The Mark of the Horse Lord (2 page)

They grinned back, one or two tossing up their weapons in mock salute. ‘Understood, Automedon! Understood, noble Captain!’

‘That’s well.’ His face lost something of its grimness in a gleam of humour. ‘This new Governor is fresh out from Rome, and maybe he doesn’t expect much from a frontier circus, so show him that even if he has seen bigger fights in the Colosseum, man for man the Corstopitum lads can give Rome a bloody nose any day of the week!’

They shouted for him then in good earnest, tossing up swords and javelins as though to Caesar himself, and while their shouts still rang hollow under the roofbeams, Phaedrus heard the silver crowing of the trumpets, and the grinding clang as the arena doors were flung wide.

Automedon turned on his heel with a rapped-out command, and the arena guard stood back on each side of the broad stone stairway that led up to the open air. Two by two, the gladiators stepped off and swung forward.

Phaedrus shortened his stride at the foot of the stairway, clipped steps, head up, sword drawn, and shield at the ready. The lamplit gloom fell away behind, and the light of day came down to them with the swelling voice of the crowd. They were out from the echoing shadows of the arched stairway into the sudden space and wind and sunshine of the arena, the yielding sand underfoot, the greeting of the multitude bursting upon them in a solid wave of sound, hoarse under the clash of the cymbals and the high strident crowing of the trumpets. They swung left to circle the arena, falling into the long swaggering pace of the parade march, past the Altar of Vengeance at which they had sacrificed at first light, as always before the games; past the mouth of the beast-dens, past the dark alleyway giving on to the rooms where the Syrian doctor and his slaves were waiting to deal with such of the wounded as seemed worth trying to save, past the shovels and sand-boxes and the Mercuries with their little, flapping gilded wings and long hooks. Phaedrus looked up, seeing the tiered benches of the amphitheatre packed to their topmost skyline: Roman and Briton, townsfolk and tribesmen, easy figures in purple-bordered tunics in the Magistrates’ Gallery, and everywhere – for Corstopitum was a depot town for the frontier – the russet-red cloth and glinting bronze of the Legions. Faces stared down at them, hands clutched the barriers in the excitement of what was to come. The usual flowers and sweetmeats began to shower down upon favourite gladiators. Phaedrus caught a white briar-rose in the hollow of his shield, and flashed his trained play-actor’s gesture of thanks up at the fat woman in many jewels who had thrown it.

Full circle round the wide rim of the arena, they were close beneath the Governor’s box now. Automedon snapped out a command, and they clashed to a halt, and wheeled to face the big, bull-necked man who leaned there with the glowing wine-red folds of his cloak flung back from the embossed and gilded breastplate beneath: Caesar’s new representative, the giver of the games. Their weapons flashed up in the windy sunlight, and they raised the full-throated shout as though Caesar himself had leaned there.

‘Hail Caesar! Those about to die salute you!’

Then they were breaking away to take station round the barricades. Phaedrus swung his shield into its resting position behind his shoulder, and straddling his legs, stood with hands on hips, deliberately wearing his courage at a rakish angle. That was what the crowd liked to see; the crowd that had come to watch him or Vortimax die.

The attendant Mercuries were hauling back the bars that closed the dark mouth of the dens, and the proud ten-point stag came flying in, half mad already with fear of the wolf-smell in his nostrils; and a few moments later the wolves were loosed after him. Six wolves in a dark, low-running pack. He killed two with his terrible antlers and left them ripped and broken on the bloody sand, before the rest pulled him down to a red rending death amid a great yelling from the onlookers. The bodies were dragged away; a third wolf who lay snapping and snarling with a broken back was finished off by one of the Mercuries. The remaining three were decoyed back to their cages for use another day, and fresh sand was spread over the stains in the arena. After that came the boxing-match, and the big sham fight which pleased the crowd better, especially when blood began to flow – for despite Automedon’s orders, there was seldom a sword-fight that did not end in a few deaths and maimings. Now it was the turn of the Net-and-Trident men, and all across the arena they and the swordsmen matched against them were zigzagging like mayflies in a wicked dance of death.

Suddenly Phaedrus realized that the open expanse before him was empty of tense and running figures, the Mercuries with their hooks were dragging another dead man away, and for the last time the filthy sand was being raked over and the worst of the stains covered.

And he thought in a perfectly detached way, ‘Our turn now.’

The trumpets were crowing again, and as one man, the chosen eight strode out from their station close under the Governor’s box to the centre of the arena, where Automedon now stood waiting for them.

They were being placed in pairs, ten paces apart and with no advantage of light or wind to either. It was all happening very quickly now; from the Governor’s box came the white flutter of a falling scarf, and the trumpets were sounding the ‘set on’.

Phaedrus took the customary two steps forward and one to the left, which was like the opening move in a game of draughts, and brought sword and shield to the ready. With that movement he ceased to be aware of the other pairs, ceased even to be aware of the suddenly hushed onlookers. Life sharpened its focus, narrowed to a circle of trampled sand, and the light-fleck of Vortimax’s eyes behind the slits of his visor. (‘Watch the eyes,’ Automedon had said on the very first day in the training-school. ‘Always be aware of the sword-hand, but watch the eyes.’) They were circling warily, crouching behind their bucklers, ready to spring. Phaedrus’s head felt cold and clear and his body very light, as it always did the moment the fight began, whether in earnest or in practice. Practice. He had fought out so many practice bouts with Vortimax. The surface of his mind knew that this was different, that this was kill or be killed, but something in him refused to believe it. This
could
be no more than a trial of skill between himself and Vortimax; and afterwards they would slam the swords back into the arms-racks, and laugh and go off to the wine-booth together . . . He made a sudden feint, and the Gaul came in with a crouching leap. Their blades rang together in thrust and counter thrust, a fierce flurry that struck out sparks from the grey iron into the windy sunlight. The sand rose in little clouds and eddies round their feet; they were circling and weaving as they fought, each trying to get the sun behind him and the dazzle of it in the other’s eyes. Phaedrus felt the hornet-sting of the other’s blade nick his ribs, and sprang back out of touch. Vortimax was pressing after him, and giving back another step before the darting blade, he knew that the Gaul’s purpose was to drive him against the barricade, where he would have no space to manoeuvre. He could sense the wooden barrier behind him, some way off still, but waiting – waiting – and side-sprang clear, at the same time playing a thrust over the shield that narrowly missed the other’s shoulder. ‘A feint at the head, a cut at the leg, and come in over the shield with a lunge.’ Automedon’s voice sounded in his inner ear as he had heard it so often at practice. The crowd were crying ‘Habet!’ as a fighter went down; and almost at once the shout was repeated, one wave crashing on the tail of another, and the Mercuries were dragging two bodies away. Only two pairs left now. Phaedrus knew it, on the outer edge of his consciousness, but it had no meaning for him; it was beyond the narrow circle of trampled sand and the sparks of living danger behind the eye-slits of Vortimax’s visor. They had returned for a while to more cautious play, and the blades rang together lightly, almost exploringly; but they had no need to explore, they knew each other’s play too well. It was that, partly, that made the whole fight seem faintly unreal, a fight in a dream. And the sense of unreality took the edge from Phaedrus’s sword-play; he knew it, and tried to break through, and could not.

Ah! Vortimax’s guard was a shade more open that time! Phaedrus’s blade leaped, and it was the other’s turn to spring back out of touch, with a red gash opening like a mouth in the brown skin over the collar-bone. He had the Gaul now, and began to press him back – back – Vortimax’s turn to feel the waiting barrier. But still the odd sense of fighting in a dream was upon Phaedrus, and the inability to bring his sword-play out of the practice yard and set it to the real work of killing . . .

He saw the flicker behind Vortimax’s eye-slits in the split instant before the deadly low stroke came. He sprang sideways, pivoting on the ball of his foot, and felt a white-hot sting like that of a whip lash across the side of his left knee. The stroke which, had it landed square, would have cut the tendon and left him ham-strung and helpless on the sand. It was a brilliant, wicked stroke, an almost outlawed stroke for it crippled instead of killing, and could bring your enemy down broken and at your mercy; but if it failed, it left your own guard wide open. Like the sudden opening of a cavern in his head, reality burst upon Phaedrus, and in that ice-bright splinter of time he understood at last that this was a fight to the death; that he was fighting, not his comrade Vortimax, whom he had fought scores and hundreds of times before, but death – red rending death such as the stag’s had been, and the hooks of the Mercuries in the dark alleyway. And the man before him was the enemy, and he sprang to finish him. But in the same instant the Gaul, almost knee-down in the sand, twisted aside and up in an almost miraculous recovery, and again sprang back out of touch.

Phaedrus set his teeth and went after him, warned by the warm flow down his leg that he had not much time. He did not hear the crowd cry ‘Habet!’ for the third time, nor the mounting roar as all along the benches they shouted for himself or Vortimax. He had another enemy to fight now: the rising weakness of blood-loss creeping through him. Soon he felt his sword-play growing less sure. No onlooker could guess it as yet, but he knew, and so did Vortimax. Once, the Gaul’s blade was within a nail’s breath of his throat before he turned it aside. His heart was lurching in the sick hollow of his body, his teeth were clenched and his breath whistled through flared nostrils. The crowd had fallen suddenly oddly silent, but he heard their silence no more than he had heard their yelling. He was fighting on the defensive now, he had begun to give ground – a little – a little – and then a little more – and he knew with sick despair that he was very nearly done. Suddenly his blade wavered glaringly out of line, and Vortimax sprang in under his guard. How he avoided that thrust he never knew, but as he leaped sideways without thought – like a wounded wolf, Vortimax’s foot slipped on Phaedrus’s own blood in the sand, and in the instant that he was off balance with lowered shield, Phaedrus gathered the last of his strength and struck home.

Vortimax gave a small surprised grunt, and pitched forward, twisting as he fell, so that he landed face upward, still part covered by his buckler.

Phaedrus stumbled to one knee over him, and caught himself back from crashing headlong. He heard the voice of the crowd now, but distantly, as one heard it from the underground changing-rooms, and stood with raised sword, drawing his breath in great sobbing gasps, while he waited to hear the ‘Habet’ and see the thumbs turned down. But the signal did not come; instead, a long roar of applause, and then he understood. Vortimax’s chin-strap had snapped in his fall, and the plumed bronze helmet had fallen off, leaving his face bare. He was quite dead.

Phaedrus thought without emotion, looking down at him, ‘That was almost me.’

He just remembered to turn and salute the Governor’s box, which swam in his sight as the arena floor was swimming under his feet, then Automedon was beside him, growling in his ear, ‘Hold on! Hold up, lad! If you go down now I swear I’ll get the Mercuries with the hot irons to you!’ And the Captain’s hand was clenched on his arm, turning him back towards the arched entrance of the changing-rooms. The Mercuries were already dragging Vortimax’s body away. ‘Come on now, a drink is what you need!’ And he thought with a sick shock of laughter, ‘I’m being decoyed away, just like the wolves from their kill – decoyed away for another day.’ He managed something of his usual swagger as he passed out of the westering sunlight, leaving a heavy blood-trail behind him, into the gloom of the stairhead and the smoky glimmer of the lamps still burning below. His foot missed the top step, and he stumbled forward, and somebody caught him from a headlong fall, saying cheerfully, ‘Drunk again? This is no time to go breaking your neck!’

He was sitting on a bench, with head hanging, while the long, crowded changing-room swirled around him. They had taken off his helmet, and the Syrian doctor was lashing his knee in linen strips, so tightly that he could not bend it. There was a sudden splurge of voices with his own name and the words ‘wooden foil’ tangled somewhere in the midst of them. They were thumping him on the shoulders to rouse him, pouring the promised drink down his throat. The barley-spirit ran like fire through his veins, and the world steadied somewhat.

‘Now – up with you!’ Automedon said. ‘Up!’

And he was being thrust back towards the entrance stairway and the evening sunlight wavering beyond the great double doors; and all at once the truth dawned on him!

Somehow – the barley-spirit helped – he pulled himself together and put on the best swagger he could with a rigid knee, and managed the few paces to the Governor’s box with a kind of stiff-legged, fighting-cock strut. Sylvanus’s coarse, clever face seemed to float in clouds of bright nothingness and the rest of the world was the merest blur so that he never saw the sandy, withered-looking man with silver and coral drops in his ears, who leaned forward abruptly from a near-by bench to stare at him out of suddenly widened eyes.

He saw nothing but the Governor’s big fleshy nose and small shrewd eyes, and the foil with its blade of smooth ash-wood as white almost as the silver guard. He took it from the Governor’s hands into his own, feeling how light it was after the heavy gladius that he was used to, how lacking in the familiar balance when he brought it to the salute.