Companions (The Parthian Chronicles) (41 page)

‘I am Surena of the Ma’adan,’ he shouted.

‘Surena,’ I called to him, ‘stop playing the fool.’

We were told to make our way to the second floor of the stage building as the beast hunters assembled on the ground floor. These men, armed with spears, knives and swords, were apparently trained to display their hunting prowess in the arena, being pitted against a variety of wild animals. Though looking at them with their fearful expressions and trembling limbs, I sensed that they were either slaves or petty criminals coerced into taking part in the games.

There were two pairs of stone steps at each end of the ground floor that gave access to the first floor, which contained rows of empty cots, and the second floor. Alcaeus informed me that the cots were for injured gladiators.

‘If you get injured you will be pleased to know that the organisers of the games have spared no expense with regard to medicines,’ he told me.

‘Of course not,’ said Drenis, ‘gladiators are literally worth their weight in gold.’

We reach the second floor where gladiators took off their armour and relaxed at benches that had been positioned either side of tables. There were at least a dozen open windows that gave a view of the arena below but few seemed interested in watching the proceedings. Most had seen the spectacle many times before. They were more interested in sating their thirsts and picking at the snacks that were brought by slaves. These jumped when a high-pitched scream came from the arena as a man was mauled by a leopard or gored by a wild boar.

‘Talking of weight in gold,’ I said to my companions as we sat at the end of a table. ‘I spoke to Burebista and he believes that his freedom and that of his wife could be bought, for the right price.’

The sounds of animals squealing and screeching and people shouting and screaming came from below.

‘It will be a high price,’ said Drenis.

‘Then it is fortunate that Dura is a rich kingdom,’ I retorted. ‘I will ask Athineos to broker a deal.’

‘He will want paying for his troubles as well,’ said Alcaeus.

‘It will be worth it,’ I told him.

The animal hunts lasted about half an hour at most. Afterwards, as some of the one hundred and twenty gladiators dozed on couches that had been arrange around the walls, slaves wafting fans over them, the condemned were herded into the arena to be executed. There was a great roar from the crowd as leopards and panthers were released on to the sand, the animals immediately attacking the hapless captives whose tunics had been smeared with blood to make them more appetising to the animals. The cries and shrieks of the victims reached my ears and I shuddered.

‘Not like you expected it to be, is it?’ said Drenis.

I had seen criminals being executed but there was something bizarre bordering on the obscene at such wholesale slaughter.

‘Roman justice is brutal,’ I answered. ‘I expected that.’

I declined an offer from Surena to observe the butchery from a window. After it was finished he returned and informed us that upwards of a hundred prisoners had met their deaths below.

‘The sand is red,’ he said.

It was now afternoon and many of the crowd had left their seats to either stretch their legs or purchase something to eat from the dozens of food stalls outside the theatre. I lifted an arm and saw that it was shaking a little. Pre-battle nerves, though I did not feel nervous but rather eager to get to grips with the enemy. I looked around. I would be fighting one of these men who appeared relaxed and even peaceful. Who would it be? I saw the wild hair of Acco. He and I would be a good match.

A small, white-haired Roman in a white tunic appeared, two referees flanking him. They blew their whistles to get everyone’s attention.

The white-haired man spoke. ‘The
editor
demands the presence of all gladiators in the arena in thirty minutes.’

There were murmurs among the fighters and Acco pushed his way to stand before the Roman.

‘All gladiators? Hasn’t the fat bastard arranged matched pairs yet? No doubt too busy filling his gut.’

‘Or filling some a slave boy with his manhood,’ called another gladiator to hoots from the others.

The referees blew their whistles again.

‘Those are my orders,’ said the Roman, ‘so collect your weapons and armour.’

Drenis was frowning and Arminius was shaking his head.

‘This is most odd,’ he muttered.

Burebista came over as we began to file down the stairs.

‘Watch yourself, lord, this
editor
is an oily beast and this stinks of his devious mind.’

But it was the arena that stank. Reeked of death, blood, urine and guts. I winced as my bare feet stepped on sand that was soft and wet, wet with blood of humans and animals. Slaves had been sent into the arena before we filed out of the stage building to sprinkle fresh sand but such had been the bloodletting that their attempts had been only partially successful. I was momentarily taken back to the Roman city of Nola, to its amphitheatre where Spartacus had been sitting on top of the wall that surrounded its arena after the city had fallen to him. He had told me that he had fought on the sand as a gladiator but his one abiding memory of such bouts had been the smell of the arena. At the time I did not know what he meant. I did now.

I was brought back to the present by a mighty roar as members of the crowd jumped to their feet and whistled and cheered our entrance. A few of the gladiators raised their shields and weapons in acknowledgement, including Surena, but the majority just looked around in confusion. We had already been paraded around the arena. Something was wrong.

As we stood before the crowd, the governor and high priest talking to each other and the rotund Ceukianus whispering into the ear of the handsome Roman officer next to Metellus, the announcer waited for the din to die down before rising to his feet. Behind us the doors to the arena were closed.

‘They are going to spring a surprise on us,’ warned Drenis, nodding up at the announcer. ‘When he stops talking turn round and expect the unexpected.’

‘I thought the afternoon was given over to gladiator bouts,’ said Surena, disappointment in his voice.

‘Let me take you back to when a Roman army under Licinius Lucullus, half-starving and hundreds of miles from Rome,’ the announcer’s voice echoed around the theatre, ‘was surrounded by over one hundred thousand heathen Armenians led by the tyrant Tigranes at a place called Tigranocerta.’

He looked down into the arena and held out an arm towards us. ‘Behold the brave legionaries of Lucullus, men of bronze with iron discipline who do not fear long odds.’

‘He sounds like Domitus,’ said Arminius.

The announcer turned to the crowd, his voice like a clap of thunder.

‘It was Roman discipline and Roman leadership pitted against Eastern fury. Who will triumph?’

‘Turn,’ shouted Drenis as I heard the doors open behind me.

‘Surena, cover our backs,’ ordered Arminius as he stood beside Drenis and I braced myself on the other side of the latter.

The crowd fell into silence as the other gladiators turned to see men pouring from the doors, shouting and screaming as they raced into the arena. They were mostly unshaven and filthy, wearing dirty, torn tunics with nothing on their grubby feet or their lice-ridden heads. They were either criminals or prisoners of war, emaciated and weak, but there were many of them.

Perhaps they had been told that if they killed us all their lives would be spared; more likely they knew that they were condemned men. But just a glimpse of freedom had intoxicated them and they came at us with a feral rage. Only a few had weapons – cheap swords, wooden clubs and knives – but desperate men are dangerous. A wild-eyed individual wielding a club swung it at my head. I ducked and let him run on to my sword, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets as the blade sank deep into his belly. I used my shield to batter him aside as a man behind him threw himself at me, a knife in his hand. I caught his right arm on my shield so he could not stab down his knife and slashed at his belly with my sword. He screamed and fell to the ground, writhing in agony as more and more men ran out of the doors. There must have been hundreds of them.

The gladiators fought as individuals, sidestepping attackers to slice their calves and hamstrings as they passed. I saw Acco, a
gladius
in each hand, standing like a rock against which wave upon wave of assailants were crashing, being cut down by his scything blows. But the sheer number of attackers meant some gladiators either tripped and fell to the ground, allowing their opponents to stab and trample them to death, or were simply overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers.

Drenis was also like a rock and Arminius and I stood with him, cutting down attackers as they came at us. Behind us Surena obeyed his orders and guarded our backs, thrusting his trident left and right at opponents who tried to get behind us. As the time passed there was a wall of dead and dying men in front of us, their bellies cut open and stab wounds in their torsos and faces.

A deranged, unarmed man hurled himself at me like a springing lion. When he landed on me I stabbed at his belly five or six times, blood sheeting over my chest and helmet. He groaned and blood frothed at his mouth but his dead weight collapsed on me and I fell to the ground, he on top of me. I heaved him aside just as a man armed with a spear appeared and stood over me, gripping the shaft with both his hands. Grinning savagely as he prepared to thrust the point into my exposed chest, he died as Surena drove the prongs of his trident into his neck.

‘Up lord,’ he said, hauling me to my feet.

The members of the threadbare army swirled around groups of gladiators, trying to strike them with their weapons but invariably suffering horribly at the hands of the trained fighters. Only by isolating a gladiator, like a pack of hyenas circling a lone victim, could the prisoners hope to fell a student of a
ludus
. But even when isolated and surrounded it took upwards of ten prisoners to fell a lone gladiator, half of them dying before they cut him down.

The crowd was delirious with delight, shouting their encouragement to both prisoners and gladiators and revelling in the spectacle. I killed a man holding a sword who looked half-dead before I struck the fatal blow, severed the windpipe of another, reduced the groin of an opponent who tripped on a body in front of me to a bloody pulp then stooped to avoid a sideways blow with a sword before slicing open both calves of my opponent.

And still the prisoners kept coming.

The swords of Drenis and Arminius resembled silver flashes of light so fast were they being moved, cutting down, up and stabbing forward. They held their shields tight to their unarmoured torsos as opponents tried to strike them with their weapons, only cutting air or the surface of a shield before feeling the points or keen edges of their swords.

Surena was in his element, wrapping his net around the ankles of assailants and lunging forward to stab them with his trident, the deftness and speed of his strikes resembling those of a desert cobra. He ducked and dodged to avoid the weapons of opponents before attacking. He moved his net to catch an opponent’s eye and then struck with his trident in the split-second when his enemy was distracted. And all the time the crowd cheered and roared.

Acco used one
gladius
to parry blows and the other to lacerate the bodies of opponents, applying enough force behind a blow to ensure that his victim would not rise once on the ground. For a big man he was remarkably light on his feet, darting forwards, backwards and sideways to avoid the clumsy attacks of the prisoners. Most of the latter were now dead, heaps of their slain littering the arena. Some, having dropped their weapons, attempted to flee back through the doors but they were now shut. They were hunted down and slaughtered by gladiators until there were no more prisoners left. The crowd gave a mighty cheer as the last one was hacked to pieces by two
Murmillos
. The re-enactment of the Battle of Tigranocerta was over.

I slapped Drenis and Arminius on the arm and thanked Surena for saving my life as the doors were opened once more and referees came from the gloom to order everyone back inside. Some gladiators, wounded in the contest, were hobbling and had to be assisted from the arena either by slaves who rushed from the stage building or their fellow gladiators. The announcer’s words filled the theatre as we left the once more blood-soaked sand.

‘Once again Roman discipline and courage has triumphed over barbarian numbers and tyranny.’

The crowd applauded as Surena turned and raised his bloody trident in a victory salute. Through the protective eyeholes of my helmet I just caught sight of Timini Ceukianus on his feet drooling over the cocky young man from the marshes.

Back inside the building we trouped to the top floor once more and removed our armour and helmets. The wounded were taken to the infirmary on the floor below and slaves brought food and towels so we could wipe the sweat from our bodies. Alcaeus fussed around us, examining us for wounds or bruises.

‘The gods smile on you,’ he said. ‘This time anyway. And now you will have to excuse me. I am needed below.’

He disappeared with his medical bag as Drenis stretched out on a couch and Arminius inspected his helmet, which had a dent on its side.