Sands of Fate: The Wrong Side of History

Chapter 33: "Al–"

The infirmary smelled of blood and rain, and the sharp bite of medicinal herbs that couldn’t quite mask the rot beneath.

Alex was carried through the low stone archway by two guards, his body limp, his white hair crusted with blood that was no longer white at all.

The straw beds were mostly empty; the day’s carnage had filled the arena but not yet the medic’s ward. A single torch guttered in its bracket, casting long shadows across the stone walls, as the rain drummed a steady rhythm outside.

Spartacus lay on the nearest straw bed, his right arm bound tight against his chest. His face was slack, unconscious, his breathing deep and even.

"Why is he still like this?" Oseka asked, but no answer came.

The Ignatius survivors swarmed in behind the guards, filling the small chamber with the smell of wet leather and fresh blood.

Brennus was at their head, his broken arm still dangling useless at his side, the stolen sword now sheathed at his hip. His face was a mask of exhaustion and something else—something that looked almost like pride. He had followed the Ghost into the meat grinder and walked out the other side. They all had. Barely a dozen of them remained, but they were standing.

"Lay him there," Brennus said, pointing to the straw bed beside Spartacus. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw from screaming orders in the rain. "Carefully, damn it."

The guards lowered Alex onto the bed. His head lolled to the side. His chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged breaths. The cut across his ribs was still seeping, a thin line of red.

Oseka pushed through the crowd and dropped to his knees beside the bed. His tunic was torn, his face was streaked with blood and rain, and the gash above his eye had finally stopped bleeding, leaving a dark crust across his brow. He looked at Alex, and shook his head.

"He’s still breathing," Oseka said. "Thank the gods. He’s still breathing."

"He’s too stubborn to die," Brennus replied. "We all saw it. The giants came at him five at once, and he—" He stopped, shaking his head. Whatever words he had weren’t enough.

One of the other fighters; a lean figure with a gaping wound across his thigh, scanned the room with a scowl. "Where the hell is that old bat?" he growled. "We’re bleeding all over his floor and he’s—"

"Hiding in the cave between your mother’s legs."

The voice came from the entrance.

Gaius walked through the archway, his cloak dripping rainwater onto the stone, his bag slung over one shoulder. His hair was plastered to his skull, grey and thin and streaming with water.

The man who had spoken earlier spun around, hand going to his sword. Then he saw who it was and relaxed, a flush creeping up his neck. "Gaius. Where the hell–"

Gaius pushed past him, dripping water across the floor, and set his bag down on the workbench with a heavy thud.

He didn’t wait for them to move. He walked through the crowd of fighters like they were furniture, his eyes already scanning the room—Spartacus on the first bed, Alex on the second, the dozen wounded men standing around them like sentinels.

"Where were you?" Brennus asked. His tone a bit stern.

Gaius began unpacking his bag. Thread, bandages, the stronger ointment from the back of the shelf. "Since when does the medic answer to the patients?"

"Since the medic disappeared while our champion was fighting five giants alone."

Gaius paused. His hand hovered over a roll of bandages. Then he resumed unpacking, his movements steady, unhurried. "He won, didn’t he?"

"That’s not the point."

"That’s exactly the point." Gaius turned to face them. "You’re standing here because of him. So stop asking questions that don’t matter and let me do my work."

Brenus opened his mouth to argue, but Gaius was already walking toward Alex’s bed.

He stopped at the foot of it.

For a long moment, he didn’t move.

He studied the boy the way a scholar studies a text—carefully, methodically, his eyes tracing every visible wound. The cut across the ribs. The bruises blooming across his chest and shoulders. The hands, still curled into loose fists, the knuckles raw and split. The blood—so much blood, caked in the white hair and smeared across the pale face and dried in dark rivers down the arms.

The words from the scroll echoed in his skull. He could still see the faded ink, the archaic Latin, the name he had almost spoken before Titus’s interruption.

’...a man who healed from wounds that should have killed him...’

He looked at the cut on Alex’s ribs. It was already closing—the edges of the skin drawing together in a thin, pink line that hadn’t been there minutes ago.

’...who moved with the wind, faster than the eyes could track...’

Gaius had heard the stories from witnesses, on his way back. The way the boy moved through the enemy lines. The way the giants couldn’t touch him. The way he saw gaps that no one else could see and exploited them before his opponents could blink.

’...who took down armies with a sword in each hand...’

Five giants. Alone. While his brothers were still picking up broken swords from the sand. Five giants, and he had cut through them like a scythe through wheat.

Gaius’s eyes reached the boy’s face. The closed eyes, the slack jaw, the white hair, dyed red now. The blood so thick it had begun to dry in crusted clumps.

"Albius," he muttered, too quiet for anyone else to hear.

"Everyone out."

The lean man blinked. "What?"

"You heard me." Gaius turned to face the room. His voice wasn’t loud. "All of you. Out. Now."

"We’re wounded—"

"You’ll live." Gaius pointed at the door. "I’ll tend to you when I’m done here. Brennus, get them out."

Some of the men opened their mouths to protest. Brennus cut them off with a single raised hand. His eyes met Gaius’s; the medic’s gaze steady, and something passed between them. An understanding. Or the beginning of one.

"You heard him," Brennus said. "Out. All of you. Wait in the corridor."

The men filed out slowly, reluctantly, their boots scuffing against the stone. Oseka was the last to leave. He paused at the door, looking back at Alex, his face tight with something he couldn’t name.

"He saved us," Oseka said quietly. "All of us."

"I know," Gaius replied.

"Take care of him."

"I always do."

Oseka nodded once and stepped through the archway, and turned a corner.

The infirmary fell silent.

Gaius stood alone in the flickering torchlight, surrounded by the soft sound of rain on stone and the slower, steadier rhythm of two men breathing. Spartacus on the first bed, unconscious, his arm bound, his chest rising and falling in the deep, even cadence of exhausted sleep. Alex on the second bed, barely breathing at all, his body a canvas of wounds that were already beginning to heal faster than they should.

Gaius pulled a stool to Alex’s bedside and sat down.

He reached for a clean cloth, dipped it in a basin of water, and began to wash the blood from the boy’s face with slow, careful strokes. The water in the basin turned pink, then red, then dark as old wine. He worked in silence, his hands steady, his mind racing.

’Who are you?’ he thought, wiping blood from the closed eyelids. ’What are you?’

The boy didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. But the scroll had answered, in faded ink and archaic Latin, and the answer started with a name Gaius hadn’t quite been allowed to read.

"Al—"

He cut himself off. The word hung in the air like a held breath.

Then he set the cloth aside, reached for the ointment, and began to work on the wound across Alex’s ribs. The cut was already half-closed. By morning, it would be a scar. By the next fight, it would be gone entirely.

Gaius applied the ointment anyway. Some things were better not explained to the men waiting outside.

The rain kept drumming on the roof. The torch kept guttering in its bracket. And the old medic sat alone with his two champions—one broken, one impossible—and waited for the one who was not quite human to wake up.