At least Pulcra appeared to be enjoying the exhibition. She squirmed in her seat with each excellent blow by the mountain man. Now, while Bulbus covertly studied her, she crossed her legs and began to swing one nicely turned ankle. A sure sign a woman had a naughty itch to soothe, Bulbus thought lasciviously.
“I’ll have you down to size in no time,” Julian taunted. “Then I’ll prick your hide to give you a good lesson.”
Julian feinted to the right, dodged back to the left, spun a full circle on his heel to gain momentum, then whipped out his weighted net. Preacher ducked, picked up the edge of the fan-shaped snare and did a wrist roll that collapsed it into a long, folded filament. This he quickly climbed, mock sword in his teeth. When he reached the forearm of Julian, he let go with one hand and dosed his fist around the hilt.
A swift swat to the temple and Julian went down, a stone dropped into a fathomless pool. And with hardly more than a ripple. Preacher came to his moccasined feet and turned toward the box. A steady flow of sweat blurred his vision and stung his eyes. It kept him from clearly seeing the occupants, though he rightly guessed one to be Bulbus and another Quintus.
Exasperated, Bulbus clapped his palms together. “I’ll have an end to this at once! Two of you, have a go at him at the same time.”
A pair from the training staff came forth. One wore a caestus, its usually sharp bronze talons blunted with India gum. The other bore a curved Persian sword. Preacher greeted them with a nasty grin.
Above him, Pulcra veritably writhed in her chair, her leg swinging ever faster, small beads of perspiration breaking out on her upper lip. Fascinated by this enthralling demonstration by the mountain barbarian, Marcus had eyes only for what went on in the arena.
Preacher went for the swordsman first, after a glance at the blurred figures in the box. He came in low, leading with his sword. The tactic thoroughly distracted his opponent, who raised his weapon to parry the blade with enough force to knock it from Preacher’s hand and do a quick reverse that would have, had his own been sharp, disemboweled the hapless antagonist who so insulted their abilities. Only it did not work that way.
At the last second, Preacher let the tip of his sword drop, so that the edge of the other one slipped across the flat without making contact. Startled, the trainer stumbled off balance while Preacher drove straight in. He rammed the point of his weapon into the helpless man’s gut. It drove the air from his lungs in a gush.
Preacher wasted no time on finishing him, and then spun to confront his second threat. The armored fist lashed out at him and forced the mountain man to duck. Even with the sticky gum on the four triangular blades, they could inflict a terrible injury. Preacher avoided the caestus and hacked at the trainer’s belly. Far quicker than the man with the sword, the trainer dodged the blow and tried to backhand Preacher in the head.
In a flash, Preacher went down at his knees and extended one leg. With a powerful push-off from one hand, he spun on his heel and swept the feet from under his opponent. A startled yelp came from twisted lips as the burly brawler left the ground and painfully landed on his rear. Preacher jumped to his moccasin soles and towered over the dazed man. He reversed his hold on the practice sword and rapped the trainer soundly at the base of his skull.
Preacher stepped back and let him fall. Then he placed one foot on the unconscious man’s chest. Slowly he raised his eyes to the box.
“Blast and damn! Enough. You are through for the day, Arthur,” Bulbus bellowed angrily. “You have won more than you have lost, so you get early baths, along with the other winners. Now, get out of here.”
Beside him, Titiana Pulcra reached over and touched her husband’s arm. “I’m going to leave now. The sun is too hot, and glaring. It has given me a headache.”
“Very well, my dear. There is snow-chilled wine awaiting us at home.”
She smiled sweetly. “I know I’ll enjoy it.”
* * *
Someone else had watched Preacher’s performance—albeit with far less cupidity than Titiana Pulcra. Sister Amelia Witherspoon saved her feelings of desire for an image of Preacher as deliverer. When they had arrived in this horrid New Rome, they had been condemned to die in the arena, thrown to the lions.
Now, Sister Amelia was quite familiar with the heroic stories of Christian martyrdom in the days of the mad Nero. Yet, deep in her heart, she knew that she was not ready to be fed upon by beasts for the sake of her faith if it could be reasonably avoided. She saw no conflict between her retreat from the martyr’s role and the depth of her belief. Amelia had a healthy respect for life. And she wanted to escape from this horrid place like all get-out.
From the first time she saw this magnificent specimen of male prowess, Amelia just knew he was the answer to her prayers. Arthur would save them. Like her captors, Sister Amelia did not know that this brave, strong man was the legendary Preacher. She knew him only by the name those hated Romans called him. Now she felt all trembly at the sight of how swiftly and surely he had handled those men. How could she make her plight, and that of her brothers and sisters of the Mobile Church in the Wildwood, known to him? She hurried off to make her thoughts known to Sister Charity and to seek her advice.
* * *
Thick steam rose from the surface of the large pool in the calderium room of the thermae publicus of New Rome. Preacher gratefully sank his bruised hide and aching muscles into the hot depths. During his six days in the gladiator school, while he learned the ways of the strange new weapons, he had taken his share of punishment. He would ache for a while yet, he felt certain.
Taking a bath in the raw, in the presence of other men, had never bothered Preacher. He vaguely recalled weekly Saturday excursions from his early homelife in a single, large, wooden tub, and older brothers squirming around in it together with him. The first time he discovered that women, and children of both sexes, readily joined the men of New Rome in their baths, he had been quite disconcerted. Now he handled it with greater ease. He took care, though, to look the other way as best he could. He also made an effort to banish the blood-racing thoughts certain of the ladies engendered in his mind. All of which left him unprepared when a loud splash announced the presence of a shapely young woman who made a shallow dive into the hot pool.
She swam around him in circles, as graceful and as wriggly as an eel. At last, she let her legs descend and stood before him, the water up to her shoulders. Her long, blond hair hung wetly down her back. She smiled and touched a small, slender finger to his chest.
“You’re that exciting new gladiator at the school of Bulbus,” she stated coyly in English.
Tension added bluntness to Preacher’s words. “Not by any choice of my own.”
Teasingly, she moved her hand to his shoulder and draped it across the top. “You should be grateful. If you fight well, win a lot of battles, you could gain your freedom. You could even receive the rudis.”
“What’s that?”
She puckered her mouth. “You really don’t know. It’s the wooden sword that is the symbol of your retirement from the arena. A free man, a citizen, and one who no longer has to fight. It’s something to work for.”
A sudden suspicion bloomed in Preacher’s mind. “Are you allowed to talk to slaves?”
“I’m allowed to speak to anyone I choose. I’m Pricilia,” she responded with no small heat. “Let’s scrub down. I’ll scrape you and you can scrape me. Then we can move on to the tepidium.”
Preacher found himself less reluctant than he had been when she had first appeared. After all, it had been a long time since any woman, especially one so young and attractive as this one, had shown interest in the rugged mountain man. It might be fun, he decided, shedding another inhibition, to partake. After all, she wouldn’t bite. He screwed up a smile.
“If that’s what you want, it’s fine as frogs’ hair with me.”
“How quaint,” she said through a titter.
After a thorough cleansing, the pair swam across the wide pool and cl
imbed out. In the next room, the tepidium, they entered the luke-warm water eagerly. It made their skin tingle. Preacher had grown painfully aware of their nakedness while scraping her silken skin with a stigilis, the curved, bronze, knifelike implement used in the manner of a washcloth.
Now they frolicked like youngsters. Exactly like . . . Terry and Vickie, he thought suddenly. Soon the bright pinkness left their skin, and the water began to feel less refreshing. Pricilia tapped Preacher on the chest, her head canted to one side atop her long, graceful neck.
“Race you to the frigidium.”
“You’re on!” said Preacher through a shout of laughter.
Now, that would be more like it, Preacher thought. Cold water being something he was most familiar with, he expected that a dip in it would calm the odd stirrings that teased his body. He crossed the pool with powerful strokes. Out and onto the warm tile floor. Through the curtained doorway.
Preacher beat her by half a length to plunge into the icy water that flowed directly into the pool from the stream outside. They splashed and swam for several minutes, until goose bumps appeared on Pricilia’s shoulders and arms. She edged to the shallow end and drew herself out of the water to her waist on the marble-tiled steps. She threw her arms wide in a gesture of invitation.
“Come warm me, Arthur. I’m frozen.”
After all his efforts to resist, Preacher found himself beguiled into dumb obedience. He crossed the frigid water in five long strokes and entered her embrace. After he had twined his strong arms around her, she drew his lips to hers.
In no time, they caused the icy liquid of the frigidium to reach a near-boil with the energy of their amorous romp.
12
Fully sated, Preacher lay on a bench, covered by a towel, when Pricilia made her departure. Entering as she left, Buck Sears and Philadelphia Braddock got a good look at her. One glance at their companion and they knew what must have gone on.
“You loon-witted he-goat!” Buck Sears blurted in shocked surprise. “You tryin’ to get yourself killed before we can escape?”
Preacher sat upright, the sappy expression wiped from his face. “No? Why? What did I do that could cause that?”
Flabbergasted by Preacher’s response, Buck worked his mouth for several moments before he could get any sound to come. “Don’t you know who that was?”
Preacher blinked, suddenly suspicious of his recent amour. “Not for sure. She said her name was Pricilia. She was quite... friendly.”
“I’ll just bet she was. That happens to be Titiana Pulcra, the wife of Marcus Quintus Americus.” He struck his forehead with the palm of one hand. “I wondered why those guards were not letting anyone enter the baths. If the Praetorian guard learns that we got by their watch at the door and saw—anything at all, they’ll kill us along with you.”
Preacher could not believe what he heard. Fooling around with another man’s wife was definitely not a part of his code. Anger blended with self-disgust as he questioned Buck further. “Are you sure? D’you mean she’s the dictator’s woman—his wife?”
“I am only too sorry to say that I am sure,” Buck lamented.
“Dang-bust it, I’ve been tricked. She done lied to me.” His face turned dark red. “Me dossin’ another man’s wife. I’ll never live it down. Though I don’t reckon I should waste time tryin’ to explain it to him. Only one thing for it now. We gotta go ahead with our plan to escape. Suppose you tell us how you got in mind for us to do that, Buck?”
Buck shrugged, then produced a smug smile. “It’s plain as could be. In fact, it’s right under your noses.”
“What’er you gettin’ at?” Philadelphia growled. He, too, felt his friend’s chagrin.
“We all agreed we could not escape from the school. So that leaves having to be outside the school to make a break. And the only time we are outside is to get to the coliseum to fight or here to the baths.”
“They told us we go to the arena by tunnel.”
“That’s right, Preacher, they said that,” Philadelphia agreed.
“Then it has to be here. What about the guards?”
Buck gave a slow answer, his expression one of awe and bemusement. “You . . . are . . . the Preacher?”
“That I am, Buck. But there’s no time to talk about that. How do we get out? What about the guards?”
Buck produced a sunny smile. “They are a sufficiently lazy lot. They’re convinced there is only one way in and out of this place. I found out better, before I was sold to be a gladiator for hittin’ my so-called master.”
Preacher exploded with curiosity. “Go on—go on, tell us.”
“I worked here at the baths. Part of my job was to clean out anything that got caught in the water system. The water comes in big tunnellike things. There is a way to get to them from behind a wall of the cold room. All we have to do is get to there, then walk and swim our way to freedom. Because, all the water that comes in has to go out.”
“That shines. I like it. Don’t stand there, show us the way.”
“You mean right now, today?” Buck seemed uneasy.
“Do you want to wait around until that Marcus feller finds out I rode his filly?”
Buck grimaced at that graphic depiction. “All right. Come with me.”
Preacher stopped him with a hand on one arm. “One thing, though. I don’t figger to leave without my brace of Walker Colts.”
Buck dismissed him. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes. First thing is to get away from here and out of the far end of the entrance tunnel.”
Preacher squared his shoulders and reached for his clothes. “I’m game. Let’s go.”
* * *
At first progress came easily. Ledges had been cut into the tunnel walls, a good two feet above the water that flowed with regularity into the frigidium pool, and beyond into those of the heated tanks. After some thirty paces, Preacher estimated that they had reached a place somewhere out near the middle of the forum. Only the single long, covered opening presented itself to them.
Preacher, Philadelphia, and Buck followed it beyond what must have been the southern edge of the forum. The walls grew wet and slick. Thick hanks of roots hung down above their heads. From his spyglass reconnoiter, Preacher recalled a garden, with bushes and hedges trimmed into the shapes of animals. That had to be what they passed under now.
Their pathway became narrower and closer to the water. The latter swirled by in oily blackness, its surface alone illuminated by the torch in Buck’s hand. He had taken the lead, naturally enough, since it had been he who discovered this way out of Nova Roma. Preacher came next in line, with Philadelphia bringing up the rear. Little light reached the big-eared mountain man, and he stumbled occasionally, with a muffled curse for each time.
Philadelphia had about run out of cuss words, when an even worse situation came to them. Buck halted his companions and gestured ahead with the torch. “We walk in the water from here. At about what I guesstimate to be a hunnard yards from the inlet, we have to swim for it.”
“So nice, this route of yours,” Preacher told him acidly.
Buck removed his slave’s tunic and wrapped it atop his head, then stepped off into chest-deep water as he spoke. “Be glad there is any trail out of here, Preacher. These New Romans are damned thorough in everything they do.”
One by one they followed him. Chill water swirled around them. Buck reasoned aloud that once out, so long as they moved through the city with an air of going about their usual business, their slave costumes would not be a danger to them. They could even get to within a hundred paces outside the walls.
“Then we cut and run,” he added grimly.
Preacher eyed him sternly. “Now, that’s why I want my Colt re-volvers an’ Cougar. I can run a damn sight faster on a horse.”
Buck lectured him in how to accomplish that. “There are storerooms in the house of the master of games for all that sort of captured things. Also a stable. Since it is built into the outside wall of t
he school, on the Via Martius, we should have no trouble getting there. It’s the getting away that bothers me.”
Preacher gave him a grunt and a knowing nod. “You let me an’ my Walker Colts handle that.”
Shaking his head in wonder, Buck spoke with awe. “You actually have a pair of those Texas guns?”
“Sure enough. An’ a dang good Hawken. I left my fancy Frenchie rifle at Trout Creek Pass.” He nodded to Braddock. “Philadelphia’s got him four of the nicest two-shooter pistols a feller could ever want. Sixty caliber they be. Ain’t no spear-chucker can stand up again’ our firepower for long.”
“And I’ll have my pick of what’s in there, too,” Buck added with a note of anticipation.
He led off once again and soon discovered that this late into summer, the water level had fallen enough that they did not have to swim at any point along the tunnel. Soon, a soft, gray glow emerged in the distance, around a bend. When Buck reached the turn, he paused a moment.
“Dang, I was afraid that might be,” he spat.
“What’s that?” Philadelphia asked.
“I worked the tunnels. All we ever dragged out was small bits of wood, a dead rat or two, some other animals caught in the water. Stood to reason they had a way of keeping bigger things out of the water course. See up ahead? There are bars across the opening to the river itself.”
“Then we’re stuck here?” Philadelphia demanded.
“Not necessarily,” Preacher advised. “First let’s get a look at them bars.”
To Preacher’s delight, they found them old, rusted and neglected. The current was stronger here and threatened to sweep them off their feet. Preacher gauged the weakest-appearing ones and took hold. He dug his feet into the sandy silt on the floor of the tunnel and heaved with all his might.
Preacher and the Mountain Caesar Page 13
