Arena (27 page)

‘Bugger it!’ Macro grumbled.

He raced towards Bato. The Thracian turned to face him, calmly standing his ground, wielding a wooden training sword which he twirled in his hand as Macro charged at him. His lightning-fast gladiator reflexes caught the optio by surprise. There was a flash of shadow as the wooden blade whacked Macro on the side of his head. He fell to one knee and tried to clear his head of the dizzying sensation. Bato lunged again, bringing the wooden sword down over Macro’s head as if chopping with an axe. Macro’s combat instincts kicked in, and he rolled on to his side. He felt the swoosh of the wooden blade as it grazed his cheek and stabbed the sand. Seizing the chance to counterattack, he cut up at Bato, aiming at the throat. The gladiator jerked his head at the last instant. The blade nicked his ear. He jumped back, half mad with anger as blood trickled down his neck. His glare turned to a grin as Duras disappeared into the shadows of the dormitory. Bato turned to follow him, and Macro was shaping to pursue them when a voice at his back stopped him short.

‘Sir!’ one of the guards shouted. ‘Look! To the south.’

Macro swung his gaze towards the open gate. Five gladiators had broken away from the battle and were charging the guards at the post next to the gate. Seeing the imminent danger, the guards lowered the portcullis and drew their swords. Macro promptly felt his throat constrict.

‘Oh shit. They’ll raise the gate!’

He was temporarily torn between pursuing Bato and securing the gate. But with only four guards left standing, and Macer having deserted, he knew he lacked the manpower to regain control of the dormitory. There were sixty cells in the dormitory, with two gladiators to a cell. Attacking it with a trickle of poorly trained and out-of-shape guards would be doomed to failure. On the other hand, as long as the gladiators were trapped inside the ludus, the people of Capua were safe. He quickly decided that isolating the threat was his best strategy, at least until he possessed the means to force the issue with Bato.

Macro turned to the men. ‘Who’s second-in-command here?’

A young guard with blond curly hair raised his hand. ‘Glabrio, sir.’

‘You’ve just been promoted, lad.’ The young man gave an anxious nod. ‘Now, where the fuck are the other guards?’

The young soldier nodded to the dormitory. Hideous screams echoed from deep within it, and he and Macro shuddered at the appalling fate awaiting those guards unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped amid a throng of vengeful gladiators.

‘It’s too late for them,’ Macro said, snapping Glabrio out of his trance. ‘Listen carefully. There are only two exits from the ludus. I’ll take care of the gate. I want you to fall back to the lanista’s quarters and seal the door. We have to make sure there’s nowhere for Bato and his men to run.’

‘What about Macer, sir?’

The optio stared darkly at the junior officer. ‘Macer has deserted. I’m in charge, lad. And I’m ordering you to bloody well seal off the other exit! If you prefer, I can write you up for dereliction of duty, and you can run the gauntlet at dawn. Am I clear, Glabrio?’

The young soldier nodded after a momentary pause. ‘Yes, sir!’

‘Good. Take one guard with you.’

Macro eyed the arms of a grizzled guard. Judging from his scars, the man had seen combat at one time or another. Unlike his commander, the optio thought glumly.

‘You! Name!’

‘Bassus, sir.’

‘Ever fought in a proper battle?’

Bassus nodded quickly. ‘I was in the Eighth Legion for twenty years, sir. Saw plenty of action down by the Danube.’

‘Today’s your lucky day, Bassus. You get to cut down a bunch of mutinous gladiators and save the imperial ludus from disaster.’ Macro gestured to the struggle unfolding at the gate.

The orderlies unloading the wagon had been scythed down by the onrushing gladiators; amphoras lay shattered on the ground, their contents spilling across the sand. One of the guards lay on his back, clutching his guts and screaming for his mother. His comrade put up a brave resistance, but he’d been forced back to the outer door by one of the breakaway gladiators. The other four gladiators split into two pairs, grappling with the two sets of coiled cord ropes used to raise the portcullis.

‘We’ve got to stop them from escaping,’ Macro said to Bassus. ‘If they break out, half the locals in Capua will find themselves at the wrong end of a blade. Same goes for us if the Emperor discovers our fuck-up. We’ve got to take them down.’

Bassus looked dumbfounded. ‘Seal the doors, sir? Forgive me, but we’ll be trapped too.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ Macro answered firmly. ‘We’re all that stands between a mob of angry gladiators and the people of Capua.’

Macro hurried towards the main gate. Bassus staggered at his shoulder, his breathing laboured as he struggled to match the optio’s pace. He was clearly exhausted from the skirmish. Years spent living in the relative comfort of the ludus, far from the rough and tumble of life on the frontiers of the Empire, had dulled his edge. Macro prayed that the guards’ superior weapons would be enough to stop the gladiators from gaining complete control of the ludus.

There was a barbaric cheer from the main gate as the portcullis slowly rose off the ground. In front of the outer door, the guard managed to cut down his gladiator opponent and dropped to one knee, clutching a wide gash on his right ankle.

‘Take the bastards on the left,’ Macro shouted to Bassus. ‘I’ll cut down the two on the right.’

Bassus nodded enthusiastically. Belting out a hoarse roar, Macro charged at the gladiators to the right of the portcullis. His veins coursed with hot rage and one of the gladiators glanced up at the onrushing optio and hesitated. Filling his lungs, Macro let out an animal snarl and leapt forward. The gladiator quickly dropped the rope and moved to meet Macro head on, bracing himself for impact. At the last moment Macro thrust his shield out, smashing into the gladiator. The shield juddered in his grip, sending tremors up his forearm. He had no time to admire his handiwork. A piercing grating noise told him that the portcullis had finally been raised. The last gladiator on the right was frantically securing the rope.

The optio quickened his pace now, moving forward fearlessly towards the gladiator as he darted for the open mouth of the gate. Macro dived at him, nicking his calf muscle with the tip of his blade. A gout of red and pink oozed out of his leg. The gladiator spun round, hobbling with pain. Macro froze. The gladiator was clutching a sword taken from a dead guard. Incensed by his injury, he thrust his sword at the optio. Macro threw his head to one side at the last instant, the edge of the blade grazing his cheek. The gladiator sprang forward. There was an explosive grunt as the full weight of the man crashed on top of Macro’s shield, slamming the optio to the ground. He placed the sole of his hobnailed sandal on the gladiator’s chest and kicked out with all his might, launching the gladiator into the air. The man landed heavily a short distance away, the sword clattering out of his hand. As Macro scraped himself off the sand, he saw the gladiator roll on to his belly, crawling towards his sword. Macro had a moment to react. He glanced up and saw the portcullis directly over the floored gladiator. The spikes glistened like wolves’ teeth.

‘Leave the ludus!’ Macro shouted to the guard standing in front of the outer door. ‘Lock it behind you, and whatever you do, don’t open it up!’

The guard nodded and hobbled out through the doors, slamming them shut behind him. In the same instant Macro spun to his left and hacked through the tautened portcullis rope with his sword with a single clean blow. The rope snapped apart, and the gate crashed heavily to earth. The gladiator on the ground screamed as the spikes punched through his arms, legs and torso, impaling him.

‘I’ve always wanted to do that, sir.’

Macro looked over his shoulder at Bassus. He stood beaming over the bodies of the two gladiators who’d been operating the ropes on the left. They now lay sprawled on the sand.

‘What’s that, Bassus?’

‘Carve up a couple of Thracians. Devious buggers, sir. Couldn’t trust any of ’em further than you could piss.’

Macro chuckled drily. ‘There’s one or two men I could describe that way.’

He sucked in a breath through his teeth as his thoughts turned to Pallas and Murena. The imperial secretary and his aide would surely make him pay a heavy price for the gladiator rebellion. He quickly shook his head clear. There would be plenty of time to worry about the Greeks later. First he had to put a stop to Bato.

‘Sir!’ Bassus exclaimed. ‘Look …’

The guard pointed to the dormitory. Two gladiators were dangling a guard from a window on the first floor, gripping him by his feet. The guard was still alive. The gladiators began hacking through his ankles with a pair of saws. The guard howled in agony, thrashing wildly as the saw teeth sliced through bone, before he fell to earth with a thud. Another guard had been set alight and pushed from a window. He landed not far from his stricken comrade and rolled desperately on the ground in a futile attempt to put out the flames.

‘Good gods,’ Bassus said with a shiver.

Macro turned away from the terrifying spectacle. ‘Back to the lanista’s quarters. Now!’

They raced across the training ground to the sounds of shrieks and moans as the freed gladiators exacted revenge on the remaining guards inside the dormitory. In the shadow of the porticoes at the northern end of the training ground Macro caught sight of Bato emerging from the dormitory block. Freed gladiators poured out after the Thracian. Bato made a lewd gesture at Macro with his hands and crotch, while around him rampant gladiators uprooted the paluses and overturned the stone sundial.

‘Sir,’ Bassus said. ‘We have to go!’

Macro ground his teeth at the sight of the mutinous gladiators, then hurried on to the lanista’s quarters in the gathering dusk, muttering under his breath.

‘I swear to the gods, Bato will pay for this.’

M
acro raced down a wide corridor alongside Bassus, away from the ludus training ground. At the end of the corridor the two men scrambled up a set of marble steps and stopped in front of a solid double wooden door fitted with ornate bronze doorknobs. Macro clasped the knocker, a bronze ring running through the mouth of a wolf’s head, and rapped three times on the door.

‘Who’s there?’ a muffled voice asked from the other side.

‘It’s Macro! For fuck’s sake, open up!’

There was a brief pause, followed by a series of metallic clanks and groans as someone fiddled with the heavy lock. Then the door creaked open to reveal Glabrio, breathing a sigh of immense relief.

‘Thank Fortuna!’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘Thought you might have been done for, sir.’

Macro brushed past the young soldier. ‘It’ll take more than a few barbarians to cut me down, lad. I’ve been sending men like Bato over to the afterlife for thirteen years.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Glabrio shivered as he slammed the door shut and secured the lock. ‘I used to be with the urban watch here in Capua, sir. Putting out fires and breaking up fights outside the taverns, that sort of thing. Never thought I’d be fighting for my life against a mob of fanatical gladiators.’

A depressing sight greeted the optio in the lanista’s quarters. The few surviving guards from the skirmish huddled in a group in the middle of the room. Among them was Macer. They were in a state of shock, drenched with sweat and blood. The orderlies and household slaves stood further back, their wretched faces stitched with anxiety at the sudden outbreak of violence, their eyes collectively focused on Macro for reassurance that their miserable lives were not in immediate danger.

Macro noticed a dishevelled figure pinned down under a guard, who pressed down on the man’s back with his knees. The figure rocked his shoulders, trying to shake the guard off. His legs and arms were purpled with bruises and his curly hair was matted with blood.

‘Got one of the bastards, sir!’ the guard declared proudly. ‘The slaves found him hiding in one of the side rooms and alerted us when we got here. He was clearly intending to ambush us, sir.’

‘Urghhh,’ the figure croaked.

Macro thought he recognised the groan. He approached the man, wrinkling his nose at the putrid smell coming off his filthy skin and hair. At the optio’s instruction, the guard reluctantly slid off the man’s back and Macro lifted the figure by his chin to get a better look at him.

‘Pavo!’ he exclaimed. ‘What in Hades happened to you?’

‘Sir …’

Macro ordered one of the household slaves to fetch a cup of wine. A few moments later the slave returned and passed the cup to the young gladiator. Pavo downed the wine in one gulp while an orderly who had experience of working in the infirmary examined his injuries. The sutured wound on Pavo’s shoulder had been ripped open and resembled a pair of puckered lips. His jaw was swollen and his lips were distended. The orderly applied a new gauze dressing to his shoulder wound while Pavo sat gingerly upright.

‘You’re covered in shit,’ Macro observed drily.

‘I know, sir.’

‘And you smell like Gallic cunny.’

‘I seem to remember it was you who allowed Aculeo to put me on latrine duty.’

‘Just saying.’ Macro shrugged. ‘Seems to happen to you a lot.’

The young gladiator groaned. ‘This is no time for humour … sir. I am in rather a lot of pain.’

‘That’s your problem, Pavo. Always bloody complaining. Now, what happened?’

The young gladiator glared at Macro through his puffed-up eyes. ‘They ambushed me, sir. In the baths. I overheard them plotting the rebellion. Then they left for me dead. I managed to escape when they went to begin the uprising. I came here to warn you. But it was too late.’

‘Bato’s thugs?’

Pavo nodded and swallowed hard. ‘They’re planning to escape the ludus, sir. Make their way to the hills and set up as a brigand outfit.’

‘Shit.’ Macro rubbed his jaw.

‘Why didn’t they all make a run for it back there when they had the chance, sir?’ Bassus asked. ‘Only a few tried to escape, rather than the entire mob. It doesn’t make sense.’