Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) (129 page)

‘But even if you put the dogs to sleep, there are all those gladiators, men who’ve been trained to kill—’

‘I shall carry a dagger for self-defence.’

‘A dagger! From the way you describe Ahala, the
lanista
himself could kill you with his bare hands.’ She shook her head. ‘You’ll be taking a terrible risk, Gordianus.’

‘That’s what you’re paying me for, Zuleika.’

‘I should go with you.’

‘Absolutely not!’

Some distance from the compound, I tethered my horse to a stunted tree and proceeded on foot. Hours past midnight, the half-moon was low in the sky. It shed just enough light for me to cautiously pick my way, while casting ample shadows to offer concealment.

The compound was quiet and dark; gladiators need their sleep. As I drew near the palisade, one of the dogs began to bark. I tossed bits of steak over the wall. The barking immediately ceased, followed by slavering sounds, followed by silence.

The climb over the palisade was easier than I expected. A running start, a quick scamper up the rough bark of the poles, a leap of faith over the sharp spikes, and I landed solidly atop the roof of the slaughterhouse, making only a faint, plunking noise. I paused for breath, listening intently. From outside the compound I heard a quiet, scurrying noise – some nocturnal animal, I presumed – but within the compound there was only a deep silence.

I climbed off the roof and proceeded quickly to the gate that opened into the inner compound, where the gladiators were quartered. As I suspected, it was unbarred. At night, the men inside were free to come and go at will.

I returned to the slaughterhouse and stepped inside. As I had thought, the organs I had seen hanging to dry in the back corner were bladders harvested from slaughtered beasts. I took one down and examined it in the moonlight. Ahala was a frugal man; this bladder already had been used at least once, and was ready to be used again. The opening had been stitched shut but then carefully unstitched; a gash in the side had been repaired with some particularly fine stitch work. The inside of the bladder had been thoroughly cleaned, but by the moonlight I thought I could nonetheless discern bits of dried blood within.

I left the slaughterhouse and made my way to the armoury shed, by night a hanging forest of weird shapes. Navigating through the darkness amid dangling helmets and swords, I located one of the peculiar wood-and-metal tubes I had noticed earlier. I hefted the object in my hand, then put it in my mouth. I blew through it, cautiously, quietly – and even so, gave myself a fright, so uncanny was the gurgling death-rattle that emerged from the tube.

It frightened the other person in the shed, as well; for I was not alone. A silhouette behind me gave a start, whirled about, and collided with a hanging helmet. The helmet knocked against a shield with a loud, clanging noise. The silhouette staggered back and collided with more pieces of hanging armour, knocking some from their hooks and sending them clattering across the floor.

The cacophony roused at least one of the drugged canines. From the kennel, I heard a bloodcurdling howl. A moment later, a man began to shout an alarm.

‘Gordianus! Where are you?’ The stumbling, confused silhouette had a voice.

‘Zuleika! I told you not to follow me!’

‘All these hanging swords, like an infernal maze – Hades! I’ve cut myself . . .’

Perhaps it was her blood that attracted the beast. I saw its silhouette enter from the direction of the kennels and careen towards us, like a missile shot from a sling. The snarling creature took a flying leap and knocked Zuleika to the ground. She screamed.

Suddenly there were others in the armoury – not dogs, but men. ‘Was that a woman?’ one of them muttered.

The dog snarled. Zuleika screamed again.

‘Zuleika!’ I cried.

‘Did he say . . .
Zuleika
?’ One of the men – tall, broad, majestic in silhouette – broke away from the others and ran towards her. Seizing a hanging trident, he drove it into the snarling dog – then gave a cry of exasperation and cast the trident aside. ‘Numa’s balls, I grabbed one of the fakes! Somebody hand me a
real
weapon!’

I was closest. I reached into my tunic, pulled out my dagger, and thrust it into his hand. He swooped down. The dog gave a single plaintive yelp, then went limp. The man scooped up the lifeless dog and thrust it aside.

‘Zuleika!’ he cried.

‘Zanziba?’ she answered, her voice weak.

In blood, fear and darkness, the siblings were reunited.

The danger was not over, but just beginning; for having discovered the secret of Ahala’s gladiator camp, how could I be allowed to live? Their success – indeed, their survival – depended on absolute secrecy.

If Zuleika had not followed me, I would have climbed over the palisade and ridden back to Ravenna, satisfied that I knew the truth and reasonably certain that the Nubian I had seen earlier that day was indeed Zanziba, still very much alive. For my suspicion had been confirmed: Ahala and his gladiators had learned to cheat death. The bouts they staged at funeral games looked real, but in fact were shams, not spontaneous but very carefully choreographed. When they appeared to bleed, the blood was animal blood that spurted from animal bladders concealed under their scanty armour or loincloths, or from the hollow, bloodfilled tips of weapons with retractable points, cleverly devised by Ahala’s smiths; when they appeared to expire, the death rattles that issued from their throats actually came from sound-makers like the one I had blown through. No doubt there were many other tricks of their trade which I had not discovered with my cursory inspection, or even conceived of; they were seasoned professionals, after all, an experienced troupe of acrobats, actors and mimes making a very handsome living by pretending to be a troupe of gladiators.

Any doubt was dispelled when I was dragged from the armoury into the open and surrounded by a ring of naked, rudely awakened men. The torches in their hands turned night to day and lit up the face of Zuleika, who lay bleeding but alive on the sand, attended by an unflappable, greybearded physician; it made sense that Ahala’s troupe would have a skilled doctor among them, to attend to accidents and injuries.

Among the assembled gladiators, I was quite sure I saw the tall, lumbering Samnite who had ‘died’ in Saturnia, along with the shorter, stockier Thracian who had ‘killed’ him – and who had put on such a convincing show of tottering off-balance and almost impaling himself on the Samnite’s upright sword. I also saw the two
dimacheri
who had put on such a show with their flashing daggers that the spectators had spared them both. There was the redheaded Gaul who had delivered the ‘death blow’ to Zanziba – and there was Zanziba himself, hovering fretfully over his sister and the physician attending to her.

‘I can’t understand it,’ the physician finally announced. ‘The dog should have torn her limb from limb, but he seems hardly to have broken the skin. The beast must have been dazed – or drugged.’ He shot a suspicious glance at me. ‘At any rate, she’s lost very little blood. The wounds are shallow, and I’ve cleaned them thoroughly. Unless an infection sets in, that should be the end of it. Your sister is a lucky woman.’

The physician stepped back and Zanziba knelt over her. ‘Zuleika! How did you find me?’

‘The gods led me to you,’ she whispered.

I cleared my throat.

‘With some help from the Finder,’ she added. ‘It
was
you I saw at the funeral games in Saturnia that day?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then again in Rome?’

He nodded. ‘I was there very briefly, some days ago, then came straight back to Ravenna.’

‘But Zanziba, why didn’t you send for me?’

He sighed. ‘When I sent you the money, I was in great despair. I expected every day to be my last. I moved from place to place, plying my trade as a gladiator, expecting death but handing it out to others instead. Then I fell in with these fellows, and everything changed.’ He smiled and gestured to the men around him. ‘A company of free men, all experienced gladiators, who’ve realized that it simply isn’t necessary to kill or be killed to put on a good show for the spectators. Ahala is our leader, but he’s only first among equals. We all pull together. After I joined these fellows, I
did
send for you – I sent a letter to your old master in Alexandria, but he had no idea where you’d gone. I had no way to find you. I thought we’d lost each other forever.’

Regaining her strength, Zuleika rose on to her elbows. ‘Your fighting is all illusion, then?’

Her brother grinned. ‘The Romans have a saying: “A gladiator dies only once.” But I’ve died in the arena many, many times! And been paid quite handsomely for it.’

I shook my head. ‘The game you’re playing is incredibly dangerous.’

‘Not as dangerous as being a real gladiator,’ said Zanziba.

‘You’ve pulled it off so far,’ I said. ‘But the more famous this troupe becomes, the more widely you travel and the more people see you – some of them on more than one occasion – the harder it will become to maintain the deception. The risk of discovery will grow greater each time you perform. If you’re found out, you’ll be charged with sacrilege, at the very least. Romans save their cruellest punishments for that sort of crime.’

‘You’re talking to men who’ve stared death in the face many times,’ growled Ahala. ‘We have nothing to lose. But you, Gordianus, on the other hand . . .’

‘He’ll have to die,’ said one of the men. ‘Like the others who’ve discovered our secret.’

‘The skulls decorating the gateway?’ I said.

Ahala nodded grimly.

‘But we can’t kill him!’ protested Zanziba.

‘He lied about his purpose in coming here,’ said Ahala.

‘But his purpose was to bring Zuleika to me . . .’

So began the debate over what to do with me, which lasted through the night. In the end, as was their custom, they decided by voting. I was locked away while the deliberations took place. What was said, I never knew; but at daybreak I was released, and after making me pledge never to betray them, Ahala showed me to the gate.

‘Zuleika is staying?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘How did the voting go?’

‘The motion to release you was decided by a bare majority of one.’

‘That close? How did you vote, Ahala?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

The look on his face told me I didn’t.

I untethered my horse and rode quickly away, never looking back.

On my first day back in Rome, I saw Cicero in the Forum. I tried to avoid him, but he made a beeline for me, smiling broadly.

‘Well met, Gordianus! Except for this beastly weather. Not yet noon, and already a scorcher. Reminds me of the last time I saw you, at those funeral games in Saturnia. Do you remember?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘What fine games those were!’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, a bit reluctantly.

‘But do you know, since then I’ve seen some even more spectacular funeral games. It was down in Capua. Amazing fighters! The star of the show was a fellow with some barbaric Thracian name. What was it, now? Ah, yes: Spartacus, they called him. Like the city of warriors, Sparta. A good name for a gladiator, eh?’

I nodded and quickly changed the subject. But for some reason, the name Cicero had spoken stuck in my mind. As Zuleika had said, how strange are the coincidences dropped in our paths by the gods; for in a matter of days, that name would be on the lips of everyone in Rome and all over Italy.

For that was the month that the great slave revolt began, led by Spartacus and his rebel gladiators. It would last for many months, spreading conflagration and chaos all over Italy. It would take me to the Bay of Neapolis for my first fateful meeting with Rome’s richest man, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and a household of ninety-nine slaves all marked for death; but that is another story.

What became of Zanziba and Zuleika? In the ensuing months of warfare and panic, I lost track of them, but thought of them often. I especially remembered Zuleika’s comments on Roman slavery. Were her sympathies inflamed by the revolt? Did she manage to persuade her brother and his comrades, if indeed they needed persuading, to join the revolt and take up arms against Rome? If they did, then almost certainly things went badly for them; for eventually Spartacus and his followers were trapped and defeated, hunted and slaughtered like animals, and crucified by the thousands.