Atlantis: Devil's Sea by Robert Doherty Read Free Book Online

frenzy, screaming Falco’s name. The retiarius turned toward the emperor’s box and cried out, begging for mercy, tossing his dagger away to make the point obvious and getting to his knees. Falco paused, peering into the shadow, out of which the new emperor Titus stepped. The flames were in honor of him, as he had just taken office two months ago after the death of a Vespasian, his father. Titus scanned the crowd.
    Falco suddenly felt tired. When he had begun fighting, more often than not, mercy was shown, and a man who fought well would be spared. But each year the crowd’s thirst for blood could not be slacked so easily. They could not see beyond the immediate moment and the fact that every gladiator who died was very difficult to replace. Life was cheap in the arena and growing cheaper with each new set of games.
    The thumbs were almost all down. Titus then gave Falco the same sign. He picked up the retiarius’ s dagger and walked up to the man whose head was now bowed, his lips moving in some prayer to his gods.
    Falco didn’t waste any time in showmanship now, slicing the blade across the man’s neck and stepping back out of the way of the flow of blood. The body slumped forward onto the sand, the blood soaking into it.
    Falco turned and raised the blade to the emperor, then slowly spun about, showing it to the stands. The crowd roared its approval. When he completed the turn, he saw that the emperor was in his seat, another man leaning over, talking to him.
    Gaius Marcus was the Ianista or head of the emperor’s gladiatorial school at Rome. When men had first been pitted against each other in such contest, the Ianista worked for private factions, and it had been a business. But the revolt at Capua in 73 B.C. led by Spartacus had forced the emperor to put all such schools under his own control. It was a move that went beyond security, though, as considerable sums of money flowed from such schools.
    Now gladiators were a mixture. Many were slaves, sold into the life. Some were ex-soldiers who entered the arena for their own reason, most to make money, but some with a darkness inside that only found solace in combat. Falco was both, having been born a slave and sold to the Ianista while still young. Then he’d been drawn into the army during the desperate civil war of ’69. When his service was up, he returned to the arena.
    Falco saw the darkness not only in his own heart but also in most men’s souls, and nothing could quiet the voices in his head. If his blood were to flow on the arena sand, he could say little, but in all his fights, he had always won. He knew, in a way, his lack of normal fear of dying gave him a large advantage over those who entered the arena with debilitating fear. And every time he was in a situation, as today, where he could have allowed death to over take him, something had burst forth and caused him to fight, to survive, but he didn’t know what that was.
    A legionnaire ran out with a red-hot poker in his hand and laid it against the skin of each of the retiarii to insure none was faking. Occasionally, gladiators used bladders of pig’s blood inside their armor to simulate wounds. Certain they were all dead, slaves ran out and began removing the bodies and raking the sand, covering the blood, preparing for the next contest.
    In the shadow of the imperial box, he saw her. Smiling as she always did, leaning forward, scented scarf covering her mouth. He had been freed years earlier, but she owned him as securely as any of his former masters.
    Falco slowly walked toward the entrance that led to the tunnels below. Today was only the first day of the games, which were to last a month. There would be much more death.
    He paused just before going into the tunnel, and his head turned toward the south. Unbidden, a vision came to him. A mountain, looming above a city, a cloud at the peak of the mountain. He’d seen that peak before, that city, but it would not come to him at first; then he