Sword of Rome (50 page)

Valerius was moving even before the riderless mount swerved across the front of the line and collided with the charge. He screamed at Juva to get the eagles to safety, but his words were drowned in a splintering crash and the shrieks of crushed men as a mountain of horseflesh scythed into the wall of shields. The second line of cavalry, followed
by the third, swerved to avoid the mayhem, knowing there were easier victims to come, but Claudius Victor leapt through the carnage with a squadron at his heels and charged into the centre of the already disintegrating square.

‘He’s mine!’ The screamed order was directed at a Batavian trooper who had lined up the square’s one-handed commander with his long spear. The cavalryman swerved away. In the same moment, Valerius heard the shout and turned to find his nemesis bearing down on him. Victor crouched low in the saddle with a smile on his pale features and the leaf-shaped iron blade aimed at his enemy’s lower belly. For once Valerius couldn’t depend on Serpentius to be his strong right hand; the Spaniard was elsewhere, fighting his own deadly battle. He had nowhere to run; his only defence was his sword and his speed. He feinted left, but the spear point went with him. Victor held the shaft close to his steed’s flank, to give his enemy no chance of getting inside the point. Another second and the spear would tear through the iron mail and gut him. The Batavian expected Valerius to break and run in that final heartbeat. Instead the one-armed Roman danced to his right, bringing the sword up in a scything, unwieldy slash that bit into the cavalry horse’s throat. A cloud of scarlet and the animal screamed as it felt the bite of iron and Valerius threw himself to the side as it surged past, already going down on its knees. In the corner of his eye he registered Victor tumbling from the saddle and the snap as the long spear broke, but there was no time to be pleased with himself. For now the exhausted legionaries of Twenty-first Rapax had found new strength and were tearing at the shattered formation like a pack of wolves on a dying deer calf. Suddenly, Victor was no longer Valerius’s greatest threat as he tripped on a body, lost his grip on the
gladius
and found himself sprawling among the feet of a knot of men hacking at two gladiators who had tried to surrender. Unarmed and wriggling backwards through someone’s entrails, Valerius flinched away as one of the legionaries stepped into position with his sword poised for the killing blow.

‘Mine!’ The guttural Germanic roar was punctuated by a butcher’s block slap that registered the moment Victor’s long cavalry
spatha
took
the man’s head off at his shoulders. As the torso collapsed, Valerius’s worst nightmare loomed over him. ‘The remaining hand, I think. We will start with the hand.’

Victor raised the sword high as Valerius lay helpless. The Roman looked into his killer’s eyes and saw a madness there that told him the hand was only the least of it. He groped frantically for his lost
gladius
. Instead, his fingers connected with something obscenely soft, with the slimy texture of a fresh-caught eel. He threw the still-warm guts of the anonymous gladiator into Victor’s face and the Batavian reeled back, but recovered when he realized what had struck him. A savage smile wreathed his face as he made the decision to end the games. All around them was chaos and slaughter, the screams of the dying and the victory cries of their killers. From nowhere, a bay horse, out of control with its Pannonian rider dead in the saddle, galloped blind-eyed with panic towards them and Valerius rolled away from the flashing hooves. He heard Victor curse even as he found his escape blocked by the bulk of the auxiliary commander’s dead mount. A kaleidoscope of images: blue sky, blood-soaked earth, a dead man’s staring eyes, a glint of bright metal. The sword flashed down and he twisted desperately to one side, some voice screaming a message at him that his mind struggled to decipher. The sharp slap of metal slicing into muscle, but surprisingly he felt no pain and he realized Victor’s blow must have struck the dead horse. Without conscious thought, his hand wrapped around the shaft of the broken spear embedded in the ground to his left. His arm whipped round and he felt the moment the point tore through cloth into the sucking embrace of flesh, the crunch of iron scraping on bone and then the breakthrough into the softness beyond. An agonized shriek that combined pain, torment and frustration filled his ears and he looked up as Claudius Victor’s shuddering body collapsed on top of him.

The random, panicked thrust of the spearhead had taken Victor deep in the groin, slicing through the big artery there and into his lower stomach. The Batavian’s body shuddered uncontrollably with each wave of shock and agony. He knew he was dying, but the animal instinct to destroy his foe was overwhelming. Powerful warrior’s hands fought their way to Valerius’s throat and the Batavian’s eyes
bulged as he used the last of his strength to throttle the man who had killed his brother. Trapped beneath the armour-clad body, Valerius struggled to free his good hand and somehow prise the iron grip of the fingers from his throat. His vision blurred and he heard the sound of a rook cawing and knew it was the sound of his dying. Claudius Victor’s face was in his, and he felt the other man’s spittle on his cheek and remembered the foul breath of his enemy from their previous terrifying meeting in the woods of Germania. His mind screamed at him. He … would … not … die. His fingers closed on the object at his belt and somehow he forced his left hand upwards between their two bodies. Victor was oblivious of what was happening, his mind lost in the divine, unearthly madness of victory and death. He barely felt the point of the knife that forced its way through the skin beneath his chin. Only in the lightning-flash moment when it entered his brain did he accept defeat.

Blood surged from the gaping jaws over Valerius’s face and he almost vomited at the foulness of it in his mouth. A moment of relief, darkness and finally despair threatened to overwhelm him, but he took the time to cut the leather strip holding the golden boar amulet that had hung at Claudius Victor’s neck and push it into his tunic. What seemed like much later rough hands dragged him clear of the body and he heard a familiar voice in his ear.

‘Can’t lie about here as if you’re already in the Senate, lord,’ Serpentius chided.

Someone put a sword in his hand as Juva placed a giant arm round his waist and between them the Nubian and the Spaniard half carried him through the fighting and the heaped bodies of the dead and the dying. Somehow they found themselves among a group of gladiators still battling for their lives.

‘The First’s eagle?’ Valerius demanded.

Serpentius shrugged and the Roman knew it was gone. A pain pierced him that was more terrible than anything he’d suffered this day as he remembered his promise to Benignus. But he was their leader. He could not surrender to despair. ‘We fight on. Otho’s reserve will be here soon. While we live, there’s still a chance.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Serpentius’s voice was bleak. The first time Valerius had heard it bereft of hope. Because Aulus Caecina Alienus had thrown in his reserves to finish it.

A massed wave of charging infantry and cavalry swept across the plain towards them. ‘If I’m to die, I will die like a man.’ Still clutching the eagle of the Twenty-first, Juva of the
Waverider
, centurion of the first century, Fifth cohort of Legio I Adiutrix, gave a final nod to his two friends and was gone before Valerius could stop him. His last memory of the Nubian was of Juva standing like a colossus at the heart of the full cohort sent to squash the insolent slaves who had tarnished the honour of a legion, before he was consumed by a whirling maelstrom of bright iron.

As he waited with Serpentius at his side, his strong right hand for one final time, Valerius felt the same mix of pride, loss and anger he had experienced in the final moments of the siege of the Temple of Claudius. There was no glory in defeat, but what did that matter when a man had known warriors like these and had a friend such as this. He planted his feet more firmly in the rich, dark soil and held the
gladius
at the ready as a squadron of cavalry charged the two defiant figures who stood firm among the dead and the wounded. Valerius managed to sidestep the first spear, but moved too late to avoid the bulk of the galloping horse. He felt something break in his left shoulder and the moment the sword dropped from his nerveless fingers.

Then, only darkness.

Gaius Valerius Verrens recognized the soot-stained walls of the burned-out villa on the hill and each detail of the defence and fall of the Temple of Claudius returned, as if it was carved on his brain by the point of a dagger. Falco and his militia dying where they stood so that the others could escape. Lunaris, like a hero of old, holding back Boudicca’s horde on the steps of the temple. And Messor, poor Messor, slipping into the dark tunnel that would have been better being his tomb. With a start, he realized he wasn’t alone. The cloaked figure who worked in the gloom by the shuttered window seemed familiar and his heart soared as he realized her identity.

‘Maeve?’

She turned and he reached out to her and it was only then he realized that his arms ended in ragged stumps. Both hands had been chopped off above the wrist. As the first shuddering scream escaped his tortured throat he looked up into a face from the gates of the Otherworld; not his Maeve, not the beautiful Trinovante who had loved and betrayed him, but Claudius Victor, and a Claudius Victor straight from the grave, eyes turned to puddles of white pus, a gaping crater for a nose and a yawning mouth filled with worms and nameless crawling things. Hands like skeletal claws reached for something at his neck. He screamed again. And again.

Rough hands shook his shoulders. ‘Valerius.’

No, they wouldn’t take him.

‘Valerius, open your eyes.’

Reluctantly, he obeyed a voice that had an authority that could not be ignored. Staring at him was another face from Hades; burning eyes glared out from features tanned to the colour of a house tile, the nose narrow with an edge like a woodsman’s well-used axe and below it a razor-lipped rat-trap mouth. Beyond this nightmare the world was the uniform pale blue of a song thrush’s egg.

‘Serpentius?’

The word emerged as a hoarse croak and the Spaniard put a cup to his lips. Valerius gulped down what he discovered was well-watered tavern wine. He choked and Serpentius removed the cup.

‘Don’t talk now. I’ve put your shoulder back in place, the fever’s gone and you’re getting stronger every day. Rest, and we’ll speak later.’

But there was one thing Valerius had to know, and he dared not look himself. ‘My hand?’ Serpentius smiled gently and raised the left arm, so Valerius could see his hand was intact. The Roman allowed his head to fall back and closed his eyes. ‘My worst nightmare,’ he whispered.

‘No,’ he heard the former gladiator say, ‘your worst nightmare is yet to come.’

‘Where are we?’ Valerius surveyed the rough stockade that enclosed the parade ground of beaten earth that was their prison, along with over a hundred other ragged, bearded men.

‘Somewhere outside Cremona. When Otho died …’ The Spaniard hesitated as he saw the question in Valerius’s eyes. Otho had been nowhere near the battle; there was no reason why he shouldn’t have escaped and joined the Eastern legions who had been marching to join him. Serpentius shrugged. ‘They say that the officers who were with him at Brixellum urged him to fight on. Said that when the Seventh and the Fourteenth arrived they’d outnumber Vitellius’s men. But Otho hadn’t just lost the battle, he’d lost his heart. He said he’d killed enough men and went into his tent … well, you can guess the rest.’

Valerius felt a pang of compassion for the man who had been, if
not his friend, then at least a colourful and entertaining companion. A man who, against all odds, would have made a fine Emperor, given time. The gods had presented Marcus Salvius Otho with everything he had ever desired, and just as quickly taken it away.

‘Who are these
they
, so free with their information? Who’s to say it’s true?’

‘The guards.’ Serpentius waved a hand towards the men watching from the perimeter. ‘They’re not bad sorts. Now that the war is over they feel a bit sorry for us. We fought well, but we lost. They’re just glad it’s not them sitting here, so they make sure we’re well fed and let us do pretty much what we please, as long as we don’t cause any trouble.’

Valerius stared suspiciously. This wasn’t the Spaniard he remembered. Perhaps Otho wasn’t the only one who’d lost heart. For the first time he noticed that Serpentius was working on a block of wood with a small fruit knife.

‘Not bad sorts? Fools, surely, to give a man like you a blade. I’ve seen the day you’d have slit half a dozen throats and been halfway to Rome by now, and taken the others with you.’

The Spaniard chewed his lip. ‘Maybe so, but it’s different now. For one thing, as far as they’re concerned every man here is a gladiator, and he’ll be treated as an escaped slave if he runs. You know what that means?’

‘The cross.’

‘That would be the best of it.’

‘And the other reason?’

Serpentius shrugged. ‘They knew I had reasons for staying.’

Valerius snorted and shook his head. ‘Fool. That still doesn’t explain why we’re here.’ Something occurred to him. ‘Gladiators?’

‘It’s the only reason we’re still alive. We were with what was left of the gladiators when you got your second knock. They were about to butcher the lot of us when Caecina rode up and called off his dogs. Turns out he had a better use for us.’

‘What kind of use?’ Valerius didn’t hide his suspicion.

The Spaniard stared at him, the dark eyes deadly serious. ‘We do what gladiators do best. We fight. To the death.’ Valerius’s brain fought
against the reality of the final three words. Execution he had expected, exile or imprisonment at best. But not that. Never that. Serpentius explained that Caecina, ever eager to stay one step ahead of his rival Valens, had ordered a great games for the Emperor and the climax would be a hundred and fifty captured gladiators fighting to the death. ‘What do you expect? As far as Vitellius is concerned we’re slaves who rose up against him. No better than Spartacus and his lads.’