‘Creature? What mockery is this?!’ Claudius exclaimed with indignation. ‘You truly are beginning to wear my patience thin!’ he hissed, spitting half a mouthful of wine into the steaming water from the vociferousness of his bellyaching.
‘Hold on to that last strand of patience, I beseech you,’ the still-smiling Octavian said, unfazed by his guest’s irritability. ‘Brutus! Bring out the beast and her lover.’
A spear-wielding guard, attired in the exotic armour of a champion gladiator, responded to Octavian’s order. He saluted and then disappeared through a door that was hidden behind one of the hanging tapestries. A few moments later he reappeared, followed by three more guards who were kitted out in equally impressive armour. The first of them was dragging a shirtless young mulatto man behind him in chains. The prisoner appeared to be in a state of semi-consciousness, either through drink, a drug or simply from being beaten senseless; his attractive, well-formed face and his muscular torso were bruised, swollen and bleeding from a multitude of fresh wounds. Behind him, wheeled in inside a cage of steel, was a North African woman, who was nude. She, however, was fully conscious, and she was yelling, screaming and weeping hysterically all at once.
‘What in the name of Jupiter is this?!’ Claudius gasped. ‘If you are about to perform some sort of obscene execution or torture in front of us, then myself, Lepidus and the other senators will insist on taking our leave immediately! And I guarantee you this, Octavian: no amount of gold from your blood-stained coffers will restore our relationship with you! Ever!’ He glared with fury-reddened eyes at Octavian, and then glanced back at the unfolding spectacle before he continued. ‘I’ve had enough of this pathetic mockery for one evening, enough. Enough, I say! This sort of crass entertainment is fit only for low-born plebs and their ilk, not for a senator of the Republic!’
‘Relax, Claudius, relax,’ replied Octavian, who wore a smile that was half smug, half cryptic. ‘You’ve not yet seen what I wanted to show you.’
‘Gods, she’s as black as the depths of Hades,’ Lepidus muttered, his disapproval blatant. ‘She must be from the deepest recesses of the province of Africa.’
‘She … or it?’ Octavian asked.
‘What on earth are you talking about?!’ Claudius snapped as he rose from the steaming waters of the bath. ‘This nonsense has gone too far! I’ve had my fill of it. Boy, bring me a towel and my chilton. I’m leaving.’
‘Change!’ Octavian shouted, turning to the woman in the cage and ignoring Claudius. ‘Change into your animal form!’
‘Never!’ she screamed shrilly.
Octavian chuckled, his visage contorted with mirth, seemingly deriving some sort of sadistic amusement from the woman’s wrath and defiance. He stepped nonchalantly over to a boy who bore a platter of fruit on a golden plate and plucked a grape from it. He popped it into his mouth and began chewing thoughtfully, ignoring Claudius, who was drying himself off with vigorous, angry strokes. The grape burst between his teeth, and its red juice dribbled through his lips and trickled down his strong, jutting chin.
‘Kurush, remove her lover’s right hand,’ Octavian commanded, as casually as if he’d asked the guard to simply salute him.
Kurush, without a word or a change of his robotic expression, unsheathed a scimitar, while a guard stretched out the dazed prisoner’s right arm on the polished marble floor.
‘No!’ the woman cried, her voice hoarse with a new flush of terror and desperation.
‘Do it,’ Octavian muttered as he picked another grape from the bunch.
Kurush hacked at the prisoner’s arm just above his wrist, bringing his razor-edged blade down with brutal force. The steel cleaved neatly through muscle, sinew and bone, and hit the floor with a clang as it separated the young man’s hand from his arm. Blood gushed in gruesome washes from the stump, and the caged woman wept and wailed and beat the bars in tortured anguish.
‘Gods! You’re even more of a vile brute than I could have imagined!’ Claudius exclaimed, his countenance crumpling into a contortion of unabashed disgust. ‘Senators, let us leave this hovel before this revolting spectacle becomes even more horrific! And you, Octavian, we’re done with you, done and finished! Congratulations on successfully destroying your business relationship with us, you uncultured savage!’
‘Change now, or I’ll have the rest of that arm and his other one!’ Octavian roared, his previous expression of dispassionate calm now giving way to a twisted grimace of crimson wrath. ‘Do it!’
‘No,’ she screamed, her voice shrill and hoarse from her plaintive weeping. ‘No!’
‘Kurush,’ Octavian grunted, ‘sever the bastard’s arm at the shoulder. And then take the other one too, um, make that one at the elbow as well. We’ll start on his feet and legs next.’
Kurush nodded, his black eyes icy and pitiless as he raised his blade above his shoulder to strike another blow.
‘Stop, please stop,’ the woman begged through her tears.
Kurush ignored the woman’s hysterical pleas, his scarred face betraying no hint of emotion, and with another swift blow he hacked the man’s right arm off at the elbow.
‘A good, clean blow my friend. Well struck,’ Octavian commented as he bit into a peach. ‘Now, the other arm please.’
Kurush stepped over the body and raised his scimitar.
‘Stop!’ the woman screamed between wailing sobs. ‘I’ll change, just stop!’
Octavian narrowed his eyes and held up his hand, signalling to Kurush to halt.
‘You’ll want to keep your eyes on the woman, my friends!’ he shouted to Claudius and the other senators, who had likewise dried and clothed themselves, as they were making hurriedly for the exit. Just as Claudius turned upon his heels to respond to Octavian, he saw an incredible sight unfolding before his eyes, one that would remain with him until the end of his days: inside the bars of the cage, in the space of but a second or two, the nude figure of the woman burst, in a terrifying explosion of expanding limbs, a horrifically distended torso, a monstrous distortion of her
