The Ten Thousand by Michael Curtis Ford

saw the trainer catch Boy's eye and nod to him slowly, in a signal with which both were familiar. Aedon wavered unsteadily on his feet, but still moved gamely into the center of the ring and made a fierce lunge. Boy stepped aside deftly and kicked out sideways, and Aedon, his feet tripped out from beneath him and his hands grasping only air, crumpled into the dirt with a grunt and a dazed, confused expression in his eye.
    Boy quickly made his move. Pressing his sweaty chest against Aedon's back in the ladder-grip, his legs wrapped around his opponent's stomach and his bicep around his neck, with his free hand he pressed Aedon's head forward, cutting off the air supply. Aedon's eyes bulged even through their swelling, and his tongue emerged from his split lips as his legs twitched helplessly. He flailed his arms wildly above and behind him, seeking to hook anything—hair, nostrils—in a desperate bid to remove Boy's arm from his throat. In his struggle, he somehow managed to seize Boy's ear-lobe with his fingernails, ripping it from its tenuous attachment to the side of his head. Howling in pain, Boy dropped him and backed away, his mouth working soundlessly in bewilderment, then his eyes narrowing in fury.
    Aedon scrambled to his feet as well, suddenly energized by this unexpected success, and carefully circled Boy as the other eyed him ruefully and rubbed his bloodied ear. The two opponents locked eyes, Aedon's muscles quivering in fatigue and tension. Gryllus, I saw, had straightened up and was now watching the match intently, as the two boys froze momentarily, testing each other's reflexes, each daring the other to strike.
    This time it was Boy who launched first, and in a swift, catlike maneuver he dropped to one knee, seized Aedon about the legs before he could sprawl out of reach, and lifted him high into the air. Aedon, however, having identified his opponent's weakness, began repeatedly clubbing his injured ear with his fist. The mauling staggered Boy, who dropped Aedon in a rage, his ear turning a lusty purple and swelling into a shapeless mass before our eyes. Before Aedon could rise to his feet, Boy took two quick steps forward and landed him a terrific kick in the ribs, sending him sprawling onto his belly at the edge of the ring, gasping for breath. Boy eyed him warily to be sure he wasn't feigning exhaustion, then straddled Aedon's back, a crazed expression flitting across his face, masking the pain that had been evident since the ripping of his ear a moment before.
    Seizing Aedon once more with his arm across the neck, Boy dug the knuckles of his free hand into the side of his throat, against the carotid artery on the side of the trachea, in the choke that stops the flow of blood to the brain and can kill a man in seconds. Aedon's eyes glazed immediately as the sleep of death began creeping over him, and when he went limp, Boy released the pressure of his knuckles; but when Aedon regained his senses, Boy applied the pressure a second time. Gryllus leaped up in alarm and bounded over to his son, arriving just ahead of Antinous. Grasping Boy by the hair he pulled him roughly to his feet, allowing Aedon to drop to his belly in the sand, his eyes open but bereft of understanding. I carried him to his room, where I revived him with cut wine and a massage to the chest to increase the flow of blood to his head. Gryllus accompanied Antinous and his loutish brother to the door and summarily dismissed them, telling them in no uncertain terms that to return to his household would be their death.
    That night, in an awkward gesture of reconciliation, Gryllus came into Aedon's room bearing a bundle wrapped in a greasy piece of fabric. "You'll never be a pancratist," he admitted grudgingly, "so you may as well at least arm yourself well." He unwrapped the parcel to display a gleaming Spartan short sword, a xiphos, only slightly longer than a dagger but constructed of a tremendous heaviness, lending it a strength fit for