Free Web NovelChapter 10: Wrong Side of History
Chapter 10: Wrong Side of History
The sand was red.
Not the usual red of the arena floor, baked into the ground by years of blood and sun. This was fresh. Dark and wet and spreading slowly outward from the bodies that lay scattered across the sand like broken things. The air carried the metallic stench of it.
There were so many of them. So many gladiators face down in the dirt, weapons still in hand, armor split open in ways that told you everything about how quickly it had happened. One man lay with his arm stretched out ahead of him, fingers still curled around the hilt of a sword he never got to use. Another had fallen backward, staring up at the sky with the particular stillness of someone who would never look away.
The crowd was silent.
Fifty thousand people. Not one of them making a sound.
At the far end of the arena, three men still stood. Tall, slightly defined muscles under tanned skins. They were breathing hard but standing. Watching. All three wearing the same expression.
Awe poorly disguised as menace.
Awe, at the man standing in front of them.
Agrippa.
He stood between them and the body at his feet.
He looked like something the arena had already chewed up and decided to spit back out just to see what would happen. He was bathed in red, that made his tunic stick to his skin.
His legs were shaking. Not from fear. But from exhaustion. From the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from having already done something that should have been impossible and being asked to do it again.
The sword in his hand was dripping.
Behind him, Octavian lay still in a puddle of blood that had spread wide and dark across the sand. He lay still, with a single arrow sticking out from his side.
Agrippa took a quick look at him.
Even in his current state and knowing all hopes were lost, he still cared for him.
Every second of this fight, he had positioned himself in front of every threat, absorbed every blow that was meant for the younger man, moved backward only when moving backward kept Octavian further from the blades.
He raised the sword.
His arm was shaking now too.
The three men across the sand glanced at each other. Then back at Agrippa. Then at each other again.
One of them took a step forward.
Agrippa shifted his weight.
The crowd remained silent.
And somewhere within the holding area, a pale boy with white hair was watching with an expression on his face that nobody around him could read.
Because he was witnessing the history he knows die before his eyes.
---
---
– FOUR HOURS EARLIER –
The cold water hit before consciousness did.
Alex went from dead asleep to completely soaked in the space of half a second. He gasped. Sat up. Slipped on the wet stone floor and caught himself on the wall.
Around him, the living quarters erupted. Men lurching upright. Cursing. Sliding. One man near the door went down completely doing a split.
Oseka made a sound like a cat dropped in a river.
In the doorway, two guards stood with empty buckets and the expressions of men who had enjoyed that considerably more than their job required.
Behind them, Akosa.
He looked at the chaos he’d created with his arms folded and the particular satisfaction of a man whose morning had already peaked.
"Good morning." He said. "You have four minutes."
---
They filed into the courtyard in various states of dripping. The sun was barely up, painting everything pale gold and long shadows. The cage carts were already waiting by the main gate, horses stamping in the dust, guards running chains through the bars.
Alex pulled his tunic straight and looked around.
Spartacus was standing by a wall, with his broken arm still wrapped, watching them load up with those steady ashen eyes that missed nothing.
Alex caught his gaze.
Spartacus lifted his chin slightly. Then —
"Don’t die."
Two words. Flat, simple and completely serious.
"I’ll try." Alex nodded once.
He climbed into the cart.
Oseka was already inside. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the bars and his hands resting on his knees. Alex dropped down beside him. The cart creaked. The chains rattled as the guards secured the door.
Around them, other gladiators settled into silence. The kind of silence that had weight to it. The kind that came from men who knew where they were going and had run out of things to say about it.
The cart lurched forward.
Alex stared at the gate as it passed overhead. At the grey walls of the ludus shrinking behind them. At Spartacus still standing by the training building, watching them go, until the turn in the road took him out of sight.
He looked at Oseka.
Oseka’s hands were on his knees.
Alex noticed them shake. Subtle, but vivid.
The kind of shaking a person does when they’re trying very hard not to.
A faint tremor. Fingers pressing slightly too hard into the fabric of his tunic.
Alex didn’t say anything.
He reached over and put a hand on Oseka’s shoulder.
Oseka looked at him.
Alex smiled. Weakly. The best he could manage with his own stomach knotting within itself.
Oseka smiled back just as weakly.
The cart kept moving.
The wheels hit the cobblestones of the city streets and the rattling filled the silence between them. Rome was already awake around them. Merchants setting up stalls. Children running between legs. A dog barking somewhere. The ordinary world going about its ordinary business on the other side of the iron bars.
They rode for quite a while.
Then the sound changed.
Not gradually. All at once. Like walking through a door.
The crowd noise hit them before the Colosseum came into view. A low constant roar that seemed to come from everywhere simultaneously. From the ground. From the air. From somewhere in Alex’s chest that vibrated against his will.
He’d heard it before. On day one. From inside the arena.
Hearing it from outside was different. From out here it sounded less like people and more like something alive. Something large and patient that had been waiting all morning and was finally getting what it wanted.
The cart rounded a corner.
And there it was.
The Colosseum. In full morning light. Banners hanging from the upper arches in deep red and gold. People streaming through every entrance in long winding lines.
Vendors moving through the crowds with trays and baskets, the smell of something savory filling the nose of a hungry Alex.
Guards were stationed at every gate in full armor that caught the sun.
Alex stared at it all through the bars.
The cart stopped at the eastern gate.
Guards were already waiting. They moved efficiently, unlocking the door, pulling it open, directing the gladiators out with the particular boredom of men who had done this enough times that it had become routine.
Alex climbed out. The ground was stone here, smooth and worn. The shadow of the Colosseum fell across everything, cutting the morning heat by several degrees.
They were herded through a narrow gate and into the underbelly of the building. The crowd noise changed the moment they stepped inside — muffled above them now, pressing down through layers of stone and wood and fifty thousand pairs of feet.
The corridor was wide enough for two men to walk side by side. Torches every few metres. The walls were damp and close and had that particular smell — old blood and stone and something underneath both that Alex had no word for. The smell of a place where most dreams came to die.
Guards directed them left. Then right. Then down a short flight of steps.
At the bottom, Alex saw a man with a table and a wooden box full of weapons.
He took a short sword. The weight of it settled into his palm like something familiar. Flashes of his fight with the giant came flooding in. He blinked once. Then again, before looking at Oseka beside him.
Oseka had taken a short sword too. Alex could still see the slight tremble of his hands.
Their eyes met briefly.
Neither of them said anything.
A guard pointed them toward a heavy iron door at the end of the corridor. It opened into the holding area.
The holding area was a low stone chamber carved directly beneath the arena floor. The ceiling was close enough to touch if you reached up. The air smelled like old blood and dry sand and the particular staleness of a room that had held too many frightened men for too many years.
Torches on the walls. Iron gate at the far end. Through the bars, a slice of bright sky and the roar of fifty thousand people pressing down from above like weather.
Alex sat on a stone bench with his forearms on his knees and stared at the gate.
Around him, gladiators were in various states of preparation rituals. Some pacing. Some sitting perfectly still with their eyes closed. Some muttering things he couldn’t hear. Oseka was two seats down, wrapping his own hand in a strip of linen with slow careful movements, his face concentrated and blank.
The crowd noise shifted.
Not louder exactly. Just... different. A change in texture. Like the sound of an audience settling before something important.
Then a voice.
From the pulvinar, a box for the Roman elites.
Old, unhurried, but amplified by the stone bowl of the arena above them until it came down through the ceiling and through the floor and through Alex’s chest simultaneously.
He was draped in a white toga that had broad, purple outlines.
"Beautiful people of Rome." He addressed, gesturing with his hands. His golden bracelets glistening in the sun. "My people. I am proud to announce the start of a new era for our great Republic." He said, his voice full of vigor.
The crowd still maintained silence, like every one of them held their breaths simultaneously.
"One of prosperity, and bountiful peace." The continued. "Some people were opposed to this future. Full of greed, they wanted to become kings." He scoffed. "We’ve all seen the chaos monarchy brings. They impose unethical rules as they please. They fight amongst themselves for thrones, which eventually hurts the people. Look at the Celts, look at the East – kingdoms ruled by whims, not laws. You don’t want that do you?" He said that last part with a raised voice, and it got a roar from the crowd. A sign of concordance.
The old man smiled from this. This meant he was winning the people’s trust.
Alex stood in the holding area, watching and listening to the old man. His face a mix of confusion and utter disbelief.
’I have a bad feeling.’ Alex thought.
"As you all know, those people who were against our great Republic. Those people who wanted to make themselves kings. Those TRAITORS who waged war against me. Who waged war against you. Who waged war against our mother Rome!" The man yelled. A beat. Then, he continued. "Failed at Philippi."
That was it. Philippi. The first clue that everything Alex thought he knew about this era was wrong.
At that moment, Alex’s eyes were visibly twitching.
’Philippi? Traitors?’ He looked at the old man standing in the pulvinar. "Is he... Brutus?’ he was dumbfounded. ’No way. Brutus died in Philippi.’ Alex rebuked the thought. ’But he’s too old to be Octavian. The records said Octavian was in his twenties when he won the battle of Philippi.’ He glanced at Brutus one more time. ’But here is a man well above sixty talking about winning the battle. Unless...?’ the thought lingered.
He didn’t want this uncomfortable feeling in his guts to be true.
Alex watched as the old man continued his speech.
"And today, out of the abundance of my heart, I give them a chance at survival." Brutus said, his tone shifting into something sadistic. "Their fates will be decided by this very arena. They win, and they are banished with their lives intact. They lose..." A beat. "Well, they die." He said flatly.
"Bring them out!" He ordered.
Alex watched from across the arena as soldiers opened the barred gates, as two men were escorted out.
The first thing he noticed was how young one of them was.
The taller one came through the gate first. Mid thirties maybe. Built like someone who had spent his entire life preparing for moments like this. He had broad shoulders, a thick chest that his blood‑stained tunic made little effort hiding. And the kind of frame that spoke of decades of military training rather than arena preparation. He walked like a soldier. Head up. Eyes forward. The sword in his hand held low and easy, like an extension of his arm.
His face was a map of the last few days. A reflection of the things he had experienced. A deep cut ran from his left brow to his cheekbone, closed badly and already darkening at the edges. His bottom lip was split. Both eyes carried the particular heaviness of a man running on nothing but will and stubbornness. His tunic was torn at the shoulder and stained dark in patches that hadn’t dried evenly.
He didn’t look at the crowd. Didn’t look at Brutus. He just walked out onto the sand and stopped. And waited.
The second man followed.
Younger. Mid twenties but looking older than that today. Lean where the first man was broad. Sharp features that would have been striking under different circumstances. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, the kind of face that looked like it had been designed for coin profiles rather than arenas.
He was limping, carrying a rectangular shield in hand. No sword, no spear. Just the shield.
He stopped beside the first man.
They stood there together. Battered. Outnumbered before the fight had even started. Looking at an arena that had been designed specifically to kill them in front of as many witnesses as possible.
Neither of them looked particularly surprised by any of it.
The taller one said something quietly. Too quiet for the crowd to hear. "Stay beside me at all times."
The younger one nodded once.
Then they both turned to face whatever was coming.
"Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you... Gaius Octavian. And his loyal dog, Marcus Agrippa." Brutus’s voice resonated throughout the Colosseum.
At that moment, something within Alex snapped.
