Chapter 9

Five Years Later – Rome, Spring of 264 BC

They still chanted "Gemini" sometimes.

But most had learned the other name now.

The one I whispered in the dark.

The one that bled out of myth and into marble.

Tenebris.

The shadow.

The whisper before the sword.

I had fought thirty-two times in the Colosseum.

Twenty-four of them ended in death.

Not mine.

They gave me gold, women, perfumes, and titles that dripped from senators' tongues like oil: The Black Hound. The Blade That Smiles. The Ghost of Rome.

I took none of them.

Just coin.

And silence.

I didn't spend the money. Not yet. I stored it in a cellar beneath Cassian's villa, wrapped in oilcloth and salt to keep the metal clean.

Because money wasn't wealth.

It was leverage.

And leverage waits.

Kesseph stayed close.

He didn't fight anymore—not often. His last match had nearly opened his spine, and I'd carried him to the surgeon myself.

He trained the recruits now. The boys who came to the ludus too proud and too soft.

But he and I still sparred, every morning. No armor. No limits.

We never spoke during the drills.

But our silences had become fluent.

Rivals

Lurco was a Gaul, wide as two men, bald and burned from the shoulder down. He wielded a double-handed spatha and fought barefoot, caked in chalk to grip the sand.

We fought in the full sun. Three rounds. No shields. No pause.

He cracked my rib in the first minute.

I opened his thigh to the bone in the third.

The crowd roared when I slipped under his final swing, shattered his knee with my heel, and drove my blade through his eye as he fell.

They stood. All of them.

Even the senators.

Lurco's body burned that night on a pyre of pine and incense.

I kept the coin his manager left.

I didn't forget the scar.

Felix wasn't the strongest. He was the fastest.

A Thracian bastard with three Ludus victories and an ego sharp as his falx.

We fought three times in two years.

The first, I beat him by bleeding him out in the elbow, forcing his grip to fail.

The second, he nearly took my throat—only Kesseph's scream from the sideline made me roll instead of block.

The third was the final bout of the winter games.

He died screaming.

The crowd went silent afterward.

Even Cassian didn't smile.

By now, I knew the names of Consuls.

Men who had once sneered at the games now came to watch mine.

They changed every year—but the ambitious ones? They returned.

Some sat quietly in the marble shade.

Others wagered openly on my matches.

But two weeks ago, one of them stood.

And today, the two of them summoned me.

Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, Consul of the Republic

He wore a scarlet-trimmed tunic and bore himself like a man who had spent too long in armor. The Senate chamber felt small around him. Too many words. Not enough decisions.

He had watched the man fight—the one called Tenebris.

He didn't like him.

But he respected him.

"We'll need men," Flaccus told the other Consul. "Not just soldiers. Killers. Sicily is slipping."

"He's a gladiator," the junior replied.

"No," Flaccus said. "He's a weapon."

Publius Claudius Pulcher, Senator and Political Advisor

The Republic was restless.

He could feel it in the Senate benches. Hear it in the noise of the forums. Smell it in the sweat of traders at the port.

Rome was looking for war.

And war meant names.

He had seen the man in the arena. Noticed the way the crowds quieted when he moved.

Not just a fighter.

A symbol.

"If the legions march," he told Flaccus, "they'll need a myth to lead them."

"He'll never follow orders."

"Then give him his own."

Tenebris – Cassian's Villa

They summoned me at dusk.

Both Consuls. A dozen guards. Wine that cost more than most men's homes.

Cassian poured it himself.

"They've come to offer you something," he said. "And it's not freedom."

I stood across from them, blades at my side.

Not dressed. Not bowed.

"You've killed men worth armies," said Flaccus. "Bled for our city. The people love you."

"The gods might fear you," the other added.

I said nothing.

Flaccus nodded.

"Sicily is failing. Carthage will not blink again. We march in weeks."

"Lead a unit," he said. "Not a legion. But yours. Chosen. Fed. Honored."

"And if I win?" I asked.

"You'll be more than free," he said. "You'll be remembered."

I thought of the blood I had spilled.

Of Kesseph's broken back.

And I whispered:

"I accept."

Rhegium – Roman Military Camp, One Week Before War

The air smelled of salt and sweat and sharpening iron.

The tents ran in rows of canvas white, muddied at the base by the trampling of three thousand feet. Smoke curled from cookfires, and the clang of hammer against helm rang like iron music across the hills.

I stood beneath the command pole as the first soldiers were brought to me.

Eighty men.

A centuria. Not Rome's best.

But not her worst.

They had seen my fights. Some cheered me. Others watched like they might piss themselves if I blinked too hard.

They thought they were being punished.

They were wrong.

They were being chosen.

They called themselves "scrap-men." Veterans, misfits, probationary recruits. Scars on their arms, drunk on their breath.

One stepped forward, bold-faced, a red tattoo of Vulcan's anvil on his neck.

"You're no centurion," he said. "You're a butcher."

I stepped close.

"That's right," I said.

Then I drove my elbow into his solar plexus.

He dropped. Gasps. Some stepped back.

I helped him up.

"You live," I said. "So does your jaw. That's the first lesson."

"What's the second?" one asked.

"You answer to me. You don't need to love me. But you will walk out of Sicily alive if you obey."

"And if we don't?"

"Then you get a grave. Or a poem."

"Written by who?"

"No one remembers the dead who disobey."

They were lightly equipped—scuta (oval shields), gladii (short swords), and pila (heavy javelins). Their armor varied: some in chain, others in boiled leather, a few with bronze greaves or borrowed helmets.

No banners yet.

They weren't a legion.

They were a blade I was going to sharpen.

The Consuls had granted me custom gear.

Laminated bronze cuirass, shaped for mobility. Greaves and vambraces etched with blackened iron—stylised shadows across the metal. Blackened leather over-tunic, sleeveless, easier to move in. Twin sicae, now with carved hilts—one bearing a wolf, the other a raven. A crimson crest on my helmet—not for decoration, but because fear starts with a silhouette.

Kesseph came without asking.

Cassian had slipped him into the rear wagon, listed as "non-combat staff."

No one protested when I pulled him into the training yard.

"You're wounded," I said.

"And?"

"They'll call you dead weight."

"Then I'll teach them how to carry the weight better."

He became my optio—second-in-command in all but name.

He trained the soft-bellied boys from the northern farms.

I trained the killers.

We drilled day and night.

Not just formation. Not just shield wall.

We drilled instinct.

How to survive when your foot slips. How to fight uphill. How to kill a man whose eyes look like your brother's.

And then I taught them silence.

Because war is loud.

But the deadliest moments come just before it breaks.

They didn't chant "Gemini" anymore.

Not here.

They whispered Tenebris like a warning.

Carthage – General Hanno the Younger, Adirim of the Western Fleet

The sea was calm.

Too calm.

He watched the horizon through the thick lens of a war-scrying glass brought from Phoenicia. The port of Lilybaeum buzzed below with the groan of ropes and the stink of tar.

Ships were being readied.

He was being readied.

"Rome has crossed the straits," said his naval quartermaster. "A centuria under strange command has set camp near Messana. Scouts report drills not seen in standard formation."

"Whose command?"

"No name in the rolls. But they say he moves like death itself. A gladiator, once. They chant Tenebris in the wind."

Hanno frowned.

"We'll see if shadows bleed."

Inside his command room, maps of Sicily covered the table. Allies in Agrigentum were wavering. Mercenaries from Iberia hadn't arrived. Trade with Tyre was disrupted.

Rome had ships now.

Not enough.

But soon, they would learn.

"Tell the captains to prepare the siege supplies," Hanno ordered.

"Are we attacking?"

"No. We're showing teeth."

He paused.

"And bring me everything we know about this gladiator."

"To kill him?"

"To know him," Hanno said.

"And then to kill him."

Back in Rhegium – Dusk

I sat outside the command tent. Sword on my lap. Kesseph beside me, wrapping his arm.

"You were different today," he said.

"How?"

"You looked like you cared."

I didn't answer.

But I thought of the men—how they'd started to stand straighter. How one now sharpened the others' blades without being told.

"They're yours now," he said.

"They're Rome's."

"No," Kesseph muttered. "Rome's forgotten how to earn loyalty. You didn't."

I looked up at the smoke curling from the campfires.

At the sky, turning red.

And whispered to no one:

"We march soon."