Free The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

the running swordsman, so intent on his chase that he had forgotten to guard for it; the weight carried the deadly folds across and across again, and a howl burst from the crowd as he crashed headlong and rolled over, helplessly meshed as a fly in a spider’s web.
    Marcus wrenched forward, his breath caught in his throat. The swordsman was lying just below him, so near that they could have spoken to each other in an undertone. The Fisher was standing over his fallen antagonist, with the trident poised to strike, a little smile on his face, though his breath whistled through widened nostrils, as he looked about him for the bidding of the crowd. The fallen man made as though to raise his hampered arm in the signal by which a vanquished gladiator might appeal to the crowd for mercy; then let it drop back, proudly, to his side. Through the fold of the net across his face, he looked up straight into Marcus’s eyes, a look as direct and intimate as though they had been the only two people in all that great amphitheatre.
    Marcus was up and standing with one hand on the barrier rail to steady himself, while with the other he made the sign for mercy. Again and again he made it, with a blazing vehemence, with every atom of will-power that was in him, his glance thrusting like a challenge along the crowded tiers of benches where already the thumbs were beginning to turn down. This mob, this unutterably stupid, blood-greedy mob that must somehow be swung over into forgoing the blood it wanted! His gorge rose against them, and there was an extraordinary sense of battle in him that could not have been more vivid had he been standing over the fallen gladiator, sword in hand. Thumbs up! Thumbs up! you fools! … He had been aware from the first of Uncle Aquila’s great thumb pointing skyward beside him; suddenly he was aware of a few others echoing the gesture, and then a few more. For a long, long moment the swordsman’s fate still hung in the balance, and then as thumb after thumb went up, the Fisher slowly lowered his trident and with a little mocking bow, stepped back.
    Marcus drew a shuddering breath, and relaxed into a flood of pain from his cramped leg, as an attendant came forward to disentangle the swordsman and aid him to his feet. He did not look at the young gladiator again. This moment was shame for him, and Marcus felt that he had no right to witness it.
     
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    That evening, over the usual game of draughts, Marcus asked his uncle: ‘What will become of that lad now?’
    Uncle Aquila moved an ebony piece after due consideration. ‘The young fool of a swordsman? He will be sold in all likelihood. The crowd do not pay to see a man fight, when once he has been down and at their mercy.’
    ‘That is what I have been thinking,’ Marcus said. He looked up from making his own move. ‘How do prices run in these parts? Would fifteen hundred sesterces buy him?’
    ‘Very probably. Why?’
    ‘Because I have that much left of my pay and a parting thank-offering that I had from Tullus Lepidus. There was not much to spend it on in Isca Dumnoniorum.’
    Uncle Aquila’s brows cocked inquiringly. ‘Are you suggesting buying him yourself ?’
    ‘Would you give him house-room?’
    ‘I expect so,’ said Uncle Aquila. ‘Though I am somewhat at a loss to understand why you should wish to keep a tame gladiator. Why not try a wolf instead?’
    Marcus laughed. ‘It is not so much a tame gladiator as a body-slave that I need. I cannot go on overworking poor old Stephanos for ever.’
    Uncle Aquila leaned across the chequered board. ‘And what makes you think that an ex-gladiator would make you a suitable body-slave?’
    ‘To speak the truth, I had not thought about it,’ Marcus said. ‘How do you advise me to set about buying him?’
    ‘Send down to the circus slave-master, and offer half of what you expect to pay. And sleep with a knife under your pillow