The Emperor's Knives (37 page)

‘Tribune Scaurus! I’m so glad that you and the centurion could join us. Your men are set to fight this afternoon, and I think you’re going to find what we’ve got planned perfectly attuned to your military tastes.’

The crowd roared with apparent delight at the lunchtime entertainment, and the two soldiers peered over the podium’s parapet, Scaurus raising an eyebrow at Julianus and shaking his head in apparent bemusement.

‘I see the Flavian arena hasn’t lost its touch for the bizarre while I’ve been away in the north.’

His senior centurion had managed to keep a straight face, but Julianus sensed that he was less than happy at what he’d witnessed. The tribune was clearly aware of his man’s discomfort, his question filling the awkward silence.

‘So, some sort of military-themed bout, from the sound of it? Will our two men be fighting together?’

Julianus smiled, doing his best to ignore the shouts of encouragement that the crowd were showering down upon the object of their attention.

‘Better than that, Rutilius Scaurus, they’ll be going into the arena with another soldier, a man called Horatius. My colleague who runs this place has dug up some Dacian prisoners for them to fight, so it ought to make for a spectacular piece of entertainment.’

Scaurus nodded, and was about to reply when the crowd roared in sudden delight.

‘Thank Our Lord Mithras for that, the poor beast must have finished.’

Julianus turned to look briefly over the parapet.

‘So it seems. It never ceases to strike me how degrading that must be for all concerned, but of course the audience here do like their depravity. There, the beast handlers have him under control …’

A blast of horns blew to warn the crowd that the first fight of the afternoon was about to begin, and Julianus turned back to the sand with a note of relief on his face.

‘Thank the gods for that. I haven’t seen such a lacklustre lunchtime show for years. A few tired-looking clowns, and a drunken baboon being made to couple with a young woman tied to a post isn’t really my idea of entertainment.’

‘Watch the net. With a retarius you always have to watch the net, because that’s what does the damage. The trident’s dangerous alright, but if he puts the net over the secutor then the fight’s over unless the other man’s very, very lucky. Mind you, this should be easy enough for Glaucus. Trust me, a good chaser will beat a good net man almost every time, and Glaucus is still just about as good as they come.’

Looking through the closely spaced iron bars, the friends watched as the first bout of the afternoon was announced, and the veteran secutor Glaucus walked proudly into the ring with his sword and shield held up in recognition of the booming applause that showered down on him from all sides. His smooth-fronted helmet, whilst it was designed to frustrate the net in his opponent’s hand by providing it with nothing to catch on to, also had the effect of bestowing an anonymity upon him that was far more unnerving to an opponent than a snarling face. Velox nodded his head with a fond expression.

‘Look, even the emperor’s up and shouting. That old bastard Glaucus may be getting long in the tooth for all this, but he’s earned all the adulation he’s getting. Thirty-six fights, and against every decent net man to have come out of the Ludus Magnus in the last ten years, and he’s never once been defeated. And in all that time he’s always been decent enough to make his opponent look good, so that he’s only had to put a handful of them to the sword.’

He stared speculatively at the veteran’s opponent, nodding approvingly as the retarius padded across the sand to take up his position ready for the fight to begin.

‘Nice feet. See how he barely disturbs the sand as he walks? That boy’s as light-footed as a mountain goat. Let’s see if his skills with the net and trident are as good as his footwork.’

The retarius padded up to his starting position and took guard, the trident held underarm and ready to fight, while the Master of the Games announcer bellowed out the names and fighting records of the two men. Velox frowned as the net fighter’s list of fights and victories was detailed, and looked out at Glaucus with a bemused look.

‘His opponent’s only had a handful of fights from the sound of it, and none of them were in Rome, which makes him a bit of an unknown quantity.’ He stared pensively out across the sand at the waiting retarius, stroking his chin thoughtfully. ‘Glaucus must be wondering what’s going on, given the stupendous amount of money he was offered to make one last appearance …’ He turned away with a determined look, throwing a swift comment over his shoulder. ‘Stay here!’

In his absence the chief referee strode out between the two men, resplendent in his white tunic and carrying the long stick with which he could marshal cooperative gladiators, while his heavily built assistant loomed behind him, his iron-tipped quarterstaff ready to deal with anything that required more direct methods. Behind them the arena slaves waited by a red-hot brazier, which contained several long irons already sufficiently hot to make them visibly glow red and leave trails of smoke when they were pulled out and shown to the crowd, their threat more than enough to persuade any reluctant fighters to get on with their bout. Velox was only gone for long enough that the preliminaries to the fight were all but complete by the time he returned, his face set in an angry scowl and his voice dangerously controlled as he raised it to be heard over the announcer’s shouted introduction of the two fighters and the cheers that greeted them in turn.

‘It’s a bloody
fix.
I tried to get odds against Glaucus from one of the gamblers who makes odds for the senators up on the podium, but he told me he’s not been taking bets on the net man for an hour or so, ever since someone in the Ludus Magnus spilled the beans to someone who was good enough to warn him off in turn. Apparently this “new boy” isn’t a new boy at all, but some talent whose skills have been sharpened up on the arena circuit in Hispania over the last year. Not that they needed much sharpening, from the look of him …’

They turned their attention to the two gladiators who were now squaring up to each other under the referee’s command, Glaucus’s blank iron face seemingly locked on to his opponent as the retarius bounced on the balls of his feet, ready to fight. At the shouted command he leapt forward, and from the first moves of the bout it was clear that the veteran fighter was in trouble.

Dancing in with quick, darting steps that made a mockery of the usual practice of shuffling forward to avoid tripping on an unseen obstacle, the retarius struck first. His attack was lightning fast, stabbing his trident at the other man’s head with such speed and force that it was all that Glaucus could do to get his shield in the way of the blow. As the unbalanced secutor stepped back to regain his footing, the retarius stabbed his trident in low, its long central prong scraping down the hastily lowered shield’s painted face until it snagged the brass rim, forcing Glaucus’s defence down until it hit the sand. He flicked the weapon back and up to strike again with the same seemingly divine speed, jabbing it over the shield’s rim at Glaucus’s helmet faster than the secutor could raise it. The brass-sheathed iron stopped the blow, but Glaucus’s head was punched backwards with a clang that was audible at fifty paces, violently rocking the veteran with its crashing impact.

Velox sucked in a swift breath, shaking his head as the older man staggered backwards, and the crowd were suddenly silent as the reality of what was happening to their beloved champion sank in. Before the veteran chaser could re-establish his defence, the retarius hooked his trident over the top edge of Glaucus’s shield, leaning back and whipping the weapon backwards with all the strength in his finely muscled torso and thighs to tear the heavy layered board from the secutor’s stunned grasp. The crowd, already shocked at the indignities being visited upon their hero, were reduced to horrified silence as Glaucus staggered forward, dragged off balance from the abrupt removal of his defence. As he teetered on the edge of another involuntary step forward, the retarius took a single pace forward, disdainful of any threat from the secutor’s sword, and plunged the long middle prong of his trident into the veteran’s leading foot.

‘
No!
’

A single voice in the otherwise silent crowd denied what was so clearly happening before them. The veteran gladiator threw his head back in a scream of agony that was clearly audible despite the helmet’s face mask, the muscles of his chest tensing like whips as the agony of the cold metal’s punching intrusion through the bones of his foot hit him. After a moment’s disbelieving pause, the crowd found their voices, screaming a single word again and again.

‘
Habet! Habet! Habet!
’

‘Yes, he’s had it alright.’ Marcus looked across at Velox as the champion spat out his disgust at the crowd’s exultant reaction. ‘It didn’t take you lot long to decide which side you’d rather be on, did it?’

Stepping back from the reeling chaser, the retarius cast his net at the stricken veteran with such confidence that he barely even looked at his target. Released by a practised twist of his hand, that opened the net out from a tight ball into a six-foot-wide spinning snare, it wrapped around the older man to seal his doom. Crippled and ensnared, Glaucus toppled over with the inevitability of a falling tree, not even bothering to struggle against the net’s bonds.

‘Poor bastard.’

Velox looked over at Horatius, his eyes hard with anger.

‘Poor betrayed bastard, you mean. They’re both from the same school, and yet he clearly had no idea what was about to hit him. That net man is the cream, and the ludus have clearly put him in without giving Glaucus any warning. Either it was a bet set up to let them place some very hefty money on a result that only they could predict, or he’s upset someone important and rich enough to pressure the school into setting the whole thing up. I don’t suppose his fee was ever a problem, whatever was at the root of the matter, given that a few well-placed wagers will have more than paid that back …’

He fell silent as the referee walked out to look down at Glaucus, who had wearily raised a finger in surrender. The official paused for a moment, as if he were unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes, then turned to look up at the imperial box.

‘He’s already dead. There’s no way that Commodus will let him live after that poor a display, and even if he were minded to show some respect to the man’s long and distinguished record, this crowd are baying for blood.’ The champion fighter shook his head sadly. ‘And who can blame them? Many of them probably put more than they could afford to lose on Glaucus, given what a safe bet he’s been for so long, and now the professional gamblers are walking away smiling while the average man is already down on the day. See, Charun knows …’

The arena slave dressed as the spirit guide of the underworld, whose task it was to finish off dying gladiators with a heavy double-headed hammer, was walking slowly forward as Commodus rose to his feet and looked about the arena for a moment. He was clearly taking stock of the number of cries of ‘
Mitte
’ he was hearing, entreaties for the defeated man to be spared death. Velox smiled sadly.

‘Listen. I told you so.’

The number of people shouting for the killing stroke echoed around the arena in a ceaseless, vindictive chorus of ‘
Igula! Igula! Igula!
’, utterly overwhelming those few sentimentalists who had been swayed by Glaucus’s glorious record. The emperor paused for a moment to bask in the waves of sound and the power that they gave him, making a show of considering the fallen secutor’s fate. His hand rose, the thumb pointing upwards for a second before he jerked it towards his own throat, and the crowd’s roar descended into a wordless, frenzied cacophony of screams as the retarius stepped forward, taking a sword from an arena slave and raising it in readiness for the delivery of the killing stoke.

Snared in the net’s deadly embrace and unable to stand, his opponent managed to lever himself up onto his knees, fiddling with the fastenings of his helmet and pulling away the face mask to stare up at his opponent with unveiled hatred. His words were inaudible over the crowd’s continuous roar, but the effect was immediate, as the referee waved the brazier minders forward to free the condemned fighter from the net’s folds. Unable to put his weight on the shattered and torn remnant of his foot, he reached forward and took a firm grip of the retarius’s thigh, staring up at the imperial box for a long moment before releasing his hold and opening his arms wide, his lips moving again as he spat whatever defiance he had left at the man who would be his killer.

The retarius struck with the same mercurial speed that he had used to defeat his opponent, sinking the sword’s blade deep into Glaucus’s throat, and the dying veteran sank to the sand in a fresh gout of blood. Bowing to the referee, and then to the emperor, who was still graciously applauding his victory, the retarius dropped the sword and turned away without a second glance at Glaucus’s corpse, walking away towards the Gate of Life with the hysterical shouts and screams of the crowd still echoing around the arena.

‘And a new hero is born.’ Velox shook his head in disgust. ‘But whoever came up with the idea of sacrificing a man to make it happen, that man should be praying that I never find out his name. Come on, I’ll take you to the armourers. After that disgusting charade, we’d probably be best making sure that they haven’t been instructed to kit you three out as dancing girls.’

‘I presume that rather hapless chaser had done something to offend, or is that just the way the Great School does business these days?’

While the arena slaves scattered fresh white sand over the blood spilled by Glaucus, and the next pair of fighters entered to yet more thunderous applause, Cleander had strolled across the imperial box to direct an apparently casual question at the Ludus Magnus’s procurator. Much as the man clearly wanted to take umbrage, the chamberlain’s reputation for making and breaking both careers and men went before him.

‘In truth, Aurelius Cleander, the man’s demands for money had become rather tiresome. He knew only too well that he was expected to be on the bill, and in consequence he was asking for a hundred thousand just to put his feet on the sand.’