The Emperor's Knives (35 page)

‘That’s the emperor’s arse in his seat then! Come on Velox, stop trying to make the women wet! It’s time to go walkies again! And make sure you don’t step in any elephant shit, that stuff’s three-feet deep!’

8

Once the parade of the gladiators was complete, the procession having made its way through the Forum to the Gate of Death, and onward into the amphitheatre for the ritual circuit of the fighting surface, the day’s combatants were dismissed back to their schools while the beast fighters took their turn in the sun. Sannitus summoned his men to him, pointing towards the Gate of Life.

‘Come on then, let’s have you back down the tunnel, you can channel all that frustration from marching behind the dancing girls into some serious practice for a change!’

Velox walked over to him and bent to whisper in his ear, tipping his head at the three centurions, and after a moment the lanista nodded and came across to them.

‘Your new best friend here thinks he ought to give you a tour of the arena, show how it all works so that it’s a bit less of a shock this afternoon when the time comes to fight. Behave yourselves, and remember that you’ve signed your lives over to the ludus. If you run, then when we catch you we’ll crucify you over the gate as a lesson for others. And you …’

He pointed at the champion gladiator.

‘Don’t go pushing your luck with the arena staff. You may be golden bollocks at the moment, but there’ll be a few of them who’d happily screw you over, especially if they’re still nursing their losses from that fight with the net man last month. Right, I’m off to find the procurator and make sure that we know exactly what it is that those three will be fighting later on. Edius, you’re in charge, get the rest of them back to the ludus without anyone getting any clever ideas about taking the rest of the day off, eh?’

He turned away and led his men away towards the Gate of Life, and Velox grinned at them with the look of a man excused duties for the day.

‘Come on then, let’s get off the sand before the beast fighting starts.’

‘Greetings, Tribune. I had not thought to see you again so soon, given your preoccupation with the pursuit of the Emperor’s Knives?’

Scaurus bowed to Sigilis, the men behind him copying the gesture as they had been instructed. The Senator had received them without any delay, despite the unannounced nature of their visit, and looking about himself Scaurus noted that his vestibule was empty of any clients despite the relatively early hour.

‘You are my first guests of the day, Tribune, you and your men. My usual constant flow of clients has dried up to nothing, now that the word is out as to my pending fate, it seems. Nobody wants to associate with a man under threat of death, do they? You and your people are welcome visitors, to break up the monotony of an otherwise empty day.’

The tribune had once again been accompanied by the same trio of barbarians and his first spear, the latter accompanied by a pair of soldiers.

‘I thought you might appreciate a little news on that very subject, Senator. After all, I suspect that you’ve seen little of your erstwhile informant in the last few days?’

Sigilis nodded, gesturing for the tribune’s party to follow him.

‘Indeed. I take it as yet another sign that the throne’s fingers are tightening around what’s left of my allotted lifespan. My people are followed whenever they leave the domus, and men watch the house around the clock. This morning both of my supposedly hidden exits from this property were found to have been broken in, with armed guards set to prevent their use. I do not have long left, I suspect. Anyway, tell me your news, Tribune, and hopefully bring a little pleasure to these grey days.’

Scaurus inclined his head respectfully.

‘I believe that my tidings would be best delivered in a setting that would ensure privacy, Senator. Might we perhaps repair to your garden, as we did the last time I came to visit?’

‘Well now, Julianus, here’s a cup of wine for you. It’s the Sicilian, the one you enjoyed so much the last time, and it’s already watered.’

The procurator accepted the drink from the servant who had approached him at his host’s signal, took a sip and nodded his approval.

‘Delicious! Every bit as good as the last time I tasted it, if not even better!’

He waved a hand at the packed and buzzing arena that rose high above their place on the first floor, adjacent to the imperial box. The emperor himself was relaxing at the far end of the area reserved for his court, a pair of young women vying to feed him from the table of delicacies laid out before them, while his chamberlain Cleander was standing not far from the party of senior gladiatorial officials which Julianus had joined, looking about him with his usual expression of calculation.

‘And am I to take this apparent state of relaxation as a sign that all is as it should be for the first day of the games?’

His host, the man responsible for the arena’s operation, shook his head dismissively.

‘As it should be? I
very
much doubt it, but then what else does a man have staff for? They’ll be running around like men whose backsides have been stung by hornets at this very minute.’ The men standing around the table laughed appreciatively at the affected insouciance in his aristocratic drawl. ‘Just as you procurators have your lanistas, I have a small number of very capable and in one or two cases ruthless individuals whose specialisation is the art of making things happen, no matter what it takes. So the show, gentlemen, will go more or less to schedule, and nobody not intimately familiar with the way in which the organisation that runs this arena operates will ever know the difference. Let us just hope that your gladiators will be able to live up to the magnificence of the setting, shall we?’

‘There’s no fear of anything else!’ Novius, procurator of the Gallic Ludus, raised his cup to point at Julianus. ‘We’ve raised a fine crop of fighters this year, hard as nails all the way down to the tenth rank and not, as some schools seem to be, dependent on a few big names to carry their reputation.’

He sniffed loudly, and the other procurators sniggered at the barb, sinking it even deeper into Julianus’s thin skin.

‘There’s more to the Dacian Ludus than Velox and Mortiferum!’

‘
Is
there?’ His counterpart raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Who do you have in the third rank? I hear the name Hermes, although I hear little to encourage a belief that he’ll give my own third-rank man a decent workout. Face it, Julianus, once we’re past your admittedly lethal one and two, the rest of your ranking is decidedly ordinary.’

Julianus bristled at the slur, waving his rival’s words away with an extravagant sweep of his hand.

‘Which shows how little your sources within my school really know. I’d advise you to stay for the mid-afternoon livener, colleague, rather than sloping off to your favourite brothel after the first bout of the afternoon as seems to be your usual habit. You might see something from which you’ll learn a thing or two about the finer arts of finding good fighting men.’

Novius narrowed his eyes, turning to the arena’s procurator with a questioning look, and the administrator waved a languid arm at Julianus.

‘Procurator Julianus has entered a new team of commoners for the last non-ranking fight of the day, something to get the crowd shouting again before we send in the big names. We’re going to match them with an appropriate number of Dacian prisoners of war and see if they’re as good as he makes out.’

‘And how many of these mob fighters do you have, Julianus? Ten. A dozen?’

The Dacian procurator smiled back at him.

‘Only three. But three men of such a quality that I expect them to go through their assailants without any problem whatsoever.’

‘And how many Dacians will you throw at these newcomers?’

Julianus shrugged, affecting to neither know nor care, despite his lanista’s very careful instructions on the subject.

‘That’s a level of detail somewhat deeper than I usually bother myself with, although I do recall Sannitus muttering something about a two to one fight.’

He looked at his fingernails, but Novius saw an opening and went for it.

‘Two to one? But if they’re as good as you say, surely they can cope with stronger odds than that? Perhaps we need to make a wager on the subject?’

Julianus looked up at him from beneath hooded eyelids.

‘A wager? But Novius, surely the last time we gambled on the result of a fight you lost a—’

‘And now’s my best chance to make it back, from the sound of it. A thousand sestertii, eh, but on a
three
to one fight?’

Unable to back down, Julianus decided to attack.

‘A thousand? No,
five
thousand.’

Novius recoiled.

‘
Five?
’ He looked about him, realising that he’d manoeuvred himself into a corner from which there was no escape. ‘Very well, five.’ He waved a hand at the arena’s procurator, and Julianus smiled at him while a small part of him started worrying as to how Sannitus was going to react to the change of plan. ‘With our colleague here to ensure fair play, eh? And, before you leap to your feet to scurry off and warn that animal of a lanista of yours, that bet’s good just as long as there’s no warning for these new commoners of yours. Let your men discover that the odds against them have changed when the Dacians jump out of their pits, eh? Or will that be too much for them?’

Julianus shrugged, knowing that having raised the stake so high he had little choice in the matter.

‘As you say, let’s see how real gladiators cope with surprises.’

Sigilis led the small party into the domus’s garden and took his seat under the shade of the circle of trees that protected his outside dining area.

‘Do sit down, Tribune, and tell me your story.’

Scaurus took his seat.

‘Forgive me, Senator, if I detail one of my men to take an interest in this magnificent garden. It would not do for us to be overheard.’ The senator nodded, and one of the two soldiers who had accompanied Julius paced away steadily towards the massive wall that guarded the property, while the other walked steadily towards the house. ‘So, you will be pleased to hear, three of the four men who have terrorised Rome for the last few years have been dealt with by my vengeful centurion.’

He briefly detailed the deaths of Dorso, Brutus and Pilinius, and with the mention of the last of the three Sigilis smiled slowly.

‘With regard to that particular disgusting specimen of twisted humanity and his cronies, I’m genuinely pleased to hear your news. I knew that something had happened to them, from the rumours sweeping the city, but for the delivery of their justice to be so fitting …’ He looked across the immaculate garden to where the soldier set to search for any eavesdroppers had reached the wall, turned about and was walking back towards them in the same slow, deliberate manner. ‘But what of the fourth? Which one of them still survives?’

‘Mortiferum.’

‘I should have known it …’ He shook his head knowingly. ‘And how do you expect to get to him, might I ask?’

‘So there you see it. The Flavian arena in all its glory.’

Velox gestured to the view through the closely spaced iron bars that protected the viewing point out onto the arena’s sand, grinning as Dubnus and Horatius crowded forward to peer up at the tiered rows of seats on the amphitheatre’s far side. Their window out onto the fighting surface was at ground level, the room in which they stood part of the arena’s labyrinth of underground passages and chambers. Looking up, they could see that every seat was filled, the packed galleries teeming with a mass of humanity whose sole instinct seemed to be to bay for the blood of the men pacing forward across the fighting surface before them. With their heads only five above the arena’s surface, the four men’s view out across the sand was unimpeded, although there were only two fighters on show and neither of them was showing any sign of hostility towards the other. Armed with long rectangular shields and what looked like smooth wooden cudgels, they were advancing slowly towards a hastily installed grove of small potted trees in the amphitheatre’s centre.

‘You’ve seen all this before, haven’t you?’

Their escort’s quiet question in Marcus’s ear was couched in a knowing tone of voice, and his answer was equally amused.

‘Yes. But I was usually sitting in the expensive seats.’

The champion gladiator grinned wryly.

‘Gives you a different perspective, eh?’

The Roman nodded, pointing up at the low ceiling above their heads.

‘And the noise!’

The packed stands over them were booming with a raucous cacophony, as the crowd yelled, bellowed and hooted their preferences for the fight underway before them, the massive structure seeming to shake with the reverberations. Dubnus shook his head in amazement.

‘What are they shouting?’

Velox put a finger to his ear.

‘Listen carefully and you’ll make it out.’

The big Briton tipped his head, and after a moment realised that the crowd were shouting two words in a seemingly unending chorus.

‘
Black Brutus! Black Brutus! Black Brutus!
’

‘Black Brutus?’

The gladiator pointed at the arena before them, indicating an iron cage large enough to hold two men at best, its door open wide in anticipation of a prisoner of some nature.

‘You see the empty cage? Those two are beast fighters. It looks like they’re playing a rather dangerous game that was only invented last year, which I suppose you might call “putting the blood-crazed man-eating cat back in his box without becoming his lunch”. Any minute now there’s going to be—’

A trapdoor within the circle of trees swung upwards, and out of the yawning gap in the fighting surface a glossy black feline monster sprang out onto the sand. Driven to fresh paroxysms of excitement by the animal’s sudden appearance, the sixty-thousand-strong crowd came to its collective feet, bellowing the same two words over and over again as the two men facing the cat eyed it unhappily over the rims of their shields. Dubnus shook his head in disbelief.