Fireball by John Christopher Page A

symbols. It was just that he did not easily associate the remark with someone like Bos—especially with someone of Bos’s calling. How did he reconcile being a Christian with a lifetime commitment to kill people in the arena? He decided it would be unwise, especially with his limited command of Latin, to pursue that point. Hecontented himself with saying: “Et ego.” Bos looked at him, and this time was surprised. Simon nodded. “Christianus sum.”
    The big face split into a grin, and a moment later he was enfolded in a hug that made him feel Bos ought to have been called after a bear rather than an ox. He did not grasp all, or even half, of what else was said except that Bos was going to take him to meet a priest, after the Games. That might be useful, Simon thought. Whatever the priest thought about Bos’s being a gladiator, surely he would lend a hand to help someone else to escape from the business. He wondered again, just where in the past he was. Before Christianity took over, presumably, but he had forgotten when that happened. And it scarcely mattered, compared with what lay not much more than a week ahead.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Although Bos was his close and constant companion, Simon had inevitably come to know other people in the barracks, particularly in the dormitory. Apart from the Celt, who kept his distance, he got on well with all of them, though he realized that might well be connected with the fact that Bos had befriended him.
    The one he got on best with was Tulpius, the slave who had been picked with him out of the seven in the forum. In such a world as this, shared experiences—common disasters and common strokes of luck—were very likely to forge bonds of real, if transient, friendship. At any rate, he talked quite a bit with Tulpius, who was unlike Bos in having been a verna, a slave from birth, bred on a big country estate. He, too, had been sold, not on the death of his master, but on the dissolution of the estate. He was vague about the reason for it—there had been some talk of a fortune’s being lost in sea-trading ventures. The result was all that mattered. He had found himself in a much smaller household, and in the city, not the country. He had not liked it; there had been only six slaves altogether, which meant a lot more work than he had been used to.
    Then his new master had been murdered. There was no evidence as to who had killed him—he had been stabbed in the street, just outside the house. It was lucky that it had happened outside rather than inside. The magistrates had varied the normal ruling that all slaves of a murdered man should be put to death (for not having protected him) and hadordered that only the chief slave should be executed out of hand. The rest had been sold to the lanista. He had been lucky again in being young and strong enough to be chosen for the sword, instead of going like the rest to the beasts.
    Bos had not shown any interest in Simon’s life prior to joining the gladiatorial school—he had very little curiosity in general—but Tulpius did ask questions. Simon’s near-total ignorance of the language immediately stamped him as a barbarian—someone from foreign parts. So he said he hailed from a land across the sea, leaving it vague as to whether he meant Ireland or Scandinavia or Ultima Thule, and had been captured by pirates and sold here in Britain. Tulpius found that acceptable; just another run-of-the-mill story of life in the Roman Empire. He asked other questions about his earlier life, and Simon duly invented what he could and fell back on his poor Latin when things started looking sticky. But they rarely did; very little was known of lands beyond the borders of the empire, so almost anything would do.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    The weather had been unsettled for a week, and a lot of the final practising had taken place in pouringrain, but the day of the Games dawned