by Scott Baker
Escape, at least for the moment, was impossible. Years earlier, Spartacus the Thracian had lead a rebellion against Rome with an army of gladiators. He was a man who would accept his station no more – but although his story was legendary, he had seen to it conditions would never allow an event such as that to happen again. We were under heavy guard at all times, so I knew that my ally now, my only hope for survival, was information. I had to play their game long enough to find a way back to Jerusalem.
As I contemplated this, a sudden chill struck me. What if I had arrived too late? Or more than a lifetime too early? There was much debate in the world I had left about when Jesus walked the earth. If he was still alive, then I had to survive and find my way to him. If he had already been killed, then I could not complete my mission. For now, I would have to fight to survive. Little did I know that I would get my chance to do just that the following morning.
It was the horn that woke me. A deep booming bass that shook us awake each morning not long after the sun rose. This in itself was not unusual, but the sound of gravel crunching along the corridor brought me fully alert. Soon a stablehand came into view with four Roman guards beside him. The lock jingled to life and the door to my cell swung open.
‘You’re coming with us,’ the stablehand, a boy not much older than Mishca, said with pomp and arrogance. ‘You are fighting today.’ With that he turned and the four guards entered the cell. I followed the boy out into the corridor, just in time to hear Malbool’s voice call after me.
‘May the gods protect you!’
I was taken by carriage for perhaps an hour. When the carriage doors swung open, I was shadowed by the massive structure looming before me. I remembered in my previous life visiting Rome with my parents when I was a boy, and, standing not far from where I was right now, staring up at the tiered structure of repeating arches, at the intricate stone carvings, and at the iron gates that stood with imposing defiance. The last time I saw this monument it was in ruin, but now, larger than life and immaculate, stood the very heart of Roman culture: the Coliseum.
‘We are taking you to registration, this afternoon you will fight for Master Tiberius and show him that you are worthy of his graces.’
‘I was told I would be given three days’ notice before I was to fight.’
The boy turned, shocked that I had dared speak to him.
‘You,’ he said as if explaining to a child, ‘will fight when you are told to do so. When you have earned your way, killed many men, then you will be given the privilege to know ahead of time that you may fight. If you must know, the master’s only invited entry in this tournament was injured yesterday in practice and you are to take his place.’
I was marched into a room with other teams of people, none of them appearing to be gladiators. The boy spoke to someone and then turned to ask me a question.
‘What are you?’ he asked.
‘What am I? What do you mean?’ I replied, puzzled.
‘What are you? What category do you fight as?’ the boy asked impatiently.
‘Oh, that? I don’t really care.’ The ambience in the room dropped off, replaced by silence and stares from every corner.
‘What?’ the boy spat.
‘I don’t care what I fight as. With a sword, I suppose.’ The room that had thinned its conversation now gave up a few chuckles.
‘With a sword, you suppose?’ The boy stepped up to me. ‘Are you trying to make me look foolish in front of the registrars? Do not forget that it is I who controls your rations at the ludus!’ he whispered harshly.
‘Boy,’ I said evenly, ‘I do not care what you register me as. I have had little training in your arts, so it makes no difference to me.’
The boy stepped away, conscious that everyone was now looking at him, and that a slave had called him ‘boy’. He spoke to the registrar and then turned back to the troop of guards who were with me.
‘Give him a sword and a round shield. He will fill the place of his stablemate and fight as a murmillo! Take him to be branded.’
The boy seemed pleased to show his authority, watching contemptuously as I was taken away to be burned with fire, forever scarred with the smell of my own burning flesh and singed hair. The scent filled my nostrils. To be owned. This is a thing few modern men imagine, a thing over which my country had fought a civil war.
As the glowing steel rod was brought close to my arm, I could feel the heat on my face. It was a mark that stayed with me always, and the scar never let me forget what it means to belong to another.
Six hours later, I stood alone. My left arm had been fitted with a banded golden sleeve of armour, and on the same arm was strapped a round shield. In my other hand my fingers flexed around the hilt of a curved sword, and only sandals and a loincloth covered the rest of my body.
Malbool was right, it really was an intentional deliberation of armour and skin. Naked and shielded at the same time, to add interest to the bloodbath. I had refused their helmet. It was heavy and clumsy and had the crest of a fish-like fin along its top. It cut off my peripheral vision, and I felt safer without it.
As the gate in front of me rose, I saw the stairs leading into the arena. I was to fight a Gaul – a man captured in war who only survived by killing other men. I had been warned about not fighting to kill. I had been told that there were archers poised at all times to end the life of a disobedient participant in the games. Killing now was my only chance of continuing with my true mission.
With purpose, I strode forward. The roar was immense. Jets of perfumed water filled the air with fragrance, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets and horns. I looked around the massive amphitheatre; in its stately glory, it seemed even larger than it had looked as a ruin and eclipsed all my childhood memories of it. The Coliseum held forty thousand faces, all of whom stared down at me. The energy from every ring of seating, from every bench in the private boxes, made it feel like a full house, pulsing with noise, movement and colour. I only now understood. The people, the crowd, the citizens – they all loved this.
I felt ill. I was part of it. What’s more, I would kill this man who now looked across the sand of the arena floor at me. I would kill him because if I did not, he would kill me.
A horn sounded. It had begun.
The Gaul was about my height, a big man by the standards of the day. The straight sword he carried looked as if it weighed nothing in his hand. It was longer than mine, and boasted a double edge and jewelled hilt. His shield was curved but rectangular, maybe half the height of the man himself. I absorbed these details carefully as he advanced.
The crowd’s roars grew louder as we drew closer together, circling and sizing each other up until finally, he swung. It was an over-handed blow designed not so much to cause any real damage as to test me, to see how I would react – and react I did, but not in the parrying way he expected. As the blow came down, I raised my left elbow, making as if to meet the blow with my small, circular shield. Instead I spun, guiding more than blocking his blow away. I continued my turn, whipping my back leg up and around my body as I did so. I spun fast and drove my heel hard into the side of his helmet. The blow snapped his head sideways and his body followed, coming forward and down, splaying onto the sand of the arena face first.
Far from a roar, the crowd went quiet, unsure about what they had just seen. A man spinning and kicking another man in the head? It was like nothing ever before witnessed in the arena.
I put my foot on his back, and the tip of my sword to his spine between his shoulder blades.
‘Surrender,’ I said in Roman.
His reply was to swing back with his sword in a wide arc, nearly taking my leg off at the ankle. I literally hopped over the attack before diving clear. This was a seasoned gladiator, a man of many victories in the arena, and a man who would rather die than live with the dishonour of submission.
So be it.
Drums began to pound. BOOM! BOOM! A cheer broke out as the Gaul regained his feet. I took a deep breath
and resigned myself to the moment. We circled one another. I let go of my abhorrence, my reluctance to be a part of this bloody sport, and I accepted my new reality. Malbool was right. I would fight.
The Gaul bared his teeth as he rushed forward, swinging his blade in a wide sweeping arc. This blow was intended to cut me in half horizontal to the ground but was in no way a test of my reactions. I folded my knees and leaned back, flattening to the ground in time to watch the blade sail overhead, then bounced back up as quickly as I had dropped. Infuriated, the Gaul swung again, this time cutting down a diagonal. I became the angle. The sword came at the reverse diagonal, and I became that angle too. The man roared in frustration.
Then he surprised me. He motioned to swing again, and, seeing me stay within his range, he changed tact and thrust his shield out. It crashed into my exposed face with force, splitting my lip and momentarily disorienting me. It was then that he swung. The blade whistled towards my head and the roar of the crowd erupted at once as they sensed a kill. They got one.
At that same moment, I dropped to one knee, driving the sharpened tip of my sword straight up, penetrating the soft tissue underneath his jaw. The blade slid easily and quickly, and those watching the Gaul from behind would have seen his helmet raise off his head inexplicably.
The Gaul did not fall. He was held standing by my sword. I stared at his stomach in front of my eyes, and as blood ran down it the warmth of his spent life force showered me and I knew that I was changed forever.
The roar was immense. The crowd cheered like I was a hero as I stayed on one knee.
Then the roar changed almost imperceptibly. It grew louder, and I knew that something was wrong. It was not until I heard another roar that I realised just what it was. This roar was not the roar of the crowd, but the deafening roar of a beast close behind me.
I stood and spun in one action and was met by a huge golden mass crashing into me. I fell back as enormous white teeth were bared. I felt the warm breath of the beast’s rage as I stumbled backwards. My sword was knocked clear of my grasp and it was all I could do to grip the animal’s mane as I fell, trying with all my strength to hold it away from my head.
I lifted both my feet at the same time and drove my knees up to my chest, tucking into a tight ball. I had never fought a lion before; it was not the sort of thing they trained us for at The Facility. I pulled its head down and kicked out at its body moments before I hit the ground hard.
The leverage I had gained on the animal flipped the shaggy mass over backwards, giving me the time I needed to land and roll to my feet. I turned, seeing that the massive beast had righted itself mid-air and landed on its feet, before skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust.
I bolted, straight for the entrance gate. The sound from the crowd told the story. I had a twenty-metre start, and was being run down by the king of beasts. With each stride, the animal gained. I looked to the portcullis gate that was being lowered even as I ran. They were locking me in. I sprinted on, leaping over the open trapdoor in the arena floor from which the lion had emerged only seconds before.
I could hear the beast behind me now breathing in grunts as its body pounded the ground closer and closer. The gate was closing. Closer, it must be nearly ready to pounce. Closer.
I drove my knees hard and pumped my burning thighs with all the energy I had left. Closer.
The gate was almost down, only fifteen feet away. Closer.
Too late, it has to be too late. Closer.
The pounding steps behind me stopped. The beast had leaped and was airborne. The gate slammed shut in front of me. No gap to dive through. No way out. Waiting for the impact.
I saw the lion’s paw slide past my shoulder. I knew jaws were only inches from my neck.
My reaction was automatic. My left foot stepped up on the crossbar of the gate as I reached it and I kicked out hard. My body was propelled upwards, the full speed of my sprint transferred to the new direction, thrusting me upwards.
I leaned back, throwing my head in an arch with all my might, like an Olympic high jumper. I pulled my feet and knees up to my chest, giving the final rotation needed to complete the flip and sail twelve feet in the air before gliding back to the earth, still facing the gate. The lion leaped into the crosses of iron at full speed, and slammed into the gate with sickening force. The massive cat’s paws slid cleanly through the gaps in the gate and the animal took the force of the metal on its open jaws, shattering its gleaming teeth into jagged shards and breaking its face.
I did not wait around to see more. The instant my feet hit the ground, I spun and bolted back towards the centre of the arena, and back to my sword, which was still lodged firmly in the fallen Gaul’s head. As I approached I saw that he wasn’t fallen at all, but was propped up on his knees in a sad parody of himself. The sword protruded from under his chin and acted like a stilt, holding the man’s body up with his arms hanging limply at his side. A large pool of red spread out in a circle around him, and as I approached, not a sound pierced the air.
I had never been more aware of my own footsteps than I was at that moment. The crowd, every one of them, stared in silence. I reached down into the pool of blood and lifted the Gaul’s long, double-edged broadsword. Then I turned and walked back towards the giant cat.
It lay crumpled at the base of the buckled metal gate, awful gurgling sounds escaping its fallen body. A horrible sick moan sent feelings of revulsion deep into my stomach. The once mighty animal pitifully slumped at the rim of the arena. I looked up. I saw the master of the games; I saw the aides who stood by his side; and I saw a hooded figure behind them.
The games master, perhaps forty years old, looked at me appraisingly with thin lips and sparse white strings of hair. He watched me keenly as I strode forward. The hooded figure came to whisper in his ear.
I knew then it was he who was responsible for the lion, he who ordered the gate closed. On this altar of sacrifice, the games master was but a puppet – it was the hooded man who was God.
The pathetic, horrible sounds of the fallen animal intensified as I approached. My eyes never left those of the games master as I came up alongside the lion, lifted my sword high and drove it straight down through the animal’s head. Instantly the sounds ceased.
I pulled the sword free and as the buckled gate in front of me began to rise slowly, deliberately, I marched back into the darkness.
CHAPTER 24
‘How lon you lie?’ asked the small Chinese man with a smile.
‘Ah, can I print here?’ Shaun asked, feeling for his wallet, thankful he still had it on him.
‘You prin fifty cen one prin,’ the man behind the counter continued to smile and nod. Shaun did the math in his head.
‘Yeah, okay. I’ll be back in a second,’ he turned and dashed out of the store.
The door to the taxi was still open, and the engine was running. Vern leaned against the hood with his arms folded. He liked this guy, but he wasn’t going to give him a free ride.
‘This the place that’s going to do you, then?’
‘Yeah, this is fine.’ Shaun was nervous. He still could not believe he had talked the cabbie into this.
‘Well, lead the way,’ Vern held out his hand in an ‘after you’ gesture. He then turned the engine off and locked the cab. He could not believe that the wet, stinky guy had talked him into this. The meter had read, when all was said and done, a cool nine hundred dollars and thirteen cents. That had to be a record as far as Vern was concerned. He would be a hero, probably get his own car from the company, and maybe get in their records book.
He followed the man into the internet cafe and took a seat next to him. Shaun had told him he could not use the credit card in case he was tracked. Vern was suspicious, of course, thinking that maybe he had just helped a criminal escape or something, but the guy had said that he would pay double the meter fare if Vern agreed to be paid by online transfer. Of course this was only possible if the guy paid the money directly into Vern’s personal acc
ount, since he didn’t know the cab company’s bank details.
Convenient.
Vern looked around at the spiky-haired kids and foreign backpackers who populated the internet cafe and felt severely out of place, but he wasn’t going to take this guy’s word about the payment. He would sit next to him and watch the whole thing go through. All he knew was that if he called his bank once the guy said it was done and the money was in there, then he would be two grand richer. Now, that was worth waiting around for.
Shaun logged on to the bank site and went through the process. Less than twenty minutes later, Vern was sitting in his car on his way back to Charlotte wearing the broadest grin he had had in years. He pulled out his cell phone and dialled the most popular number in America: 911.
After being rudely told that it was a felony to abuse the number without a bona-fide emergency, of which Vern’s ‘hunch’ didn’t qualify, he decided to call the operator and ask for the local police. He figured that, hell, he might as well see if there was a reward for finding this guy.
Yep, it was definitely one of his finer moments.
Shaun frantically tapped at the keyboard, scanning the back-ups of his papers online via his private server.
He clicked on a folder called ‘Completed’ and then on a subfolder called ‘Space and Time’. In here were nine papers, all between twenty and thirty pages long.
He thought back to what the voice on the phone had said: ‘We actually move about in time every day.’ Shaun had used that line in just about all of his papers, so that was no real help.
‘The space craft would not be able to travel faster than light.’ Space craft? He often talked about space crafts, but usually just to illustrate some hypothetical concept.
‘Impossible to hold these worm holes open.’ Only three of his papers spoke about these. It was this topic that had caused Shaun to grow so frustrated he eventually abandoned the field of space–time for other areas of interest. The worm holes that could be created could only last a moment, and nothing could hold them open.