If the gladiator had stood his ground, the lion might have been content to lick its wounds. But, armed only with a dagger, he decided to put as much distance between himself and his nemesis as possible. Its hunting instinct aroused, the lion charged.
Now the roars of the crowd were roars of laughter. In his fear, the gladiator lost all sense of direction and ran in circles, scattering antelope as he went, with the lion gaining on him at every stride. The laughter grew hysterical when he looked over his shoulder, tore off his bronze mask and soiled his loincloth all in the same instant. Then the lion was on him, pinning the screaming man face down, shaking its head and working its great jaws at his shoulder. The screams grew louder as the lion bit through leather and into skin, but the thick shoulder strap saved the gladiator from greater damage for a few vital seconds.
Rufus watched with horrified fascination, unable to tear his eyes away from the doomed fighter. He barely noticed the slim figure who danced lightly across the arena to stand over the lion and its victim.
'This should be good,' Fronto said to him.
The man in the golden mask could have killed the lion with a single thrust, but he gauged the crowd's humour with the same precision he employed to calculate the damage the lion was doing his fellow performer.
Instead of striking instantly, he mimicked indecision with the mischievous confidence of an accomplished actor. The lifeless eyes of the young god mask merely added to the comic appeal. Should he strike? No, perhaps not. Was this his friend lying here on the ground in the process of being devoured? Perhaps yes. But the poor lion had to eat, didn't it? Well then, I'll leave the decision up to you, the audience.
Most would have been happy to see the lion's victim die. But when the young gladiator forced his blade home into the base of the animal's neck, killing it instantly, the blow was received with universal approval.
Now he had his own performance to complete, and it was a piece of theatre that broke Rufus's heart.
Circe fought because the young gladiator left her no other choice. She lay behind the carcass of her final kill, ears flat against her head, and watched suspiciously as he advanced. Even when he was close enough to touch her with his sword, she stayed motionless, unable to decide whether the strange apparition was harmless or something altogether different.
Rufus felt bile rising in his throat. He understood there was only one outcome to the contest, but he could not stop himself from calling out to the leopard.
'Attack, Circe. Kill him, or you're going to die. Please, do something…' His anguished cry tailed into silence as Fronto gripped him by the arm. He turned to bury his head in the folds of the animal trader's cloak, but Fronto's strong hands forced his face upward and turned him to watch the spectacle unfold.
Circe did not die a brave death, or even a dignified one. She was butchered, slowly, one piece at a time, for the entertainment of the crowd.
With a barely perceptible flick of his wrist, the golden-masked figure drew the tip of his sword across the tender flesh of the leopard's nose, drawing blood and making the animal scream with pain as she retreated backwards from the protection of the antelope corpse. Still she did not attack, and the gladiator marched relentlessly forward with a measured pace that gave the spotted cat no time to consider her next move.
The sword flicked again, slicing away part of Circe's ear and leaving her half blinded by a flood of red which covered her face mask. Now the pain was unbearable and the cat launched itself at her tormentor, a spring-heeled, snarling, yellow and black harbinger of hell, whose needle-pointed claws raked at the soft, vulnerable skin of his stomach.
But the gladiator had been waiting for just such an attempt.
To the mesmerized crowd in the tiered stands, it was as if his whole being flowed in the same instant from one spot on the arena floor to another a few feet away. To the cat it was as if she was attacking one of the insubstantial white strips of cloud which scarred the azure sky above them. One moment he was there, so close she could almost feel her claws sinking into his flesh, the next he was gone and the rear of her body went rigid with shock and turned into a searing ball of unbelievable agony.
The crowd shrieked with amazement and Fronto shouted with them.
' Di omnes. Will you look at that?'
As he melted away from the cat's attack, the gladiator had positioned himself to deliver a single sweep of the long sword which severed her tail an inch from the root.
Circe spun in circles, almost insane with pain, squealing pathetically and trying without success to lick the stump of her tail. Eventually she came to a shambling halt and turned again to face her torturer.
Rufus watched Circe's suffering in an agony of torment. Even at the risk of his own life, he would have rushed into the centre of the arena to stand between her and her executioner, but Fronto's vice grip on his shoulder held him where he was. Gradually the horror of what he was witnessing became too much, and it was replaced by a great emptiness. He willed the gladiator with the god's face to bring the uneven contest to a merciful end, but knew he would not. Every cut of the fighter's sword drove the crowd to new heights of ecstasy and each blow turned the once-proud animal into a shambling, bleeding mass of raw meat.
He removed an eye with a spearing thrust. A casual slash chopped off the other ear. As the tormented animal tried to close with him, he flayed her, expertly replacing the dark rosettes which had made her one of nature's most beautiful animals with obscene patches of scarlet flesh and white bone. Soon, Circe was swaying on her feet, exhausted by her efforts and by the loss of the blood which dripped into the packed earth.
The gladiator turned to walk away. Somehow Circe found the strength to break into a tired loping trot and then a full-blown charge that carried her towards the fighter's exposed back.
The crowd screamed a warning, but Rufus knew the gladiator had no need of it. He had choreographed this moment, just as he had choreographed every second of the one-sided contest. He turned in a single graceful movement with the sword already extended in front of him, and sank the long blade into the leaping animal's throat, driving a yard of iron down the length of Circe's body. The blow split her heart, killing her instantly.
Rufus, sobbing now, but still drawn irresistibly to the dreadful slaughterhouse of the arena, could visualize the grinning, triumphant features behind the mask as the gladiator marched from the arena, acknowledging the tributes of the crowd. But as he traded the harsh glare of the arena for the shade of the corridor, the fighter's confident stride faltered, as if he somehow gained his energy and strength from the sun itself. Hatred welled up inside Rufus like the magma of an erupting volcano and for an instant he was on the point of launching himself at Circe's killer.
Then the gladiator removed his golden helmet.
IV
The saddest eyes Rufus had ever seen gazed from a face as handsome as the mask which had hidden it, and more so, for this was the face of a living, breathing thing and not some soulless metal facade that killed without compassion or conscience. His hair was the colour of a cornfield in high summer, but his eyes were the dull grey of a winter's morning. The sadness in them had depths that Rufus knew he could never — or hoped never to — fathom.
The second surprise was that the gladiator, who had looked and acted like a veteran of a hundred combats, was only a few years older than Rufus himself, probably in his early twenties.
When he spoke, it was in a guttural German-accented Latin that Rufus at first found difficult to understand, and his words were addressed to Fronto.
'This is the boy?'
'Yes. This is him.'
The young gladiator stared at Rufus for a second. 'I am Cupido,' he said, an unspoken question in his voice.
Rufus hesitated, but Fronto replied for him.
'This one is Rufus. He is my slave, but one day, if he learns, he will be my partner.'
'So, Rufus, you hate me now? For what I did to your animal?'
Rufus blinked away a tear, but said nothing.
'I was told you must be taught the reality of the arena. The cruelty? It was part of your training, I think.' Cupido fixed Fronto with a long stare, making the big man shiver. 'It was not something I took pleasure in. It was
