by Talbot Mundy
Trumpets again, and some one swung the dungeon gate, admitting a glare of dazzling sunlight. Slaves passed the hot irons and Nepos’ men drove out the prisoners, flourishing the irons behind them and thrusting at those who were last. The great gate swung shut and for a minute the two score looked about them, blinking at the rows and rows of faces. Then the two slaves pulled the trap and jumped clear, one of them missing his grip. He was caught, dragged down and worried by the famished dogs that poured out of the trap yelping for their first meal in nearly a week.
The crowd looked on in silence until two of the prisoners, mad with terror, ran as if to throw themselves before Pompey and beg to be spared. A dozen dogs gave chase, and there began to be a snarl of passion, punctuated by the shrill, excited screams of women, as the Romans felt the vice of it take hold of them. There was a choking roar when half a dozen dogs pulled down the runners; and the roar grew to a din that drowned the yelping when the other dogs all raced toward the prisoners who stood grouped near the dungeon-gate.
It was not over soon, nor easily. The dogs dragged some of the frenzied wretches to the sand and worried them, but there were six dogs to a man, all fighting for the victim’s throat and stomach. Two or three men fought the dogs off with their fists. One slew a dog by choking him, and with the carcass guarded himself desperately until a great brute caught him by the arm and pulled him over backward. Utterly bereft of reason by the horror of it as another fifty dogs were loosed out of a trap, the remaining prisoners ran for their lives, until the last one went down under twenty dogs and the two packs started fighting one another.
Men is masks then, representing the infernal regions, came out of a door beside the spoliarium to drag away the mangled bodies. Fifty men in line, with whips and torches, drove the dogs back through the hole they came from, and a dozen men with buckets scattered fresh sand where the blood lay. Then again the crowd stared at an empty rectangle of sand and two slaves, clinging to their pegs, stood by a trap-door facing Pompey’s box. There was a gasp of expectation now. Each turn was always more absorbing than the last.
Nepos had herded fifty men and women into the inclosure behind the gate and they were begging to be told what fate awaited them. A woman fainted; they revived her with a hot iron. A man tried to kill a guard who mocked him, so they tore his muscles with the hooks and then, because he could not stand — or would not — they lashed him with cords to two others and so sent him into the arena when the door swung wide.
This time the slaves released three maddened elephants that raced around the Circus before their little blood-shot eyes saw human beings at their mercy — beings of the same sort that had tortured them for three days in the darkened cage. There was a havoc then that pleased Rome to the marrow. Men were tossed over the barrier and thrown back to be finished off. One monster seized a woman in its trunk and beat her head off against the barrier beneath the Vestals’ seats. Another chased a woman all around the Circus, seeming to enjoy her screams, and, when she fell at last, knelt slowly on her, as if kneeling in salute to Pompey. The crowd took that for an omen and yelled —
“Pompeius Magnus Imperator!”
There was no capturing those elephants. The maddened brutes were ready to face torches — anything. When they had crushed the last cowering victim and flattened his head in the sand they set off once again around the Circus, pausing here and there to trample on a crushed corpse and to scream back at the mob that roared with a frenzy no less bestial than theirs. The gladiators had to march out and despatch the elephants, and that was the crowd’s first taste that day of anything resembling fair fight.
They took the side of the elephants, forever popular in Rome since Carthage fell and Rome learned to amuse herself with monsters that were dangerous to friend and foe alike on battlefields. A hundred gladiators armed with spears essayed to corner them and kill them where it would be easy to drag out the carcasses, and each time that the elephants charged through the line the crowd applauded madly, disregarding the pluck of the men who knelt and met them point-first — usually to be trampled, even though they thrust the spear home in the monster’s belly.
Teams of horses dragged out the enormous carcasses. The men in masks came from the spoliarium with hooks to set under the arms of dead or injured gladiators and haul them out of sight. Fresh sand was strewn, and once again a bare arena sparkled in the sun.
And now the populace’s blood was up. They were in no mood to be entertained with any lesser spectacle. The third turn had to be a climax that should glut their appetite for murder — as the men who managed the proceedings well knew — unless they were to yell death-verdicts for expensive gladiators later on. If satiated now with butchery they might let live the wounded men who presently should lie face-upward and appeal for magnanimity; and it took time and money, besides skill to train a gladiator, who, though he were too severely wounded to appear again in the arena, was as marketable as a horse. The fashion of employing gladiators as the personal attendants of even the women of rank had put a premium on wounded men from the arena. And these scarred and grizzled passé warriors, decked out far more gorgeously than in their palmiest fighting days, became expensive luxuries.
So a hundred criminals were herded into the inclosure by the dungeon gate — all “enemies of Rome,” as Nepos thoughtfully remarked — and they were all clothed decently to make their death the more spectacular. Nor were they thrust forth as the others had been, to stand blinking and bewildered near the gate. They were herded by Nepos’ guards into the very center of the Circus and there provided with wooden swords with which to make a mockery of self-defense. One man contrived to kill himself with his ridiculous weapon before the guards were out of the arena, and the guards had to hasten retreat at the cost of their own dignity; the master of the ceremonies ordered the traps raised instantly to prevent other victims from cheating the spectators.
Simultaneously, out of ten doors spaced at equal intervals around the arena came tigers, lions, wolves, bears and a great rhinoceros. The latter was received with roars of approbation, which apparently confused him; for a moment he stood blinking at the sunlight, then turned on a tiger suddenly, impaled him on his horn and crushed him against the wooden barricade. The tiger’s claws provided all the necessary impulse that was lacking. He began to attack the other animals, but suddenly grew conscious of the helpless mass of humans in the midst of the arena and went straight at them like a avalanche on four legs.
He was violence untrammelled — senseless — an incarnate cataclysm. He impaled his victims, tossed them, trampled down a swath among them, ripped them open, shook the blood and entrails from his eyes and charged until turning so often left him breathless and he stood with drooped head waiting to recover and begin again.
The lions, wolves and tigers were mere supernumerary skirmishers, who picked off victims scattered by the monster. Famished though they were, they dreaded him and kept clear. When he paused at last, and twenty human victims in a group stood back to back to guard themselves against the lions — and the lions sprang in, maddened by the ineffective weapons — the rhinoceros recovered zeal and rammed his weight into the mass, impaling indiscriminately, tossing a great lion in the air and mowing men into a mass of crimson pulp. Wolves tore the wounded. Tigers struck down any who escaped out of the carnage. And the Roman populace exulted as if all Elysium were at its feet.
Then more excitement as the gladiators entered to destroy the brutes that had destroyed the human victims. The extravagance of killing a rhinoceros that was known to have cost enough to feast a whole precinct of Rome raised the whole tone of the orgy in the estimation of the mob; and the big brute slew three gladiators before a luckier one knelt and drove a spear into his belly. Then a dozen others closed in on him with their swords and the horse-teams dragged the carcass out. The last of the tigers was slain by a retiarius with net and trident, after the tiger had wounded half a dozen men.
While slaves were strewing fresh sand and the clamor of the crowd was
gradually dying to a satisfied, expectant hum, Tros turned and found Nepos beside him.
“Your turn now,” he said. “They are in a good mood.”
He released Tros’s wrists, then Orwic’s, and gave Tros his sword. It was the same one he had left in Zeuxis’ house. The Northmen came out of the cage like great bears growling, studying the axes handed to them by the prison guards.
“Lord Tros, these are not our weapons! These are rotten-hafted choppers for a housewife’s kindling!”
They appeared to think that Tros had cheated them. Alternatively they were ready to wreak vengeance on the guards, who stood back, ready with their hooked clubs, reaching hands through the grille to receive red-hot “persuaders” from the slaves.
Tros examined an ax. It was the sort of tool the Romans served out to the slaves whom it was reckoned inadvisable to trust with anything too nearly like a weapon — half the weight of the broad-bladed axes that the Northmen used.
“Those are the axes that Zeuxis sent,” said Nepos. “There are twelve spears for the Britons. It is too late now for—”
“Too late now for Zeuxis!” Tros said grimly. “Nepos, will you—”
He had all but fallen from the dignity of Samothrace! To have asked Nepos to take vengeance on the Greek would have undone in a moment all the magic Tros knew. The gods, whoever or whatever they are, love him who sees main issues and avoids the byways of revengeful spite. It needed no clairvoyance to appreciate that Zeuxis — characterless rascal — had succumbed at the last minute to the dread that Tros, if not slain in the Circus, might denounce him after all. Let the gods pay Zeuxis.
“It is too late to replace those. Probably Zeuxis’ slaves misunderstood him. Can you give us other weapons?”
Nepos, grinned.
“Aye! Tros, you should have been a Roman! Ho, there! Poniards and targets!”
They were long, lean poniards and shields of toughened bronze that clattered on the floor as fast as Nepos’ guards could bring them from the storeroom. And for Tros there was a buckler that a Thracian had carried to his death. A wave-edged scimitar a yard long and a wooden Gaulish shield with iron studs for Orwic.
Then the trumpets sounded and the great gate swung, admitting light that dazzled all the Northmen’s eyes. They kept the futile axes — thrust the poniards into their belts — and followed Tros, who ordered Orwic out alone in front of him, ten paces in the lead.
“Remember now!” said Nepos, as the great gate swung shut at the nervous Britons’ backs.
The Northmen marched in two lines behind Tros, Britons bringing up the rear, Tros keeping up a running admonition to prevent them from thinking their own thoughts and abandoning their discipline in panic. The enormous Circus and the mass of faces, leaning, leering, lusting — the anticipation that suggested ambush and the unpredictable — the glitter, glare and color, and the hush were likely to have unnerved Tros himself unless he had had men who looked to him to carry himself bravely and direct their destiny.
“So — you will fight as I have taught you when we practiced on the upper deck repelling boarders — Room for a weapon to swing, and no more — ranks closing swiftly when a man goes down — wounded crawl to the center, keeping clear of feet. — Each wounded man keep hold of his weapon — pass it to any comrade who is disarmed — Swift with the stab; very slow to recover; eyes on the enemy’s — ears listening for orders! When the lions come, steady — and step forward as they spring. Then duck and stab!”
They were midway to the center before a small group of spectators recognized the gallant youngster in the lead. But then, as if some one were organizing a demonstration, they began to shout his name:
“Ignotus! Ignotus!”
Recognition swelled into a roar as Orwic waved the wreath he had received as victor. They who had won money betting on him doubled and redoubled the applause until the whole arena was a-roar with curiosity and new excitement, changing — so it seemed — the very atmosphere. No better man than Orwic could have strode alone to take that thundering ovation; he was to the manner born, and though he walked without the measured Roman dignity, his own was no less captivating. He had won the crowd’s mood with a gesture, and the Northmen, ignorant of what was happening, accepted all the acclamation as their own due; Tros could feel their changed emotion as they formed up at his back and stood in line in front of Pompey, with the white-robed Vestals gazing at them from the draped seats of their own inclosure, well to the front, on Pompey’s right.
No Vestal made the slightest sign that Tros could detect; they were stern- faced women with their faces framed in white — apparently emotionless; four arbiters of life and death. The obligation to attend the sacred flame of Vesta made it always necessary for two to remain on duty to relieve each other. To the right and left of Pompey’s box the senators and equites — no interest less thrilling would have brought them from their country villas — sat with faces flushed, their attitude an effort to appear calm although every unstudied movement betrayed tense excitement. They were laughing cynically — chattering — their voices drowned by the enormous volume of the crowd’s roar.
Pompey was talking to some one who knelt at his side — by his costume a slave, by his bearing a messenger. A dozen gaudily dressed Romans, men and women, who were Pompey’s guests, appeared to listen eagerly to what the messenger was saying; not an eye in all that sumptuously decorated box was turned toward the men about to die in the arena. The salute they gave was unreturned, although the mob applauded the raised axes of the Northmen as a new barbaric detail introduced for their amusement. Tros growled to Orwic:
“Ready now! Lud’s luck — and a blow for your friends in Britain!” He faced his men; and if he felt afraid they never knew it!
“Ye are my men, and I have come to die or live with you. Do me no shame this day!”
Then, with his men behind him, he followed Orwic to the very midst of the arena; and as he turned he saw that Pompey leaned out of his box to speak to the Great Vestal, who was nearest to him of the four majestic women. The attendant slave-women pressed forward as if to protect the Vestals’ privacy. Tros saw the old gray Vestal’s lips move. When he shouted to his men again there was a note of triumph in his voice:
“Think you has Odin lost the way to Rome? Does Thor sleep? And is Lud of Lunden rotting in the Thames? Forget you are in Rome, and fight now for your own gods! Steady!”
Faithful to his promise, Nepos had contrived that the lions should be kept in until Tros was ready. He had almost overdone the kindness and the crowd was giving vent to its impatience when the doors were raised at last from five dens and the yellow brutes came hurrying out into the sunlight. There were marks on some of them of hot iron. There was not a second’s interval before they saw their quarry and began to creep up, crouching, blinking, stalking for a flank attack — so many of them that Tros never tried to count.
But there was no opening in the solid square of men that faced four ways at once. Tros stood alone, in front, on one side; Orwic on the other to stiffen the Britons, who were not so easy to make battle-brave. And, since they two looked easier to kill, there was a sudden lightning motion nearly too swift for the eye to follow as three brutes at once leaped at each of them, snarling. Then the melee! There was not a second to be spared for rallying the men or for a thought of anything but butchery — ax, poniard and sword out-licking with the speed of light as fifty lions leaped after the first against the solid square. One dragged a Briton down and through the gap three lions leaped in, to be slain by Northmen. Bleeding from a claw-wound, stepping forward with his buckler raised, Tros drove his long sword through a lion’s heart and turned to face another, stooping to entice the brute to spring, then straightening himself suddenly and thrusting upward. He could only fight and hope his men were standing firm. He found breath for their battle-cry and roared it:
“Odin! Odin!”
He could hear their answering roar, but it was all mixed up with lions’ snarling and the tumult from the mob,
until — as suddenly as the assault began — the butchery was over and he turned to see his square unbroken, three men and himself but slightly injured, and one Briton dead. His Northmen grinned at him, filling their lungs and breathing heavily — awaiting praise. He nodded to them, which was praise enough. Three lions dragged themselves away, blood dripping from them, and a fourth, uninjured, raced around the Circus looking for a chance to leap the barrier. The Northmen showed him half a dozen rotten axes broken, but Orwic laughed gaily from the far side of the square:
“Tros, don’t you wish those brutes were Romans!”
There was nothing now to make the crowd impatient — not a second’s pause. A gate swung open at the end that faced the carceres. Numidians came running in, their ostrich-feather plumes all nodding as they shook their shields in time to a barbaric chant, their long spears flashing in the sun.
Tros turned his eyes toward the Vestal Virgins, but they seemed not to be looking. Pompey was still leaning from his box, apparently engaged in conversation with the Virgo Vestalis Maxima.
There were sixty, not fifty Numidians, and they appeared to have been told their task was easy. Their black, almost naked bodies shone like polished ebony as they began to play and prance to draw the crowd’s applause. Groups of three gave chase to the wounded lions and slew them with their long spears, while a dozen others stalked the one uninjured beast and, finally surrounding him, coaxed him to spring, when they knelt and received him on spear-points.
Hurriedly Tros put his Britons in the center of the square and made them surrender their spears to the Northmen whose axes were broken.
“Watch your chance. Seize the weapons of the fallen enemy!” he commanded. Then, to the Northmen, “Fight as if repelling boarders! If the square breaks, form again!”