‘No it won’t, my old friend,’ a familiar voice yelled from behind Lucius. ‘The only blood spilled from here on will be yours.’
Lucius spun around and saw Viridovix standing there in his magnificent gladiatorial armour, the burnished steel contours of it glossy like quicksilver in the torchlight, the mighty warrior looking like a biomechanical amalgam of man, metal and bear as he stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, gripping his longsword loosely in his right hand.
‘Friends, take your seats, and do not run, there is nothing to fear!’ Batiatus shouted smugly, an evil grin smeared across his visage. ‘Behold my finest warrior, the Beast of the North, Viridovix! He will subdue this criminal, this murderer! And then we will watch him burn inside the brazen bull!’
Batiatus turned to Viridovix and gave him a curt nod.
‘Viridovix, take him!’ he commanded brusquely. ‘Wound him if you must, but do not kill him!’
‘Yes master!’ Viridovix cried, saluting his master with his longsword, after which he dropped the blade down low and bent his knees as he adopted an unorthodox guard.
Lucius spun his spear in his hands and bent his knees, raising himself up onto the balls of his feet as he prepared for combat. Inside his helmet, however, he licked his lips, feeling the dryness of new fear inside his mouth. The five guards formed up in a wide circle around Viridovix and Lucius, making a human ring and giving the fighters plenty of room to move about.
I have to keep him at a distance … if he closes in it’ll all be over. Stay calm, keep him out of striking range. And if I can provoke him into anger, if I can get him to lose his cool, I might, just might have a chance.
‘Come on then you mutt!’ Lucius shouted brashly. ‘Come, you flea-ridden puppy, keep on licking your master’s arsehole and do his bidding!’
Viridovix did not respond. Instead he merely swung his sword with an almost casual deadliness in his hand and began to advance, taking measured, deliberate steps.
Lucius jabbed his spear forward in a half-lunge, testing out his opponent’s reflexes. Not only was the assault battered away with blistering speed, it was followed up with a sudden and furious charging counterattack of three rapid slashes that forced Lucius into a stumbling retreat; this fighter’s reaction time seemed to be beyond human, outstripping even Lucius’s animal-enhanced reflexes. Knowing, however, that to go on the defensive would be to lose this battle, Lucius rapidly unleashed a flurry of scorpion-stabbing jabs as he surged forward, alternately directing the spear-point at his opponent’s face and throat, and forcing the swordsman to defend without any room for a riposte.
‘Come on slave!’ Lucius shouted, breathing hard now from both the exertion of combat and the flood of adrenalin dousing his system. ‘You aren’t pleasing your master like this! What’s wrong? Are your hands slippery from your master’s piss and shit? Yes, I’m sure you wipe his arse for him too, and gladly, I’ll wager!’
With a sudden roar Viridovix smacked Lucius’s spear aside with his armoured left forearm, and he used the momentum of this blow to swivel his entire body about in a three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin, which culminated in a vicious slash aimed squarely at Lucius’s throat, a blow that Lucius was only just able to parry and spring back from.
It’s working … the anger is unbalancing him.
‘Viridovix!’ Batiatus snarled. ‘What are you doing, damn you?! I ordered you not to kill him! You must subdue him, you fool, not mortally wound him!’
‘Oh great warrior chieftain of the Gallic tribes!’ Lucius mocked, capitalising at once on this opportunity. ‘Dance for the amusement of the Roman masters! Dance like a chained bear! Do it, you mindless slave! Make the masters happy, then go back to your dank underground kennel where they lock you up every night! What a fit throne for a barbarian king: a filthy, shit-smeared dungeon! Ha! Come on dog, come on dancing bear! You heard your master! Go lick on his balls, suck his cock, and subdue me!’
Lucius switched to a single-hand grip on the spear, keeping it in his right hand, and with his left he drew his gladius from its sheath on his hip. He had been a dimachaeri gladiator, for one of his greatest assets in the arena had been his ambidexterity; a true rarity, most especially amongst warriors. This talent gave him the ability to wield two weapons simultaneously, or to switch stances from right-handed to left-handed in the blink of an eye, a skill that had confounded many an opponent over the years.
Viridovix, however, was not just any opponent. He had had plenty of experience sparring with an even more skilled dimachaeri than Lucius – Crixus – and as soon as his adversary adopted a dual-weapon stance he opened his guard up slightly. He shifted his position so that he could wield his sword with his right hand, and then use the claw-enhanced armour on his left forearm as both a striking weapon and a shield.
Both fighters circled the perimeter of the ring, maintaining a cautious distance, with each launching a few restrained and quickly-pulled-back attacks as each probed and analysed the other’s defences. Lucius knew that despite his ambidexterity, his natural speed and agility, and the reach advantage that his spear offered, he was up against a superior opponent, and the odds of winning this fight were slim. The only way he would stand a chance would be to play a mind game, to goad his adversary into making an error. He knew that the passionate intensity that burned inside Viridovix – even if it had been mostly broken by his years of slavery – could be awakened and then used to unbalance him. He had to ramp up his taunts and insults, and make his words penetrate and cut as deeply as any darts or arrows.
‘Come on slave!’ he mocked, his every syllable dripping with caustic
