‘Ladle,’ said Drust, the password for his plan. Ugo blinked and dashed sweat from his eyes.
‘Time to die,’ Drust urged. Then he sank down as if the last man had mortally wounded him. Ugo remembered the ladle, the way Drust had used it to flatten Mus from winning the cauldron contest. He grinned and keeled over facing the opposite way; now they had almost a circle of vision covered, and looked, lying in the dirty-white, blood-flushed sand, as if they had bled out.
They lay for a long time, feeling the heat, but there was cloud so no glaring sun to broil them. They got back their breathing and it would have been perfect, Drust thought, if they’d had a flask of water or a skin of decent wine.
In the end, he grew worried about Ugo, strained to hear the man’s breathing over the noise but couldn’t. Perhaps he really had bled out; he’d seen the wounds on the German and they looked leaky. So he risked asking and had back a grunt.
‘Still here. Good idea, this – but Silver-Arm and his partner are headed this way. Looking to get to someone on your side.’
Drust could only see two figures, one supporting the other who was clearly done for – it seemed Dyad Silver-Arm and his pair-brother were looking for two easy kills.
‘When they get to a position,’ Drust hissed, ‘take them from behind, like you would a two-as whore. Six them both.’
‘Not honourable,’ he heard Ugo mutter. ‘That’s Dyad and the other is the Gaul, Caccuso. The one they call Mountain of Heads. They are darlings of the crowd.’
‘Six them,’ Drust hoarsed back and hoped the big arse would do it, not rise up and challenge them both.
He did it better than even Drust had hoped; Caccuso stepped over him and when he did Ugo rammed the gladius up between his legs. It must have hurt because Caccuso screamed like a scalded pig and then died, rolling over and over and spraying blood; blue-white coils unfolded from under his kirtle. Ugo was right – it was no way for a hero of the harena to die, but fuck him, Drust thought savagely.
Silver-Arm was fast; he hadn’t won so many contests by not having reactions like a hunted leopard. He spun and struck and Ugo gave a grunt; Drust saw the blade come out of Ugo’s side trailing rubies, and the big German dropped to one knee.
Drust’s leap up took the Greek by surprise; he’d thought only Ugo was faking it and the appearance of a second man almost froze him, long enough for Drust to hammer home a blow into the kidneys, a hard, frantic thrust that slammed the hilt on Dyad’s flesh. The Greek reared away, but still had the presence to block Drust’s second slash with the polished scales that gave him his nickname.
He was finished, though, and knew it. He went to one knee and tried to get up, failed and dropped his sword, went to both knees and bowed his head. ‘Bless me divine number, you who generated gods and men. For the divine number begins with the profound, pure unity until it comes to the holy four; then it begets the mother of all, the all-comprising, all-bounding, the firstborn, the never-swerving, the never-tiring holy ten, the keyholder of all.’
Pythagoras. Drust wondered if there was any truth in it, then drove the point of the gladius down into his neck and the voice gurgled to a close.
‘Six is the only number for you now,’ he said, letting him fall face forward, then risked a swift look to see if anyone was closing on them. The two behind were no danger; one was a limp ragdoll shape on the white sand, the other was struggling with a new pair of fighters.
Ugo got to his feet, straightening up so that the blood sluiced down and dripped off his knees. There was a moment when Drust didn’t want to believe it, but he knew – as he knew Ugo knew when their eyes met.
‘I hope this Pythongrass is not god,’ he growled. ‘I am not good with numbers.’
‘Count breaths,’ Drust said, helping him up by one blood-slathered arm. ‘In, out, in, out – that’s easy.’
‘Last pair,’ Ugo said and his grin was bloody. Drust looked and saw it was true – the last pair had killed their only opponent and were now taking the plaudits of the crowd with raised hands and half turning in circles. There was no one left to worry about except Drust and Ugo.
And Tiridates and his pair-brother Alafai did not seem too bothered.
Ugo blew out blood and spat. ‘I will get it to one,’ he said. ‘Beyond that is beyond me. Burn me well – don’t let me go in the Hole.’
‘Ugo…’
The big German took up the hoplite shield and the trident, stood upright and started forward at a staggering, weaving trot. Alafai saw him and called out to Tiridates, who stopped acknowledging the cheers and turned; even across the distance between them, Drust could see the uncertain eyes behind the enamelled splendour of the cat mask. These were supposed to be long dead, hadn’t been seen upright for a long time. Ladle, Drust thought. No rules…
He charged after Ugo, shuffling through the sand, half weeping as he saw the big German veer sideways, dragging Alafai to one side. They closed and Alafai was ready, sword up, shield up – then Ugo hurled his hoplite shield like a discus, and the man had to block desperately. This was nothing like rules, not anything he had experienced before. By the time he had recovered, Ugo was on him; Alafai thrust his sword into Ugo’s belly, but that was all part of it, Drust knew.
Ugo’s trident took the man in the face, lanced into both eyes and smashed the nose. They went down in a welter of gore and sand and the crowd loved it with massive roars.
Drust felt numb. Tiridates stared his cat mask at the locked bodies, busy kicking themselves out of the world, then he turned murderously towards Drust, waited for him in the centre of the ring, oiled with sweat and other men’s blood. He had no more than a loincloth and leather harness, the cat helmet, the long-handled, wickedly curved khepesh in one hand and a longer, leaf-bladed spear in the other.
Drust was bone-weary. He dropped the shield, which was too heavy for him to lift now, and saw the smile on those too-full lips, left bare where the masked helmet stopped. It was a sneer that said how Tiridates would kill this man – he could imagine no other outcome. Only a handful of nail-gnawed people up in the tiers knew that this was more than a passing bloody fancy to occupy an indolence of afternoon.
Tiridates shifted to keep Drust in front of him. He held himself with an easy confidence, assured in the superiority of his weapons and skill, and if he thought about how Drust, the aged and least of fighters when he’d been in his prime, had got to this point it did not dent his arrogance.
His reach was longer; he was younger and had no debilitating wounds – none at all, Drust saw, beyond a scratch or two a cat might have done. Drust had to stop himself from giggling at that thought; Tiridates still had the helmet, so he must be feeling some heat – but he also had that khepesh, an ugly weapon which he twirled to show his wrist was supple and strong.
Arrogance is good, Drust thought. It replaces thinking…
He continued to drift around the man, maintaining the same distance and letting the tip of his gladius dance, as if he knew how to work some mind-magic, as if he was assessing where he would strike with it. He stopped beside the slumped bodies, never taking his eyes from the cat mask; there was nothing at his feet but the annoyed buzzing of flies.
The sun came through as if Sol Invictus himself took a ringside seat for this final contest. It hammered the sand, even managed to mute the crowd; Drust felt sweat squeeze out all over him, run down his neck, drip down the inside of his arms. Tiridates must be feeling it, he thought, but he was desperate for that to be true – the cat mask stayed blank, the lips under it still smiled and there didn’t seem more than an oiled sheen, as if he was fresh from a massage at the baths.
Then there was a grunt, a small puff of sound, no more. Drust broke his glance to look, saw the bubble form and break on Ugo’s lips, saw the glaucous eye, slitted as if half asleep.
Tiridates leaped, the khepesh lashing out at Drust’s neck. It was a perfectly delivered blow, the weight of Tiridates’ arm right behind the brutal head of the machine as it whirled tow
ards him. The blade is only sharpened on the outside portion of the curved end, Drust told himself. They stopped using it a thousand years ago – it was typical of this flash arse-sponge to be using it now.
It meant you had to get the blow just right to cut, otherwise you were using a massive hammer. That will do, Drust thought – but he was already sliding away from it as it came round, hadn’t forgotten about the spear, and when it came thrusting in Drust went to the outside in a staggering flurry of sand. There was nothing finessed or elegant from him – he felt tired enough just to lie down and gasp – but he slammed the pommel of the gladius against that arm, blocking the blow, before it could even be fully retracted.
It blew numbness into Tiridates’ spear hand; the weapon dropped from fingers that wouldn’t work, the arm simply fell to his side and the lips beneath the cat mask made an O. He was lithe and fast all the same, sprang back, whipped the khepesh again in a flailing scythe to keep Drust away.
Tiridates kept his distance, circling in a crouch while the crowd jeered and howled. Drust was happy to let him; his breath rasped painfully in his throat, black and grey circles seemed to pop at the edges of his vision, and he dashed the sweat out of his eyes with his free hand.
Tiridates flapped his own free arm, willing the blood into it, willing the fingers to work. I should be on him now, Drust thought, when I have the advantage – but he had no such thing. He was barely upright.
When Tiridates was sure his fingers had grip, he came forward in a dancing rush, khepesh held in both hands, but in such a way that Drust had no idea whether he would swing from above his head or from one hip to the other.
He had a choice to move right or left, behind or in front. Moving in front meant a lot of energy he did not have, but it also meant his sword could come into play. Moving behind was less risky but futile.
He allowed Tiridates to strike, closing so that the double-handed blow would hit high up near the man’s clenched fists, having travelled hardly any distance. They collided in a grunting sweaty mass and Drust’s blade slashed across the gap between the base of the cat helmet and his neck. He felt the jar, heard metal grate but no sign of blood – then the blow thumped him in the ribs, lifted him up and sent him spinning sideways into the sand, rolling over the prone bodies.
Tiridates seemed unnerved by what had happened. He danced on the balls of his feet on the far side of the bodies, as if trying to convince the howling crowd – or himself – that he was still in control. There was blood on his neck, Drust saw.
Drust could barely wobble to his feet. The only reason the next blow missed him was because the move was one he knew and he could let the hissing wind of it pass him with only a slight bend, pivoting on one hand – under it he felt something hard and realised it was Ugo’s gladius.
The crowd roared with delight as they separated, Drust now shambling like a head-down bull being led to slaughter. Drust saw figures flitting behind Tiridates and to the left; he risked a look and they were behind him too. For one belly-sinking moment he thought it was the last act, the final snap-finger gesture of a mad boy-emperor who had brought in more pairs to keep the entertainment going. Then he realised it was Dis and all his masked helpers with their hooks and chains, coming to knock the fallen on the head and drag out the clearly dead.
They won’t come near us, he thought dully; this has to be finished by one or the other. He straightened, hefted a gladius in either hand and waited. Tiridates wobbled, the crowd was on its feet, shouting and screaming a war cry of its own, hurling cushions and hats. Tiridates gripped the khepesh with both hands and moved in, fast. Furious and bold – and it might work. Drust tried to will his legs to work, to throw himself out of the way of this boulder with a blade, who baby-stepped over the corpses in his path, teeth bared in a feral grin.
‘Ladle.’
It was a last burbling roar from Ugo and Tiridates yelled, jerking away from Ugo’s thrust, the sickle-sword flailing. It was a weak punch of Ugo’s dagger blade, did no more than slide an inch into the ankle, but it made Tiridates hop and then – seemingly slowly, magnificently – crash to the ground in a spray of sand.
Drust stumbled forward as Tiridates rolled over, and his slash struck something solid, so that Tiridates howled like a burning cat – Drust saw his hand, khepesh and all, whirl through the air and flop in the white sand. Jumping spider, he thought wildly, and jabbed with the gladius again and again. He missed more than he hit, but one of them shoved the point into the base of Tiridates’ remaining, desperate hand, thrown up to defend his face. Drust felt the point grind against bone, and he shoved and twisted the blade while Tiridates screamed.
The push of the gladius, with Drust half-fainting his weight onto it, finally pinned the hand to Tiridates’ face while he struggled. He managed to break away, one hand skewered on his cheek, straight through the cat-face helmet, the gladius waggling where it had been torn from Drust’s flabby grip.
Tiridates was struggling to rise, brought up his right hand to pluck the sword free, then saw the blood-raggled stump and realised he had no hands left to fight with. He knew something was wrong, but he was like the moth lying in a viscous pool, struggling to fly but unable to understand why it couldn’t.
Drust took Ugo’s gladius and knelt beside the Greek, seeing the fear, hearing the whimpering screams. With a grunt, he put the blade to one of the beautiful, astonished eyes under the cat face and leaned on it. Tiridates thrashed for a moment, managed to tear his hand through the webbing of his fingers, the other sword still in his cheek. He waved the freed hand wildly as if asking for mercy, then all his limbs flopped to stillness in the slow flush of blood.
Like a moth crushed into a pool of wine.
* * *
Drust’s last few marbled steps up to the Imperial platform were in a mist. The Emperor took up a prominent position on the podium at the centre of the narrower side of the ring on the north side. He – and the other great and good – were raised above the podium on a dais. There were four columns, each surmounted by a statue of Victory, supporting a canopy and the whole thing was known as the cubiculum – the bedroom – because it permitted the Emperor and his guests to recline like Romans instead of sitting like barbarians.
Senators sat, however – they had their own prized curule seats, signature of their rank, which they could move about – but the Emperor lay in a bisellium, richly ornamented and with room for two people, although only one person ever occupied it. Except for today. This was where Drust would plant his sweating arse, once he had stumbled through the marble and porphyry, gilded tesserae, the orichalcum and the polite mouse-scuttering of applause.
The applauders in their broad and narrow purple stripes turned in their curule chairs and politely called out blessings as he passed; the guards were stolid in polished gilding and only their eyes moved – save one.
He was the most polished, most gilded of all, with his crested helmet tucked under one arm. He had fashionably styled hair and a twist of a smile on his lips as he held out his hand. Drust stared blankly; they had cleaned him up as best they could, stuck a fresh tunic on and bound his head wound so that he had a clean bandage, now slightly stained. He looked like a hero and felt like a dog turd.
‘Some fight, I see,’ Honoratus declared and had appreciative chuckles. Drust saw the clean, smelled the slight whiff of hair oil, was dazzled by the polish and personae of all these golden Palace Rats, and could not think of anything else through the strange veils of mist that seemed to be draped on him.
‘Some don’t,’ he answered, and Honoratus, Prefect of the Praetorians, lost his smile, twisted though it was. He gestured sternly at Drust, who realised he wanted the battered leather scroll case, supposedly with the permitted petitions from Drust and his friends. Drust clutched it more protectively to him and Honoratus scowled.
‘Let it be,’ said a voice, gentle yet firm. ‘He did not wade through all that blood simply to get close enough to kill me.’
‘Might just have br
ibed a Praetorian,’ said another, and the Emperor turned to gently chide the man, calling him Philostratus as he did so. Drust had no idea who the Greek was, but the boy-emperor kept a lot of philosophising Greeks around. He liked this one if only because of Honoratus’s blood-bag face at the comment.
Boy-emperor. It was used scathingly by those who thought him too young and unlikely ever to be out from under his mother. He was trying hard to grow chin-hair on a bland boy’s face, which looked like a child’s drawing on an egg. He looked quizzically at Drust and stroked his chin as if he had the beard of Socrates. Then he indicated for him to sit, another great honour besides the monstrous purse, the laurel wreath, the symbolic victory palm branch and the wooden sword of freedom.
For this fleeting moment they were head to head, close as brothers.
‘Here, give me your petitions.’
‘Not petitions,’ Drust heard himself say and then told him what the case contained and who was behind it all. Watched the dark-olive skin – not as mavro as the others in his line – turn the colour of creamed wheat. Drust sympathised – no good thing to learn of your ma’s perfidy; he sat and wobbled while Alexander plucked one scroll and read it, then took out another. Drust was aware of the onlookers, at how puzzled and uncertain they were. The Praetorians were the same; there was something wrong, but they had no idea what and did not want to get foot-stamped more by this boy with the power of life and death.
The Emperor finally looked sideways at Drust and called out, seemingly to no one at all, ‘Bring wine – more water in it.’
A cup was thrust into his hand. Drust sat and sipped – the wine was Falernian and snow-cooled; he wished they had ignored the instruction on the water, especially when Alexander finally raised his head and looked at him.
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