opposition in an ambush, wouldn’t they?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the eunuch. ‘You must have been listening to too many silly stories from the slaves.’ He held his hanky to his face again and mopped up the drop of sweat that had formed on the end of his bulbous nose. ‘Gladiators, indeed,’ he huffed.
But the boy was right. He always listened to the stories from the slaves, and found them a very good source of information. He liked information. It was a kind of power.
Emperor Honorius had abolished the games back in AD 404, after the self-sacrificing protest of the monk Telemachus; at the same time, he had shut the gladiatorial schools. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have occurred to either Honorius or his advisers that an unemployed gladiator, like an unemployed soldier, is a rather dangerous individual. Five thousand professional gladiators finding themselves unemployed overnight are very dangerous indeed. After their well-remunerated careers of bloodlust and carnage in the arena, it was somehow unlikely that these men would quietly settle down as good citizens, and get jobs as water carriers, fresco painters, fig merchants or whatever. Some went into the army, but most of them were too old. The army only wanted young men up to the age of twenty-one: fit, malleable and easily trained. After their years of individual heroics, gladiators, for all their toughness and predisposition to extreme violence, were regarded as poor-quality soldier material.
The best-looking ones were snapped up by some of the wealthier ladies of Roman society, to be their ‘personal assistants’, ‘litter bearers’, or even, in one instance which caused great hilarity among the city’s satirists and literary salons, her ornatrix, or ‘hairdresser’. The word was of the feminine gender, but was now peculiarly applied to male hairdressers, who had become fashionable of late. They were mostly eunuchs, of course, or else interested strictly in boys. Upon hearing of the gladiator-hairdresser, the satirists sharpened their goose-quill pens. Soon there were circulating little squibs about how strange it was that an ornatrix should be required to attend upon his mistress in her private chambers only after having stripped naked, oiled himself all over, and performed vigorous weightlifting and strengthening exercises in the gym with his membrum virile.
But the laughter died on their sophisticated faces when they learnt that the great majority of the gladiators had taken to the hills to become bandits.
‘Remember Spartacus,’ said the pessimists.
‘Yes, and look what became of him,’ said the optimists. ‘Crucified along with his men all along the Appian Way.’
‘Yes,’ said the pessimists, ‘but only after they’d wiped out two Roman legions.’
‘Ah,’ said the optimists. ‘Well, yes…’
Which was why Olympian was so disturbed by this wretched barbarian boy’s suggestion that they might be ambushed. As the eunuch well knew, this was a real possibility.
In general, however, the bandit gangs of the Sabine Hills and beyond were not reckoned to be any great threat, but operated as cowards, attacking lonely, isolated farmsteads, or wealthy merchants foolish enough to travel without a decent armed escort. Whoever they were, it was inconceivable that they should have the temerity to attack a fully escorted imperial column, even in these remote hills.
3
The first arrow struck Marco in his upper arm.
‘Fuck!’ he roared, looking down. The arrow had punched almost through his tricep and out again. He ordered his optio to snap off the haft, and push the arrowhead through and out the other side, while he clenched his teeth furiously on the leather strap of his reins and bit down. Another arrow whistled over his head as their horses skittered, and the optio struggled to tie the tourniquet tightly above the wound.
His lieutenant came galloping back. It was Lucius, the grey-eyed British lieutenant.
‘First blood, centurion,’ he called cheerfully. ‘Good man!’
‘Yeah, unfortunately it’s my blood, sir.’
Another arrow fell short and clattered over the rough ground at their horses’ feet. Lucius squinted up. There was nothing in the silent air but the trill of the cicadas, nothing to be seen up on the ridge but the blue sky beyond. Not a plume of dust, not a scuffle.
‘We’re being ambushed by… what? A solitary six-year-old boy? What in the Name of Light is going on?’
Marco shook his head. ‘No idea, sir. Feeblest ambush I’ve ever been in.’
The column had come to a halt, even though it was in a narrow defile. No more arrows came. There was no need to panic.
‘When you’ve finally stopped bleeding-’ said Lucius.
‘Stopped already, sir,’ interrupted Marco, patting the tourniquet. ‘Tight as a virgin’s-’
‘OK, Centurion, I get the message. Now ride on up to the Palatine vanguard and ask Count Heraclian, respectfully, what he wants us to do.’
Marco soon returned. ‘He suggests you’re in a better intelligence position than he is, sir.’
Lucius stared at him. ‘He wants me to give the orders?’
‘Seems so, sir. He also suggests that you and your Frontier Guard ride at the head of the column from now on.’
‘Jesus the Jumping Jew.’ Lucius turned away. ‘Master-General Heraclian,’ he said under his breath, ‘you are one useless pile of mule-shit.’ He turned back. ‘OK, Centurion, we ride on. At the end of this defile, when we come to that stand of cork oaks there – see? – you and me and First Squadron turn sharply back and ride round to the left and see what we can see. How’s that for a plan?’
‘Tremendously complex, sir, but it might just work.’
‘OK, you cheeky bastard. Ride on.’
As they rode, Marco gave the silent signal to the first troop of eight cavalrymen to be ready to split off from the column and climb the slope to the left. At the given moment they did so, without Lucius needing to bark a single word of command. The horses strained to get them up the steep slope, their heads held low and their nostrils flared, until at last they reached the summit, and reined in and stopped, and looked away across the blank escarpment.
Nothing. Not even a plume of dust.
‘What the fuck is going on, sir?’
Lucius squinted across the plain. At last he said softly, ‘What kind of bandit gang, Centurion, launches probing, reconnaissance attacks, to test the strength of its chosen target? Not even a volley, just a few well-aimed arrows, and then has the discipline to retreat and vanish before the enemy can counter?’
‘None that I know of, sir.’
Lucius scanned the hazy horizon again with eyes almost closed.
‘Gladiators?’ said another, younger trooper, wide-eyed Carpicius, all boyish excitement and dread. ‘Turned bandits?’
‘Gladiators,’ snorted Ops, a bull-necked Egyptian decurion in his early forties, due for retirement soon but as tough as any in the legion. His real name was Oporsenes, but Ops suited him better. ‘Don’t give me fuckin’ gladiators. Gladiators, sunshine, is a bunch of actors with swords in their hands. They’re just celebrity fuckin’ murderers, they are.’
Like any other soldier, Ops had nothing but contempt for gladiators, unemployed or not. Overpaid sex symbols, nancy-boys, showy individualist fighters who wouldn’t last five minutes on a real battlefield, where the mutual loyalty and trust between you and your men was what kept you all alive. Not fancy bladework in front of a roaring crowd of thousands.
‘OK, men,’ said Lucius, wheeling his horse round again. ‘Back to the column and ride on, eyes skinned. This isn’t over yet.’
‘What on earth is going on?’ whispered Olympian as the column rumbled forwards again. ‘We can’t be under attack, can we?’
‘Looks like it,’ said the little barbarian, settling back comfortably in his seat. ‘Pretty disciplined attack, too, I’d
