“So?” Catus snapped.
Giles Amadea was a large man who tolerated his employer’s unforgivable manner for the meagre salary it afforded him and his family. Whenever Catus’ voice would burst in upon his thoughts, the mantra Anything is better than the bloody arena… would repeat itself in his mind.
That thought normally brought him back to sense, cooling his frustration with Catus, but the last few years had been unbearable at best, and his daily trial of going to work had become a true hardship. Only thoughts of his family kept him from reaching for the gladius behind him and ending the old man. Rome would certainly have thanked him for it!
But Giles was a good man, his freedom in the arena hard-won nine years before at the games in honour of Saturn, when bouts were to the death, an offerin
