The Emperor's Knives (30 page)

Scaurus inclined his head in recognition of his guest’s exalted status, looking at the procurator’s badge of office for a moment before handing it back with a respectful inclination of his head.

‘A weighty responsibility, Lucius. Especially these days …’

He left the statement unfinished, and the procurator took his conversational bait without hesitation.

‘How right you are. The emperor’s rather close interest in every aspect of the gladiatorial spectacle means that we have to produce the finest swordsmen in the empire if we are to satisfy his expectations.’

‘I can only imagine the pressure involved. But then you have those two brothers, do you not? Velox and …’

Scaurus looked at the ceiling as if trying to remember the other name.

‘Mortiferum. Yes, we do, and by the gods, they’re a superb pair of fighters, so good that I’ve bowed to my lanista’s suggestion and named them both as my first rank fighters despite the unusual nature of such an arrangement. However, and as I’m sure you can imagine, we do rather tend to go through the second and third rank men. So, when three candidates for the ludus present themselves together, and proceed, one after another, to comprehensively outfight one of my more effective men, well, I’m sure I can leave it to your imagination to work out what their potential might be. Not to mention their prospects.’

Scaurus smiled his agreement, raising an eyebrow to Julius.

‘
Three
men of such skill? I can indeed see what a gift that might seem. But of course, there’s always the risk of taking on a man who is in reality still a serving soldier. I can only assume that you examine each ex-soldier’s record with the very greatest of care?’

Julianus nodded.

‘Indeed I do. Which, as I expect you have already perceived, is what brings me here at such short notice. I have two men from your cohort in my ludus at this very moment, both claiming to have recently bought their way out of their commissions, and therefore claiming the right to take the oath.’

‘
Ah.
’

Scaurus’s expression went from relaxed bonhomie to shifty discomfort, and Julianus smiled sympathetically.

‘Ah
indeed.
’ He leaned forwards and lowered his voice, shooting Julius a conspiratorial glance. ‘Please believe me when I assure you that your own internal administrative procedures really are none of my business, and to be frank with you both, you’ve done me a huge service in freeing them up to seek their fortunes in the arena.’ He leaned back with an expansive gesture. ‘I can see them earning the ludus a good deal of gold. A
very
good deal of it. And some of that gold will, in time, work its way down to them with, I’m sure, the adulation of the crowd, the swooning services of a variety of grateful matrons, and so on. I’m sure we’ll all enjoy sharing in their reflected glory – you really haven’t lived until your female companion for the evening has spent the day at the arena enjoying the aphrodisiac effect of watching grown men tear into each other with sharp iron!’

He leaned back in his chair with a smug smile, and Scaurus leaned forward with an intrigued expression.

‘Now that I would like to see!’

‘And you shall, Rutilius Scaurus, as my personal guest when your men fight in the arena for the first time. I suspect that we’ll be making them part of a spectacle that will have Rome buzzing for days. Anyway, all I need to be assured of their freedom to take the oath is to see those two precious sheets of bronze that declare them both to be honourably discharged as citizens of the empire, with all the witness seals intact, of course.’

Scaurus shot Julius a swift glance.

‘Their diplomas?’

‘Yes indeed, that’s all. Just show me their diplomas and I’ll be on my way. You do have them to hand, I presume?’

7

The morning had passed slowly for the newcomers, obliged to sit and watch the ludus’s routine as Sannitus and his men had variously encouraged, chivvied, cajoled, bullied and simply kicked his trainees through their lessons. The sound of booted feet rasping across the floor and the grunts and curses of the would-be gladiators filled the air.

‘Ointment.’

Marcus stirred from his reverie.

‘What?’

His friend waved a hand at the men exercised before them.

‘I was thinking how this isn’t very much different to the way we train, and then it hit me.’ He sniffed the air ostentatiously. ‘Muscle ointment. They’re all using it, despite the fact that they might as well be rubbing on rabbit fat for all the good it’ll do them.’

The Briton yawned, looking round at the soldier they had rescued from robbers earlier that morning, who had woken from his own doze and was looking around him with weary interest. The three soldiers had been sat down in a corner of the hall with a pail of water between them and told not to move until the issue of their status was concluded, their presence tolerated but not yet accepted by Sannitus.

‘You’re really listed as dead?’

Horatius nodded at Dubnus, leaning back and taking a sip of water from the pail’s scoop.

‘As far as the record keepers for my legion are concerned, I died in an ambush a few miles south of Vindobona, in Noricum. Whereas what really happened was that I ran from the fight like a frightened child.’

Dubnus smiled.

‘We’ve all been there.’

The soldier snorted angrily.

‘
Not
me. Not until that instant when my feet took me into the forest without me even considering the alternative.’ He sighed. ‘You won’t understand unless you know the full story, and we hardly seem to be short of time for the telling, do we? I was a centurion with the Tenth Gemina, and, let me tell you without any pride at all that I was the best fucking officer in my cohort. The fastest man with a sword, the most accurate with a spear … I could kill a man with nothing more than a shield.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Oh yes, I was death incarnate, and didn’t I know it? As far as I was concerned, every other man in the cohort was inferior to me in the only way that mattered, and I stalked around as though I were the only real soldier in the fortress.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Which made what I did that day even worse. I could have killed half a dozen of these bastards before they took me down, and instead …’

‘How did they manage to ambush you in the first place?’

Horatius nodded.

‘Don’t think I haven’t asked myself that question a thousand times since the day it happened, after all, it’s the stuff they teach you in basic training, isn’t it? I can still remember that leathery old bugger of a centurion who turned us into soldiers telling us all about ambushes. “Every successful ambush needs two things, gentlemen, one party cunning enough to set the trap and another stupid enough to walk into it!” And gods, you can believe me when I tell you that we really were
that
stupid. Just because the men setting the trap were our own, we meekly allowed—’

‘You were attacked by
Romans
?’

Horatius snorted a humourless laugh, raising an eyebrow at Marcus, who was staring at him with a look of incredulity at the revelation.

‘Yes, by
Romans.
Is that shocking to you, friend? A praetorian centurion came to the Vindobona fortress, you see, with orders from the emperor. The Legatus was to ride south to Rome immediately, and there was an escort “waiting for us just down the road”, so he decided that he only needed a few of his own men for the sake of appearances, me and a half-dozen of my lads that could ride to act as bodyguards. When I asked the praetorian why he’d not brought his own men to the fortress with him, he told me that it was to avoid any unnecessary delay, and that there was “no time to lose”. The bastard was right though …’ The soldier’s eyes were cold as he recalled the moment. ‘His men were waiting for us alright, they waited at the top of a hill between two steep verges and then, once we were halfway up, they came down the road towards us four abreast and at the gallop, calling out to each other with the excitement of getting to kill a senator. I shouted to the Legatus to ride for his life but he was too slow getting his horse turned about, and they ran him down like a dog. I took my men into them, but there were too many of them for us to do anything but die gloriously.’

He drank from the scoop again, shaking his head in disgust.

‘I managed to put my blade’s point into a face, punched the man clean off his horse, only to find myself on my back in the road beside him. His spear had caught me in the arm and snagged one of the joints of my manica.’ He grunted a mirthless laugh. ‘That metal sleeve probably saved my bloody life. I staggered back onto my feet between a pair of horsemen, both of them trying to get their spears lined up on me, and that gave me time to put my swordpoint up into the jaw of the man on my left. Then I slipped on the road’s surface, probably from the blood that was running down it in rivulets, and lost my grip on the sword. I knew if I bent down to find it I’d never come back up again, so I drew my dagger and pulled the man on my right out of his saddle.’ His eyes closed, and a satisfied smile played across his face for a moment. ‘I’ve always liked my knives long enough to be of some use in a fight, and I hit him so hard that it went right through his neck and stuck out of the other side. And then it happened …’

He paused again and shook his head, the disgusted expression twisting his lips.

‘I pulled his sword from its scabbard and rolled under his horse. There were four of them surrounding the last of my men, just playing with him before the kill, and as I got to my feet it came over me, the sudden realisation that I could either stand and fight with him, and die with some pride, or run for my life. And I ran, brothers …’ He lowered his head, rubbing at his eyes with a big calloused hand. ‘May Our Lord Mithras forgive me, I
ran.
Coward though I was, Our Lord was still watching me that day, and both of the spears that were thrown at me as I ran missed, one landing so close that I was able to grab it as I jumped the ditch and went for the trees like … well, like a man running for his worthless rotten life. I heard a voice shouting orders behind me, whoever was in command of that rabble, “
Get after him! There are to be no survivors!
”, and my hope that it was all some horrible mistake went out like a snuffed lamp.

‘Those bastards killed the last of my men as I ran from them up the hill beyond the ditch. I heard the scream as one of them put iron into him, and then again as another man finished him. They were after me quickly enough, of course, and I could hear them calling out to me that if I came out nice and meek, and made it easy for them then they wouldn’t torment me before the kill, but if I made them wait they’d make me pay for the pleasure, you know the sort of thing.’

Dubnus nodded.

‘And that made you angry, right?’

Horatius smiled grimly.

‘
Angry
? I was already angry, I was raging! With myself mainly, but it was more than that. They were assuming that I was already a beaten man, because of the way I’d run from them, and until they started shouting for me to come out and die like a man, they weren’t far from wrong. No, it wasn’t anger, it was fury! It was the need to murder them all to make amends for my own cowardice. There were four of them, laughing and joking to each other as they came up the hill in a line, full of that confidence that a man can’t help but feel when he’s killed another, whether it’s justified or not …’ He looked down at his hands. ‘I just thought “
fuck you
” and stepped out from behind the tree I was using for cover and gave them a moment to realise what they were facing before I threw the spear. I wanted them to know that I was alone, and to come to me.’

He smiled at the memory.

‘I always was good with a spear, but I’ll tell you this, I’ve never slung any better than that in all my life. One moment it was in my hand, the point tickling my ear, the next I was looking down my outstretched arm at the closest of them with the bloody thing spitted through him front and back, armour and all. He staggered and fell backwards while the other three just stared at me, come out of nowhere and covered in other men’s blood, my teeth bared and my eyes like dinner plates, and I think they knew right then that they were already dead. One of them had a spear, but he was so terrified that he threw it wide of me, and I was into them before they knew what was happening.’

Horatius stared across the ludus’s training hall at the men rehearsing their cuts and strokes, and Marcus knew that he was replaying the moment in his head.

‘I put the spear man down before the fool even had the chance to pull his own blade free. He was no more than a child, and as I opened his throat I knew I’d made a mistake in attacking him first, but then I had to run straight at him to be able to dodge the spear, if he could have thrown it straight …’ He shrugged. ‘Mistakes we make, eh? Not that the other two were any more of a threat. The man on the right might as well have been trying to fight me with a sausage, for all the good he was with a sword, and in the instant that I looked into his eyes I knew that I was invincible against men like these. I stabbed down with my blade, putting it through his thigh and then ripped it free to open the artery. Gods, you should have seen the blood. So
much
blood …’

He grimaced.

‘You killed them all?’

The legion man shook his head at the big Briton’s question.

‘The last of them ran for his life away down the hill screaming for help, and for a moment I considered chasing him down, putting my iron through his spine and then charging into the rest of them to sell my life dearly, but …’

He shrugged, and Marcus found the words for him.

‘You chose life instead.’

Horatius nodded.

‘I chose to make my escape, and ran across the farmland to the next line of trees before they could get their horses onto the open ground. After that I knew that there was only one purpose left for me in life, to discover the reason why my legatus died and to take a cold and bitter revenge for him. It may take me years, or I may never manage it, but this new life will provide me with shelter until that time comes.’