Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  Arishat ignored him and staggered past on wobbly legs, making an unstable, lumbering beeline for the General and his friends.

  ‘Do you have the knives, girl, do you have them?!’ the General hissed as she approached, his eyes wide and white as sun-bleached sea shells on a black sand beach, his heart jumping with such frenetecism in his chest that he was not sure how it had not yet exploded.

  Arishat gulped, and then nodded, biting her lower lip with such a force of fear that her teeth began to draw blood. Tears were rimming her eyes, and she looked as if she could barely maintain her grip on the amphora any longer, so frantically were her hands trembling.

  ‘There are th-, th-, thirteen in h-, h-, here,’ she managed to stammer.

  The gladiators knelt down together in a huddle, with apprehension and anticipation as stifling as a raging desert sandstorm thickening the air.

  ‘My friends, we are about to do this for love, for honour, for brotherhood … and for freedom,’ N’Jalabenadou whispered solemnly, extending a hand straight out in front of him.

  Oenomaus, Spartacus and the ten other gladiators who had pledged loyalty to them all placed their hands in a stack on the General’s. Crixus, meanwhile, watched with keen interest from his corner.

  ‘For love, for honour, for brotherhood, and for freedom,’ they all whispered in unison.

  ‘Arishat, when I say so, throw this amphora down and smash it,’ N’Jalabenadou said to the girl. ‘Then run as fast as you can for the door. Get out of the room before any guards can get out, and close and bar the doors behind you. Only open it when you hear one of our voices telling you to. None of these guards must escape to alert the others.’

  ‘Wait,’ Arishat said, colour returning to her cheeks as her own courage was bolstered by that of the gladiators. ‘Grab my leg, General, grab it!’

  ‘What?! Why?!’

  ‘I’ll draw them away from the door. It’ll give me a better chance to make it out and close it before any of them can escape!’

  The General smiled knowingly and nodded his head.

  ‘Clever girl,’ he whispered. ‘Clever girl.’

  With that, he shot out his hand and clamped it onto her calf.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed abruptly. ‘Guards, help me! One of these savages is laying his hands on me!’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sakes!’ Nonus shouted. ‘What’s gotten into these blasted slaves today?! All right Titus, come on! Uncoil the whip, I’ve fucking had it with these mutts now, fucking had it with them and their shit!’

  Titus grinned evilly and uncoiled the rawhide whip he kept at his side, and both of them began striding towards Arishat and the General’s group of gladiators, with violent intent scrawled blatantly across their faces.

  ‘Take your hands off the slut, you scum!’ Titus snarled. ‘You’re about to get the thrashing of your life for this fuckery!’

  ‘Get ready brothers,’ the General whispered as the guards approached. ‘There can be no hesitation. Speed and efficiency are key here.’

  ‘And you, you little whore, after I’ve finished thrashing this lot you’re going to suck long and hard on my—’

  Arishat suddenly spun about, and with an ear-piercing scream of pure hatred and rage that emanated from the very deepest core of her being, she flung the heavy amphora right into Titus’s face. The move was completely unexpected, and the distance between them was far too close for him to do anything but gasp with shock in the split-second between him seeing the projectile hurtling towards him and it smashing into his face.

  Everything from that splinter in time onwards seemed to happen in slow motion. The heavy amphora exploded as it struck Titus’s face, and the impact sent him stumbling backward in shock, causing him to drop his spear. While this was happening, the gladiators scrambled to their feet with a combined roar of primal aggression, and Arishat sprinted on her bare feet through the explosion – the explosion of flying porcelain shards, water, and naked, sharpened butcher’s knives.

  Nonus froze up as his mind tried to process what came out of the exploding amphora. He saw the brightness of metal flashing against the light, and heard steel clattering on the floor, and a look of complete confusion blanked his long face for a drawn-out moment – a look which morphed rapidly into one of absolute horror and panic as he saw the gladiators lunging for the knives.

  ‘Oh fuck!’ he howled as he realised what was unfolding, with sudden terror raising his voice in pitch. ‘Oh fucking fuck!’

  Then, as the General had promised, hell was unleashed.

  Nonus spun around just in time to see Spartacus in front of him, brandishing a ten-inch butcher’s knife.

  ‘Who’s the cur now, you gutter rat?!’ Spartacus roared.

  Nonus swung his whip with futile desperation at Spartacus’s face, but the Thracian was swift and agile, and he sprang back, snapping up his left arm to take the brunt of the blow. The whip coiled around Spartacus’s forearm, and as it did, he jerked his arm back, yanking Nonus forward. With his right arm he stabbed with a lightning-fast strike, burying the butcher’s knife to its hilt in Nonus’s throat. Nonus fell to his knees, grasping at his throat and making horrid gasping and gargling sounds as he drowned in a froth of his own blood.

  At that moment, however, another guard lunged at Spartus, his gladius perfectly poised for a thrust directly into his chest, and the gladiator had nothing in his hands with which to defend himself, nor any space or time in which to dodge the imminent attack; despair came crashing in a powerful instant through Spartacus’s core. He had started this rebellion but would not live to see the outcome of it. All he could do was twist his body and drop his hands in a hasty, futile attempt to stave off the savage thrust, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth as he prepared for the stab of agony that would accompany the blade’s impalement of his torso … yet the pain never came.

  Stunned and surprised, Spartacus opened his eyes and looked down, and saw the point of the blade hovering a mere inch from his chest. And as his eyes traced a passage down the length of steel, and moved onto the hand and arm gripping it, he saw a big, honey-coloured hand holding that arm in place.

  The guard, who was just as surprised as Spartacus that his attack had been thwarted, looked up and saw Crixus standing over him, grasping his forearm in a powerful one-handed grip. The big Carthaginian’s face was an expressionless mask, but a dangerous fire blazed brightly in his dark eyes. In a swift, fluid manoeuvre Crixus struck the guard’s wrist with his free hand, breaking the man’s arm and causing him to howl out with pain and drop his gladius.

  Spartacus sprang forward and snatched up the weapon, while Crixus slammed his huge right hand over the guard’s flabby throat. Crixus clamped his fingers down, the powerful digits snapping shut around the man’s throat like a bear trap slamming closed, and then he started to lift the guard up off the ground with one hand, staring with a pitiless gaze into the guard’s bulging eyes as the man’s face turned crimson and his swelling tongue jutted obscenely from his mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ Spartacus grunted to Crixus as the big gladiator held the guard in his one-handed throttling grip, the man’s fat, pasty legs dangling and kicking helplessly in the air.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for years,’ Crixus rasped as he tightened his merciless grip on the hapless guard’s throat.

  Spartacus stopped in his tracks, staring with utter surprise at his fellow gladiator, who had finally broken his five-year silence.

  Behind him the dazed Titus, whose face was half-caved-in from the force of the amphora smashing against it, saw armed gladiators attacking panicking guards all over the hall. He knew that flight was the only chance he had of surviving this massacre, so he turned and bolted in the direction of the doors – which slammed shut in his face just as he reached them.

  ‘Let me out!’ he screamed, banging desperately on the rough wood, his voice hoarse with terror. ‘Fucking let me out!’

  ‘You’re a pig,’ a familiar female voice hissed through
the narrow gap between the doors. ‘And you’ve just entered the slaughterhouse.’

  On the other side of the door Arishat smiled even as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Titus turned around slowly, his knees hopelessly weak beneath him, panic gushing through his veins, his back pressed against the doors. Everywhere, gangs of gladiators, armed with kitchen knives and weapons they had taken from the dead, were killing off the last few remaining guards. As the General had predicted, once the battle had started all of the gladiators had joined, even those who had previously said they would not participate; blood was sprayed across the walls and was already running thick on the ground.

  It did not take long for the gladiators to finish off the guards; after a minute or two every guard but Titus was dead, and not one gladiator was seriously wounded, despite all of them being unarmoured. The gladiators were able, at this point, to discard their butcher’s knives and arm themselves with weapons taken from the fallen guards.

  Titus, with blood streaming down his swollen face from his broken nose, knocked-out teeth and split-open lips, watched as the pack of gladiators advanced with slow menace on him. Their eyes shone with an insatiable desire for vengeance, and the bloodied knives, spears and gladiuses they carried were stark beacons in the torchlight, illuminating a long and twisted passage that would take his lost soul from this world to the gates of Hades.

  ‘Please,’ he whimpered as tears started to roll down his chubby, stubble-rough cheeks. ‘Please, in the names of all the gods I’m begging you, I’m begging you, please, please spare me…’

  ‘Damn right it’s your turn to beg,’ Oenomaus rumbled menacingly. ‘So get down on your knees and beg, you bastard. Beg for your miserable life.’

  Titus fell to his knees, weeping loudly and plaintively. His hands and arms shook with a violent, palpable terror, and a gush of warm urine ran down his left thigh.

  ‘Oh please, please, great and glorious and merciful gladiators, oh please in the names of all the gods, oh please, I beg you, I beg you, please be merciful, I beg you!’ he cried, his voice tremulous with fear.

  ‘A filth like you deserves no mercy,’ the General growled flatly. ‘We will tear your limbs off, one by one. This is how you will meet your Roman gods: limbless, and in the end, headless.’

  ‘No, oh no! Oh by the gods, please, no! No! Don’t—’

  Spartacus sprang suddenly forward, and with one vicious but precise swipe of his gladius he slit Titus’s throat. The cut was deep and wide, and Titus’s throat opened up like a grotesquely yawning mouth, spraying arterial blood all over the oaken doors behind him as he flopped onto the ground, shuddering and grasping with rapidly weakening hands at the fatal wound the Thracian had dealt him.

  ‘Die now Roman,’ Spartacus muttered, ‘and let your evil pollute this earth no more. Here is the clean, quick death that you do not deserve, but which is given freely by me, who you so grievously wronged.’

  He then looked up at his fellow gladiators, his eyes ablaze with the dazzling fire of righteousness.

  ‘We are not like them!’ he shouted, pointing his sword at the dying Titus. ‘We will not torture, we will not maim for the sake of vengeance or amusement, and we will not enslave anyone! Do you hear me, brothers?! We will take our freedom, we will fight against the tyranny of Rome and her rich masters, and we will enact justice where it has previously been denied – but we will never, ever become like them! We are free men – almost, my friends, almost – but when we win the next battle, when we break out of this ludus, we will be, above all, free men of honour! Free men who fight for all that is good in this world! We will free all slaves! We will end the tyranny of power, and we will fight for the oppressed against the might of those who would crush them beneath their golden heels! We will be champions of the poor, of the downtrodden, of the slaves, of anyone who has been beaten down, broken and crushed by the black might of this evil empire! Together, we will stand up against their cruelty and greed, we will defy them, and what is more, WE WILL TRIUMPH!’

  A mighty cheer erupted from the gladiators, and all of them raised their weapons to salute Spartacus.

  ‘To Spartacus!’ they roared. ‘Spartacus, the Liberator!’

  ‘My friends, my brothers, my comrades!’ N’Jalabenadou interrupted with a booming bellow. ‘Today’s battle is not yet won! These are only ten of the forty or so guards in this ludus. We took these ones unawares, and the battle was easily won … but we cannot become overconfident from this one small victory. When we leave this hall we will face a much tougher battle, and some of us will certainly die. Out there, out there in this labyrinth that is Batiatus’s ludus, there are far more guards, as well as archers with bows hiding in the dark, who can pick us off from a distance. And let us not forget the former gladiators, like Maharbaal and perhaps Lucius Sertorius, if he is here, who are formidable opponents, who may likely fight to the death to defend their employer. We must strike quickly, and we must be thorough and efficient. None must leave this ludus alive. If word gets out, they will send an army against us – an army we cannot defeat – and they will crucify every last one of us.’

  ‘The General is right,’ Spartacus said. ‘Like Viridovix said earlier, Rome hates nothing with more vehemence than a slave revolt. They will send an army, and they will make sure we are punished most severely for this. Thus, as brutal as it is, we must strike hard and fast first. Nobody must escape tonight but us and the slaves we liberate.’

  ‘What about the servants?’ Oenomaus asked. ‘They ain’t never done us no wrong.’

  ‘He is right,’ the General said. ‘The servants are innocent of any crime. We cannot simply butcher them.’

  Spartacus nodded and considered this for a few moments.

  ‘Yes, this is true. Like I said, we are not like the masters, and nor will we ever become like them. So, I suppose we will have to capture the servants and imprison them in our cells. We can give them all the available food and water from the kitchens. Someone will stop by this ludus within a few days, probably within a week at the most; Batiatus has plenty of friends and traders stopping by all the time. The servants will be discovered and set free before any of them are in danger of starving to death, and we will be long gone by that time, on our way to distant lands, where the Roman Legions will never find us.’

  ‘And the masters?’ Oenomaus asked.

  Spartacus’s eyes narrowed and he gritted his teeth.

  ‘We kill them. We kill them all.’

  Crixus now walked up to the three leaders of the rebellion, armed with a spear he had taken from a fallen guard.

  ‘Crixus,’ the General said to the towering Carthaginian. ‘Are you with us?’

  Crixus grinned abruptly, and a murmur of surprise rippled through the gathered gladiators; it was the first time any of them had ever seen any form of expression on the heavily scarred warrior’s face.

  ‘Damn right I’m with you,’ he gnarled, still smiling. It was also the first time any of them had ever heard his voice. ‘My whole cursed life has been leading up to this moment! Let’s tear the masters’ lungs out and stick their fucking heads on spikes!’

  The gladiators all cheered, and the General grinned savagely and gave Crixus a short, tight hug.

  ‘It is good to have such a powerful warrior on our side, Crixus. We are grateful for your presence and loyalty.’ He turned to the door and rapped on it with the pommel of his gladius. ‘Arishat! Arishat, are you there?’ he shouted.

  ‘I am here,’ she whispered through the slim gap between the doors.

  ‘It is done. We are victorious.’

  The gladiators heard the heavy beam being removed from the lock outside, and the doors creaked open. Arishat came in and gasped with shock when she saw the extent of the gore and carnage before her.

  ‘I am sorry that you have to look upon such a sight,’ Spartacus said softly. ‘But such is the price we must pay for freedom.’

  Arishat rushed over to him and embraced him tightly.
r />   ‘Is it over?’ she gasped between sobs. ‘Is it really over?’

  ‘No, my dear, it is not. It has only just begun,’ the General murmured darkly. ‘The gutters of this ludus will run red with blood before this night is over.’

  ‘That is the truth, girl,’ Spartacus added. ‘But you, at least, are now free. Whatever else happens, you are free.’ He handed her one of the butcher’s knives. ‘If we fail, if we are defeated, they will crucify every one of you household slaves to make an example for any other slaves who may think of rebelling. With that in mind, take this knife; its blade is sharp and true. If we lose and are defeated and they come for you, place the point of the blade right here between your ribs and push hard.’ He tapped a point on his left side, between his ribs, before continuing. ‘The pain will be sharp and intense, but short. You will die quickly, and in a far more dignified and painless manner than being gang-raped and then crucified. But if we win, you will walk out of these gates as a free woman, and you can cast that blade aside and never need fear violence from anyone again.’

  Arishat took the blade with trembling hands, and nodded, biting her quivering lower lip.

  ‘Brothers! Gather around me!’ the General cried. ‘Listen carefully. This is the plan, and these are the steps we must follow if we are to succeed. Now that we are armed and have defeated the first wave of guards, our next objective is to get to the armoury and get ourselves properly armoured in our arena gear, with our arena weapons. These are kept locked up in a warehouse at the other end of the ludus, and it is to there that will we now proceed. When we are suitably armed and armoured, we can enact phase two of the plan. Before we go, place your hands on mine, brothers.’ The General extended his hand, and all of the gladiators placed theirs on his. ‘For love, for honour, for brotherhood, and for freedom!’ he cried.

  ‘For love, for honour, for brotherhood, and for freedom!’ they all echoed in unison, and with that they stood up, and on bare feet they crept out into the dark passage, with sharp weapons in their hands and the diamond-bright glint of vengeance and liberty in their eyes.