Viridovix grunted and darted forward in a blitzkrieg attack, hammering with his steel bear-claw while slashing and stabbing with his blade. A lesser fighter would not have been able to counter the blazing flurry of double blows, but Lucius, with his ambidextrous hands and fast reflexes, was able to parry the attacks, albeit only just. In response, he launched a blistering counterattack of his own, which forced Viridovix onto his back foot.
Not wishing to commit fully to an assault – for Lucius had seen in the arena how quickly Viridovix could swing a defensive manoeuvre into an offensive one, and thereby finish off an opponent foolish enough to launch an all-out assault on him – he sprang back, keeping the spear-point aimed at the vulnerable spot beneath Viridovix’s helm, where his Adam’s apple was exposed.
‘Ha! Is that the best you’ve got?’ Lucius scoffed, panting and sweating inside his skin of steel. ‘No wonder we Romans were able to conquer your pathetic tribe with such ease! You were a hairy, uncouth savage when I first bought you, and you know what they say: you can take the savage out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the savage! Ha! You’re still nothing more than a beast, Viridovix! Strip this expensive armour off – armour that belongs to your master anyway, not you – and you’re just a stinking subhuman barbarian, nothing more! Gods, no wonder you’ve stayed a slave all these years.’
Viridovix bellowed out a wordless shout of anger and stormed across the space between them, closing the distance with a leaping attack, the force and momentum of which smashed Lucius’s defences wide open. Viridovix’s bear-claw whistled through the gap opened by the vicious sweep of his longsword, and the downward punch of his steel paw smashed into Lucius’s helm and sent him stumbling back, stunned. Lucius was only just able to block a follow-up backhand slash aimed at his chest, and he then had to jump up and tuck his knees as the stroke was turned and redirected into a whistling cut aimed at his shins. While airborne, though, he jabbed the spear at Viridovix’s leading shoulder, and the point glanced off of the warrior’s steel pauldron, only just missing an opening in the armour.
At this near-miss Viridovix jumped back, caught briefly off-guard, and Lucius, with his razor wits, whipped the spear down to slash the edge against Viridovix’s exposed calf muscle. The sharp point pared open the flesh, and as Lucius sprang back from the successful attack, an arc of blood traced the path of his spear-point through the air.
It’s working for certain now … His anger has been roused, and it is unbalancing him.
‘Lucius Sertorius draws first blood!’ Lucius howled with brash obnoxiousness. ‘How do you like that, cur?! You’re really disappointing your master now! What’s wrong with you? Bah, nobody should be surprised anyway, because after all I’m a Roman and you’re just a primitive Gallic savage! You’ll always be the dirt beneath our Roman sandals, just dog shit to be scraped off on our streets!’
Viridovix switched to a two-handed grip on his longsword and bent his knees, adopting a low, crouching guard as he advanced with measured caution.
He’s trying to calm himself … He understands that this rage I’m stirring up will be his undoing. Curses! I must stoke it more! I cannot lose this fight! I will not die inside that brazen bull!
‘Roman,’ Viridovix shouted suddenly, ‘I made a promise to you once! Do you remember what it was?’
‘I remember nothing of the sort, slave!’
‘I said that the gods of wood, stream, rock and earth would give me your head, to roll at my feet … and now I will have my freedom and your head.’
‘My head is not yours to take, cur! Your master has decided to burn me in that brazen bull, so come on and do his bidding! Your promise is worth less than piss to him!’
‘I know what you’re trying to do with your words and taunts, Lucius Sertorius … but you see, you can’t do it, because I know something that you don’t know.’
‘Oh, and what is that, dog? You arse-licking mutt!’
A sudden flare – the fire of triumph, lit as a mountaintop beacon against the backdrop of a stormy night sky – roared to life in Viridovix’s eyes.
‘Batiatus is giving me my wooden sword tonight,’ he replied calmly. ‘After you die in the bull, I’m a free man! And I will hack the head off of your blackened corpse, and kick it about this hall like a child’s ball when that happens.’
All of the blood drained from Lucius’s face, and a glacial cold drenched his body. The sword and spear felt suddenly flaccid in his hands, and his limbs began to burn from the inside with a crushing exertion, as if even holding the weapons out before him was too strenuous a task.
By all the gods … I have lost … I’m done for. I will burn in that brazen bull tonight.
With a panicked shriek he launched into an all-out assault on Viridovix, fighting with the desperation of a cornered leopard; now the tables were completely turned, and it was Lucius who had lost all semblance of control.
This was what Viridovix had been waiting for. He laughed as, one after another, he turned away the desperate lunges, stabs, jabs and cuts, for through his eyes the furious attacks coming at him seemed to be happening in time slowed down, right down to the trickling ooze of tree sap creeping earthwards down a rough-barked trunk. It took little effort on his part to eventually smash the spear from Lucius’s right hand, and to then batter the gladius out of his left. With laughter booming inside his helm he blocked, dodged and ducked under his
