The hut was lit from within by a single lantern. Not a lot of light for a surgeon. Decius was ushered into the dimly-lit room and quickly shoved into a chair, which rocked back and nearly tipped over from his drugged, uncoordinated bulk.
“Why’d you push me?” he said, wounded. “Where’s Camelia? I was just talking to her…”
One of the guards turned, covering his mouth with his hand and whispering: “How much of that stuff did you put in the wine?” to another.
“This place doesn’t look much like a surgeon’s… house. Shop?” Decius carried on, unfazed.
“Oh, no?” said one of the guards, sneering. “What does it look like then, oh mighty one?”
“Looks like the kind of place you take a sap to beat the living daylights out of him,” Decius said. The three guards looked at each other.
Broken Nose turned his back on Decius and went over to a table. This wasn’t a surgery, but some of the tools on the long abacus wouldn’t have looked out of place in one. “Perceptive boy,” he said and licked his dry lips as he selected a long metal implement. One of the guards produced a rope and bent down to bind the reclining gladiator’s arms.
“Oh, that was nothing. Wait until you hear how good I am at detecting when my wine has been poisoned,” said Decius.
The guard who was in the middle of binding his arms tried to leap away, leaving the rope half-wound, but Decius was already moving. An elbow crashed into the side of the guard’s head in the middle of his attempted dodge, sending him spinning to the floor. Decius sprung to his feet, warding off an advance from Broken Nose. He was waving his implement of torture like a magic wand, as if he could incant some ancient barbarian ritual and force him back into the seat. The other guard rushed forward, his hand pulling his sword from his belt, but Decius grabbed the hilt of the sword, holding it down as he rained down blows on the hapless man. The guard fell to the floor, dazed, the sword sliding from its sheath as he went, leaving Decius holding it in a loose, easy defense.
A noise from behind and Decius spun, meeting a clay amphora coming at him dead-on and staggering him back towards Broken Nose. He wasn’t as heavily drugged as he had pretended on the way here, but he was a long way from being as sober as he was acting. He caught himself on a timber and swung wild slashes at both his opponents, snarling like a wolf. The blade flashed in the lanternlight and dragged across the armour of the other guard, leaving a deep slash in the leather but going no further. Decius cursed and drove the sword a foot into the timber of the wall, squaring off to fight both adversaries knuckle-to-knuckle. He easily deflected a clumsy strike from the other guard and grounded him with a swift punch to the gut – a sword might not break through their armour, but a fist in the diaphragm is a great leveller. More wisdom from the centurion.
As the other guard bent over, retching pathetically and falling to his knees, Decius turned on Broken Nose, raising a fist like Vulcan’s hammer.
The old guard fell to his knees immediately, throwing the mysterious implement to the floor. Decius picked it up.
“What’s this for?” he asked mildly. “Is this a hook?”
“Please,” said Broken Nose. “Don’t kill me.”
Decius laughed, a booming, terrifying laugh. “I won’t, little man. But why does it need to be this peculiar shape?”
Broken Nose told him.

The rotten wood door exploded outwards as Broken Nose flew through the centre of it. Decius followed, the sword he had stolen from the guard in one giant hand.
“What kind of heart do you have to have to come up with an idea like that?” he said to himself.
The prone figure groaned. “Go on!” Decius said. “Run home to Valentinian and tell him all about this!” He watched as Broken Nose got to his feet and limped off into the woods. He was going the wrong way. Not that Decius felt like correcting him. Then something occurred to Decius.
Wasn’t the secret training camp meant to be out here somewhere? Maybe the guard knew where he was headed after all.
Decius loped after him into the woods as the sun began to rise.

The camp was nestled in a small clearing deep in the woods. Decius dropped into a low crawl as he approached and settled in the bushes. There was only one entrance in the rudimentary walls of the encampment, hastily-erected walls of thick leather stretched around tentpoles shielding Valentinian’s champion from the world and weather. Guards patrolled tightly, circling the camp so often that Decius couldn’t pick out even a moment’s opportunity to close the distance to the wall. There was no sign of Broken Nose.
Decius laid very still and continued to watch the patrols. Even if he could get close enough, he couldn’t make any kind of mark on the wall by way of entrance without raising the alarm immediately. There were only two ways inside the camp. Under or over. Things being how they were, under was ruled out immediately. That left only over. It was difficult to judge the height of the walls, but “above reasonable jumping height” was a relatively simple calculation.
The sun was starting to set again when Decius was finally able to make his move. At night the patrols were less frequent. He would have a count of thirty between the two guards passing his position and them re-emerging on the other side of the camp. He raised himself into position, angling his legs like a runner ready to push off from the ground.

Go! One, two, move quickly but quietly out of the bushes, staying out of sight of the guards. Decius dropped flat as one of them turned to glance back. Five, six, seven, over to the wall. Ten, eleven, that horrible hook-thing that Broken Nose had been ready to use on him dug its vicious barbed little hook halfway up the wall. Twelve, pull! Hope that that vicious little hook is enough to lift you for even a second and grab the top of that wall. Fifteen, sixteen, check the other side of the wall for guards. A makeshift training ground, mercifully empty. Nineteen, twenty, leg over the wall, pull the hook out. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three, abandon the hook. Hope it blends in with the leather enough for now. Twenty-seven, other leg over. Twenty-eight, let go just as the guards come around the corner.
Twenty-eight. He must have slowed down counting somewhere.

Inside the main tent a great thing occupied the straw bed. Decius approached and realised that what he had taken for a bear, or possibly a boulder, was in fact a man.
Not just any man. He swore loudly.
“Canus?” he said, “You’re the Black Dog?”
The great boulder-man opened one eye.
“You. I’m sleeping.”
The eye closed. Then opened again.
“Flavius? Here for that denarius I owe you?”
“Decius these days. Fancy running into each other here.”
Canus sat up, a maneuver that took quite a long time to execute.
“Yes, fancy. I’m not supposed to be running into anyone. That’s sort of the idea of the armed guard. Speaking of which, explain to me why I shouldn’t shout them right now.”
“Well, well,” said Decius, ignoring him. “So you got out of the soldier-of-fortune life too.”
“And look where it got me. At least when I spent five days in a tent in the woods with the company there was the promise that I might actually make some money along the way. From a dog of war to a pit hound.”
“We’re supposed to kill each other tomorrow,” Decius said amicably. “Your master tried to have me roughed up so I wouldn’t be able to fight.”
“So you did that to Eclectus? Good work, I never liked that little weasel,” said Canus. Decius told him about the hook, and Canus cursed. “By Pluto, these people aren’t right. Master Valentinian seems to put up hiring notices in the lowest places.”
“It’s a wonder he gets applicants who can walk on two legs,” Decius said. Canus chuckled, a noise like a rockslide.

It was the middle of the night when Decius slipped away. Whether his words, his declaration of a common enemy with the giant who had once been his rival, had found their mark, he would just have to wait and see.

The next day was bright and airy. Decius walked slowly to the armoury, enjoying the wind on his face for what could be the last time. He was tired, sluggish. If Canus brought his all to the fight it would be over in minutes.
An official was waiting in the armoury for him. He looked down at a wax tablet covered in spidery scrawl.
“Decius Sinistra?” he asked. Decius nodded. “Yes, hm. By order of master Valentinian, you’re being reassigned. Take the trident and net by the door. You’ll be fighting as a Retarius today.”
Decius hefted the trident familiarly. It was Tertius’. He ignored the armoured sleeve. It would slow him down, and it wouldn’t stop Canus for one instant.

The giant was armoured in black, the broad-brimmed helm and curved sword of the Thraex shining dully in the hot sunlight. Decius felt a pang of sympathy for the big man, sweating in that heat-absorbing helmet. He raised the trident like he had seen Tertius do dozens of times in sparring, and prepared to fight.
Canus wasn’t prepared to risk angering Valentinian, it seemed, as he swung furiously down at Decius. He was like an alpine avalanche, approaching with deceptive slowness before attacking swifter than wind. It was all Decius could do to deflect the brutal blow with the haft of the trident with a scraping of metal on metal.
The relentless Canus continued his assault until Decius was nearly beaten to one knee. He raised that crescent blade above his head, poised to deliver the killing blow, when his opponent dropped in a roll, abandoning the silvery trident. Decius came up behind the great statue of a man and, with the care of someone who had been on the receiving end of the play many a time, threw his net around Canus’ head and chest, and pulled with all his might.
The giant staggered backwards, skidded in the sand, and then fell over as slowly as if he had been falling through honey.
Decius snatched up the trident and levelled it at Canus.
“Do you yield?” he said quietly.
“You’ve twisted my arm,” Canus replied with characteristic evenness. Decius raised the prongs of the trident to the sky. He met eyes with Valentinian, high in his shaded seat at the top of the arena. Your move, bastardi.
The oily Valentinian raised his hand and extended a thumb upwards. The drawn sword. Death.
Decius reached out a hand. Canus took it. The amount Decius could actually do to lift the giant to his feet was almost nothing, but the symbol was the important thing anyway.
“No!” yelled Valentinian. “Kill him! You’re supposed to kill him!” He stamped his foot like a child demanding his favourite toy. “Kill him, kill him, kill him! He’s useless to me!”
Decius looked at Canus.
“Take that stupid helmet off,” he said. Canus did so.
“Good call,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to spoil my aim.”
One of Canus’ giant paws closed around the trident and lifted it easily from Decius’ grasp. He closed one eye. Valentinian looked around, nervously.
“Guards! Seize that man!”
Nobody seemed very interested in seizing Canus as he tested the weight of the trident, aimed directly at the highest seat in the shaded box.
It flew beautifully, describing a nearly perfectly straight line from Canus’ hand to-
The back of the chair, where it embedded itself, vibrating from the force of the impact.
Valentinian looked at the trident in horror, penetrating right through the space he had been a moment earlier. He looked around at the smirks of his guests.
“Well?” he said, panting. “What’s so funny?”
Then he looked down at himself, at the floor, and understood.

“You know, I’ve seen you fight before,” said Decius as he and Canus left the arena.
“Your point being?” asked the giant.
“You were holding back. You could have killed me any time.”
“Maybe.”
“Of course, I’m honour-bound to demand a rematch,” said Decius.
“Maybe,” said Canus.
Then they parted ways, and Decius went to find Camelia.