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perfection of single gladiators, preferring a quality over quantity approach to the games, the lanista’s father Felix had dreamt beyond such. When the ludus passed into the hands of Felix he began to buy more slaves, train them only in the basics of battle, and then hurl them into the arena. He would insist to his son Atticus that there were men born for glory and men born for slaughter, and that as a lanista it was his calling to tell one man for the other. Raise up the champions, throw the rest into the bloodbath. House Laeca swiftly gained wealth and reputation by being a purveyor of bulk bloodshed, and won the majority of the contracts for the mock battles that required death on a grand scale.
    Sadly, for Atticus, when the ludus passed into his hands, the tastes of the Roman mob had shifted away from the battles and had returned to a desire for feats of skill. No longer did the crowd wish to see dozens of men hacked to pieces in wild melees, or to see slaves and criminals armed with daggers be slaughtered by quality gladiators. The Roman audience craved matched pairs and champions, skilled gladiators fighting grand duels for personal glory and the love of the crowd. Rome wanted the gladiators of his grandfather, thought Atticus, not the arena fodder of his father.
    Lanista Atticus had done his best to stay relevant in the games, and had taken what few men of quality that remained in his stable and began crafting them into true gladiators. All were capable gladiators, and had won coin and glory for House Laeca, though due to the reputation of the ludus Atticus was unable to secure position in any of the larger games. His men fought well, and they brought coin and glory, though the cost of the estate and the staff had exceeded the winnings. The other men were training hard, and gladiators in their own right, though none were to the standard of the great games of the Coliseum, and as such fought in the smaller arenas spread throughout Rome and its provinces. Heraus, a older man and the last surviving gladiator of Felix’s stock, fought almost exclusively in the bloody pits of the noxii, the black market arenas in which condemned criminals and slaves were forced to fight.
    This simply would not do. Atticus cared about his ludus, and took his life as a lanista seriously. He must find a way to rise up, to elevate Ludus Laeca once more. At this thought he turned from the window and looked at the severed head on his desk. Its skin was a deathly pallor, the ragged wound at the base of its neck had been carefully wrapped in scented cloth, and its yellowed eyes burned with an unsettling vitality. Upon its head was a word, tattooed in the language of the Hebrews, the word for ‘life’ according to the centurion from whom Atticus had purchased the head.
    Several days past Atticus had been called upon by Centurion Cyprian Africanus, a well-known veteran of the Legio VII. The soldier had sent word ahead to the ludus that his arrival was eminent, asking for audience with the lanista for the purpose of a business transaction. Atticus knew that the seventh legion had recently returned from a campaign in Judea, though given their billet in the distant city of Capua he could not imagine the centurion’s reason for making the journey to Rome itself. Possibly the soldier intended to sell the lanista several slaves for the pits, though the tribes of Judea were not especially known for breeding the kinds of warriors that made good gladiators, so Atticus was curious as to what business the soldier might bring.
    Centurion Africanus was granted audience, and the lanista made sure to ply the soldier with food, drink, and small talk before inquiring as to the nature of the visit. Atticus had long been a shrewd judge of character in men, after all it was his job as a lanista to see the champions or beasts lying quiet in men’s souls, and stoking the fires to craft them into fine warriors. In the centurion Atticus saw a hardened soldier, a