Champion in Love (bxb)

CHAPTER 14. The Night of the Behemoths

Time flies when you are happy. Three weeks passed faster than a dream, full of ribbing and measuring dicks. I was in heaven, but everything ends.

Messalina Augusta spared no expense on the games that opened the season, and the masters of stagecraft pulled out all the stops at the Colosseum.

The weather, too, cooperated. Like on the day in history that we were celebrating, the sky was clear. It was warm enough to sit on a stone bench without your teeth chattering. The artificial lake created in the arena glistened in sunlight. The ice crystallizing at its edges intensified that glimmer.

Closer to the middle, the water steamed, warmed up by a clever piping system, though still a far cry from a hot spring. My toes curled inside my socks from just looking at all this, and I congratulated myself for wearing them, despite hating socks with sandals combo. The spectators with less foresight or more fashion sense, warmed themselves on pastries and beer.

Dead center in the frigid water, rose an island piled with marble blocks, which was supposed to represent the historic fort. It would offer the fighters cover and supplies, if they won time to search for stashes of spears and nets. If they made the landfall at all, rather than go under ingloriously like it often happened on this night.

Please, Mithras, let them reach it. Mars? Jupiter? Or should I pray to some nameless barbarian gods to protect their own, since most gladiators on the boat were barbarians? Including my men, Victor and Junius. Because, of course, Junius was in. Rufius Fulgentius made sure of it, like I knew he would.

Barbarian gods? The Great Hunter? Let Victor and Junius reach the island safely. Please. There, I covered all the bases and there was little left to do, but to wait for the trumpets.

I bit off a broken nail and spat it out. The place was so packed, there was barely space for it to hit the ground. I didn't know if I was envious or anxious. Envious, probably, because it was too late for worries now. We did what we could in our three weeks together. All that remained for Victor and Junius was to take their places on the boat, sail into the arena, and let the Fates weave as they would.

Speaking of the boat! My eyes swept to the exit from the gladiatorial tunnel, praying for it to come out already. A giant arch decorated the mouth of the tunnel, symbolizing the portal between the two worlds, and the backdrop was our Lost Earth. They painted it with the brightest colors I had ever seen in my life, including so much green pigment that one might have thought it was as common as dirt.

To the sides of the arch, the artists painted figures—our venerable Roman ancestors. At least twice life-sized, they huddled, surviving their first winter after the Crossing. Nanciscor was alien to them. The barbarian tribes were unfriendly, and the Romans had no idea about the dangers of the Barea River—dammit, Victor!—the Tiber in the spring.

The painter even added a foaming tidal wave angling for the camp, but the bedraggled legionnaires turned their backs on this warning. This artistic touch was probably accurate. According to the annals, it was the mating season for the behemoths, so they came up the river and fell upon our clueless ancestors out of the blue.

It could have been the end of civilization as we know it, if not for the centurion Marcus Caelius. In September, he led the survivors through the portal to Nanciscor. Now, after the harsh winter, and the less-than-balmy spring break up, he rallied his men again.

He had nothing but the power of his giant brass balls to count on, or had the foggiest how to kill the behemoths. But he girded his loins, and sick, exhausted, starving men closed ranks and fought like Mithras.

Our historians said it was a glorious battle and wrote volumes about the movements of the units and the positions they had occupied. There were maps with arrows and everything... The textbooks also said that the barbarians gathered in the hills that night, waiting to finish what the behemoths had started. Only the prowess of the legionnaires in the face of the beasts' onslaught kept them at bay.