“He’ll be safe.” Marcus had no desire to see what the Emperor would do to the Barbarian, and no desire for his daughter to see it, either. “Cling tight, Sabina.”

“He stole my pearl haircomb,” she said mournfully. “Do you think I’ll see him again?”

THEA

AS Domitian wrested a bow and a quiver of arrows from a guard, I fell toward him with some idea of throwing him to the ground. But I tripped and fell headlong, and he swiftly nocked and shot.

The shaft thudded into the sand between Arius’s feet.

Arius laughed again. He strode forward, holding his arms out, offering himself up. Grinning.

Domitian shouted. No words, just a long bellow. He shot again.

The arrow wisped through Arius’s hair. The next brushed past his shoulder.

Ordinarily Domitian could draw a bow with such precision that he could send five arrows winging between the splayed fingers of a slave fifty yards away. Today, not one of an entire quiver touched his scornful target.

Arius laughed again. I felt a bubble of hysterical mirth lurking at the back of my own throat. In the stands I heard a ripple of choked giggles. Domitian gazed wildly back and forth, looking for laughers amid an audience of fifty thousand.

Arius’s laughter trailed off. He leaned forward. Nailed Domitian’s eyes with his own. He spat into the sand.

“Guards!” Domitian bellowed, brick red. “Guards!”

A hail of spears rained down into the arena. Two struck a hapless Brigantian boy, who screamed and writhed. But Arius strode unhurriedly to the center of the arena to lay the crushed body of the dwarf on his shield, lift it up, and stride unhurriedly out through the Gate of Death. Not one spear touched him.

A silence fell over the Colosseum, a silence so dead and heavy that it froze fifty thousand people to stone. A few made stealthily for exits—one of them a fat man with a fringe of oiled ringlets. The Emperor’s eyes darted to him, and a finger pointed to the man who had suggested that killing the dwarf would bring a better show from the Barbarian.

“Throw him in.”

The stands erupted. Roman citizens leaped to their feet, ripping the air with their hands and baying for blood, and a dozen hands picked Gallus up and tossed him over the wall. Into the arena, where a half-dozen sobbing, hysterical Brigantians tore him to pieces before he could shriek the words, “I’ll pay.”

IN the arena Arius had felt immortality surging through his veins, but in the dark hall of the Gate of Death, immortality faded. He felt sand gritting in his mouth, he felt a sluggishly bleeding wound on his leg, and even the light weight of the dead dwarf was heavy.

Hercules.

In the bare hallway where the dead were dragged, he laid out the dwarf on his shield like they laid out the heroes of Brigantia. Straightened the crushed limbs, closed the eye that hadn’t been gouged out, folded the little hands around their little sword. He dropped his own helmet at the dwarf’s side, then his armor. A good time to put an end to Arius the Barbarian, who surely didn’t have long to live anyway. He found a torch guttering in a wall bracket and held his arm over it until the blurred gladiator tattoo burned over black. The pain of the fire barely registered.