Fireball by John Christopher Read Free Book Online Page B

and did not reappear. They had beencondemned to the beasts, too, Bos explained, having failed to make the grade as gladiators.
    The trainers were mostly superannuated gladiators. Apart from general training, they supervised the individual disciplines, of which there were many different kinds. Some, whose training took place not in the square but in an arena behind the barracks, had to do with horses; like the essedarii who fought from horse-driven chariots. All the rest fought on foot, but in a number of ways.
    There were several varieties of heavily armed fighter, under the general title of secutores. A secutor parmularius had a small shield, for instance, while a scutarius had a big one. And there were thraeces, who had light shields and a sort of sickle, and the retiarii, who were by way of being the stars of the show. These wore neither helmet nor breastplate—they fought bareheaded in tunics—and were armed only with a net with which to snare their opponents, a three-pronged trident, and a small dagger. Apparently they took on not only heavily armed foot fighters but even essedarii. Their skill and therefore their advantage lay in their agility; their aim was to danceround their more powerful foe, provoking and angering and eventually exhausting him—only then did they move in, tangle him in the net, pin him with the trident, and dispatch him with the dagger.
    Simon, Bos said, was not the right type for a retiarius —too heavily built, young as he was, and not fast enough on his feet. Simon did not feel any great regret over that judgement. He did not relish the notion of going into the arena at all, but if he had to, he wanted to have something more than a yard or two of netting to protect him.
    There were a lot of other people in the barracks, apart from the gladiators and their trainers and the poor devils in the north wing who had nothing to do but wait for their appointment with the lions. (And tigers and wolves, Bos added, and occasionally the chance of being trampled to death by maddened elephants, though that was something of a rarity.) There was a host of auxiliaries, playing their separate parts in this little world: cooks and their assistants, storemen, bootmakers, tailors, armourers, masseurs, doctors, and medical orderlies . . . they seemed to outnumber the gladiators, but it wasn’t easy to estimate their numbers accurately. For one thing theyhad the right to pass in and out of the barracks without restriction. Simon had a thought of getting out himself by passing as one of them, but abandoned it; however hard he found it to keep track, the guards seemed to know them all, and a botched escape, he was fairly sure, would, like a poor showing in training, condemn him to the beasts.
    He did not try to discuss any of this with Bos. Even with their limited comprehension of each other’s speech, he had come to realize that Bos’s basic attitude was one of acceptance of things as they were. After being taken captive as a boy, he had been a farm slave for many years before being sold to the gladiatorial school on the death of his master. For several years since, he had fought as a secutor, surviving dozens of single-handed combats and several mass battles. None of this, obviously, would he have chosen, but he did not seem to resent any of it and would, Simon guessed, have thought anyone mad who suggested trying to escape from it.
    But while he could not confide his own intentions to Bos, he could learn from him. He learned, for instance, that the present rigid confinement to barracks normally applied only to those like himselfwho had not yet fought: the tirones. The veterani, such as Bos, were usually permitted to go in and out, as the auxiliaries did. The exception to this was in the month immediately leading up to the Games.
    So once the Games were over, there would be a relaxation, and by that time, too, he would be a veteranus. Bos talked, with anticipation but not