Bookworm Gladiator

Finding Hurek would be a bit of work. With the ongoing bouts of unranked gladiators and other games like archery and tent-pegging, the streets were packed with locals, Bedouins, Romans and foreigners like Persians, some Indian merchants and even a few strange looking folk from the Far East. After waiting an hour for our carriage to pull through the Colonnade, I gave up.

"Where are you going?" Atia snapped, watching me gather my things and open the carriage door.

"This is taking too long. I will travel on foot instead," I replied. She looked a little disappointed and didn't say anything as I hopped out of the carriage, my knees screaming with pain. By Jupiter, I couldn't figure this woman out. From subtle death threats, to praise, and now disappointment that I wasn't giving her company? Was it a ploy to keep me on my toes? I can barely walk as it is.

The sun bore down on my bald head without mercy and I was forced to use my journal as a pitiful shade, hoping my armpits didn't stink too much as I squeezed myself through the afternoon crowd. Fortunately and unfortunately, the people smelled worse.

Oh Cicero, you bumbling old fool, I thought. Should have stayed in the carriage.

It took another hour to find the brick kiln quarter. A servant had informed me that Hurek was staying with his friend, Jiri-something, who was a brick kiln worker in the slums. Even "slums" was a generous word as the entire neighborhood was little more than a shanty-town collection of tents and old-discarded marquees patched up with lamb-skin. And it wasn't nearly as well-done compared to a Bedouin camp. I supposed there was an art to living under a bed-sheet.

I turned left at a broken statue of an old Persian king as I'd been directed. His nose was missing. Why always the noses?

Another few yards brought me to a wooden shack held together with twine and resin, and coming from inside I heard a familiar voice. My knocks clattered the front door, and it wobbled on its hinges dangerously. I was afraid it might fall over as someone flung it open.

"Priest!" Hurek pulled me into a bear hug before I could even recognize him. But with my nose immediately clogged with the scent of horse manure, I had no doubts. "Very sweaty," he commented as I managed to escape his arms. I really was drenched, and smelly, and tired. Some Essence of Horse wouldn't have done me much worse I figured.

"You resting?" I asked shortly. He looked like he'd escaped a storm of swords and rock. His face, eyes especially, were puffed black and blue. Someone had stitched up his lips but done it with very poor material that might give him an infection. And his hand was in a cast. "Did you break your hand?"

"Wrist," Hurek said, and gestured for me to come inside.

"Are you sure? I don't mean to intrude-"

"Welcome, welcome Master Cicero!" A warm voice called. The shack had no rooms but I saw curtains hung around the walls to create private quarters, some candles burning with the sweet scent of jasmine and a stove pit in the corner bubbled with a steamy broth that sent my stomach aching with hunger. But my eyes fell to a leather-faced, chubby man by the dinner table, and his pregnant wife who beamed up at me with a warmth I'd yet to experience at Palmyra. "A friend of Hurek is never intruding," she said.

"Cicero, meet Jirikoy, meet his wife Ollia," Hurek pointed, "And Jirikoy meet Cicero, Ollia meet Cicero and Cicero meet Ollia, Jirikoy wife, and-"

"Yes, thank you, Hurek," I said, placing a hand on the fighter's shoulder. "A pleasure to meet you both."

"You must be tired, come," Ollia stood, a hand on her belly and tried to offer me her chair.

"No, no please sit, I do not wish to be a burden please. I am just here to check on Hurek..."

But Ollia had already stood and made her way to the stove, swiftly filling a bowl with hot stew and offered it to me with a hand towel. "Please, eat."

Hurek returned to stand by Jirikoy and they resumed a conversation that I must have interrupted. "Thank you, that's very kind of you, Ollia," I obliged, taking the hot bowl but I couldn't make myself steal her chair. "But please, you should sit."

"Take mine," Jirikoy said, lifting himself up with a grunt and moving to stand beside Hurek. Their hospitality was especially unique, something I hadn't really encountered thus far. Not from Atia or the Temple. Not from the academics, my colleagues, and even the locals, poor or rich. Indeed, as I settled down on the table with my bowl, I paid careful attention to their language and mannerisms. To think that I'd been so ignorant of Hurek's origin that I hadn't noticed he wasn't from any culture or peoples that I was familiar with. We always ignored slaves and dismissed gladiators as a dull background décor of any given household, but each one of them often came from diverse backgrounds that I remember being very curious of long time ago. Before my foray into the politics and grudges of the Senate and indulging in my own literary ambitions.

There was something about watching them together, Hurek and Jirikoy, heads together in deep discussion, and Ollia sitting peacefully while keeping an eye on my reaction to her stew. It made me feel, for the first time, that I was in a home. But not even since Rome, or even before my wife had passed. But much, much longer than that.

"So, you and Jirikoy are from?" I asked Ollia, hoping she understood my latin fully.

"We are Nokchi, as is Hurek."

"Nokchi?"

"We come from north, and clash with Corbula," she explained. I figured she spoke of the Roman war with Parthia not too long ago, for the lands by the northern sea. Corbula had captured many prisoners in that war and sold them as slaves. And that's how Hurek and Jirikoy had become gladiators?

"One day we go back," Ollia continued, "but for now, Jirikoy is free and in business. And Hurek will be free too, thanks to you."

"Jirikoy is free?" I asked, ignoring the pang of guilt at their expectations and thinking of what Atia had planned for Hurek.

"Yes!" she beamed, "Julius gave Jirikoy freedom. Now we do business."

"He works at the kiln now?"

"Yes, but we also make soap."

"Ah." That explains it; Hurek's obsession with making soap. Although Jirikoy seemed like a proper business man, despite his face, which had just as much scar tissue as Hurek's. "You know of the horse soap then?"

Ollia laughed, covering her mouth with her hands, a little embarrassed. "Yes, Hurek want to make soap too. But we tell him, he needs better flavor. Like Jasmine."

"Yes, please tell him that," I remarked, making her laugh some more. "Lovely stew by the way, very delicious." And I wasn't lying. She'd made the best vegetable stew I'd had in a while, and I wished I had some bread to dip it with. But I gathered they were too poor to afford anything else.

"Thank you!" Ollia said. "I make more for you."

"I would very much like that."

I slurped the rest of the broth from the bowl and tried to listen to Hurek and Jirikoy's language. They spoke in a jovial tone, and the words seemed very similar to Armenian and maybe some Persian? But I couldn't make out a single word. Before I could join in and ask all the questions that were stacking up in my mind, there was a knock at the rickety door.

"Hurek!" A boy called, slamming his fists on the wood. "Hurek, open up!"

"It's Paco," Ollia said to me as Hurek crossed the room to let the boy in. Out of breath, the boy stumbled in wide-eyed and pointed outside. "It's Flamma! He came!"

Another ranked gladiator had already arrived? Hurek had barely rested! And Flamma of all people. He was ranked very highly by Suetonius, so Hurek would probably not fight him so quickly if he competed. "Was anyone else with him?" I asked nervously. "A younger man? Brown-haired?"

The boy paused, and then he nodded excitedly, "in silver armour!"

My heart dropped. Shams of Damascus.

The Stalwart Prince he'd been named. Ranked seventeenth in the realm, and potentially the next opponent for Hurek.

***