Barbarian (2 page)

A voice in the lower galleries shouted at Capito, ‘Finish him!’

‘Don’t show the bastard any mercy!’

‘Go for the throat!’ a woman screamed.

Capito didn’t care if the spectacle was a little short. The crowd wanted blood, and he would provide it. He moved in for the kill and stepped towards the barbarian, his shield hoisted and his sword elbow tucked tightly to his side. The barbarian raised his fists, making one last stand as the gladiator closed in. Advancing swiftly, Capito thrust his sword at his opponent and stabbed at an upward angle, aiming just above the ribcage.

But the barbarian stunned Capito by kicking the bottom of his shield. As he did so, the top tilted forward and in a flash the barbarian wrenched it down at the gladiator’s feet. Capito grunted as the metal rim crushed the toes of his left foot. The barbarian ripped the shield away from Capito and kicked him in the groin. Capito staggered backwards, dazed by what had happened, rattled by the same thought as the five gladiators who had faced Britomaris previously.
How could such a large man move so quickly?

The barbarian followed up with a weighted punch that struck Capito on the shoulder and shuddered through his bones. He collapsed onto the sand and in a flash Britomaris threw himself forward. The two men rolled in the sand, exchanging blows while the umpire stood a few paces away and ordered them both to their feet. But he was powerless to intervene. Capito tried to scrabble clear but the barbarian smashed a fist into him and sent the gladiator crashing face down into the sand. The blow stunned Capito. He lay there for a moment in dumb shock and wondered what had happened to his sword. Then he felt a powerful blow like teeth sinking into his flesh strike him on the back. Something warm and wet was draining out of his back and down his legs. He rolled onto his side and saw Britomaris towering over him and grasping a sword. It was Capito’s sword.

Capito became conscious of blood pooling around him, gushing out of his back. ‘What?’ he said disbelievingly. ‘But . . . how . . .?’

The crowd went deadly quiet. Capito felt sick. His mouth was suddenly very dry. Blotches bubbled across his vision. The crowd implored him to get up and fight, but he couldn’t. The blow had struck deep. He could feel blood filling his lungs.

‘I call on you, gods,’ he gasped. ‘Save me.’

He glanced up at the podium in despair. The Emperor stared down with cold disapproval. Capito knew he could expect no mercy. None of the gladiators could be granted a reprieve – not even the highest-ranking imperial warrior. His reputation demanded that he accept death fearlessly.

Capito trembled as he struggled onto his knees, clamped his hands around the solid legs of Britomaris and bowed deeply, presenting himself for execution. He stared hopelessly at the bloodied sand as he silently cursed himself for underestimating his opponent. He prayed that whoever faced Britomaris next would not make the same mistake.

His limbs spasmed as the sword plunged into his neck behind his collarbone, and tore deep into his heart.

The officer raised his head slowly from his cup of wine and focused on the two Praetorian guards standing in front of him, dimly lit by the dull glow of a single oil lamp. Outside the inn, the street was pitch-black.

‘Lucius Cornelius Macro, optio of the Second Legion?’ the guard on the left barked. The officer nodded with pride and raised his cup to the guards. They wore plain white togas over their tunics, he noticed, which was the distinctive garb of the Praetorian Guard.

‘That’s me,’ Macro slurred. ‘Come to hear the story behind my decoration too, I suppose. Well, take a seat, lads, and I’ll give you every grisly detail. But it’ll cost you a jug of wine. None of that Gallic swill though, eh?’

The guard stared humourlessly at Macro. ‘You’re required to come with us.’

‘What, right now?’ Macro looked at the young guard on the right. ‘Isn’t it past your bedtime, lad?’

The young Praetorian glared with outrage at the officer. The guard on the left cleared his throat and said, ‘We are here on orders from the imperial palace.’

Macro sobered up. A summons to the imperial household, well after dusk? He shook his head.

‘You must be mistaken. I’ve already collected my award.’ He proudly tapped the bronze medals strapped across his chest, which he’d been presented with by the Emperor before the festivities at the Statilius Taurus amphitheatre earlier that day. The defeat of Capito had cast a cloud over proceedings and Macro had left his seat as soon as the gladiator had fallen, sensing the mood of the crowd was about to turn ugly. He’d sunk a skinful of wine at the Sword and Shield tavern not far from the amphitheatre. It was a stinking hovel with foul wine, redeemed by the fact that the owner was an old sweat from the Second Legion who insisted on plying Macro with free drinks in recognition of his decoration.

‘The Praetorian Guard doesn’t make mistakes,’ the guard said bluntly. ‘Now come with us.’

‘No use arguing with you boys, is there?’ Macro slid out of his bench and reluctantly followed the guards outside.

The crowds had taken their anger out on everything in the streets. Market stalls had been overthrown. Carved miniature statuettes of Capito with their heads smashed off littered the ground, and Macro had to watch his step as he ambled down the covered portico of the Flaminian Way towards the Fontinalian Gate. The Julian plaza stood at his right, its ornate marble façade commemorating Caesar. To his left stood rows of extravagant private residences.

‘What’s this all about, then?’ Macro asked the guards.

‘No idea, mate,’ the one at his left shoulder replied, blunt as the spear Britomaris had been equipped with. ‘We were just told to find you and escort you to the palace. What you’re wanted for is none of our business.’

Gods, thought Macro as the guards escorted him through the gate towards the Capitoline Hill. A Praetorian who wasn’t sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted? He couldn’t quite believe it.

‘You never get used to the smell here, I suppose,’ Macro said, creasing his nose at the foetid stench coming from an open section of the great sewer that carried the city’s filth out from the Forum.

The guard nodded.

‘You think it’s bad here,’ he said, ‘wait ’til you visit the Subura. Smells like a fucking Gaul’s arse down there. We steer well clear of the place, thank the gods. Spend most of our time up at the imperial palace, being in the Guard and all. Clean air, fresh cunny and all the figs you can eat.’ He grinned at the other guard to Macro’s right. ‘And that fifteen-thousand sestertii bonus from the new Emperor came in very handy.’

A bewildering array of smells fanned over the officer. Although the markets had closed a few hours earlier, the potent aroma of cinnamon and pepper, cheap perfume and rotten fish lingered in the air, mixing with the smell of the sewers and conspiring to churn Macro’s guts. He hated being in Rome. Too much noise, too much dirt, too many people. And too many bloody Praetorians, he thought. Acrid billows of dull-grey smoke wafted up from forges and blanketed the sky, rendering the air muggy and leaden. It was like walking through a giant kiln. Fires glowered dimly in the dark. Apartment blocks tapered along the distant hills and valleys, their blackened upper storeys barely visible against the night sky.

‘All the lads in the camp are talking about your decoration,’ the guard said, his voice carrying a hint of jealousy. ‘It’s not every day that his imperial majesty personally awards a lowly officer, you know. You’re the toast of Rome.’ He narrowed his eyes to slits. ‘You must have some friends in high places, I suppose.’

‘Afraid not,’ Macro replied dryly. ‘My boys and I were part of a punitive expedition against a tribe from across the Rhine. We got caught in the thick of it. Killed three hundred of the wildest looking Germans you could imagine. I led the men back after our centurion copped it. All in a day’s work for the Second. Honestly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’

The Praetorian swapped an impressed look with the second guard. Macro felt a sudden hankering to be back on the Rhine Frontier. Rome disagreed with him, even though he had lived there in his childhood. He’d left the city under a cloud some thirteen years ago, after avenging the death of his uncle Sextus by slaying a violent gang leader. Macro had journeyed north to Gaul and enlisted for twenty-five years at the fortress of the Second Legion. He’d not expected to ever return to the city, and being back felt strange.

‘Yes,’ he said, patting his stomach. ‘It’s tough being a hero. Everyone buying you drinks. Tarts fawning over you, of course. The ladies love a man with a shiny set of medals.’ The guard glanced back enviously across his shoulder at Macro. ‘Especially the posh ones. They can’t resist a bit of rough.’

Macro struggled to match pace with the guards as they weaved their way through a wave of exotic faces – Syrians and Gauls, Nubians and Jews. Synagogues and a variety of temples he hadn’t seen before loomed between the tenements along the main thoroughfare.

‘A word to the wise,’ said the guard. ‘From one soldier to another. Things aren’t like they used to be around here. A lot’s changed.’

‘Oh?’ Macro asked, his interest piqued. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Claudius may be Emperor, but his accession hasn’t exactly been smooth. That unfortunate business of Caligula getting the chop a few months back caused a bit of a mess.’

‘As I recall,’ said Macro frostily, ‘it was one of your own who stuck his blade into Caligula.’

News of the assassination of the previous Emperor in January had been greeted with a mixture of dismay and relief by the men in the Second. Dismay that there was a chance they might return to the days of the Republic, but relief that Caligula’s reign had ended. The Emperor had been dogged by scandals. It was common knowledge that he’d committed incest with his sisters and turned the imperial palace into a brothel, and an attempt on his life from the offended aristocracy and Senate had been all-too predictable. In the end a trio of officers from the Praetorian Guard, led by Cassius Chaerea, had taken matters into their own hands. The conspirators had stabbed Caligula thirty times, slain his wife and smashed his young daughter’s head against a wall to end the bloodline. For a short while, a new Roman republic had seemed on the cards. Until the Praetorians turned to Claudius.

The guard stopped in his tracks and, turning to face Macro, lowered his voice. ‘Look, between you and me, old Chaerea was a decent bloke, but he never had much support among the Guard. He forgot the golden rule. Praetorians stick by our Emperor through thick and thin.’ He paused, took a calming breath and continued. ‘Anyway, after Caligula died a few unsavoury types crawled out of the woodwork, announcing they were opposed to Claudius becoming Emperor. One or two of them had the idea that they deserved the job instead. Or worse, wanted to turn Rome into a republic again! To have us return to the dark days of civil war and bloodletting on the streets . . .’ The guard shivered at the thought. ‘Obviously the Emperor can’t rule with dissent in the ranks.’

‘Obviously,’ Macro said.

‘Right. So we’ve had to spend these last few months rooting out the ones who were opposed to Claudius and make them disappear.’

Macro made a face. ‘Disappear?’

‘Yes,’ the guard said, his eyes darting left and right to check no one was snooping in on their conversation. ‘We quietly take them off the streets, bring ’em to the palace and deal with them.’ He made a throat-slitting gesture. ‘Senators, knights, magistrates. Even the odd legate. The sons get exiled, or worse, thrown into the gladiator schools. The list seems to grow by the week. No one is safe, I’m telling you.’

‘Not sure I like the sound of that,’ Macro said tersely. ‘Soldiers shouldn’t get involved in politics.’

The guard raised a hand in mock surrender. ‘Hey, don’t look at me. You know how it is. Orders are orders. If you ask me, it’s those freedmen the Emperor has been surrounding himself with we need to watch. You should see the way they talk to us. But they’ve got his ear.’

The guard straightened his back and approached a set of wrought iron gates at the entrance to the imperial palace complex. A blast of cool evening air swept through the street as the guards ushered Macro up a wide staircase leading into a dimly lit hall with marbled walls and a bas-relief frieze depicting the famous battle of Zama, the decisive victory against Carthage masterminded by Publius Cornelius Scipio, the great reformer of the Roman military. They swept along a vast corridor and cut through a lavish garden adorned with fountains and statues and surrounded by marble arcades. Beyond, Macro could see the rooftops of the Forum and the columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Arriving at the opposite side of the garden, they climbed a flight of stone stairs and entered a large hall with an apse at the far end. The guards escorted Macro across the hall to where a shadowed figure stood at the step of a raised dais used by the Emperor when he was holding court.

The man at the dais was not the Emperor. He had the dark, curly hair and sloping nose of a Greek. His smooth skin and willowy physique suggested he had never done a day’s hard labour. He wore the simple tunic of a freedman, although Macro noted the tunic appeared to be made of fine-spun wool. His eyes were black like the holes in a stage mask.

‘Ah, the famous Macro!’ the freedman said with an exaggerated tone of praise. ‘A true Roman hero!’

He approached Macro, his thin lips twisted into a smile.

‘Leave us,’ he ordered the guards in a sharp, shrill voice. The Praetorians nodded and paced back down the centre of the hall. The freedman followed them with his dark eyes until they were out of earshot.

‘You have to be careful who you speak around these days,’ he said. ‘Particularly the Praetorians. They have the misguided impression that his imperial majesty owes them an eternal debt. What is the world coming to when the guards think they hold sway over the most powerful man in the world?’

Macro bit his tongue. He’d heard that after Caligula had been assassinated, Claudius had been discovered hiding in the imperial palace by members of the Praetorian Guard. Desperate for stability, the Praetorians had promptly acclaimed as Emperor a fifty-year old man with practically no experience of government and who, if the rumours were to be believed, didn’t even want the job. Without the backing of the Praetorians, there might have been another face stamped on every coin in the Empire. No wonder the freedman felt so threatened by their presence, thought Macro.