Chapter 11: Still Standing
Chapter 11: Still Standing
The names were still ringing in his ears.
Gaius Octavian. Marcus Agrippa.
"Impossible." Alex whispered, shaking his head.
He slowly sat on the bench behind him, and stared at nothing. Around him, everything faded.
The sounds around him, muffled. Not even the roars of the crowd, nor the clamoring of the men, with him, in the holding area could be heard by him.
None of it registered.
His brain had gone somewhere else entirely.
’Spartacus.’ He thought. ’Died 71 BC. Agrippa. Born 63 BC. Eight years. Eight years between them and they’re both alive and breathing and one of them is currently standing on sand a few feet away from me.’
He pressed his palms flat against his knees.
’Brutus won Philippi. Brutus is supposed to be dead. Octavian is supposed to have won. Octavian was supposed to become Augustus. The first emperor. The man who ended the Republic and built an empire that lasted five hundred years.’
He looked at his hands.
’Instead he’s up there with a shield and a limp and no sword.’
The crowd noise shifted again above them. Something was happening on the sand. Alex didn’t look up at the gate. He couldn’t.
’Three years.’ He thought. ’Three years of Roman history. Two semesters on the Republic alone. An essay on gladiatorial culture that got me an A-.’ He laughed once. Quiet and completely without humor. ’Completely useless. Every single word of it. I’ve been walking through this world with a map that doesn’t exist.’
"Albius." A voice called out, breaking Alex from his thoughts.
He looked up.
Oseka was watching him from two seats down. His hands wrapped in linen. Eyes steady. The same quiet presence he always was when things got loud.
"You’ve gone pale." Oseka said. "More than usual."
Alex opened his mouth to say something, but closed it.
"I’m fine." He lied.
Oseka looked at him for a bit longer. "Don’t get distracted." He stood, and walked towards the gate. "It could cost you."
Alex looked at Oseka, surprised at his words. He nodded, and stood to join Oseka by the gate, as they watched the scene unfolding in the arena.
---
In the arena, from where Agrippa stood, Brutus looked small.
That was the strange thing about it. The man who had dismantled the Republic, who had killed Julius Caesar with his own hands, who had hunted them across half the known world and thrown them into a dungeon beneath the Senate floor — from down here, in the sand, he was just an old man in a white toga standing in a box.
A small old man. With gold bracelets. And a very loud voice.
"People of Rome." Brutus spread his arms wide. His voice carried across the arena like it owned the air. "Today we inaugurate something new. Something that will remind us every week of what this Republic stands for. Of what we protect. Of what we refuse to become."
The crowd was silent. Hanging on every word.
He didn’t look down at the sand once.
Agrippa noticed that.
They were already beneath his attention. Already dead in whatever calculation he’d run. Already props in someone else’s speech.
Beside him, Octavian was very still. His shield arm hadn’t moved. His jaw was set in that particular way that meant he was listening to every word and processing each one as a tactical problem rather than a personal insult.
That was Octavian. Even now. Even here.
"This Republic was built on sacrifice." Brutus continued. "On the willingness of good men to face those who would destroy it. Today you will witness that sacrifice made flesh. Today you will see what becomes of those who reach for crowns in a land of free men."
A roar from the crowd. Feet on stone. Fifty thousand voices agreeing with a man who had personally stabbed the most beloved leader Rome had ever produced twenty three times in the Theatre of Pompey.
Octavian’s grip tightened on his sheild. Agrippa noticed.
"And so." Brutus’s voice shifted. Warmer now. Generous. The voice of a man bestowing a gift. "In the spirit of this new era — I give you the first of what will be our weekly games. A celebration. A tradition. A reminder."
He paused.
The crowd held its breath.
"May the gods be with them." He said.
Then he sat down on his high chair.
And raised his hand.
And dropped it.
The gate at the far end of the arena ground open. And men poured in.
Agrippa counted them as they came through.
’Seven.’
They spread out the moment they cleared the gate.
Coordinated, like they’ve practiced specifically for this moment.
A man holding two small axes, drifting left. Two more with swords moved wide on the right. A spear man staying center. A morning star flail swinging slow lazy circles. An archer keeping distance with a short blade backup. Then the last man... Big, bald, carrying huge hammer the hight of an adult.
Agrippa tracked all seven simultaneously.
That was the thing about fifteen years of military command that arena fighters never understood. They trained to fight one man. Maybe two. They learned combinations and counters and crowd pleasing moves that looked devastating and sometimes were.
Agrippa had learned to see a battlefield.
Seven men was not a battlefield. Seven men was a Tuesday.
"Stay behind me." He said quietly. "Don’t move unless I tell you."
"Agrippa—"
"Behind me. Now."
Octavian went quiet.
They all came. At once.
Not waiting their turn like good little gladiators in a training drill all seven of them poured out of the gate and spread across the sand like a single organism with seven sets of teeth.
Agrippa didn’t have time to start formulating plans. He just moved.
The axe man was fastest. He came in low, one blade leading, the other cocked back, aiming for Agrippa’s legs. Agrippa sidestepped and brought his sword down in a diagonal chop that took the man’s left hand off at the wrist.
"Aaaahhhhhh!" The man let out sharp cry, as blood spewed everywhere. The axe in his hands, clattered to the sand. The man stared at the bloody stump for a fraction of a second before Agrippa’s follow‑up took his head.
’One.’ Agrippa kept count.
In the holding area, Alex pressed his palms his mouth, as he looked away.
’He just... he just cut his haad off like it was nothing.’
The sword men came from both sides simultaneously. Good coordination.
Agrippa turned to face the one on the right, then spun at the last moment to catch the left one with a backhanded slash that opened his throat. The man dropped his sword and clutched at his neck, blood fountaining between his fingers.
’Two.’
But the other sword man had already closed the distance. His blade scraped across Agrippa’s ribs – shallow, but enough to draw blood. Agrippa didn’t flinch. He grabbed the man’s sword arm, pulled him close, and drove his own sword up under the man’s chin. The point came out the top of his skull.
’Three.’
The spear man had hung back, waiting for an opening. He lunged now, aiming for Agrippa’s back. Agrippa twisted. The spear point grazed his shoulder instead of piercing his spine. He chopped the spear shaft in two with his sword, then stepped forward and cut the spear man’s legs out from under him – a low sweeping slash that severed both hamstrings. The man collapsed, screaming, as a small puddle formed around him.
’Four.’
At this point, the thick smell of blood had began to fill the arena.
This made the crowd go wild, as fifty thousand feet stamped in unison.
’Dear God. He’s not even breathing hard.’ Alex thought. His own breathing had stopped entirely. ’And the people are loving it.’ he looked around.
The morning star man tried to circle around to Octavian, whose shield was still up, tracking everything. Agrippa threw his sword. It spun through the air and buried itself in the morning star man’s chest. The man looked down at the hilt protruding from his sternum, then fell.
’Five.’
Agrippa retrieved his sword. The archer loosed an arrow from twenty paces. Agrippa saw it coming, knocked it aside with his blade – a sharp crack – and it skittered into the sand.
Back in the holding area, Alex was amazed. ’He deflected an arrow. With a sword. In the middle of a fight.’
The archer nocked another arrow. Agrippa was already moving. He grabbed a fallen axe from the sand and hurled it. The axe hit the archer’s bow, splintering it. The man dropped the ruined weapon and reached for his short blade.
Too late. Agrippa was on him. A single horizontal slash opened the archer’s belly. He folded in two.
’Six.’
Alex heard himself exhale. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.
The big bald man with the hammer had been waiting. Calculating. He’d watched Agrippa kill six men and had measured each death, filed away each movement, learned.
He came forward now. No rush. Each step heavy and deliberate. The hammer came off his shoulder.
Agrippa circled. His side was bleeding. His shoulder was bleeding. His arm was bleeding. But He didn’t seem to notice.
The first swing came fast – faster than a man that size had any right to be. Agrippa barely got his sword up in time. The hammer hit the flat of the blade and drove Agrippa back a step. His arms shook.
The second swing came overhead. Agrippa dove sideways. The hammer hit the sand and exploded it outward in a cloud of grit.
The big man raised the hammer for a third swing. Octavian moved.
Not far nor fast. Just a single step forward. His shield came up not to block, but to push. The edge of the shield caught the big man’s knee from the side. Not hard enough to break anything, but enough to throw off his balance.
The hammer swing went wild. Overcompensating, the big man stumbled forward, off balance, and Agrippa was there. His sword found the gap under the big man’s arm. He rove in deep, wisted, and pulled free.
The big man took one more step. Then another. Then his legs stopped working. He fell forward and lay still.
"Seven." Agrippa heaved, then turned to look towards the
The arena was silent.
Fifty thousand people, not one of them making a sound.
Agrippa stood in the middle of the carnage, breathing hard. Blood dripped from his sword. From his side. From his arm. From a dozen small cuts he hadn’t even noticed.
He turned to Octavian.
Octavian lowered his shield. His face was pale. The limp was worse. But his eyes were clear.
"Still here," Octavian said.
Agrippa nodded.
Then he heard it. The gate grinding open again.
He looked.
Eleven.
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