The Rebels' Assault (5 page)

The chains
, he thought, his eyes following the links to a stout ring that was wedged in the stone floor of the tower.
You need a plan, Ruma, and you need one NOW
.

Slavious Doom's voice was unmistakable: every word was roared, yet spoken at the same time, each syllable pronounced with incredible accuracy. “Merchant friends, you are about to witness something special for your entertainment on this day! Look skyward, my friends, and you will see a small figure on the very edge of the top of the tower. That is Ruma, an Etrurian slave whose execution will start the proceedings. When Ruma has breathed his last, your attention will turn to THIS section of scaffold . . . ” Doom raised his hand and pointed to a platform where Argon now stood before three large trapdoors. From their vantage point, the crowd could see two cages and a pit beneath the trapdoors; the cages contained lions and crocodiles, respectively, while the pit literally writhed with snakes. Argon could see nothing, even when the hood was ripped from his head.

“I give you a slave whose method of execution lies in his own hands,” Doom bellowed. “I give you . . . Argon the Gaul!”

The crowd cheered wildly, but they were once again silenced by the commanding voice of their delighted host.

“When Argon has paid the highest price for his family's debt,” Doom continued, “you will need to turn your eyes to the small stage at the center of the scaffold . . . for there you will see a glorious sight indeed. Gladius, a Brindisium boy who has never missed a meal in his life—ha-ha—will face in mortal combat my own dark apprentice: the assassin Drin Hain!”

A collective gasp went up from the merchants as the sack was removed from Gladius's face, revealing the young slave's look of apprehensive horror. Drin Hain was standing opposite him, brandishing the most evil-looking sword Gladius had ever seen. The trembling slave glanced down at his feet. A short sword had been placed on the ground before him, and it looked functional at best.

Again, the crowd roared its approval.

“Finally,” Doom cried, “we have Teo.” The executioners positioned Teo over a large trapdoor on a stage that was opposite the ones containing Argon and Gladius. Once the noose was firmly around the slave's neck, his hood was removed. “Unless Gladius surprises us against the great Hain,” Doom went on, his voice now so edged with wicked excitement that he could barely contain his glee, “Teo's trapdoor will open the second his fat friend is no more. Hahahahahahaha!”

The crowd exploded. Slavious Doom took a deep bow and signaled to one of the guards that it was time for the event to begin.

The guard bowed low, then walked out to the center of the scaffold, looked toward the top of the tower, and raised a red flag.

Ruma saw the flag even before he felt the towertop executioner shove him hard in the small of the back. However, he was more than prepared. Since his chains had been unlocked, he'd gone to great pains to distract the guard by hurling abuse and goading the man several times to hit him. During these distractions, Ruma had curled a foot around the chain that had been cast aside and had managed to loop it twice around his ankle. Now, as the guard moved forward to shove him from the edge of the tower, he quickly spun around and grabbed the man around the waist. Caught unaware, the guard made a desperate attempt to drive his knee into the slave's stomach, but Ruma again used the strike to his own advantage, looping the chain around the guard's raised leg before deliberately releasing his grip and letting all his muscles relax. Believing the slave's loss of energy was due to the force of his own strength, the guard grasped Ruma by the tattered rags he was wearing and quite literally hurled him over the edge of the tower. Distracted by the wild, whooping cheers from the crowd, he wasn't aware of the chain beginning to uncurl until it was far, far too late.

In the courtyard, every face was turned toward the top of the Suvius Tower. A sudden, collective gasp of excitement and several cheers greeted the sight of the young slave flying over the battlements and beginning his long plunge . . . but the rounds of applause soon turned to cries of horror as Ruma hung, suspended by a long chain, approximately fifty feet from the top of the tower. To make matters worse, one of Doom's guards had quickly followed him over and was himself suspended by the same chain some ten or twenty feet above the slave.

While most of the crowd was positively transfixed by the scenes unfolding on the lofty summit of Suvius, several fascinated glances were also being thrown at Slavious Doom, whose own face was a picture of furious outrage.

Unfortunately, Doom had no time to bark any further orders before the crowd was hit with a new and very unexpected episode in the unfolding drama of the first execution: The guard managed to free his foot from the chain . . . and he fell.

Ruma, still hanging with his foot locked firmly in the chain, felt something rush past him, but the half-horrified, half-elated screams of the crowd drowned out the death cry of the guard as he plunged down, down, down, twisting in the air, tumbling over and over on the wind . . . until . . .

Some of the crowd looked away, and most of those that didn't still swiftly covered their eyes. For many, the sound was even worse: a sudden and terrible crunch as the guard's fractured and broken body slammed into the center of the courtyard.

Slavious Doom was still fixated on the corpse when an unexpected and quite deafening cheer rose up from the merchants all around him.

Temporarily dazed by the events, Doom was still a consummate entertainer, and he quickly picked up on the feelings of his audience.

“A death is a death!” he screamed at the pack of stunned servants who still gathered close to him. “Move the Gaul to the trapdoors . . . NOW!”

The two guards holding Argon shoved him forward, choosing to ready their spears on the chance that the Gaul tried anything in light of his companion's antics at the top of the tower.

“The Gaul!” Doom screamed with all his might, trying to pry the merchants' attention away from Ruma, who had managed to right himself and was now swinging back and forth on the chain with a determined sense of purpose that none of the awed crowd seemed able to predict. “Drop the Gaul—NOW!”

Flustered, the guards threw down their spears and rushed Argon forward, choosing one of the trapdoors seemingly at random before hauling it open and throwing the Gaul in.

Despite the swift and clumsy handling of the move, it did seem to draw the crowd's attention, especially when it became apparent that the young slave had been thrown into the snake pit.

Assured that the focus of attention had been shifted away from Ruma, Slavious Doom turned immediately to one of his guards.

“Get up to the top of that tower and free the chain,” Doom growled. “I don't care how you do it, just get it done, or you can die with the rest of the slaves. Understand?”

The guard nodded and hurried away. Slavious Doom watched him vanish through the door and then returned his gaze to the pit where Argon had leaped to his feet and was slowly backing away from three hissing cobras that were advancing on the young slave in a series of twists and turns.

“Master—”

Doom glanced briefly at another guard, who had scrambled up the scaffold to get to him.

“Wait.”

“B-but, Master—”

“Are you deaf? I told you to WAIT.”

Doom didn't take his eyes off the scene in the snake pit, and he wasn't the only one. The entire merchant crowd gasped and drew back their heads as one of the cobras darted forward, missing Argon by a fraction of an inch. The Gaul leaped into a new space, dodging two shiny, green snakes that reared up at him as he tried to avoid the attention of a massive python slumbering in the near corner of the pit. Argon was staying light on his feet, but his mind was a black hole of despair. After all, it could only be a matter of time before one of them got him.