When the messenger spoke his last word, a commotion rose up among the massed gladiators.
“To the death?” said Tertius, aghast. He was a Retarius, master of net and trident, a showman, not a practical fighter like Valentinian’s pit brawlers. Decius set his heroic jaw and stepped forward.
“By what authority does Valentinian claim the right to threaten these men?” he asked the messenger in a voice that could have been that of vengeful Mars. “What honour is there in this death-tournament?”
The messenger looked up at Decius evenly. If he was afraid, he was master of his emotions. “By the authority of Rome,” he said.

That night Decius slept uneasily in his quarters. They were larger than those of the other gladiators, with a small bath and a bronze mirror in a nook near the door, though his bed itself was a simple wood-framed affair with a thin straw mattress. He was easily woken, then, by the rustling of the curtain screen that separated him from the doorway. He rose swiftly, reaching for a weapon.
“Hold!” said Camelia (for it was she), outstretching her arms. Decius lowered his guard as soon as he heard her voice, and the specters of his fitful dreams left him as easily as they had come.
“What are you doing here?” Decius said, his stony brow furrowing. “If you’re caught by Valentinian’s men-”
“I had to!” Camelia whispered. “I couldn’t let them kill you! There’s to be a tournament…”
Decius nodded, and explained the messenger’s visit earlier that day. “I know all about the tournament,” he said reassuringly. He picked up his sword. It glinted in a slitted ray of moonlight. “Trust in my steel if you cannot trust in me. No man will fell me while I have your favour.” He swung the sword a tight arc and a thin strip of cloth fell from the curtain. The sword had cut through it as if it offered no more resistance than the air.
Camelia pressed herself close to Decius, and he laid aside his sword. “But your opponent is no man,” she said.
“A woman gladiator?” Decius said, shaking his head.
“They call her Amazon,” said Camelia. “Because of her great prowess. It is said that she was the queen of a forest tribe on an island in our sea. No man has ever wounded her, she is so agile.”
“That devil, Valentinian!” snarled Decius. “This is more than just business to him, I’ll wager.” He balled a great fist and muscles bulged in his mighty arm. “Well, he’ll soon see that I’m not so easily destroyed!”
Decius looked down into Camelia’s eyes and saw fear, and instantly his manner completely softened. He laid a rough hand against her face gently.
“I’ll be fine. I have almost a week to train. I’ll go with Tertius. His agility is second to none.”

Tertius walked backwards as they proceeded down the path to the lake’s edge.
“The first thing to remember is to forget everything you know about fighting other Secutores. This is a completely different experience,” he said, with barely a care given to the rocks and roots on the dirt path. Decius, carrying Tertius’ “vitally important training tools”, trudged after him sourly. The little half-Gaul seemed to float over every obstacle. It was, of course, this quality that had made Decius choose him as his training partner, but that made it no less infuriating.
As they arrived at the lake, Tertius took the heavy bag off Decius’ hands, removed a single blunted training gladius, and handed it to Decius.
“What am I to do with this, Tertius? Beat Amazon to death?” he said, laughing. Tertius smiled a devilish smile.
“Stand in the mud there, by the lake,” he said. Decius did so.
“The mud is up to my ankles,” he complained. A moment later, an overripe pear struck him straight in the center of the chest. He reached out for something to steady himself, found nothing, and as his feet skidded in the lake mud, he found himself keeling over into the water with a splash.
“Only speed can counter speed,” said Tertius, laughing as Decius got to his feet. “You have to learn to react. When you have mastered defense, then you’re ready to attack.”
Training continued like this for the rest of the day, with Tertius’ bag growing slimmer and slimmer until the evening. By the time the last fruit was thrown, Decius could block the flying missiles with ease left-handed or right, deflecting the soft innards into the lake with the flat edge of the sword.
“Not bad,” said Tertius as the final apple splattered against the dull steel.
“Not bad?” Decius replied, incredulous. “I’ve got you beaten! What am I supposed to do for the next three days?”
“Ah,” said Tertius, wagging his finger. “That’s a surprise. You’re a good student, though. And as a reward, I will carry the bag back to the school.”

The next day, the bag seemed if anything even heavier. Decius lumbered down the path.
“Where are you getting all this fruit?” he asked, pausing to lean against a tree.
“You’d be surprised how much fruit goes bad every day in the town. At least this way it’s productively used, instead of going into pig feed,” Tertius said cheerfully.
Decius shouldered the burden once again and grumbled, “Pig feed is productive. Feeds pigs.”

Tertius once again ordered Decius to stand in the slippery mud, and Decius once again obliged. Then, Tertius reached into the bag, and extracted two metal wrist-guards not unlike Decius’ own armour.
“Put these on,” he said. The shiny vambraces were thicker than normal and completely plain, almost like manacles. They weighed Decius’s arms down mightily. Tertius readied his arm to hurl the first fruit of the day. Decius prepared to strike it out of the air.
By the time he moved it was too late. The apple had crashed into his shoulder, fragmenting and spinning Decius to the side in the skidding mud. He pulled himself out of the water, spitting, and watched a chunk of apple float away.
The following day, the vambraces were compounded with rings of weights.
The day after that, thick sponges that absorbed the lake water and weighed Decius down even more.
By the end of each day he was moving as fast weighed down as he had on the evening of the first, or faster.
The final day came, and Tertius carried the bag down to the lake. It contained only two blunt training swords.
“Ready?” he said, tossing one to Decius, who caught it easily. Decius merely nodded. The two men fought in the shallow water from morning to night, with Decius matching Tertius’ every stroke and repaying it in kind. Neither scored a single hit until the sun was nearly set, when Tertius’ sword, wet from spray kicked up by the battle, slipped from his hand and Decius placed his blade at his neck.
Tertius laughed. “You’re as ready as I can make you,” he said.

That night, Decius bathed and went to bed early. He hadn’t seen Camelia since the night she had come to him to warn him. They had agreed not to meet again until after the fight, so as not to distract him from his training.
I could do with some distracting tonight, Decius thought.

His armored sleeve felt strangely light when he pulled the straps tight the next morning. He lowered the blank-faced metal secutor’s helmet over his head and took several deep breaths. It was dark in the armory. The ludus had a small arena, a little wooden thing, for exhibitions and demonstrations, on the other end of a short tunnel. Amazon would be waiting. So would Valentinian. Let him wait.
Then he thought of Camelia, waiting for him in the villa, and started walking towards the arena.

Amazon looked like no gladiator Decius had ever fought before – wild-haired, almost unarmoured, brandishing two short blades. A plain loincloth and a chest wrap were her only garments. The two of them turned to face Valentinian, sat in pride of place presiding over the “game”. Decius raised his sword, held loose in his left hand, in salute. Amazon raised hers.
The signal was given to commence, and Decius dropped his sword to a defensive position across his body. The woman was already running, almost within reach, and he barely managed to move his shield to catch her vicious opening strike. She recoiled from the guard, but turned the momentum into a swing with the other blade that scraped Decius’ armored left arm and threw up sparks.
Decius swung his sword in retaliation, but the agile Amazon merely ducked back and easily avoided the clumsy blow. Again and again they clashed, Decius’ iron defence meeting Amazon’s superb speed. Inside the metal casing of his helmet, sweat beaded on Decius’ forehead.
A droplet rolled onto his eyelash as Amazon came in again with a two-bladed pincer attack, and in dodging back from the swing it fell into his eye, stinging like a wasp in his battle-rushed state. In his confusion he let his sword hang loose for a second, and Amazon’s whip-quick blade was able to reach past his guard, slashing a deep red wound in his shoulder. The pain brought him back to focus and he lashed out with the heavy metal boss in the centre of his shield, knocking her back. But the damage was done. Blood ran from the gash in his shoulder, and he knew he had to finish this.
Tertius’ words by the lakeside returned to him in a flash.
“Aim for where it’s going to be!”
Decius gritted his teeth. It might have been his imagination, or the early stages of blood loss, but Amazon seemed to be slowing down. He deflected a brutal thrust aimed at his neck and replied with a feint. Amazon betrayed herself with a half-step before she recognised the ploy, but it was too late. Her momentum carried her around Decius’ right side, onto the waiting blade of his sword.
Suddenly she was no longer his fearsome enemy, but just a woman. It was a feeling Decius knew from his days at war. A mortal wound gives you a sense of perspective, he supposed. The woman who had been Amazon looked into his eyes, the black sockets of the helm not shielding him one bit, and spoke. Whatever language it was, it was completely alien to him. She fell to her knees, and then onto her side, and she was gone.
Decius pulled his sword from the body, crimson-stained, and raised it. A cheer went up from the assembled spectators. But from Valentinian, the piggy-eyed architect of Amazon’s demise, his victory earned him nought but spite.