As the guards helped to strap Viridovix’s armour back on, he stared up at the sea of countless faces that were screaming out his name, staring at him with unbridled adoration and envy and lust, and a heady drunkenness surged its giddying power through every vein and artery in his body. The announcer was saying something, but it sounded as if the man was miles away; his voice was merely a distorted echo of a lost whisper amidst the cliff-crashing ocean waves of the crowd.
Viridovix watched coolly as his opponent strode out of a gate at the far end of the arena. The man looked as if he was over seven feet tall, and he was built like a rhinoceros to boot. It did not matter; Viridovix had not tasted fear for years. He began to jog, then run, then sprint towards his adversary, gripping his sword in his right hand as he charged. With the rolling storm clouds of the spectators’ cheers propelling him on, he descended upon his opponent with all the wrath of a super-hurricane making landfall. Victory was assured him.
***
‘You made short work of the African giant, Viridovix,’ N’Jalabenadou remarked as a slave girl dug her fingers into the muscles of his back, massaging them with vigour. ‘But do you think that you could best this African?’
‘I’d wager I could best the General, General,’ Viridovix said with a wry grin, while another slave girl pounded his back with hammer-fisted blows. ‘But then if I killed you, who would I have to boast to about my victories, and all the beautiful women I fuck after said victories? Batiatus has promised me my pick of any five whores I want tonight, from Domitia’s House of Pleasures! Five of the most beautiful, voluptuous female faces and bodies in Rome, General! Five!’
The General raised an eyebrow and then shook his head, releasing a slow sigh in which his disapproval was blatant.
‘I don’t know if I’m merely disappointed or actively disgusted, Viridovix,’ he said dryly.
‘Bah! You and your Spartan ethics! You’re an African, black as Hades, just like that monster I destroyed in the Colosseum this afternoon. You’re no bloody Spartan, and as much as you admire them you never will be, for all you wish it! Why don’t you let go of your foolish discipline and have some wine and women, and enjoy yourself for a change?’
‘That’s the difference between you and I, Viridovix. Discipline is my enjoyment,’ N’Jalabenadou countered, pausing to grunt with pleasure and relief as the slave girl kneaded her knuckles into a knot in his muscles. ‘I take great joy in my “Spartan ethics”, as you call them. Where I come from, the greatest and most revered men and women are the ascetics who forsake all sensual pleasures, wealth and family to seek wisdom alone in the wilderness. There is immense knowledge and insight to be attained through the means of a simple existence, of harmony with all life, of—’
Viridovix rolled his eyes and sneered.
‘For Jupiter’s sake man, spare me your lecturing. I’d rather speak to Crixus over there than listen to your boring rambling.’
The joke Viridovix was making referred to the fact that the gladiator Crixus, who was also getting a massage with them, did not speak, ever. Crixus looked up at the mention of his name, but the look he gave Viridovix was a blank one, devoid of any expression. Viridovix and the other gladiators were used to this; they had long since become accustomed to this particular gladiator’s strange and often eccentric mannerisms. Crixus turned his broad, angular face, with its harsh, aggressive features, away from the other two gladiators and settled back down on the stone massage slab. He was an almost excessively tall, very muscular fellow in his mid-thirties, and was of an ideal build for a fighter. His honey-coloured skin – he was Carthaginian – was stretched taut over heavy muscles that were as solid and bulgy as knots in polished wood, and his long limbs gave him astounding reach, while his broad and mighty shoulders injected tremendous power into any and every blow he struck, either with his rocky fists or the scimitars he wielded.
The man’s taut skin, however, was far from flawless. His back, thighs and arms were an utter mess of ugly, raised whip scars and sword cuts – there were many more whip scars than sword scars, though – and in addition to this, much of his skin had been severely burned in a fire, and had the look of molten lava, bubbling from the quiet volcano that seemed to burn relentlessly inside him; while his face was usually a frozen mask, set in a permanently and unwaveringly neutral expression, whatever the circumstances, in his large, dark eyes there was a nearly bottomless abyss of old pain, grief and trauma.
Because he never spoke and kept entirely to himself, nobody knew what misfortunes had befallen him or what abuse he had suffered in his pre-gladiatorial life. They were aware of a few details, though. One was that “Crixus” was not his real name; it was a nickname given to him on account of the curly and springy black hair on his long skull, that he grew out to the longest length that Batiatus would permit, which was only around ten centimetres or so. Of course, because he did not speak, nobody was ever able to find out what his Carthaginian name was, and since he responded to “Crixus”, that was what they called him.
They were not sure if he was permanently silent because he was a mute who quite literally could not speak, or whether
