Calgaich the Swordsman (33 page)

The Pict looked about himself. "What the hell is the matter with him?” he demanded. "What is this talk of fighting and death?” He stood up and looked down at Calgaich. "Are you saying that you killed my uncle?”

Calgaich looked up. "It was a fair fight, young one. He championed your father. He lost.”

The blood rushed into Girich's tattooed face. "By the gods! You lie, Novantae!”

Instinctively the prisoners around the two men moved quickly out of the way, leaving Calgaich seated on the ground at the feet of the tall young Pict.

"Did you say I lied, Pict?” Calgaich asked softly.

"You heard me, Novantae!”

"There are others here who can verify what I have said.”

"Were
they
there? No! I can see it in your face! It's only
your
word!”

"And you insist that I lie?”

"Why is Calgaich so calm?” Niall whispered to Guidd.

Guidd shrugged. "I don't know. At any other time, or place, that loud-mouthed Pict would be lying dead on the ground by now with a broken back.”

Girich reached out with a foot. He poked it against Calgaich's side. “I say again, you lie.”

Calgaich got up slowly. His chains jangled together as he did so. He smiled a little. Suddenly his big hands shot out to grip the Pict by the front of his ragged tunic. He jerked Girich close to himself and stared into his eyes. "You damned young fool,” he hissed. "Do you want to make a spectacle of yourself in front of those grinning Mauretanians? They'd like that. No, young Girich, this is not the time or the place for us to settle any differences we may have.” He shoved the Pict backward and then crouched a little with his hands outheld. "It was a fair fight. He fought well. He died well. That is the truth. If you deny that again, then you must attack, and I'll kill you.”

For a moment Girich hesitated. By the gods, he wanted to attack, but there was something in the cold gray eyes of the Novantae that held him back. He looked away, turned to look at Calgaich again, then walked off. The jingling of his chains died in the distance.

Lutorius’s forecasting of Quaestor Lucius Sextillius's reappearance early in the morning, ready for his self-planned “triumphal” entry into Rome, had been right in every respect save one—he had
not
tucked all of his women safely away in his villa on the Viminal Hill. For in the morning, as the quaestor came forth carried on a litter of polished wood and ivory, he was followed by a second litter bearing Morar. She looked like a queen of the Britons, so splendid and regal did she appear.

Fomoire scratched within his ragged tunic. “I knew it,” he murmured to Calgaich. “She'd never miss such an opportunity to make herself known in Rome the first day she is here. By all the gods, she's gulled that stupid quaestor into letting her come along with him. Who'd look at the Perfumed Pig, when there's that splendid woman riding in the litter behind his?”

The prisoners were kicked to their feet and rechained together into their column. They shuffled and jingled back toward the road, with the cracking reports of the whips just behind them. The long, dusty column fell in behind the two litters and entered the cavernous mouth of the Ostian Gate.

The litters had passed on just ahead of the prisoners into the narrow street beyond the gate castle. “Look at the little prick,” Lutorius growled. He jerked his head toward the quaestor. “You'd think he rated a triumph, such as the old-time generals were granted by the Senate.”

“How did they rate such an honor?” Fomoire asked.

“I don't know all the conditions, but they had to be commander-in-chief of a victorious force, the enemy must have been decisively defeated, and Roman casualties must have been slight. At least five thousand of the enemy must have been killed.”

“You're jesting,” Fomoire suggested.

“Look at the Perfumed Pig! Don't you think he rates that?” Lutorius grinned.

Burly servants of the quaestor walked ahead of the two litters, motioning with their staves toward the people who filled the narrow street. “Stand aside! Stand aside!” they cried loudly. “Make way for the Honorable Quaestor of Britannia! Make way for Quaestor Lucius Sextillius! Clear the way there! The famed quaestor has just returned from Britannia with slaves for the arena! Make way! Make way!”

The streets were filled with people who were pushing their way through the crowds or standing in front of the many small shops that formed the lower floors of towering buildings, some of which were six and seven stories high. The mingled odors of cooking food, cheap wine, human wastes and stale perspiration hung between the tail-fronted structures. Bluish smoke arose from cooking braziers and from the street comer altars. Artisans hammered and sawed in their cubicles of shops. The constant tinkling of metalsmith's hammers mingled with the loud and constant hum of human voices. The people parted just in front of the flourished staves of the servants and then flowed back together again just as soon as the column passed.

Little attention was paid to the prisoners or to the quaestor for that matter, but the crowd did not ignore Morar. The eyes of the Roman men and women followed her as she sat boldly erect in her litter, which was borne by eight brawny Nubian slaves. Her golden hair and great blue eyes were a startling contrast to the black-skinned Nubians and the dark-haired and dark-eyed Roman women of the streets.

“Flava Coma! Flava Coma!”
some of the grinning street women called after Morar.

Morar looked proudly back at the women, who obviously must be admiring her golden hair. Quaestor Sextillius turned , his bald head sharply to one side or the other and stared imperiously at the shouting women.

“Flava Coma?”
Calgaich queried. “Yellow Hair? What's irritating the Perfumed Pig about that, Lutorius?”

Lutorius grinned. “It means ‘Yellow Hair’ sure enough, but it has another meaning here in Rome. The whores usually dye their hair yellow, and to yell ‘
Flava Coma’
at a respectable woman is to insult her.”

“They
dare
to do this in the presence of the ‘Great One’ up there?” Calgaich grinned back at Lutorius.

“The Roman mob can't be handled by
anyone
. The mob can say and do damned well anything they like and get away with it, for the most part.”

“Does Sextillius have money,
calo?”
Calgaich asked. Lutorius nodded. “A great deal. The family money is said to be controlled by the quaestor's elder sister, the Lady Antonia. She is the mother of that pouter pigeon Tribune Ulpius Claudius. She financed the senatorship of her husband Mucius Claudius, a spineless jellyfish, so that she could get herself a mouthpiece in the Senate. It was she who got Ulpius Claudius his appointment as tribune, on the long chance that he could work his way up to tribune
legatus legionis.”
Lutorius chuckled. “That stupid son-of-a-bitch couldn't handle a
decuria
of Greek auxiliaries in a wineshop brawl.”

“What's so political about such a position?”

Lutorius glanced sideways at Calgaich. “Are you jesting? How do you think your own grandfather got to be a senator? To be promoted to the rank of tribune
legatus legionis
automatically carries with it a seat in the Senate.”

“It's beginning to make sense now,” Fomoire put in.

Calgaich looked at the Druid. “What do you mean?”

“Simply this: Antonia already has control of one seat in the Senate—her husband's. She had her son appointed tribune on the frontier, with the idea that he might be able to work his way up to the rank of tribune
legatus legionis,
and then he could retire from the legion as a senator. That, in time, would give her two seats in the Senate. By backing Sextillius in his pursuit of political power, she might in time get him a seat in the Senate as well. Thus, if the dice fell right, she'd have control of three seats in the Senate.”

Calgaich nodded. “It makes sense.”

“There's one catch however,” Lutorius said. He jerked a thumb toward Morar, resplendent in her glittering litter.

‘'Sister Tonia will find
her
between herself and the Perfumed Pig.”

As the prisoners progressed toward the center of the city, it became noticeable that the people in the streets were not standing about the shops, or idling on the street comers. They were moving in the same direction as the column. The street ahead of the litters was filled wall to wall with pushing, jostling people. Each side street contributed more people until, as far as the eye could see ahead, the street was a solid mass of bobbing heads.

“What’s the great attraction?" Guidd asked Lutorius.

“You’ll see soon enough, woodsman."

Then, as the street curved more to the north and east, it became wider, and in the distance a colossal structure many stories high. The fitful morning wind was moving the vast parti-colored awning that covered the immense opening in the top of the structure, so that it almost looked like a gigantic galley under sail.

Calgaich stared at it in astonishment. “What is it, Lutorius?"

“The Flavian Amphitheatre," Lutorius replied.

The amphitheatre loomed up before the prisoners, towering high above them and the masses of people who struggled toward the wooden palisade that encircled the structure. They were pouring into the many entryways— a constant stream of sweating, cursing, hurrying humans, eager for the bloody attractions that drew them there.

The column of prisoners was forced to a stop. There was no way the servants of the quaestor could force their path through the mass of crowded humanity. Lucius stood up on his swaying litter, a ridiculous-looking figure, despite his snow-white toga and the cosmetics on his face, with his naked head, rounded paunch and short, pudgy legs. He frantically waved his stubby little arms.

“Look at the clown on the litter!" a man called out.

“Look at the golden whore on the other one!" a woman cried.

“Why, damn you all!" Lucius shouted hysterically. “I’ll have you in the arena yourselves!"

“Go fornicate with yourself, baldy!" a grinning boy shouted.

“Get him!" Lucius commanded his servants.

“Up your ass, pervert!" the boy yelled. He vanished into the surging crowd.

The crowd swayed against the quaestor's litter and he fell headfirst from it in among the people. His short, chubby legs stuck up over him. A dirty hand reached over the heads of the people closest to the quaestor and gave him a firm, hard goosing. The people nearby roared with laughter.

“You see what I mean?" Lutorius said to Calgaich.

Centurion Decrius Montanas instructed some of the guards to stand by Morar and then worked his way toward the screaming quaestor. Sextillius was out of sight now, somewhere beneath the trampling feet of the crowd.

A sound suddenly overwhelmed everyone. It was a sustained roaring, almost like the howling of a pack of wolves in the snow-covered forests of Caledonia, Calgaich thought. He looked toward the amphitheatre, the source of the sound.

'The roar of the crowd," Lutorius murmured.

They were chanting something. Calgaich could not, at first, make out the words. The roaring sound came again.
“Verbera!
Strike!
lugula!
Slay!"

Calgaich looked at Lutorius. “Are they fighting in the arena already?" he asked in amazement.

Lutorius nodded. “The games start at dawn and usually end about dusk, although I have been in there when the games went on into the torchlit night."

The roaring sound gelled up from within the great bowl and burst forth over the surrounding area.
“Habet! Habet! Habet!
That's got him! That's got him! That's got him!"

“Some poor bastard has gotten it, barbarian,” Lutorius explained.

“Hoc habet! Hoc habet! Hoc habet!
Now he's got it! Now he's got it! Now he's got it!"

The savage roaring sickened Calgaich. He turned his head and looked into the eyes of the men standing behind him. Their eyes were on the colossal amphitheatre. There was no light in them, merely a hopelessness that sickened Calgaich almost as much as the bloodthirsty mob.

The crowds hurrying toward the entryways had begun to thin out. Decrius Montanas upended the quaestor and stood him on his feet. His toga was covered with street filth. The cosmetics on his face had begun to run with the heat and flow of perspiration.

"You are all right now, sir,” Montanas said.

The quaestor slapped the centurion across his face. “You privy maggot!” he screamed. “You pig-shit! You afterbirth of a whore's mistake! Where were you when that mob attacked me!” His face was contorted and spittle flew from his mouth.

Red plumes and spear blades suddenly showed above the heads of the people. The crowd parted to let a tall man in armor pass through. He came to a halt before the quaestor and eyed the disheveled appearance of the little man. “You're late in coming, Lucius Sextillius,” he said in a cold, hard tone.

Lucius smiled weakly. “Aemilius Valens! How good to see you, Procurator.”

The procurator was a handsome man with blond hair and eyes that were almost a golden color. His lips were thin, and curled slightly, as he looked at the pompous little quaestor.

“Aemilius Valens, cousin and favorite of the emperor Valentinian and procurator of the Games,” Lutorius murmured out of the side of his mouth. “It's said that he's a stud of the first order, and that most of the women of Rome would give one of their tits to be able to sleep with him.”

“Before or after?” Calgaich asked. He grinned.

“They say he's got a cock as long as his forearm.”

“He wouldn't get far with a twig like that in my country,
calo”

Lutorius grinned back at Calgaich.

“The quaestor is afraid of him,” Fomoire whispered. “He looks like he's going to wet a leg any moment now.”

“Why am I late, Procurator?” Lucius asked nervously. “I don't understand.”

The procurator gestured toward the prisoners. “I need this arena fodder for this afternoon.”

“But Aemilius Valens, they are
mine!
I have brought many of them from Britannia, and others from Gaul. It was my intention, that is, I had planned . . .” His voice died away as lie saw the hard look in the procurator's eyes,