‘Yes, sir?’
‘Mistress Olivia said she thought she heard a man’s voice today. Have there been visitors you haven’t told me about?’
‘No, master,’ she replied. But she took a long time to say it.
Valerius rose before sunrise the next morning, the twelfth day of June and the third of Vestalia. At this time of the day the streets were cool, and by the time he passed the Temple of Vesta a long line of women were already waiting with their sacrifices to the goddess of the hearth. The festival was the only time the temple was open to any except the virgins who maintained the sacred flame, and then only to women and the Pontifex Maximus, Nero himself. The scent of baking reminded him he hadn’t broken his fast, but he smiled at the thought of eating the tasteless salt cakes the priestesses produced as tributes to the goddess.
The gladiator school was on the flat ground known as the Tarentum, outside the city wall on the west side of the Campus Martius. He turned off the Nova Via on to the Clivus Victoriae and then across the open space of the Velabrum until he could follow the river round to the old voting grounds. The stench from the Tiber gagged in his throat, but he knew he would become used to it, just as he would become used to the sight of the bloated corpses of dead dogs and deformed newborns floating in its sulphur-yellow filth. The river flowed sluggishly on his left and to his right the fading grandeur of the Pantheon and Agrippa’s baths were highlighted by the early morning sunshine.
By the time he reached the ludus a score of men were already sweating as they faced each other on the hard-packed dirt under the critical gaze of the lanista, the trainer who would hire out his troop to the editores who staged games for the Emperor or for rich patrons who wanted to impress their friends. Mostly they fought for show, but occasionally, if enough money was on offer, these men who shared barrack rooms and meals, and sometimes beds, would fight each other to the death. Valerius had once been a staunch supporter of the games, with his own favourite fighters, but now he stayed away. In Britain he had seen enough blood spilled for a lifetime.
Most of the gladiators were slaves, former warriors swept up by the Empire’s wars and spared the living death of the mines and the quarries for the entertainment value they promised. A few were unblooded: troublesome farm slaves sold on by their owners because it was more profitable than killing them and bought by the lanista on the strength of their size and fighting potential. Fewer still were the freeborn who fought of their own free will: debtors, gambling their lives to release themselves from some financial millstone, or men addicted to the thrill of combat and seeking the eternal fame that was a gladiator’s greatest prize. The odds were against them. Most would never find it, only a painful death squirming in their own blood and guts on the sand.
He saw Marcus, his trainer, working with two fighters in the centre of the practice ground and walked through the gate and into the shade of the barrack building to do the loosening-up exercises the old gladiator insisted upon. Most of the gladiators trained naked, but Valerius preferred to cover his modesty with a short kilt. He removed his tunic and carefully folded it on a bench by the doorway. A few of the men glanced at him, but none acknowledged him. He would never be truly welcome here among the living dead. He felt the tension rising inside him. He was ready. First, short runs to simulate attack and retreat. Then stretches and muscle movements. More runs. More stretches. Only when a man had broken sweat and could feel his breath searing his lungs and his heart ramming against his ribs was he ready for the fight. As he took a drink from the fountain a shadow loomed over him.
‘Not too much,’ Marcus warned. ‘I have a treat for you today.’
Valerius eyed him suspiciously. Every time he’d heard those words they had been followed by pain and humiliation. The trainer grinned, turning the scar that split his right cheek into a crevasse. Stocky and darkly handsome, despite the missing left ear which was a permanent memento of his career, he was the fastest man Valerius had ever met, with hands that could blind you with their speed.
He introduced the figure who walked up to join them. ‘Serpentius of Amaya.’ Valerius looked into eyes that hated you in an instant and a face that said its owner liked to hurt people. The narrow white seams that marked the shaven skull told of past battles won and lost. The man was thin and dark as a stockman’s whip and looked just as tough.
‘Serpentius,’ Valerius acknowledged, but the other only stared at him.
‘We call him Serpentius because he’s so fast. The snake, right?’ Marcus explained cheerfully. ‘A Spaniard. Even faster than me.’
Valerius picked up his wooden practice sword. ‘I might as well go home then.’ He spun round to bring his blade down on Serpentius’s upper arm, only to feel the point of the Spaniard’s own sword touching his throat.
Marcus howled with laughter. ‘Quick, eh?’
Valerius nodded, his eyes never leaving his opponent’s. ‘Quick.’
It looked like being a very long two hours.
The men around him practised with sword against net and trident, sword against sword and sword against spear. Valerius only ever used the short legionary gladius or the spatha, the longer cavalry blade. With the gladius, a man killed with the point; quick, brutally effective jabbing strokes and a twisting withdrawal that tore a hole in an opponent’s guts the size of a shield boss. With the spatha it was a combination of the razor edge and brute strength that could bludgeon a man to death or chop him to pieces. But today wasn’t about killing. They would use wooden practice swords and it was about speed and endurance, building strength and discovering weaknesses, his opponent’s and his own. Unless, of course, Serpentius decided differently.
They took their places in the centre of the training ground and Valerius shuffled his feet into the dusty earth to get a feel for its grip. His opponent carried only a sword, in his right hand. Valerius always trained with sword and shield; sword in the left, shield attached firmly to the carved wooden fist that served for his right. No point in strengthening his left arm by constant practice if he allowed his right to wither away. He would not be a cripple.
He felt Serpentius’s eyes on him. When he looked up the Spaniard was staring at him with the same expression he’d seen on the face of a half-starved leopard in the circus.
‘Ready?’ Marcus demanded.
Valerius nodded.
‘A legionary, eh?’ Serpentius spoke so quietly that only his opponent could hear. ‘Legionaries killed my family.’
‘ Fight.’
The practice sword was twice the weight of a normal gladius, but for all the trouble it gave Serpentius it might have been a goose feather. Somehow, the point was instantly past Valerius’s guard and only a desperate lunge with the shield knocked it aside and saved him from a bone-crunching thrust to the heart. Before he could recover, the point was back, jabbing past the shield at his eyes, his belly and his groin. He managed to parry the first thrust and block the second with the shield, but the third caught him a glancing blow on the inner thigh that would have unmanned him if it had landed square. Already the sweat was in his eyes blurring his vision, and he struggled to keep pace with the dancing figure beyond the shield. For the first five minutes it was all he could do to survive. He took hits to the shoulder and a strike that might have cracked a rib. But he fought on, spurred by pain and pride, never touching Serpentius, until gradually his senses came to terms with the speed of his opponent. His brain began to match the thrusts as they were launched, and the sword and the shield anticipated the Spaniard’s attacks.
Serpentius felt the change, and altered his tactics. Now he used his speed to wear Valerius down, always keeping him turning to the right so that the Roman’s sword could never reach him. Constantly changing the line of attack. Now high, now low. A painful crack on the ankle left Valerius hobbling for a few seconds, but the stroke was only a feint. Serpentius’s real target was the eyes. A practice sword might have an edge that wouldn’t cut a loaf of bread and a point barely worth the name, but it could still take your eye out, and Valerius saw more of the tip of Serpentius’s sword than he cared for. By the time Marcus called the first break he knew every splinter and notch intimately, and it was only good fortune that had saved him from being blinded.
He crouched down, his chest on fire, the breath tearing his throat. Marcus knelt beside him as the Spaniard stood a few yards away drinking from a goatskin and barely sweating.
‘You’ve got your sword in your left hand, but you still think like a right-handed fighter,’ the older man said. ‘You’re allowing him to dictate every move and you’re a yard slower than he is. If you keep going like this he’s going to kill you.’
‘Will you let him?’
