“You?” Spartacus said, astonished. “The gatekeeper?”

He did not hear the approaching Roman soldiers. He did not feel the first javelin. The Unbroken was, at last, truly free.

“Because hope in this place is not a virtue,” Pelorus said, his one good eye glistening. “It is a leash. The only freedom is to stop hoping they will let you live, and start planning to make them fear your death.”

Batiatus lunged. Pelorus, with the slow, economical grace of a man who had dodged death forty-seven times, sidestepped. He used his stump to hook Batiatus’s wrist and his good hand to drive the little whittling knife—the one he’d been sharpening for ten years—up under the lanista’s chin.