A Gladiator's Love

In this action-romance short story, dashing Greek gladiator Leonidas promises his true love he’ll buy her freedom if he wins his own in the Colosseum of Ancient Rome. First he must defeat an opponent he knows he cannot kill. The year is 83AD and it’s nine years since Roman soldiers killed a young Leonidas’s family in their farmhouse outside Athens and consigned him to the life of a gladiator at Ludus Magnus, one of the biggest and best ludi gladiatori, or gladiator schools, in Rome. Since then, he remains undefeated after twenty-five fights and has risen to the top of the gladiator rankings. The Greek gladiator craves freedom. The one good thing in his life is Fatuma, an Ethiopian beauty who is a gladiatrix, or female gladiator, and who has stolen his heart. They share fleeting but precious hours together after dark in Leonidas’s cell – a concession occasionally granted to the gladiators by their Roman masters. The outcome of Leonidas’s next fight will decide both their futures for he’ll be fighting Gaius, another undefeated gladiator who held the Greek to a bloody draw when they met in the arena previously. At stake will be the rudis, the small wooden sword given to gladiators who are granted their freedom.