©2001 by WILDBEARIES

This story is based on characters created in the film, "Gladiator" and in no way intended to infringe upon those characters or the story of that film. References to real people are strictly the product of the writer's imagination and meant to entertain the reader.
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All the fiends of Hades were stabbing him in the arm with their pitchforks. He moved, protesting, and opened his eyes. He seemed to be trussed over the back of a horse, hanging face down, his arms swinging loose, blood still dripping off his right hand. He could see the drops melt the snow as they landed. It was fascinating - slow ooze of the droplets, then a soundless splatter and the snow melted into little red circles. He groaned as the horse stumbled. They could have at least tied him to the beast upright. His head swam and he had the fuzzy headache he got from blood loss.

The horse stopped its uneven forward movement - for which he was mightily glad - and he tried to get his bearings. "Awake, are you?" he heard, then someone tipped his face up by means of yanking on his hair. It wasn't a face he recognized and he would have remembered this one. The man was ugly, filthy, and covered with so much hair he resembled a bear more than a human. Maximus simply looked without acknowledging the question, and the man growled, letting go of him. "Arrogant Roman," he heard, then he heard Ana's voice.

"He was born near Emerita Augusta, he's Hispanic, not Roman," she said calmly.

It took a major effort not to skew his head around to find her. She sounded near, however, and she sounded all right. Now if he could will his arm to stop bleeding, he might be able to husband his strength enough to do something about his predicament. The bony back of the horse pressing into his middle was working with the pain in his head to make him feel sick, and he did not want to vomit in this precarious position.

"Be quiet, woman!" the hairy man barked. He rode right up by the side of the horse Maximus was bound to and, without ceremony, hit him over the head with the pommel of his sword.

Ana, riding just behind Maximus on one of the cart horses that had been pulling her father's wagon, protested loudly. "There was no need for that! You have him tied onto the horse, where do you think he was going to go?"

"Quiet!" Hairy Man shouted.

Metellus, the centurion deserter finally intervened, "Garth, enough of your posturing, get back in line, and if you strike the prisoner again, I'll cut your hand off."

Garth, which apparently was the name of the hirsute man, snarled something under his breath, but quickly returned to the rear of the small group making its way through the woods. Ana tried to see her husband, but could only see his torso, bent double over the horse's back and bound with heavy rope. She looked into the eyes of Metellus, who had the grace to look away, obviously uncomfortable with the contempt on her face.

It was mid-morning when they halted, apparently having reached some place in the deep woods where they felt safe from pursuit. Ana was untied and allowed to dismount. As soon as the pins and needles in her limbs permitted, she slogged over beside Maximus and touched his face. He was cold, but still breathing and she let out a breath of relief she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. "Please," she forced herself to be polite, "untie him and let me care for his wounds?"

Metellus studied her, then Maximus, then nodded curtly, "You may, but you will also look after our wounded, and you will do that first. If you try anything, be assured I will put my sword through your husband's heart."

She gulped, but nodded, stroking her fingers in a brief, comforting motion through Maximus' hair. "Let him down and cover him with a blanket," she bargained, wondering where the courage to do this came from, "and I will see to your men."

"Do it," Metellus snapped to two of his underlings. They untied Maximus, slid him down off the horse and dragged him to a slightly less snowy area. "On a blanket," Metellus added. They spread a ragged blanket on the ground and unceremoniously dropped Maximus onto it, then covered him with his cloak, which Metellus had retrieved from the ground where Maximus had killed three of his men. He turned to Ana, "Now, take care of my men, woman."

"I need my box of medicines," she said calmly. She knew they had it - she had seen them steal it from the overturned wagon just before her father had run, shouting in outrage, around the back of the cart and literally impaled himself on the sword of one of the thieves. Ana had seen the whole thing and she didn't think she would ever forget the sight of her father falling, the blood on his chest, dead before he hit the ground. She had been snatched up by Metellus, tossed unceremoniously onto the back of one of the cart horses, and led off into the woods before she had a chance to even bend over her father and say her goodbyes.

Metellus gestured to one of his underlings, and they shortly brought her the wooden chest with her medicines in it. "Here, do you require anything else, my lady?" His voice held just enough sarcasm for her to know not to push her luck with him.

"Hot water, clean bandages if you have any, and, depending upon their injuries, I might need you to hold onto the man if I need to do something - um - serious."

Metellus nodded, dispatched the same man who had brought her the chest to get the items she wanted, and then went to fetch the wounded bandits. There were three of them. Adding in her head, Ana thought that made a total of seven - Metellus, the odious one named Garth and five others, three of whom were apparently wounded. She paid close attention to these last as she examined them.

The first, a grizzled man with a thick Gallic accent, had a simple cut on his thigh. She cleaned it while he sat stoically silent, decided it didn't need sewing, and merely wrapped it with clean linen, telling him via Metellus' translating that he needed to have the bandage changed and the wound checked the next day.

The second man had a laceration of his hand which she cleaned and bandaged much as she had the first man. The third man, however, she wasn't sure she could do anything for. "His wound appears mortal," she told Metellus after a cursory examination. He was stabbed through the abdomen, and she could see lacerated intestines trying to push out through the wound. "His whole abdomen will be filled with the contents of his gut," she tried to explain, knowing anything she did for the man would be futile.

Metellus looked where her finger was pointing into the depths of the ugly wound. He blanched, then nodded curtly. "Make him comfortable," he requested, surprising her. From the look on his face, this was someone he knew and liked.

"I'm sorry," she found herself murmuring. She told herself she would hope that, were it someone she cared about, there would be a friend near to be sad at his loss. "May - may I see to my husband now?" she asked when she had put a rolled blanket beneath the dying man's head and covered him with another. A dose of poppy juice mixed in melted snow water had sent the man into a deathlike stupor.

Metellus gestured, and she gathered up her medicines and hastened to where her heart had been the whole time she was seeing to the outlaws' wounds. She brushed her fingers over his face, feeling his warm breath on her hand, then felt his head carefully until she found the lump where Garth had struck him. Thanking Isis when it proved to be only a bump and not a fracture, she bent to check his wounded right arm. The blood had pretty well congealed and stopped flowing because of his lying in the snow, although there was a thin blanket beneath him. The snow had seeped through, soaking the ragged wool, and had also soaked the back of Maximus' clothing. That worried her almost more than the wound. She concentrated on it first, however.

It was an ugly cut, about three inches long, fairly deep, although it ran along the muscle rather than across it, so he would not lose any function once she had the wound stitched. She opened her medicine box and took out thread and a needle. "I need hot water," she told the man who seemed to be second in command to Metellus. He came back with a small pan of water, apparently just removed from the fire, because it was almost boiling. "Excellent," she complimented him.

"Yes, my lady," he murmured in perfect Latin. Ana looked at him in surprise. "I'm not a barbarian," he whispered, glancing around to see who was within range of their voices. "I'm not what I seem." Before he could enlighten her further, however, the hairy man, Garth, came blustering up complaining about the amount of food and who would cook it. They walked away, leaving her basically alone with Maximus. She sighed, wishing they could run for it, but it was daylight, he was still unconscious, and in no condition to run. Yet.

She threaded her needle, which was extra sharp, made especially for sewing wounds. "I pray you don't wake until I'm finished, carus," she told him. She cleaned the wound with some of the hot water, touching him as lightly as she could, pausing when he tried to pull his arm away, then resuming when he lay still again. Then she began stitching the wound. After the first pass of the needle, he awakened with a hiss of indrawn breath. Ana paused. "I must do it," she explained to him.

Maximus, his arm already paining him, nodded to her to get on with it. Someone knelt on the other side of him and held a tightly rolled bit of leather to his lips. "Bite down on this," the man said kindly. Maximus sank his teeth into the leather and shut his eyes. He'd had wounds sewn before. It was not pleasant, not at all, but necessary. Ana's needle bit into his flesh again and he went rigid. It seemed that every stitch passed directly through a nerve. When she had made ten stitches, he thought he would vomit and spat out the leather. "Stop!" he grated, "Just for a moment, cara, please."

Ana paused, wiping away the sweat that beaded his brow despite their being outdoors in freezing weather. "I'm so sorry, darling, so sorry," she murmured. She waited a moment, sure he was going to throw up, but he looked less green after a bit, and nodded to her to finish, so she took the last few stitches and knotted her thread. "There, finished." She made sure it wasn't closed too tightly so that any drainage could run easily from the clean linen wick she placed in the deeper part of the wound, then bandaged it. She leaned down and kissed his forehead.

"That was well done," he whispered, mouth quirking in a half smile. It was true. He'd had many a stitch in his army career, and none so swiftly put in, and certainly all the others had hurt like blazes, much worse than her handiwork. "Gods, I'm weak as a kitten," he complained, grimacing when he tried to push himself into a sitting position and failed.

"Just lie down," Ana suggested, glancing across Maximus to where the second in command knelt. She caught his eye as she told Maximus, "You need to rest, and you need to be somewhere out of the melted snow, if there is some dry clothing that can be found for you."

The soldier - for she was sure now that's what he was, and no outlaw at that - shook his head. "No clean clothing, we travel light, my lady, but perhaps we can dry his clothes near the fire? Would that do?"

Ana nodded, and, with the other man's help, over Maximus' protests at being undressed outdoors in the snow, they got him out of his leather armor, took off the two wool tunics and his cotton shirt, and also removed the warm flannel drawers after unbuckling his greaves and taking off his boots. One of the ragged outlaws promptly pounced on the boots, shouting, "Mine!"

Ana stood up, intent on fighting to regain possession of them, but the second in command shoved her back down and grabbed the footwear away from the other man, telling him that they would not have access to their prisoner's clothing until and unless Metellus said so. Cowed, the skinny, ragged man ran back to crouch by the fire, where he cast disgusted glances in their directions, his eyes coveting Maximus' clothing. Ana took the boots from the man and thanked him, "Thank you, er - I didn't catch your name."

"Lucullus," he said shortly, "and don't thank me - it's Metellus' place to say if a prisoner's belongings are forfeit or not, and when he says they are, I will not be able to lift a finger to change that."

Ana studied the man, smiled suddenly and asked him to help her move Maximus someplace dryer. "Over there, maybe on some of those pine needles that have fallen?" She pointed to where a thick layer of dried pine needles made a cushion at the base of a huge old tree. She helped Maximus sit up, then, wrapping him in his thick red cloak, she and Lucullus got him to his feet and swiftly moved him onto the needle-bed. She had grabbed a folded blanket off the pile of plunder the outlaws had offloaded from her father's horses, and, daring anyone to stop her from taking it, spread it on the ground and helped Maximus lie down on it. She tucked the heavy cloak around him, arranging the wolf pelts into a kind of furry pillow, and, once he drew his legs up, she tucked the cloak under them also so he was covered and warm, out of the nippy air. "May we have a fire over here?" she asked Lucullus.

He walked over to where Metellus sat going through the items stolen from Erato's wagon, and came back with a lighted branch, quickly gathering more deadfall wood and building a medium sized fire close enough to where Ana crouched beside her husband that it warmed them. A bit later, he brought her an earthenware bowl of rabbit stew with pieces of dried carrot in a thick gravy. She spooned some of the gravy into her husband's mouth first, until he insisted she feed herself, and then she greedily ate most of the stew, giving Maximus the most tender pieces of the meat. Metellus, grinning at her lack of pretense to fine manners due to her hunger, brought her a piece of coarse bread with which she wiped the gravy from the bowl, and divided it with her husband. "You must eat," she said in a no-nonsense tone that would brook no refusals.

Maximus gave her a brief, wry grin, and obediently ate it. "Good," he commented, and it was. He drank a cup of melted snow water, then let her fuss over him a little, settling him down and finding yet another blanket to cover him with. "I'm very warm," he told her truthfully. He didn't bother lying that it was all due to the blanket and cloak and nothing to the fever he felt coming on - she would see right through that.

Ana scowled, felt his forehead, and commanded him to rest. "I'll take care of you." She leaned close, and under the cover of kissing him, whispered, "I think Lucullus is somehow on our side. Rest and get stronger, while I see what's what."

"Ana," he said in a low, warning tone, but he knew it was no good trying to stop her once she had her mind set on a course of action. "Just be careful," he finally said.

"I will, and you rest now, you lost a lot of blood and got quite a bump on the head."

"I know that," he commented irritably, for his head was pounding in time with his pulse.

As usual, she read his mind and gave him some of the poppy juice mixed in snow water that had eased the dying outlaw. "This will help your head, carissimus, now relax and let it work. I'll watch over you."

Somehow, Maximus knew that, little as she was, Ana would do exactly as she promised.

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Copyright 2001 by wildbearies