Douglas Jackson: Sword of Rome

‘Who are these they , so free with their information? Who’s to say it’s true?’

‘The guards.’ Serpentius waved a hand towards the men watching from the perimeter. ‘They’re not bad sorts. Now that the war is over they feel a bit sorry for us. We fought well, but we lost. They’re just glad it’s not them sitting here, so they make sure we’re well fed and let us do pretty much what we please, as long as we don’t cause any trouble.’

Valerius stared suspiciously. This wasn’t the Spaniard he remembered. Perhaps Otho wasn’t the only one who’d lost heart. For the first time he noticed that Serpentius was working on a block of wood with a small fruit knife.

‘Not bad sorts? Fools, surely, to give a man like you a blade. I’ve seen the day you’d have slit half a dozen throats and been halfway to Rome by now, and taken the others with you.’

The Spaniard chewed his lip. ‘Maybe so, but it’s different now. For one thing, as far as they’re concerned every man here is a gladiator, and he’ll be treated as an escaped slave if he runs. You know what that means?’

‘The cross.’

‘That would be the best of it.’

‘And the other reason?’

Serpentius shrugged. ‘They knew I had reasons for staying.’

Valerius snorted and shook his head. ‘Fool. That still doesn’t explain why we’re here.’ Something occurred to him. ‘Gladiators?’

‘It’s the only reason we’re still alive. We were with what was left of the gladiators when you got your second knock. They were about to butcher the lot of us when Caecina rode up and called off his dogs. Turns out he had a better use for us.’

‘What kind of use?’ Valerius didn’t hide his suspicion.

The Spaniard stared at him, the dark eyes deadly serious. ‘We do what gladiators do best. We fight. To the death.’ Valerius’s brain fought against the reality of the final three words. Execution he had expected, exile or imprisonment at best. But not that. Never that. Serpentius explained that Caecina, ever eager to stay one step ahead of his rival Valens, had ordered a great games for the Emperor and the climax would be a hundred and fifty captured gladiators fighting to the death. ‘What do you expect? As far as Vitellius is concerned we’re slaves who rose up against him. No better than Spartacus and his lads.’

They had a month.

‘In a month we’ll get you fit enough to fight.’ He saw the stricken look in Valerius’s eyes. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.’

May, AD 69

‘Ready?’

Valerius nodded, but he had a lump in his throat the size of a goose egg and his feet seemed to be encased in lead. They sat in the stifling heat of the arming room below the arena outside Cremona and all around them were the sounds of men praying, or sobbing. Somewhere close was the thick, bitter scent of fresh vomit.

Serpentius kept his voice low. ‘We’ll fight together and if the gods will it, we’ll be the last men standing.’

‘What happens then?’

The Spaniard shrugged. ‘Maybe we’ll have been so good they’ll let us both live.’

Valerius nodded slowly, knowing it was unlikely, no matter how well they fought. ‘And if not?’

He saw a glint in the dark eyes. ‘I’ll make it quick and clean.’

Valerius swallowed as he imagined the coldness of bright iron piercing his heart, but he managed a smile. ‘What if it’s the other way round?’

Serpentius stared at him. They both knew that was not going to happen. ‘Do not concern yourself. If you die, you will die with a sword in your hand and a friend by your side.’ He reached down to retrieve a bag from between his feet. ‘Here, take this.’

Valerius opened the bag and the contents took his breath away. Inside was a rough replica of the wooden hand he had watched burn all those months ago on the Rhenus. It had a laced cowhide stock and without a word he pulled it over his right forearm and deftly tied the laces with the fingers of his left hand. He turned it slowly as if he might be imagining its existence.

‘I told them you’d fight better with a shield,’ Serpentius said gruffly. ‘It should fit this.’ He produced a round shield, in the Thracian style, but Valerius only had eyes for the crude oak fist his friend had carved. For a moment, the world seemed to spin around him. No words could ever express what he felt and all he could think of was to reach across with his good hand and touch the Spaniard’s arm.

If he was going to die, he would die a whole man. A whole man with a sword in his hand and a friend by his side.

It was enough.

‘Prepare yourselves.’

Valerius’s left hand rose to touch the golden boar amulet at his neck.

Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus frowned as the guards brought them out in batches of ten. Caecina hadn’t even thought to create a better spectacle by arming them properly. They looked like a bunch of bearded peasant farmers with spears and swords. At first they stood around, frightened and bewildered, but the lanistae ran between them pushing them into match-ups and pointing out the hundreds of archers who ringed the packed dirt and had orders to kill any man who refused to fight. Soon the arena rang to the roars of the spectators, the clash of swords and the screams of the dying.

He pinned the young man sitting next to him, the architect of this farce, with a smile, muttered some unintelligible words of praise and turned away. By the gods he was bored.

After the victory at Bedriacum he had been feted from Moguntiacum to Mediolanum and Lugdunum to Rome. He had eaten and drunk until he had been surprised to discover that even his gargantuan appetites had limits. Not four days earlier, Valens had held his own little spectacle, and in truth it was infinitely more cultured than anything this upstart youth had provided thus far.

His mind returned to the day when he had finally visited the battlefield between Cremona and Bedriacum, forty days after the fighting had ended. A charnel house. A slaughterer’s yard two miles long and a mile and a half wide. Tens of thousands of putrefying corpses piled as high as temple walls and hanging from the trees. Legs, arms and severed heads littering each yard of blood-soaked earth, every inch blanketed by the flies that swarmed insatiable to the feast. His court had gagged at the stink of rotting flesh, the yards of blackened, festering intestines torn from gas-filled bodies by the feral dogs which still roamed that awful field of death, and the black clouds of crows who fought for the softest parts — the best of it, the eyes, the lips, had long gone, but there were still opportunities for the determined — but to Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus the stink of a rotting corpse was the sweet smell of victory.

A cry of appreciation from the crowd brought him back to the ‘entertainment’. A pair of gladiators had been clever enough to fight together for a time, but the taller of the men, a well-muscled bruiser, had taken the opportunity to stab his comrade in the back the instant that particular contest had been won. It appeared the victim had some special skill his murderer had feared. Perhaps the spectacle was not going to be as dull as he’d believed.

A second pair had also decided to fight as a team and he admired their skills until his attention was drawn to two equally matched men armed with terrible, curved knives. The blades darted and threatened, sang in great scything arcs that would have removed a head if they’d been successful, until the sublime moment when, with a scream that rent the air, they simultaneously ripped each other’s guts out and fell, spilling viscera on to ground already pooled with blood and gore. The numbers were down to twenty or thirty now, with the rest dead … or, like one of the gutted men who was entertainingly trying to crawl somewhere with his insides trailing behind him, certainly dying.