The Emperor's Knives (28 page)

He studied the three men with a pitiless gaze.

‘You’re all muscles, scars and tattoos, aren’t you lads, even you, the wiry one, combat trained and ready to fight at the drop of a handkerchief? Perfect for us, eh? No training needed, beyond a few short sharp lessons as to the dirty tricks that get pulled in the arena. You’re all expert with the sword, right, shield trained, and I’ll bet you can all put a spear up a cat’s arsehole at twenty-five paces. But here’s the problem, boys …’

He paused for effect.

‘You’re all spoken for. The army owns you, and any lanista that takes you on is risking losing his licence, his school and most likely his balls into the bargain if he gets caught fielding serving soldiers.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry lads, but you’re too much of a risk for my liking.’

As he turned away Horatius stepped forward.

‘I don’t know about these two, but I’m already officially dead.’

Sannitus stopped, thought for a moment and then turned back with a quizzical look.

‘You’re
dead
? How does that work?’

The former centurion shrugged.

‘I got caught up in something that I’d have been best avoiding, if I’d ever known how to stay out of it. Now I’m just another anonymous body with all the right skills to make you a fortune in the arena. Try me.’

Sannitus nodded slowly.

‘I just might. You can provide me with your former name and rank, and I’ll make some quiet enquiries about you. In the meantime, you can come in with these three, and we’ll see if you’ve got the stones to back up that claim.’ He shot a glance at Marcus and Dubnus, neither of whom had moved. ‘I don’t suppose either of you are going to try to tell me that you’re dead as well?’

While Marcus was still weighing the best approach Dubnus stepped forward, his massive frame towering over the lanista.

‘We’re honourable discharges from the First Tungrian auxiliary cohort, bought and paid for.’

Sannitus frowned up at him.

‘Really? At your ages? Neither of you looks a day over thirty, and now you mention it, your mate here looks more like a twenty-year-old.’

The Briton smiled, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.

‘Wars in far-off provinces tend to have some side benefits, once you get past all the obvious stuff like having to kill thousands of screaming barbarians who all want your cock for a belt decoration. Like gold. Me and my brother in arms here …’ He hooked a thumb back at the impassive Marcus. ‘We made it our job as centurions to be out in front of the legions when it came to hunting down the tribal chiefs who were stupid enough to start the whole thing. And when we captured Calgus, the biggest bastard of the lot, he was carrying enough gold to finance our release from service with plenty left over.’ He grinned down at Sannitus’s look of disbelief. ‘Our tribune took our gold and dismissed us honourably as too badly wounded to continue.’

‘You can prove this? You both have a diploma?’

The Briton shrugged easily.

‘We decided not to bring them with us. After all, you meet some right nasty types on the streets of this city.’

Sannitus pondered the two men for a moment, walking around them with a critical eye.

‘Not an ounce of spare flesh on either of you.’ He looked closely at Marcus’s face, then bent to examine Dubnus’s stomach. ‘Scars, some of them fresh too. What was that. A spear?’

The Briton nodded.

‘My century’s line was about to break, so I dived in and got run through for my pains.’

‘You? What happened to your nose.’

Marcus shrugged.

‘I was too slow winding my neck in.’

The lanista’s eyes narrowed, and when he spoke his voice was hard with suspicion.

‘He’s not from Rome, but you are, aren’t you? And I’ve heard that accent before, I hear it every time the rich boys come down here for their private shows. So what would a man like you have been doing in the auxiliary, eh?’

Marcus bent until his face was inches from the lanista’s, his face inscrutable.

‘My duty.’

He straightened, waiting for the trainer’s verdict with an apparent calmness that he was far from feeling. Sannitus looked up at him for a moment before speaking again.

‘Have it your own way. I won’t deny that the three of you would make an interesting feature in our shows, but I’m not the ultimate decision maker. Follow me!’

The six men hurried after him as he strode back into the ludus, and the gates closed behind them with a heavy thud, the guards promptly shooting home three massive iron bolts that made the heavy wooden doors well-nigh impregnable. Marcus looked about him, but found no clue as to the school’s purpose in its architecture.

‘Expecting an arena, were you? We don’t need one, rich boy. Let the other schools try to cover all the disciplines, we just concentrate on delivering the best fucking swordsmen anywhere in the empire. And we do it here …’

He opened the door into a long, wide hall with an open roof, gesturing for the would-be trainees to follow him.

‘One or two of you may be good enough to train for the arena as a member of this ludus, but before you get to sign your lives away you have to pass the test.
Their
test.’

He pointed to a group of men lounging against the far wall, all of them wearing a short tunic that came no more than halfway down their thighs.

‘These, gentlemen, are gladiators. They train in this hall, all day every day, until their bodies are like bags stuffed with rocks, and they eat like prize chariot horses, to put that nice layer of fat on them that a man needs in the arena. We train them until they could fight a bout with their eyes closed, so they’ll keep going until the last drop of blood has leaked out if they’re unlucky or stupid enough get wounded. All you have to do, if you want to join us, is to put up a decent performance against the man I choose from their number. If you put up a reasonable defence, you may just be good enough to win a place in the ludus. In which case you’ll swear the oath, reduce your standing in society so low that even the slaves will be sneering down on you, and you will become the property of the school, to be disposed of in any way I choose. So, who wants to go first?’

One of the men who had been ahead of the three centurions in the queue stepped forward, his voice clear and strong.

‘I’ll have a go, if you please, Lanista?’

The lanista clapped him on the back.

‘Good lad. Who shall we get to give you a try out? Pontus!’ One of the waiting gladiators got to his feet, picked up a wooden practice sword and walked into the middle of the hall. ‘Give this new boy a run around and let’s see what he’s got! Edius, arm him!’

The would-be trainee took a practice sword from Sannitus’s assistant and advanced forward to meet his opponent, who waited until he was within sword’s length and then set about him with a series of cuts and lunges which were clearly intended to find the limits of his ability to defend himself, giving the tyro no opportunity to strike back. After a dozen or so attempts to breach the triallist’s defence, he stepped up the attack, swinging the heavy wooden blade high and then low, aiming for head and then knees, and then, without warning, leapt forward and shoulder-barged his opponent to the ground, pinning him with the sword’s ragged point at his throat.

‘Not bad!’ Sannitus waited until the gladiator had pulled his defeated victim to his feet with a grin. ‘Doesn’t matter that he put you on your arse, given he was always going to beat you. That’s just one of the more basic tricks of the trade. Decent sword work though. Who taught you to defend yourself?’

The triallist handed his weapon back, standing to attention.

‘My father sir; he was a praetorian!’

Sannitus smiled.

‘Praetorian, eh? Well he trained you well enough for me to reckon you’re worth giving a chance to. Well done! Now stand aside, and let the next man have a try shall we? Nemo, your turn to show us what he’s got!’

The second candidate to step forward looked far less assured, the knuckles of his sword hand white on the practice weapon’s hilt, and his brow beaded with sweat despite the morning’s chill, and to Marcus’s eye it seemed that Sannitus gave the gladiator Nemo a meaningful glance before releasing them to spar. Where the previous triallist had been sufficiently self-assured to defend himself with some degree of proficiency, this man seemed out of his depth from the bout’s commencement, and within half a dozen stokes his opponent had tapped him twice on the arm and neck with his weapon’s point. Realising that he was rapidly losing his chance to join the school, he leapt forward with a scream and slashed wildly at his opponent, who simply ducked under the blow and jabbed him in the ribs hard enough that he subsided to the hall’s sandy floor with a dull groan. Sannitus gestured to his assistants, who collected the practice sword and set the man back on his feet.

‘Not for you, I’m afraid, not this time. Go and learn some sword skills if you want to pass this test, and don’t come back until you can defend yourself, eh?’

The failed candidate nodded glumly and was led to the gate, followed shortly after by the other remaining civilian whose assessment was equally swift and conclusive. Sannitus turned to face the three soldiers, smiling sardonically at them.

‘I’m tempted to get Mortiferum out of his bed to wipe that confidence off your faces, but I doubt he’d thank me, and he can be a right bastard if he don’t get his sleep. So …’

He turned to look across at the remaining gladiators waiting against the far wall.

‘Who shall we use for this … yes. Hermes, over here if you will!’

The biggest of them got up and strode across the hall, stopping a dozen paces from the group and folding his arms, waiting impassively for further instructions. Where the previous contestants from within their number had been encouraged by cheers that were only partially ironic, this man’s walk across the hall was greeted with nothing more than silence, the other gladiators staring stonily at his back. Sannitus signalled to one of his assistants, who promptly passed the big man a practice sword.

‘Let’s have shields as well, we don’t want anyone getting damaged. You, the legion man. Let’s see what you’ve got, shall we?’

Horatius nodded and stepped forward, taking the sword and wooden shield that he was offered and weighing them for a moment before turning to face his opponent. The gladiator scowled back at him, an angry pink scar marking one of his cheeks, and Marcus was left with the clear impression that he intended making the most of his opportunity to intimidate a potential new entry to the school.

‘Fight!’

At Sannitus’s command the gladiator leapt forward, eschewing any attack with his sword and choosing to punch with his shield instead, looking to use his superior weight to knock Horatius off balance. The legion man stepped back, barely resisting the blow with his own shield and encouraging the gladiator to step forward again, punching even harder as he sensed that the brutal tactic was unsettling his opponent. Horatius pulled back again, his step to the rear larger than the previous retreat, his right hand sliding back until the point of the wooden sword’s blade was almost level with his ear, and Marcus narrowed his eyes as he realised what was coming. Hermes stamped forward a third time, encouraged by the soldier’s accelerating retreat to go for the kill, but as he lunged into the attack, bent on smashing the wavering shield out of his way and striking at the reeling centurion with his sword, Horatius sidestepped smartly to his left, hammering his shield’s rim against the inside of his opponent’s board. Before the gladiator had time to realise what was happening, the soldier had sprung forward off his left foot with his sword arm’s elbow held rigidly before him, the blow flattening Hermes and leaving him momentarily stunned as he fell back onto the hard sandy floor.

Horatius reflexively raised his sword to strike at the fallen fighter, but a swift call from Sannitus stayed his hand.

‘
Hold!
You might do it that way in the army, but in the arena it’s more the done thing to hold a fallen opponent under the point of your sword and ask whoever is chairing the games whether he should live or die. And in this case you can give him a hand since he’s your new comrade. Welcome to the ludus.’

The victorious soldier dropped his sword and put out a hand to Hermes, but the gladiator rolled away from him, regaining his footing with an easy grace that belied his size, leaving his sword and shield where they had fallen. Horatius shrugged and handed his shield to Sannitus, exchanging looks with the trainer, who shook his head in mock sadness at the loser’s behaviour.

‘I know, he’s always been a miserable bastard. It’s just as well he fights as well as he does, or he’d have had the shit beaten out of him years ago.’ He turned away and muttered an additional comment to Edius, intended only for his assistant’s ears but which carried as far as Marcus. ‘And a good thing we’ve got Velox and Mortiferum to keep the prick in order, eh?’

He turned back to the remaining triallists, grinning up at Dubnus.

‘You, the big bastard. Sure you want to go through this? You look too … well built to be quick enough for the arena.’

The Briton raised an eyebrow.

‘Would you like to put that observation to the test, Lanista?’

Sannitus shook his head with a wry smile.

‘Not today.’ He turned to shout a comment after the defeated gladiator, who was already halfway across the hall, glaring hard at his mates and silently daring any of them to make a joke at his expense. ‘Hey, Hermes! You don’t get off that easily! Come back and take those frustrations out on this.’ Shaking his head at Dubnus he gestured to the gladiator, who had turned back to stare at him with an expression that promised violence. ‘No, big man, I’ll have to pass on your offer, given you’ve got twenty years’ advantage on me. Today you can fight Hermes for the pleasure of our company.’

The Briton shrugged and stepped forward, accepting the practice weapons with a nod to the trainer and rolling his massive bearded head around on his bull neck before stepping forward and dropping into the familiar combat stance he had practised every day for the last fifteen years.