Antonius laughed at that. ‘The matrons and patrons of Rome are so bored by being bored by the upper classes that even a desert rat, if it could fight in the arena, would have a queue of gentry waiting to sleep with it.’ He grew solemn. ‘I fear that it would be more than one’s life was worth to enter the same bed as that horned madman.’
Gilius said, ‘Why is he known, as I have heard, as the …’ he frowned. ‘The name eludes me.’
‘The Berserker?’
Gilius nodded slowly. ‘Yes, the Berserker. A strange name, and one I have never heard before.’
‘Nor has anyone. It is not even the name of an élite British warrior type.’ He grinned. ‘There are no élite British warrior types, of course. No, it is a name which he uses himself, but never explains. He claims to be a bear in human flesh. He claims that he is of a race of people to whom the Berserker warrior was a demon, almost a god, and something to be feared. No one knows to which people he refers, but I believe him. He is a fearsome and excruciatingly violent warrior. He was taken from his village among the Coritani … a tribal league in Britain. He was captured with his brother. Their village had been protected by magic for generations, but a patrol finally killed the witch who was protecting the stronghold, and the two boys were taken from the cave. Their spirit and warrior quality must have impressed someone in the garrison; the centurion who had razed their village wanted to kill them – they’d attacked him in some way – but they ended up in gladiatorial school, a few hours’ ride from here. One brother became a great gladiator, the man known as Bedus the Ox – his British name is unpronounceable.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of him.’
Antonius smiled. ‘The Horned Warrior, the other brother, needed no training at all. He is all-powerful with his axe, and with the stolen Roman sword he insists on using, and in forty fights against huge odds he has received more wounds than an infantryman would receive in forty years of campaigns against the Goths. And he scarcely flinches at any of them as he destroys the opposition in its entirety.’
Gilius frowned. ‘Could it be that a spell protects him?’
‘The druids that we made examine him – Gaulish druids, admittedly – say not.’ Antonius turned to look at his guest closely. ‘Although something unnerving did occur.’
‘Unnerving?’
‘Yes. Three druids cast cleansing spells upon him, in the early days when he was still more of a boy than a man. The next morning all three druids had been disembowelled by what appeared to be some large animal … a bear, perhaps.’
Gilius laughed nervously, stared at the Senator with a puzzled expression on his face. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Oh, just that there’s a silly rumour attached to the Berserker,’ said Antonius, as if nothing could be less important. ‘It is said that the ghost of the bear in the warrior sometimes revenges itself upon those who have abused its master, by attacking it with spells, for example, or watching it fighting …’ he laughed, patted Gilius’s knee. ‘I’m sure it’s just a rumour, a silly tale.’
Gilius, if he could have blanched whiter than he already was, may well have done so. Antonius laughed the louder. ‘I’m teasing, my friend. Just teasing. The man is merely a beast of flesh and blood. Fear not.’
Gilius relaxed visibly. ‘A good joke,’ he said. Antonius could see the cold sweat on his skin.
‘But I still wonder what killed those druids,’ added Antonius. ‘Oh look at that. That’s unexpected style from a Numidian slave.’ In the arena below the games had already commenced with some straightforward slave against slave, the sort of warm up that was popular if a little repetitive. One giant man, black as night, and streaked with red, had survived against heavy odds, and now put the finishing touches to a Greek slave who had survived this long by keeping at the edge of the unskilled affray. The black was led away in triumph and perhaps imagined that he had survived certain death … in fact, when trained up as a gladiator, he would know death inside three or four bouts. But he at least had some entertainment value.
‘I must admit,’ said Antonius, as ten men fought each other with one arm tied to their sides, ‘that I hate this sort of thing. Oh well
done
! Oh! What a pity. He was doing so well. What was I saying? Oh yes, I hate this sort of untrained slaughter. By Jupiter, that was close. But the common people like it.’
‘And they bring in the sestertii,’ observed Gilius. ‘But back to this Berserker … what odds will you give me that he will not survive the day?’
‘I’ll give you none,’ said Antonius. ‘For it is certain that he
will
survive. He will fight slaves, then female warriors from the west who fight like tigers. That will be enjoyable. Then three of Rome’s best gladiators will take him on together. That will be quite amazing. The gladiators have asked for this fight themselves …’
‘Who are they? Will I have seen them fight before?’
‘I would think you almost certainly have. The best is probably Angas the Azuilan, a half-breed from the City of Fire in the west. He is Nero’s favourite secutor. Nero will not be pleased, but has given the fight his blessing. Most
vicious is probably Laurgam from the Gaulish tribe of the Roydonni who live scattered among the so called Hills of the Dead. The third is a retiarius: Kenbul, known among his own kind as the Rejector. He’s a savage from northern Africa, but has refined talents with the trident and net. I think he comes from the Land of Mist. You’d know more about that than I.’
‘Indeed,’ said Gilius. ‘High mountains, deep valleys, and a breed of tribesman that are better left alone than subdued.’
‘Well there you are,’ said Antonius proudly. ‘Those three have survived for three years in the arena circuit, so it should be an interesting end to their lives. You can’t say you haven’t been treated to the best spectacle possible, now can you, Gilius?’
The governor grinned, understanding that he was being softened so that he would be a sympathetic voice on Antonius’s behalf if ever the Senator fell foul of his Emperor. But he said, ‘You have done me proud.’
‘Prouder,’ said Antonius, wincing at what he suddenly saw in the arena. He shook his head as the crowd roared their pleasure. ‘There will be a final bout, after those three. It will be a real entertainment, Gilius, real entertainment.’
Gilius was enthralled. ‘Tell me. I can hardly wait.’
Antonius debated briefly with himself whether or not to spoil the surprise, but finally decided he could not keep the secret. ‘The Berserker doesn’t know it yet, but his final bout is going to be against his own brother, Bedus the Ox!’
‘Excellent,’ breathed Gilius quietly, and grinning very broadly. ‘That is the sort of subtlety I really appreciate … not like this rubbish …’ He waved his hand to the arena where, as a warm-up prior to fighting each other, helmeted secutors used their short swords to dispatch heavily armed but naked slaves with all the ease of a forester lopping the branches off sapling trees.
Antonius sighed his agreement. ‘But there are so many people who will pay for this sort of mindless rubbish. We have no choice but to give it to them.’
The fire burned in his mind, the fire of anger, the fire of death. He could smell the blood and stink from the arena, could sense the death and destruction and the whining of souls as they fled on to the wind, and upwards, through the heat, to the land of darkness. The stench had excited him, and brought the bear forward in his mind, roaring and slavering, eager and anxious to participate in the cruelness itself.
Only the bars of his special cage kept him back, and he rammed his head against the iron, shook the bars, gnawed at them in his eagerness to be among the dead, dealing death himself.
At eighteen years of age he was hugely muscled and frighteningly animal to look at when the rage was on him; his eyes narrowed, his hair standing stiffly on end before his bronze helmet flattened it down, his teeth bared as his lips curled back in an animal growl that lasted not for seconds, but for
minutes. Every vein in his arms and chest stood out with the tension and the power of his body. There had been times when even the bars of his cage had been insufficient to hold him back, and he had wrenched them open, killing all who strove to force him back inside.
Within the mind of this madman, Caylen Swiftaxe was helpless, watching with as much horror as the audience in the arena would watch, as his bear-possessed body strained to escape, to kill, to satiate its enormous bloodlust. If a mind could have wept, then the trapped and helpless mind of Caylen, the boy from the tribes of the Coritani, would have shed bitter tears of despair. As it was, he knew he was helpless and resigned himself to his ferocious life for the moment, for he knew, by now, that when the Berserker had killed its fill of men it would relax. He would be in control once more.
After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, two armoured men approached the cage and prodded the Berserker back with their long, viciously pointed spears. They laughed as the Horned Warrior roared with rage. ‘It won’t be long now,’ said one. ‘The crowd are baying for you, baying like the dogs they are, for the bear and his axe. So it’s out you go, and out go twenty lives. Are you ready, Briton? Are you ready for blood?’
Caylen Swiftaxe reached down to the spear that held him hard against the cage and slowly, amazingly, bent the point back into a curve until the wood snapped, and the man who held the pilum laughed and backed away saying, ‘He’s ready all right.’
The cage door was opened.
The Horned Warrior rushed into the blood- and filth-stained arena, screamed loud as the sun and hot air embraced him, and the sweet stench of death tickled his nostrils and his soul.
He stood there for a moment, naked but for his horned helmet and the leather shoulder belt from whose slings hung his short, highly polished sword. He held his axe before him, wielding it with all the ease of a man running a coin between his fingers. Single-bladed, with a short point as an inadequate counter-balance, the edge of the axe head was pitted with death, but honed to perfection where the blade was intact.
It would know many lives before the sun vanished today behind the western tiers of the arena.
The crowd roared his name, bellowed for him to begin his orgy of death. The heat brought the sweat to his skin, and the Berserker opened his mouth and roared as a bear roared, waving his cruel axe above his head.
And it began.
As if in a dream Caylen watched the fury of the Berserker in action against the weak and pitiful men who came against it. As if from behind a veil of mist the young man saw his own body, possessed by the echo of a god, inflict the most
hideous of wounds in brief seconds of mindless and uncontrollable ecstasy. Something, some dark force within him, achieved almost sexual pleasure from the havoc and incredible deaths it culled from the warriors around it; but for Caylen lurking, almost bound in his own body, there was nothing but the single thought: I must escape! I must free myself as I have tried so often in the past to do! I must find the key to kill Odin, to rid myself of this bear!
The bear killed on as he thought these things, for as yet it was too early, and the possessing spirit too strong.
He whirled, he screamed, he struck and slashed, and there was red before his eyes, and red on the ground.
Ten trained slaves each reasonably proficient with sword and spear, ended up so much rotting meat in the space of just a few minutes. Attendants ran around the screeching, maniacal form of the Horned Warrior, gathering up limbs and heads, and dragging the torsos by their own entrails out of the arena and to the dog pens to feed those animals that had survived the earlier games.
Then came four women, breastless, hard of face and eye, naked and bronzed by sun and wind, bruised around leg and waist where unsubtle guards had had their will with them before the games. They had been promised their freedom if they killed the Berserker and they desperately wanted that freedom.
The crowd was almost frenzied with pleasure, and urged on by the noise and excitement, the women came at Swiftaxe from all sides; their sabres were as long as a man’s arm, and they reached bloodily and gleaming through the stifling air to feed upon the Horned Warrior’s flesh.
He struck them down, one by one: heads from shoulders, arms and legs from bodies. It was too quick too easy. When just a single warrior remained, the tallest and the strongest of the women, she threw caution to the wind, and screaming her anger closed with the Berserker, tried to wrestle him to the ground, and push her blade between his ribs.
But it was Swiftaxe’s blade that found its mark, and the Berserker who ranted and screamed in triumph as he backed away from the slowly collapsing warrior, not even bothering to finish her as she crawled in agony towards her own sword and used it to end her pain and her life.
He tackled the three prize gladiators, seeing little more than hostile shapes through the whirling ecstasy of red and yellow colour that danced before his eyes. He hardly knew as he struck off the left arm of Angas, who returned the blow with his good arm and found the Berserker’s flesh, but not so deeply or crippingly that Caylen Swiftaxe was slowed or stopped. Angas succumbed to his own blood loss, collapsing heavily to the ground and never knowing the terrible axe blow that separated his skull from his neck. Laurgam, his wide-brimmed helmet gleaming in the sun, came at him next, his short sword
reaching as a wasp’s sting through the Berserker’s wildly slashing arms, and taking blood again and again to the hysterical delight of the watching masses.
‘By Taranis!’ cried Laurgam arrogantly, ‘I’ll stick you like the pig you are.’
Even as he spoke he squealed with pain, and looking down saw nothing but the sand and his tumbling legs. Swiftaxe’s blade had passed clean through his knees.
A net snared the Berserker and a trident thrust agonisingly between the muscles of his back, grating off his ribs. He slashed the net free, and tore the triple-pointed spear from his flesh, turning to face Kenbul the black retiarius.
‘I am known as the Rejector,’ cried the Negro loudly, grinning as he produced a second trident from its slings, ‘for in my land a rejector is one who rejects and destroys all life that steps in front of it.’