“Leonidas?” Marcianus called out to me as I passed the cell he used as his workshop.
I halted, remembering my errand. Inside, Marcianus wrapped the splinted arm of a broad-shouldered young man who had the blond hair and large frame of those from the far north.
“Praxus took a direct hit on his arm,” Marcianus said cheerfully. “Broke it clean through.”
Praxus, who had joined the ludus after I’d left, was large and very young, with the vast confidence of a youth who thought nothing could defeat him. He winced as Marcianus tightened the bandage but kept up his air of bravado.
“It’s not bad.” Praxus’s accent was thick, his Latin barely intelligible.
“Train more with a shield or arm guard,” I advised him. “A broken bone will get you ejected from the arena. You won’t have a chance at prize money, and Aemil might make you haul water or slops until he thinks you’ve learned your lesson.”
Praxus gazed at me in all seriousness. “Then I will practice, as you say.”
“Not for some weeks,” Marcianus continued in his sunny tones. “This bone has to set. No training for you for a while. Why are you here, Leonidas? Come to assist me?”
“To find the gladiators who’ve run off,” I said, not responding to his jest. “Did they mention to you where they were going? Ajax and Herakles, I mean.” I would simply look for Rufus at his home with his wife.
Marcianus lost his smile. “I imagine it’s their business.”
Marcianus did not approve of gladiators being penned in like animals. He enjoyed his job of patching them up, but he avowed that all gladiators should voluntarily join the life and be free to leave it when they wished. Many, like Rufus, did join as free men, hoping for fortune and fame, but most were bought at auction or given to the ludus in lieu of execution, as I had been.
“Better I find them than Aemil,” I told him. “Or the urban cohorts.”
“They haven’t been gone all that long, and there are no games scheduled,” Marcianus pointed out.
“If they’re simply dicing or drinking, then Aemil can decide what to do.” I paused. “He seems worried.”
Marcianus snorted. “If you are painting Aemil as a concerned mother hen, don’t. And leave the men be.”
As I cast around for a way to pry the information from Marcianus, Praxus broke in.
“Look for Herakles at a villa north of the Pons Agrippae,” Praxus said. “He told me of a great house there with a wine cellar the size of a theatre.”
Both Marcianus and I turned to Praxus in surprise. The lad must be all of sixteen, tall and bulky, but with the lankiness of one who’d just grown into his body.
“How do you know that?” Marcianus demanded. He finished tying off the bandage, his movements gentle, though I could see he wasn’t pleased with Praxus for giving me the information.
“Herakles told me. He doesn’t talk to many, but he does to me. Probably because I’m not a Roman.”
Most gladiators were from outside Rome, but Herakles must have taken to this young man from northern Germania, both of them coming from the very edges of the empire.
“Where exactly is this villa?” I asked him.
Praxus propped one foot on the bunk, leaning against the wall behind him. “Across the river from thetrigarium. One of the big houses on the hill on the western bank.”
Thetrigariumwas a track for chariot races. It was nowhere near the size of the Circus Maximus but was a place for training and smaller races.
Marcianus’s face pinched in disapproval, but he said nothing as he folded away the rest of the bandages and mixed a concoction for Praxus to drink. “This will help with the pain,” Marcianus told him.
Praxus scoffed. “I am fine.”
Marcianus held the cup under his nose. “Maybe you are now, but when the shock wears off and you want to sleep, this will help. More sleep will heal you faster.”
Praxus shrugged but took the cup. I’d drunk Marcianus’s potions before, and I was usually asleep within minutes.
Praxus downed the liquid in one gulp. “Tastes foul.” He managed to give the cup back to Marcianus before slumping onto the bunk.
I watched with detached interest as Praxus’s big body deflated, and his eyes closed. In the next moment, a snore emitted from his open mouth.
