Warrior Conflict: Roman Gladiators versus Apache Warriors.

Author's Note:  Yeah this is easily the most mediocre conflict that you're likely to see on this Blog; but no worries, the next series of posts will be up very soon.  Anyway, you can find the Bios relevant to this Conflict can be found here and here, for the Gladiators and Apache respectively.

The Scenario.

Sparatakos crouched in the undergrowth next to his other escapees.  He touched his forehead-brand as he contemplated their situation.  They were Roman gladiators, all of them.  Each man among them had fought and killed in the arena - not the grand Coliseum in Rome, but in arenas nonetheless.  There had been ten pairs of fighters, some the traditional slaves, such as Sparatakos himself, others freeborn Romans who had wanted to win some glory in the ring.

Two nights before, they had been inside of a trade caravan that their ludus had been traveling with.  In the middle of the night, when they had set up camp, they had been set upon by men that seemed like ghosts - they drifted silently through the night, never stepping into the light of their fires.  In the confusion, Sparatakos and five others had managed to escape - taking much of their fighting-gear with them on the way out.

Now they were setting out alone, trying to find some kind of civilization, Roman or otherwise.  Their odds would be better there than out here in the wilderness, something which Sparatakos knew and which Flamma, an old Roman soldier that had lost two fingers on his right hand, agreed with.  He bore a gladius, scutum, and chained a massive war-hound that he had come to love to his hand.

Sparatakos himself had been a retiarius before his escape, but now had a sica in addition to his traditional net and trident.  He had been using the trident as a walking-stick to supplement his old foot wound.

There was the snapping of a stick some yards off.  Sparatakos and two others sprang to the source of the noise, weapons bared, and the other three spun around to cover their backs with their shields.  The gladiators were silent for a moment, tense and ready to defend themselves in this hostile country.

An arrow flew in from the darkness, silent, and buried itself in Crixus' side.  The young thraex shouted out in pain and surprise as Flamma unleashed his baying hound.  He and the other retiarius followed it into the night.  Crixus covered himself with his shield as his former enemy, Oenamus the hoplomachus, did the same.  Sparatakos had moved a little ways off from them, and spotted the shadow of a crouching man flanking them.  He said nothing as he lowered his helmet and struck out with his trident, leaping forward as he did so.

He found something - a youth, wearing the skins of animals with a club in his hands.  One of his prongs nicked the boy's thigh.  He spun around, faster than he ought to have, and tried to strike Sparatakos’ shoulder and ruin the socket.  Having anticipated that, he had shrugged a little, stretching his manaca above to absorb most of the blow.  The club bounced off of it with a resounding crash, and Sparatakos used the temporary lull of shock in the youth to pierce his stomach, his trident sliding through the stiff leather jerkin he wore and tore the muscles of his stomach.  He screamed in pain and grabbed at the trident, which Sparatakos jerked in and out repeatedly until he collapsed to the ground in a growing puddle of his own blood.  Readjusting his grip, Sparatakos slammed the points into the boy's chest cavity, killing him as they pierced his lungs and heart.

From the corner of his eye Sparatakos saw the hound leap onto a man, bringing him down and snapping its crushing jaws at his throat as he thrust a long knife into its heart.  The other retiarius, whom Sparatakos had only briefly known as the Syrian, tried in vain to immobilize his quarry with his net as he danced around it.  The leather-clad man hamstrung him with the ax in his hand and cut his throat with a knife as he fell down.

Sparatakos cursed under his breath.  This was going very badly - Crixus was bleeding out from a second arrow that had taken him full in the chest, somehow bypassing his shield.  The boy must have left his guard down for a moment, and was now paying the ultimate price for his lapse in attention.   The sounds of more fierce fighting surrounded them.

Something crashed into the back of Flamma's helmet, sending him to the ground as he staggered from the blow.  His already-sore left shoulder throbbed more as it was struck a second time.  He realized dimly that he had lost his trident, whether he had dropped it or had it taken from him he did not know.

He spun away from this new attacker, whom he realized was another of their ambushers, this time wielding a short ax and a war-club in unison.  Drawing his sica with a bitter rasp of steel on worn leather, he faced his opponent and threw his net at the man's face, following up on it with his sword swung at his foe's neck.  The Apache leapt around the net, his ax-blade smashing into Sparatokos’ armored forearm.  It bit through the plates a little to break the linen and skin beneath, thankfully lightly enough to not seriously injure him.

Sparatakos turned, too, and brought his leg up and into the Apache's stomach.  The powerful body-blow lifted him off of the ground.  However, the man used his momentum to draw a knife and then draw a line across Flamma's unarmored chest.  He grit his teeth against the flashing pain, and cut the man's hand off at the wrist as he overextended it.  He fell away, moaning at the loss of his limb, and tried to fall back further.  But Sparatakos caught up to him, and brought his sica down on the crown of his head.

Two arrows soared in from out of his field of vision, one bouncing sharply off of his neck-plate and another nicking his thigh as it sought for his stomach.

Grunting past his pain, Sparatakos ran back to where Oenamus and Flamma had stood earlier, their weapons bloody.  They were both dead now, their bare chests full of arrows.

Sparatokos shook his head wearily, tired of the fast-paced combat that they had all just had to endure.  He lifted his helmet off of his head to breath in the clean night air, and at that moment an Apache fighter chose to creep up behind him and slit his throat with a stone knife.

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The Conclusion.

The Roman Gladiators
-The Offensive Assessment; thirty (30) of forty (40) possible points.
-The Defensive Assessment; twenty-three (23) of forty (40) possible points.
-The Variables Assessment; fifteen (15) of twenty (20) possible points.
~Total Composite Assessment; sixty-eight (68) of one hundred (100) possible points.

The Apache Warriors
-The Offensive Assessment; thirty-five (35) of forty (40) possible points.
-The Defensive Assessment; nineteen (19) of forty (40) possible points.
-The Variables Assessment; sixteen (16) of twenty (20) possible points.
~Total Composite Assessment; seventy (70) of one hundred (100) possible points.

Winner:  The Apache Warriors!  And there you have it.  The Apache won through a very narrow margin, mostly due to their excellent long-distance fighting ability and stealthy tactics.  It certainly didn’t help that the gladiators were not as well-protected as they might otherwise have been, but there isn’t much that can be done for that.  This was another fun match to work on, and I can’t wait to get started on the next one… pitting Hannibal Barca, the Destroyer, against Alaric the Bold Goth.  Stay tuned!