S.J.A. Turney - The Great Game

‘Of course, captain.’

Rufinus slumped again. He felt a thick fog enveloping his senses. Even if there was room, he’d no longer be able to lift his head. Sleep. That was what he needed now. Sleep.

* * *

Rufinus’ eyes opened wide. Even his battered, glued-shut eye widened fractionally. This was a new pain. A different pain. This was something unexpected. He felt himself shudder and jerk. He gasped.

‘What did you do?’ snapped Phaestor somewhere to his left.

‘Nothing!’ The Persian replied angrily. ‘I barely touched him. Just prodded him with the tip of the knife to see if he was awake yet!’

Rufinus felt a pain that easily rivalled Amardad’s ministrations, as if someone had opened up his chest, planted a boulder between his lungs and heart, and then snapped him shut again. He couldn’t breathe. His veins were on fire.

The sound of Phaestor’s boots running across the room. ‘You drew blood.’

‘Only a trickle. In the name of Aditi, I barely touched him.’

‘That’s his spine… get the Medicus!’

As the Persian slapped out of the door in his sandals to find the nearest slave for a messenger, Phaestor reached for Rufinus’ head. The boulder in his chest was too large. His lungs had no room to take in air. His heart had no room to beat. He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t…

* * *

The medicus ran into the room ahead of Amardad.

‘You needn’t bother,’ Phaestor said flatly. ‘He’s dead. Died a few moments since. Pissed himself again; on my boot this time.’

The medicus bent beneath the limp, swinging corpse, opening his good eye with two fingers and peering inside. He opened the dead man’s mouth and examined it. A last cursory glance across the back and he spotted a small fresh rivulet of blood.

‘Perhaps you touched the spine cord. There is an important cable that runs down the backbone. If you damage it the effects are extremely unpleasant.’

The Persian spat angrily. ‘Preposterous. It was a pinprick. No one dies from that!’

Phaestor took a deep breath, his lip wrinkling into a livid sneer. Before Amardad had time to react, Phaestor snatched the ‘KAL’ brand from the glowing brazier next to him, bringing it round in a wide arc until it smashed into Amardad’s face. The Persian shrieked in agony as the red-hot iron shaft broke his cheek, sizzling skin and blinding him in the right eye.

‘Persian piss-pot. Never trusted your lot.’

Amardad managed to raise an arm in a pathetic attempt to ward off another blow, screaming as he covered his ruined face with his other hand.

‘Noooooo!’

The second blow was a lunge, and the sizzling brand slammed into the torturer’s face, burning as he pushed it ever harder. Amardad fell back and collapsed to the floor, grasping at his bubbling face.

Stepping over him, ignoring the screaming, Phaestor took out his anger and frustration on the Persian, repeatedly smashing the iron into his face. Again and again the blows struck, melting, smashing and ripping away bubbling, crisped skin. By the time he stopped and straightened, Amardad had been dead for a while, with little left to tell he was ever a man.

On the far side of the room, unheard beneath the violence of the flurry of blows, the screaming and the snarling of the captain, the medicus bent to look up at the sightless, dead eyes of Rufinus.

‘And yet, life goes on…’

PHAESTOR paused at the door. He was not given to nervousness but this was a meeting he would have given an arm not to have to attend. Taking a deep breath, he knocked.

‘Come’ called the light voice of Menander, the empress’ chamberlain, a man for whom Phaestor privately maintained the most spiteful loathing.

Another deep, heaving breath to steady himself and Phaestor pushed open the door and strode in with a purposeful gait. The room was well-lit, oil lamps and braziers adding a warm orange glow to the gilded room with its wall paintings of country scenes and white pavilions and its decorative marble floor.

Lucilla stood, already bathed and dressed in her finest stola and shawl, poring over her jewellery collection with Senova, while her cosmeta slave mixed white lead for her cheeks in a small bronze bowl. Menander stood talking to another slave, a list in his hand.

‘Phaestor?’ the chamberlain said in surprise. ‘What brings you here at this time?’

‘There has been a … development’ he said in a strong voice.

Lucilla stopped mid-task, ears pricking up at the words. Slowly she turned, and Phaestor wondered, not for the first time, why she bothered with the white lead paste, given the unhealthy pallor of her natural skin.

‘Problem, captain?’ she asked quietly.

‘After a fashion, ma’am. I beg to report that the traitor Rustius suffered with a weak heart.’ His voice tailed away and cracked a little towards the end, and he winced.

‘ Suffer- ed ?’

Phaestor flinched at the sudden rise of voice by an octave.

‘We did everything we could. Even your husband’s pet medicus could not save him. We barely got started before he started having attacks.’ Again, he flinched at the empress’ eyes. ‘We did everything we could. Had Dis been alive…’

‘But he isn’t, Captain. Because of this very traitor. Tell me something I want to hear.’

Another nervous swallow. ‘The Persian we hired from Tivoli appears to have made a mistake and pushed him too far for his heart to take. I dealt with the Persian appropriately. Fortunately, we hadn’t paid him in advance.’

Suddenly, Lucilla was close enough to him that he could smell the salt and honey on her breath from her morning teeth-cleaning.

‘ Pay ? You think I care for petty coinage? I need to know who else might be aware of our plans, and I do not believe that there was any other source of such information but the miserable little runt that you just killed, no?’

‘No, ma’am.’

Lucilla, her eyes blazing, stepped back. ‘We will have to be careful in the coming hours. It was always my intention to leave most of the staff here and travel with a small, appropriate entourage of personal slaves and the best of the guards. You were to accompany us in the stands, of course.’

‘Of course, ma’am.’

‘That is no longer the case. This place is unimportant now, while security will have to be stepped up in the city. You will leave a skeleton staff of half a dozen men. The rest will be posted around the amphitheatre, covering every possible entrance. Annianus’ guards will watch over us at our seats, while you and your men secure every foot of the arena and its stands and tunnels.’

‘Yes, my empress.’ Phaestor’s reply sounded deflated.

‘And if anything goes wrong today, for any reason, I will lay the culpability square upon your shoulders, just before I have you beaten, broken, and crucified. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Very, majesty.’

Lucilla turned and walked away, back to Senova who, keeping a carefully neutral expression, reached up with the earring. ‘Ouch!’ Lucilla turned and slapped Senova across the face, leaving a beetroot coloured handprint on her cheek. ‘You clumsy barbarian cow. You’ve made my ear bleed!’

Phaestor frowned at Senova. He’d known that she and Rustius had shared words, and possibly more. On occasion it was the cause of ribald jokes among the men. Clearly the news of his death had affected her.

He wondered for a moment whether the curiously attractive British slave girl might have been in on it with Rustius? A momentary feeling, quickly dismissed. She had been at the villa long before Rustius and, even if she did know anything, she would be accompanying the empress all day with the guards and would have no opportunity to say or do anything that might prevent the day’s events from unfolding as planned.