Some Hero Character

Background
After a battle, our guy gets captured by the enemy, and sold as a slave. He had a wild animal as his pet, that aided him on the battlefield, but after the battle, before he got captured, he ordered his animal to run away. His owner sends him off to fight in the pits as a gladiator, where he earns a name for himself.

Life as a Gladiator
After winning an important match, he is told that he can ask for anything and it will be granted, so he asks for his freedom. He is denied, and the rich person who was supposed to grant him his any wish gets offended and orders him killed for offending him, so archers enter the ring, however, our main guy grabs a shield off the floor and rushes with his back against the wall until the archers run out of arrows, after which he knocks them out one by one (idk like 5 total) grabs a bow from them, and an arrow from the shield and aims it at the rich guy ho ordered him killed. He misses intentionally, and then points another arrow say some sort of "That was just a warning, give me my freedom or the next one won't miss" thingy, so he is granted his freedom.

After he is freed
Once freed, the hero flees as fast as possible, but he is closely followed by either soldiers or just mercenaries hired by the rich dude to kill him. They eventually catch up to him, and he is forced to fight his way out, in the process suffering grave wounds, and falling unconscious shortly after. He is found by an old man that seems really nice and hospitable, who patches his wounds and invites him to stay at his house until he regains his strength.

Life at the house
At the old man's house, he finds out that the man has a wife and two young daughters. He spends most of his time in bed, but once he gets enough strength to walk he starts joining his host at the table when it comes to eating. He spends the rest of the time doing whatever work he can around the house, such as not to be a freeloader, and teaching the young girls a bit of fighting so that they can defend themselves, should they need to. During this time, however he is told to stay away from a certain door that is always locked, without being told the reason. All is nice and well, until, when his wounds have healed enough for him to move around freely and carry moderate weights, he joins the family at the table, and after everyone is done eating, the male host takes all the bones left over, walks with them towards that certain off-limits door, knocks on it two times, then opens a small visor, that had bars behind it, and throws the bones through the gaps in-between those gaps. To the main hero's surprise, a pale, skinny, bony hand reaches through the bars, trying to catch the bones as far as possible. The hero asks who that is, and his response is something like "A monster....She was our firstborn, but then she started practicing magic, and so we locked her away for the freak she is! We could have let her die, but we decided to allow her to gnaw on the bones, from the goodness of our hearts". Socked by the statement, the hero starts smuggling away food at every meal, and at nighttime he sneaks into the dinner room and gives that food to the mistreated girl. Obviously, they slowly start falling in love, him because she deserved to be treated better and loved, and her because he was the first person to actually show her some humanity, respect, compassion and love.

One day, after the old man left for the town together with his wife and girls, in order to do something, IDK exactly what, the hero steals the key to the door and makes a mold out of it from clay, then lets the girl out. After a few hours, they hear the man's voice in the distance, and our hero tells the girl to go back into her cell, and that at night he will come for her. Once the master gets home, the hero tells him that he remembered that he needed to see a blacksmith, and asks the man to lend him his horse in order to go into town to get his sword fixed. Once at the blacksmith, however, he asks the blacksmith to fill the mold of the key with metal, essentially making a duplicate. On his way back, however, he uses some of the gold that he won during his long time as a glad to buy a horse, and pays to stable him in the town. That night, the hero packs his bag, and sneaks out, frees the girl, and they both make a run for the town, where they get on the guys horse and run away.

After the escape
During the first night after they run away, the two find a quiet, hidden place that they use to camp. When they wake up, they are greeted by an arrow pointed right at their throats by a pair of outlaw bandits. However, they are saved by a mysterious arrow from the distance, killing one of them, followed by a huge, bulked up, yolked guy, that wields a very specific ax (that I will draw), charging down and killing the second one. The girl is scared, but the hero reassures her, by telling her that he knows their saviors. They are friends and comrades from the time they were gladiators, and that they fought in the pits shoulder to shoulder. After the greetings, the hero's buddies join the hero and the girl, since they have no place left to go. What follows is an adventuring lifestyle of living town to town, tavern to tavern, waging, betting, brawling and finding local criminals. (They were all filthy rich due to the arenas) And at some point during this time he gets reunited with his pet

Arriving Home
After a few months, maybe even a year of travelling the world, the four people arrive into the main hero's homeland, but there they find that the common lifestyle is no longer for them, so 1) they enroll in the army. However, due to their background and reputation that they gathered, they are assigned to a higher status: The dude with a huge ax becomes officer, the leader of a whole garrison, (maybe land and titles, depends if we are thinking of a feudal system or not), the archer guy is set as a spy in some sort of secret intel organization, The Main hero, however is chosen as the kings' (or whatever lord's) adviser and made a lord, while the girl is introduced to the greatest mage in the land, and made his personal pupil, right in the town. Or 2) they are offered this, but they refuse and choose the traveling lifestyle over it (I would like this one more)