Marcellus

 Amid the smoke and clash of steel, Marcellus pressed into the fray. His name carried the weight of command, though he was still only a youth — his face smooth, his eyes bright with fire. Yet in his own mind he was already untouchable, a young god of the arena whose strength would never falter. His body seemed to prove it true: broad shoulders, arms thick and veined, his bare chest rising and falling in great heaves, and his abdomen ridged into deep, flexing columns of muscle. Sweat and blood streaked across his torso, glistening in the torchlight as he fought with reckless confidence, certain that no Roman steel could bring him down.

The Romans surged toward him, shields locked, blades flashing. Marcellus met them head-on, swinging his sword in brutal arcs. For a few moments he seemed unstoppable, the raw power of his body alone driving the line of soldiers back.

One soldier lunged recklessly, thrusting his spear. Marcellus caught the shaft under his arm, wrenched it aside, and with a savage slash drove his blade deep into the man’s chest, splitting through muscle and bone. The soldier collapsed in a welter of blood. Another Roman rushed him with sword raised high — Marcellus pivoted, his torso twisting, the ridges of his abs flexing as he rammed his blade into the man’s abdomen, ripping it free in a spray of crimson.

Bodies fell at his feet, the young warrior’s bare torso glistening as he carved a path through the line.

At last he cornered one faltering Roman, the man’s shield splintered, his stance broken. Marcellus raised his sword arm high, ready to split him in two.

In that instant, two arrows hissed from the treeline and slammed into his broad back. 

ffffffffFTTT!!!
ffffffffFTTT!!!

Roman archers hidden among the trees. 

“UUUUHHHHH!!!” Marcellus grunted as each arrow struck, his eyes wide in shock.

Blood spurted in hot arcs from the wounds, spraying across his glistening back. The gladiator arched violently, shoulders jerking wide, his chest thrust forward, his whole torso stretched bare in the torchlight. The shafts pierced deep, pinning him upright like a sacrifice, his sculpted abdomen wide-open, the wall of muscle now laid bare and defenseless before the man he was about to kill.

The Roman froze, staring in disbelief. A heartbeat before he had been a dead man — now the gods themselves had gifted him a sacrifice beyond measure. Before him stood the muscle-bound gladiator, naked torso flung wide, his taut belly laid bare to the Roman’s blade, the arrows pinning him in place, ready to be sacrificed.

With a desperate cry, the soldier yanked his sword arm back and lunged.

ssssssSSSTTT!!!

The finely sharpened blade furiously thrust into Marcellus’ gut, piercing the iron wall of his abs — and driving the steel halfway into his torso.

“AAAAAHHHHH!!!” Marcellus roared, snapping forward, his muscles tensing to resist.

But the motion slackened his belly for the briefest instant, and with a savage shove the soldier drove the blade the rest of the way in.

ssssssSSSTTT!!!

Ramming it in to the hilt.

Marcellus staggered, blood spraying as the Roman tore the sword out — only to ram it in again, both hands gripping the hilt.

ssssssSSSTTT!!!

The blade split the gladiator’s thick belly and violently cut its way through his rigid torso, the soldier shoving with all his weight until the point erupted from Marcellus’ back. The blade burst forth grotesquely between the two arrows still quivering there, steel and wood piercing the gladiator’s quivering naked torso.

“UUUUHHHHH!!!” Marcellus roared in agony, the sound tearing from deep in his chest as his body convulsed around the steel.

For a heartbeat the Roman held him skewered, close enough to feel the gladiator’s heaving breath and the hot spray of blood. Their eyes met — Marcellus staring down in disbelief at the weak, trembling soldier he had cornered moments before, the man he should have killed with ease. The bitter truth seared him: it was this hapless wretch who had run him through.

The Roman jabbed his left hand into Marcellus’ chest, the slabs of muscle flexed hard, the smooth skin slick with sweat. He felt the pulse of life fading beneath his palm, strong muscle trembling and weakening with each beat. He pushed Marcellus back as he tore his sword out of the big gladiator’s belly in a spray of blood.

Marcellus’s hands flew to his belly, clenching desperately at the gaping wounds.

“Uhhhhh…,” he groaned, his torso convulsing, the ridges of his abs quivering as his strength ebbed.

In his dimming mind burned the bitter truth — he had believed himself invincible, his muscular body a living armor, destined to be victorious in battle. Yet it was not a worthy opponent who felled him, but the spineless Roman whose eyes had met his in that moment of defeat — a hapless wretch who would not even remember the legendary gladiator he had killed.

Marcellus staggered, swaying on his feet, his hands clamped desperately over the gaping ruin of his belly. His chest heaved, each breath shallower than the last, his powerful shoulders trembling under their own weight. His legs buckled, thick thighs quivering as the strength bled from them.

He sagged forward, his abdomen tightening in one last convulsion, the ridges of his abs flexing hard against his blood-slick palms.

“UUUUHHHHH!!!” Marcellus groaned, half roar, half sob, as his body finally surrendered.

Slowly, heavily, the gladiator toppled. His knees struck the ground first, then his chest, and at last his face, pressed into the blood-soaked dirt. The two arrows still jutted grotesquely from his broad back, quivering with the impact as his body sprawled forward.

Blood poured beneath him, spreading wide, soaking the earth as if to swallow him whole. Marcellus twitched once, his back arching, his abdomen quivering against the ground in a final, futile defiance. Then his body slackened, all power gone.

The young warrior lay face down in the dirt, his naked torso glistening in the torchlight, pierced by arrows and gutted by the blade — a godlike gladiator fallen, left nothing more than another corpse on the battlefield.

The Roman who had struck him down stood frozen, his sword slick with the gladiator’s blood, staring at the mighty warrior he had felled. For a heartbeat he seemed to swell with fortune’s gift — then the battle’s roar crashed back around him, and his courage drained away. Cowardice reclaimed him. He shrank from the fight, clutching his bloodied sword like a talisman, stumbling backward into the chaos. Other soldiers surged past, shoving him aside, trampling the dirt where he stood, until he was swallowed into obscurity by the press of men.

Marcellus lay where he had fallen, face down in the blood-soaked earth, the arrows jutting from his back a grim marker of his fall. He had believed himself untouchable, a young warrior carved in muscle and fire — yet in a cruel twist of fate it was not a champion’s blade that felled him, but the strike of a hapless Roman, trembling and cowardly, already lost to the tide of battle. The soldier would fade into obscurity, and so too would Marcellus — just another gladiator cut down, his great body broken and forgotten amid the clash of legions.