Calgaich the Swordsman (29 page)

“The Romans try to hold back the Saxons and Jutes,” Fomoire told the others, “by building their great forts at Branodunum, Gariannonum, Othona, Regulbium, Rutupiae and here at Dubris. These are great forts, but I believe they are doomed, in time, for the Saxon wind will one day prevail here.”

Calgaich spat. “Those Saxon bastards might eventually defeat these Romans, but they will not conquer Albu!”

“Perhaps. Perhaps. But if the Saxons do not conquer all of Britannia, there will be other conquerors, worse tyrants than even the Romans.”

Calgaich looked at the priest with scorn. “First we shall deal with the Romans and then we shall deal with the others.”

The street became wider. The traffic was heavy despite the increasing rain. As the head of the column of prisoners reached a small square, the door of a wineshop was flung open with a crash and a man seemed to hop out into the streaming gutter like a great and ungainly frog. He struck hard in the swift-flowing rainwater and then shook his head as he tried to get up by planting both hands in the water to force himself up on to his feet. The wineshop door slammed shut behind him.

Decrius Montanas fought with his rearing horse, which had been frightened by the sudden appearance of the man in the gutter. “By the gods!” he shouted, as the man turned his head sideways to look up at him. “Lutorius!”

Calgaich saw the familiar drink-sodden face, with its badly broken nose, and the chin gall, the thickened line of paler skin along the lower jaw and chin which could only be made by many years of wearing the chin strap of a Roman legionnaire's helmet. “Run, Bottle Emptier!” he roared.

Lutorius got clumsily to his feet. He knew damned well what his fate would be if Montanas got hold of him. He turned and ran awkwardly like a circus bear toward the nearest side street.

“After him, damn you!” Montanas shouted at the Dacians nearest him.

Four Dacians wheeled their mounts away from the prisoner column and galloped after the
calo.
Lutorius had almost made it to safety when he slipped in a pile of fresh manure and fell headlong again into the streaming gutter. He tried to rise. A cavalryman brought the butt of his short spear down hard alongside Lutorius's head. Blood spurted. Lutorius staggered gamely to his feet. He reached up and dragged the cursing Dacian from his saddle. He ripped the long-bladed cavalry
spatha
from its sheath and tore the shield from the Dacian's back. He then jumped back into the junction of two walls to face the three remaining Dacians who had dismounted and were moving in on foot.

All traffic had stopped. The Dacians swung their wet cloaks back over their shoulders to free their arms for swordplay. Their
spathae
seemed to hiss as they were whipped from their scabbards.

Montanas reined in his horse in the middle of the street. “Throw down the sword, Lutorius,” he commanded.

Lutorius spat to one side. “Let your damned auxiliaries face a lone legionnaire!” he roared. “I'm Lutorius, the Bottle Emptier, a man who served more than half a score of years in the legions. Come on, you damned Dacian swine!”

Montanas nodded to the Dacians. “I want that drunken bastard alive! I want the skin flayed off his back for a purse!”

The cavalrymen closed in. Lutorius held his shield up close to his square chin and tight against his left breast and side. He held his sword low, at an angle for thrusting, as with a
gladius.

“He hasn’t a chance,” Fomoire murmured.

“Watch him,” Calgaich suggested with professional interest. “Drunk or sober, I think he can handle those three.”

The rain slashed down. The street was very quiet except for the blowing of the horses and the occasional chink of a bit.

“Impetus gladiorum!”
Lutorius shouted, as he gave himself his own commands. It was the famed legion “Onset with swords.” He drove forward, taking three hasty strokes against his shield. His
spatha
darted out like the tongue of an adder. A Dacian cursed as blood flowed from his sword arm. He dropped back out of the fight. Lutorius swung up his shield to protect his head and then cut low at the legs of the two remaining Dacians to slow their attack.

A
spatha
skinned the
calo’
s forehead. Blood flowed down his face, partially blinding him, but Lutorius was in his element, like a butcher cutting beef.

“Go to it, Bottle Emptier!” a man shouted from the door of the wineshop from which
the calo
had been evicted.

“
Euge! Euge!
” yelled a carter, giving Lutorius the victory cry of the arena.

One of the Dacians went down from a flat-bladed blow on top of his helmet that snapped off a third of the
calo*
s
spatha
. The other Dacian limped back, cursing hotly as he gripped his slashed shoulder.

Four more Dacians dismounted and drew their swords. They advanced on
the calo.
A fighting, cursing fury met them and drove them back across the square. Lutorius yelled, half-mad with Chios wine and his aroused blood lust.

“He is
fey
,” Guidd murmured. “He feels nothing. No fatigue, wounds or pain.”

“He’ll die soon enough,” Niall prophesied.

“Tullus!” the centurion snapped.

The Balearic slinger came forward.

“Drop him,” the centurion ordered. ‘'But,
alive!
If you kill him, I’ll have your hide.”

Tullus reached into his pouch. He selected a heavy lead ball. He placed it in the loop of the sling and walked forward slowly. Lutorius was fighting like a whirligig, spinning about on a heel, striking out, then dropping to one knee to drive his blade upward, followed by a leap to his feet and a short and furious charge. Tullus whirled his sling, almost casually, and with seemingly little effort. The missile hit the
calo
just behind the left ear. He dropped into the gutter. His sword clattered on the cobblestones. The blood flowed from his face and tinted the rainwater pink.

They dragged Lutorius to the feet of the dismounted centurion, who kicked him viciously in the ribs and spat in his bloody face. He beckoned to a carter. “Haul this carrion to the slave pens in your cart,” the centurion ordered.

The column of prisoners resumed their slow march toward the waterfront. Soon they had reached the misty quays where the galleys loading for Gaul lay ranked side by side in the harbor.

It was Fomoire who brought Lutorius back to the land of the living. The Druid worked with skillful hands at the base of the
calo’s
skull. In a little while Lutorius opened one bleary eye. “Who’s paying for the next round?” he asked thickly. “Heads or ships, barbarians? Toss the coin! Best out of three!”

“Well met, Bottle Emptier,” Calgaich greeted dryly. “Your timing, as usual, was excellent. How did you happen to get thrown out of that wineshop at the exact instant Montanas was passing by?”

Lutorius sat up. He hiccupped. “It takes some skill, barbarian,” he admitted.

“Who won the fight?” he asked.

“You were winning,
calo.
It was Tullus who struck you with a leaden thunderbolt.”

“By the gods of the legions,” the old soldier growled. “Had I my old
Hispanicus gladius,
my helmet and my legion shield I would have wiped out the lot of them.”

He looked about at the silent, mud-plastered prisoners. “Where is this sad-looking lot bound, barbarian?”

"To Rome,
calo.
At least
we
are.”

Lutorius placed his back against the wall of the shed. "Well, from the looks of things, it seems as though I might be going with you to the end of the road, wherever that might be.”

"The arena,” Guidd said quietly.

Lutorius shrugged. "So be it. That’ll take a couple of months or so. Meanwhile I'm still alive, still half drunk and in fairly bad company, so I’ll make the best of it.”

Calgaich squatted in front of the
calo
. "What were you doing here in Dubris?”

"I came here hoping to catch Old Give Me Another, before he took ship for Gaul. I got lost in a wine haze for a day or two. Happened to pick a whore's purse when she passed out next to me in bed. That kept me going for another few days.” He grinned. "I did see the old man riding through the streets on his way to the ship. Before his aide kicked my rosy ass into the gutter, I managed to blurt out that you were a prisoner of the quaestor Lucius Sextillius at Luguvalium and that he meant you no good. I also said I thought you were headed for the Games at Rome.”

"And?” Calgaich asked.

Lutorius shrugged. "He looked down that long beak of his like a vulture eyeing a juicy, rotting corpse, and said, 'No one deserts the Eagles!
No one!’
He hasn't changed a bit, Caledonian. Old Give Me Another! Tribune
Legatus Legionis
Arrius Niger! Now,
there
is a soldier's soldier!”

"Did he recognize you?”

"Look at me, friend. My own dear mother, the gods rest her drunken soul, wouldn't recognize me if she came from the shades looking for me to make me pay back the money I owed her when she died.”

"So you got nothing.” Calgaich grinned. "I thought as much.”

"Well, I only wanted to pay my passage to Rome and get on the welfare rolls as an old soldier covered with honorable scars. They say half the city is on the free bread and meat rolls. Ah, Rome! The center of the world! The city of cities! A man can fall out of one wineshop and stagger into the one right next door without missing a round. And the whores! They say a man can die happy with them and never wear them out!”

“They may yet hang you at the quays,” Calgaich suggested speculatively.

Lutorius shook his grizzled poll. “I doubt it. They've been gathering prisoners from all over Britannia for the great Games to be held there early this summer. Deserters like you and me, barbarian. Picts, Silurians, Saxons, Jutes, Britons and Caledonians, as well as condemned criminals, prisoners of war, and deserters from the legions and auxiliaries. They've been shipping them out by the hundreds. They take them in chained droves clear through Gaul to Massalia, for shipment to Portus Ostiensis.

“No, Calgaich, they won't hang me. I've been a soldier too long, and I'm too skilled with die tools of my trade to escape fighting in the arena. Well, it's either that, a rope around my neck, or maybe slow death in the galleys, or, worse than that, in the salt or sulphur mines. A soldier ought to die standing with his weapons in his hands, eh, barbarian?”

Calgaich nodded. “Or a warrior,” he added absentmindedly. “With the wind in his face and his enemies in front of him.” He stood up and walked to the open end of the shed to look toward the misty quays.

“What's wrong with him?” Lutorius asked.

“You can't cage an eagle, or a wolf,” Guidd replied. “They don't live long behind liars.”

The salt tang of the sea came to Calgaich through the cold drizzle. Faintly above the busy hum of life in the port city, he heard the crying of the harbor gulls and the distant sea wash of the channel.

The first part of the long journey to Rome had seemed interminable, but as the prisoners drew closer to Massalia, the days moved on with incredible speed. The entourage of Quaestor Lucius Sextillius and the long column of prisoners had taken ship across the channel to Gesoriacum in Gaul. Day after day, the convoys of prisoners moved southward. Additional prisoners were added to the column. There were Gauls, Helvetians from the towering Alpine areas east of Gaul. Groups of stolid, blue-eyed yellow-haired giants from the dark forests of Germania formed segments of the convoys. Near the end of the journey to Massalia the prisoners were joined by dark-faced and dark-haired men from Iberia. The universal coating of yellow dust made them almost indistinguishable from each other except for the larger size of the northerners.

The prisoners had two things in common—the thick layer of dust and the resigned look in their eyes. They knew their destiny. If it was not to be bloody death in the Flavian Amphitheatre or die Circus Maximus of Rome, it would be their end when they either broke their backs or burst their hearts tugging at a galley oar. Still, it could be worse, for some of them might be condemned to the salt mines, where their fingers and toes would rot off as they slowly went mad with fatigue and pain; or perhaps the horrible sulphur mines of Sicily, which were a living death.

The tang of the sea came to them as they approached Massalia, an ancient Phoenician port situated on the Gulf of Lions. The dusty column of prisoners tramped through the cobbled streets of the ancient Phoenician port city to the harbor where they were confined in open pens, customarily used for livestock. The reek of stale wine, olive oil, fresh manure, green hides and rotting wheat hung over the quays and rose from the holds of the round-bottomed, high-sided, clumsy merchant ships. There was constant activity along the waterfront. Lines of loaded and empty carts passed each other, rumbling over the greasy cobblestones. The cries of the stevedores and seamen mingled with the creaking of the blocks and tackles of the ships as they were being loaded or unloaded. Above all other noises there was the persistent crying of the harbor gulls as they hovered over the dirty water of the harbor.

Fomoire leaned on the fence surrounding the cattle pens and looked out at the harbor.
“Mare Nostrum,
Our Sea, the arrogant Romans call it. The old name was
Mare Internum,
the Inland Sea, but in more modern times the name was changed to
Mediterranean,
the Middle of the Earth, and so it truly is. The commerce of the known world is centered in this sea—from Africa, the Middle East, Greece, Gaul and Iberia. And in the epicenter of this central sea of the world is Rome. Everything and everyone seems to be drawn to Rome from all parts of the Empire, and even beyond the Empire. Great are the Seven Wonders of the World, and of them, Rome is assuredly the greatest.” Calgaich looked up at Fomoire from where he sat on some filthy straw. “What are these Seven Wonders?” he asked.

“The rainbow, the echo, the cuckoo, the negro, the volcano, the sirocco and Rome.”

Lutorius laughed. “Don't forget the
Book of Elephantis,
weasel! By the gods, I’d rather have that scroll to read than any damned Wonders of the World!”