Paulinus sighed and laid down his pen. He locked the journal away and took a clean tunic and a toga from his pack. He spread them out on Tullius’s bed (he doubted it would be occupied tonight) to let the wrinkles shake out. He had other clothes at his uncle’s house, but he didn’t much want to run into Gentilius until his confidential morning appointment was concluded.
* * *
Correus and Flavius made a leisurely breakfast at the Shield and Pilum, and then lounged in the inn’s small garden, making army small talk with the proprietor. They awaited Paulinus’s return. He had apparently risen with the birds. He strolled in shortly, his freckled face and thin form looking older than usual in the purple-bordered folds of a carefully draped toga. Correus, remembering his own struggles with that garment, was grateful for the comparative simplicity of parade uniform, distinguished now by the silver Valorous Conduct torque that hung against the gilded scale, just beneath the centurion’s insigne. That had come after Jorunnshold, and Correus wouldn’t have traded a senatorial toga for it.
It was not a festival day, but games of one sort or another could generally be found somewhere in Rome. A gladiatorial show was scheduled for the Theater of Pompey, and Flavius’s eyes were bright and excited. The theater was reasonably crowded – as young Julius had said, there was little enough to do in that teeming city. Not enough honest work to go around, Correus thought, watching the avid faces. Free bread and free games kept an unstable population quiet, and gave them a chance to feel at one with their betters – the senatorial and equestrian boxes were also full. The crowd chattered among themselves and bought sausages and hot drinks to take off the winter chill. It looked like rain, and the canopy had been stretched out to shield the tiers of seats from any downpour. A troupe of acrobats was tumbling about in the freshly raked sand, largely ignored by their audience. The crowd was waiting for the real thing.
The Emperor was not in attendance today, and the main box was occupied by the sponsor, a City official with a harassed expression who conferred with the arena master every few minutes, then clapped his hands finally in irritation when he saw the crowd begin to grow restless. A horn sounded and the acrobats cartwheeled out. The gladiators came up from the gates under the stands, blinking in the sudden light, and saluted the sponsor with the cocky bravado that delighted the crowd. A favorite gladiator could grow rich from the presents flung his way by his admirers. A woman in the next box, curled up comfortably on cushions with a box of sweets, flung a silver bracelet at one of the men. He picked it up on his sword point with a swagger and a rakish bow of thanks. Then a shower of coins and flowers rained down around them, as the crowd cheered its pets. These were the professionals, the men of the gladiators schools, who, if no one wanted to pay for a fight to the death, might even live to get their wooden sword – the token of freedom. There were twenty pairs scheduled to fight today, net-and-trident men against sword-and-shield; Samnites with short swords against Thracians with scimitars. Some had been prisoners of war, some had been sold into the arena, others condemned there. A few were gentlemen’s sons, fallen into debt and with no friends who thought them worth saving. The night before, they had been honored at a banquet held less for their benefit than for that of the admirers who came to rub shoulders with their favorites, and for the gamblers who looked them over with an eye to the odds. Now the gladiators came to make good their reputations, or to die.
Behind the trained gladiators of the schools came other, less valuable bodies, and these were the surely doomed ones: prisoners sent to die in droves at the hands of others similarly condemned, or to be torn apart by the fangs and horns of caged beasts whose furious screaming could be heard from the pens under the arena. Correus found himself studying his brother’s eager face; then he watched Paulinus’s impassive one, bent over a sketchbook with a piece of charcoal, drawing quick, vicious portraits from the crowd… Paulinus was looking anywhere except at those doomed faces below him: frightened faces or resigned, some glassy-eyed and staring stupidly. These last, knowing themselves without hope, had used the banquet to drink themselves into numbness.
The grim parade made the circuit of the half-circle floor and disappeared again, the arena “mercuries” prodding the laggards on their way. Two remained behind – a net-and-trident man and a sword-and-shield opponent. The arena master looked toward the sponsor, who nodded and let a handkerchief fall from one plump hand. The games had begun. The sword-and-shield man circled the other warily. The net-and-trident fighter wore only a loincloth and shin greaves, while the swordsman was helmeted and heavily armed behind his shield – but none of his equipment would do any good if he let himself be caught in that flying net. Betting usually ran heavily on the net-and-trident. The first combat proved true to form. The net flew out and the sword-and-shield man thrashed in it like a caught bird, while the crowd screamed “Habet! Habet!” The sword came out through the net awkwardly and slashed at the net-man’s legs. It caught him on the ankle just below the greave and drew blood, and the net-man thrust his trident down, pinning the other’s sword arm to the sand. The net-man bowed to the sponsor, and then to the cheering crowd that was shouting for his opponents blood. The net-man gravely asked leave to spare him, and they cheered him again, while the fallen fighter in the net lay motionless, accepting his fate. That also was part of the game.
The sponsor appeared to consult the crowd and the Vestal Virgins in their private box, then graciously turned a white hand upward. The net-man jerked the trident out of the sand and the fallen gladiator rose, stumbling a little as the pain of his lacerated arm hit him. One of the mercuries took a step forward with the iron hook they used to drag the dead or badly wounded away, and the net-man hissed something at him. The mercury backed off again and the sword-man managed to salute and walk to the gates. The net-man walked beside him, carefully avoiding touching him – a gladiator left the arena on his feet or on the mercuries’ hooks; there was no in-between. But something in the set of the net-man’s shoulders made Correus wonder if they were friends… and what would have happened if the sponsor had bought a death fight.
The mercuries raked the sand out, sprinkling some fresh sand over the blood. Flavius beckoned a passing food seller over and brought a plate of sausages.
He settled back, munching sausages, eyes bright as the horns signaled the next fight – two pairs, Samnites and Thracians, with the victors to fight each other. Besides the trumpet player, a trio of musicians on curving horns and a movable water organ made incongruous accompaniment to the battle, while the arena master hovered to one side shouting instructions at his charges. Their faces were hidden under gilded, elaborately decorated helmets with grillwork that came clear over the face, like cavalry parade helmets. It must make it hard, Correus thought, not to be able to see your opponent’s eyes, and then he decided perhaps it was better not to see his face at all if he was a man you had eaten bread with the night before. The fight began.
“Marvelous style,” Flavius said. “Look at that one, with the Thracian shield. He’s going to get him! Marvelous style! They’re wasting him, so early in the show!”
The Thracian got his curved sword in under the Samnite’s guard and hacked at the back of his leg, hamstringing him. The Samnite went down with a crash of shield and armor, and his helmet broke open and rolled away. Correus saw that it was the man who had caught the silver bracelet in the opening parade, the crowd’s favorite.
Flavius chuckled. “I told you. Someone’s going to get a beating for that. Look at our sponsor – he’s seething.”
The sponsor, an aedile who wanted to be a praetor, and was counting on a popular series of games to pave the way, glowered furiously at the arena master while the crowd shouted for the fallen man’s blood, the woman who had thrown him the bracelet shrieking as loud as anyone. He was a favorite, but he had fallen too quickly, and they turned on him like Furies. They were angry now, and an angry crowd was dangerous. The Chief Vestal gave the sponsor a long look and a minute flick of her eyebrow,
and stretched out a white hand, palm down. The aedile echoed the gesture. The Samnite had been doomed as soon as he was hamstrung. It was a wound that healed badly and rendered a man unfit for further arena work. The aedile would have had to pay the cost of losing him anyway. The Thracian fighter struck the man through the throat while the crowd cursed him for a sham and a coward as he died. The mercuries, dressed as the godly messenger and guide of the dead, dragged the still-twitching body away with iron hooks, leaving a broad scarlet smear across the sand, while the music played on, harshly triumphant.
I’m going to be sick, Correus thought. I’m going to disgrace myself. He bit hard on his lower lip and willed his nausea to subside. A case of battle shakes was one thing; but no one got sick in a nice safe box in the arena. He was the freak, Correus thought, not Flavius and all these other people, not even Appius, who disliked the games but could sit through them without throwing up. It wasn’t just the death or the blood, he thought; there was a certain uncomfortable excitement in that, and his mouth twisted as he admitted as much to himself. It was his slave days, pursuing him even here. There, but for the grace of the gods and Appius Julianus, might be Correus. The mercuries raked clean sand across the sticky smear of blood, erasing the last trace of the man who had been Rome’s pet a moment ago. And it was the crowd; by letting that blood-spawned excitement touch him, he became part of it, part of a mindless, faceless thing that fed on fear. And it was easy, so easy, to let that happen. He looked at his brother with a new understanding. Flavius couldn’t help himself. The blood and that hot, choking excitement stirred something in him, something that was better left dormant… something insidious, that touched the soul. Seneca, the philosopher who had been a friend of Appius’s, had said that watching the games ate away a man’s soul, and rotted it. Correus closed his eyes, willing the smell of blood and the harsh, exultant music away.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat that way while the battles fought themselves out to a shrieking climax on the hot sand below him… but it was long enough for Paulinus to elbow him sharply.
“Stop it!” Paulinus hissed. “You wanted to come, you fool. And there are people here who know you!”
Correus knew what he meant. His position was tenuous anyway, because of his birth. A public display of revulsion at the games could brand him as a radical and sink a career before it was started. He opened his eyes and stared at the arena, while Flavius gave him an ironic look.
“A mite squeamish for a man who’s supposed to be a soldier, aren’t you, brother?”
Correus didn’t bother to deny it. They often knew what the other was thinking. It was part of that bond that held them so unwillingly together. “It’s a different war,” he said, tight-lipped, and turned his eyes back again to the sand.
The combats of skill had ended, and the crowd pelted its favorites again with coins and jewelry as they made their final parade, managing a swagger and flourish even now, despite the mild dose of opium the arena physician would have given the wounded ones to get them on their feet again. There were more intimate gifts as well, discreetly sealed notes delivered by some lady’s page, and tucked into an upturned gilded helmet carried jauntily under one arm. Fear, pain, mourning for the dead – all were hidden. The crowd would have none of those, and it was the crowd that would call out life or death the next time they fought.
Then they were gone, and the crowd settled back with a little expectant shiver. Now. Now was the time of slaughter. The condemned came out through the dark doorway beneath the stands: the murderers, the thieves, the religious misfits, driven by hot irons and whips, most of them armed with unfamiliar weapons, or no weapons at all. The crowd licked its lips.
They fought blindfolded with spears, or tied together in threes, or unarmed on horses shod with iron spiked shoes, and they fought badly, comically, while the crowd howled with glee. And when the dead had been pulled away, and the victors stood weaving and terrified in the bloody sand, the beasts were let loose. Lions and bears and wild boars, starved into madness.
Correus was never sure when it was he ceased to watch, deliberately shifting his eyes out of focus so that the arena below became a blur and the screams were the faraway sounds of nightmare. Flavius caught his breath beside him and leaned forward, gripping the stone railing of the box, carried on a blood-tide of fear and a hot, pounding excitement that was overpowering. Paulinus watched them both with the uncanny feeling that he was seeing not two men, but one, and each was a shadow cast by the other. They were too drawn into whatever private land they walked to notice him, and he took up his charcoal and began to draw them: Correus, unfocused eyes gazing into nothing, aquiline features and sharp-angled brow blank as granite, hair ruffled slightly in a wind that smelled of blood; hands, unknowingly twisting and twisting at the silver torque that hung against the golden parade scale. And beside him, a dark-side mirror image, Flavius… eyes bright and glittering, mouth slightly open… avid, eager, lost in the blood.
XVII The Outcast
Ingald watched the riders streaming in; a half-dozen of them this time, warriors all, with their gray-haired chief at the center. The horses snorted and blew out clouds of steam as they were reined in; the riders were heavily cloaked against a chilly wind with a promise of snow in it. There was snow on the ground already, from a recent fall, and the man who tried to outrun winter from hold to hold at this time of year had serious business in mind. Since he had learned of the first of these visitors to Nyallshold, Ingald had made it his business to be in and around the chieftain’s hall as much as possible – with Ranvig snapping at his heels like a herd dog. It was almost midwinter, and any Semnone lords whose trails were not snow-choked would be gathering in Nyallshold for the solstice.
Fiorgyn and her women came out of the great hall with cups of mead to greet the guests as thralls saw to the horses. At the sight of Ingald lounging near the gates, Fiorgyn shot him an unpleasant look. He turned away with a smile, back to the guest house. If he got the chance, he was going to show that lordly bitch a thing or two, but she was a small matter now. With Rome behind him, he wouldn’t need Fiorgyn. But without Rome… the wind drove through the open court in an icy blast, and Ingald shivered in spite of himself, remembering the Roman commander’s cold look.
In the great hall, Ranvig spat in the rushes on the floor of the Companions’ chamber and voiced his own opinions in a tone of sheer fury, while Kari mocked him gently with the opening harp notes of a Hero Tale.
“You – you have known Nyall all his life—” Ranvig motioned with his oddly set eyes at the partition that divided the Companions’ chamber from the main hall. Low voices could be heard through the withy and plaster. “Cannot you make him see?”
“He sees,” Kari said. He ran his hands idly along the strings now, a thoughtful whisper of sound. “He is not chieftain of the Semnones – and I am thinking maybe of the Confederation of the Suevi by now – for nothing. But he has this notion that we should be fighting Rome and not each other.”
“Then he had best put Ingald’s head on a pole!” Ranvig snapped. “What is the use of bending the Suevi chiefs to his hand, and leaving Ingald to carry tales all winter to our own lords?”
“What sort of tales?”
Ranvig’s crooked face was still furious. “That Rome cannot be beaten. That Rome is not so bad a master when a tribe once puts its head in the yoke. That the lands-across-the-river grow prosperous under Rome’s hand. Those tales! Is that enough?”
“More than enough for me,” Kari said. “But I am not the chieftain.”
Ranvig picked up a frayed bridle strap that someone had begun to mend, and turned it in his hands. “Would you want to be?”
“I am half-blood,” Kari said. “I couldn’t be.”
“So is Nyall,” Ranvig said, surprised. “I did not think that was a law with the Semnones.”
“Nyall’s half is Gaul, and they are kin to us. My half is Roman.” Kari raised his dark brows expressively. “That makes all the difference. There
was even some talk that I should not take my spear with the other boys of the tribe when the time came – my parents were old when I was born, and both dead by then – but Nyall’s father, the old chief, spoke for me.”
Ranvig returned doggedly to his first question. “If you were not a Roman woman’s son… if you were of the Kindred… would you wish to be chieftain?”
“No.” Kari, who had stretched himself out on the straw of one of the beds, raised himself up on an elbow and looked at Ranvig. “Why are you asking?”
Ranvig fished among the jumble on the table for a bronze rivet and began to mend the bridle strap. “Because I would not either, even if I were still hunting in my own lands. Although I might have tried to keep it from Ingald. As it is…”
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