partner’s head. Cai’s left blade caught one of the attackers on the side of his neck. The crowd gasped in horrified delight as the man dropped to the ground. Blood spurted in a fountain from between his fingers as he clutched at his throat . . . and then he was still.

Cai’s partner sprang up the moment Cai’s blades whistled past his head, and he dispatched the other attacking fighter with a short thrust through the gap in his armor where it buckled at the shoulder. A nonlethal blow that would likely still end the man’s gladiatorial career. Just not his life.

Carrying through with the momentum of his spin, Cai lunged for one of the other pair, his blades circling up and across on the diagonal. His target was fast, though. A step back and a low dodge and his own sword flashed wickedly. And suddenly there was blood. The slice across Cai’s upper arm was clean—from the point of the man’s blade—but deep enough to render Cai’s arm useless for the moment. His right blade flew from shock-numb fingers, cartwheeling through the air and far beyond his reach.

But his left blade . . .

Cai lurched forward and buried a finger’s length of that blade in his attacker’s thigh.

With an animal squeal of pain, the man dropped to the ground.

Now Cai had only the tattooed retiarius left to face. And he looked much less sure of himself than he had when he’d first stepped out onto the sand. Cai glanced at the copper-braided man, who grinned at Cai and stepped back, gesturing for Cai that the retiarius was all his to take care of. Cai nodded curtly and, plucking up his fallen blade, sank into a wary stance. Then he waited, patient as a hunting cat eyeing its prey from a distance. That, I thought, was legion training. The kind of training that tempers passion and rashness in a fight. The retiarius had no such training.

When the crowd again demanded action, he took it as a cue.

Lunging forward, the net in his hand blooming outward in a circle before him, he aimed at Cai’s legs to trip him up. With a single fluid motion, Cai stepped to one side and brought the sica in his left hand down in a diagonal slash aimed not at his opponent but at the net. The sica hooked through the strands, tangling in the knotted rope, and the crowd hissed savagely at what they saw as Cai’s mistake. But I knew what he was doing. With a ferocious heave, Cai yanked the retiarius forward and off balance.

Half the crowd cheered Cai’s audacious bravery and the other half booed and hissed, cried foul, and howled for his blood. In a desperate move, the retiarius thrust his trident straight out in front of him, as if to brace for a fall, and Cai thrust the blade in his right hand between the sharpened tines, twisting so that the gladiator’s entire torso was wide open, undefended. But with both his blades employed elsewhere, Cai was weaponless. Although certainly not without options. He backed off a single step and delivered a thunderous kick to the retiarius, right below his collarbone. The man fell face-first to the sand, gasping for breath, winded and helpless.

The crowd went momentarily silent, stunned at the abrupt turnaround of what had promised to be the brutal slaughter of the patricide Varro. I held my breath, watching to see if there were any more stirrings in the gladiator trenches.

Cai yanked his weapons free and stood there with his shoulders hunched, breath heaving in his chest and slick with sweat. His right arm was painted in a red sleeve of blood from his wound. Turning in a slow circle with his teeth bared, he was like a cornered bear about to be set upon by the wolf pack.

And I couldn’t help him.

Or maybe I could.

I remembered my fight in Caesar’s Triumphs and how the crowd had gone wild when Cai had leaped into the arena to sweep me into an embrace. The passions of the arena mob were extravagantly theatrical, but I knew well their sympathies could swing like a pendulum in a whirlwind, given the right push.

A murmuring in the stands all around me began to grow . . .

I reached up and stripped off the silver armband that circled my left bicep and unwound the filmy silken scarf from around my throat, glad suddenly that I’d decided—that Sorcha had forced me—to dress like an actual Roman lady that day.

I knotted a corner of the scarf around the armband and cried out, “Ave, gladiator! Ave!” in my loudest voice to get his attention. As his head swung toward me, I lobbed the armband through the air into the center of the arena, shouting, “Bravely done!”

The sunlight glittered off the silver trinket, and the scarf fluttered like a victory pennant as it flew. Cai’s eyes went wide, and he thrust out his sword, neatly catching the silver armband on the tip of his blade. It chimed like a bell, and he spun his other sword in his hand and sheathed it on his hip. Then he plucked the bauble from his blade and thrust it high over his head. A handful of the women in the audience near me laughed and clapped with delight.

And then, they began to cheer.

From blood-mad to lovestruck in a moment.

They cheered even louder when Cai reached up to remove his helmet and his hazel eyes locked with mine . . . and he slowly lowered the silver circle to his lips and kissed it. The look on his face was enough to make my heart turn over, and the rest of the female contingent of the crowd clearly seemed to feel the same way. The delighted shriek that went up was near deafening, and a young patrician woman sitting directly in front of me looked as though she might actually swoon.