Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  62

  LUCIUS

  The moment the guards started to advance on him, Lucius’s many years of gladiatorial experience and combat training kicked in. Now that he was outed, betrayed and trapped, there was nothing left to do but fight for his life.

  I would rather die by the blade than inside that monstrous brazen bull. Come for me then! I will not go quietly!

  Three guards rushed him at once, brandishing heavy clubs with which they intended to stun and subdue him.

  ‘Take him alive! Don’t kill him!’ Octavian shouted. ‘We want him to burn in the bull!’

  Lucius was not about to allow that to happen. With speed that verged on the superhuman, he jabbed his spear out in a single-handed lunge, in which he extended his entire body to its maximum stretch, and so fast was his attack that the point of his spear zipped over the surprised lead guard’s shield before he even had time to think of attempting a parry or dodge. The sharp steel slammed through his eye socket into his brain, killing him instantly. The spear-point was not even in the man’s cranium for half a second before Lucius had yanked it out, and with the force of an over-taut steel cable snapping he sprang into the air in a whirling leap, whipping the long spear around him in a whistling arc. Using the spear-point as a blade, he slashed open the throat of the next guard. The arcing momentum of the spear was blindingly fast, and the guard’s throat was yawning wide and spraying blood before he could react.

  As the dying guard fell to the floor, amid screams of horror from the banquet guests, Lucius landed on bent, springy knees and spun the spear about with dexterous skill in his hands. He jumped forward in yet another darting lunge, although this time he did not extend himself fully. The guard he stabbed the spear at was faster than his companions had been, and he ducked under the quick strike and batted the spear away with a swipe of his club.

  Lucius pressed forward with neither relent nor mercy, and jabbed with frightful speed three more times at the guard’s face. His opponent was only just able to deflect the blows as he stumbled back, losing his footing in his haste to distance himself from the cobra-strikes of the spear.

  This was exactly what Lucius had been aiming for, and with a cunning feint he made as if to lunge for the guard’s face one more time – and then abruptly dropped his leading knee to the ground and slashed the spear downward, striking the guard’s vulnerably exposed knee with brutal force. Once again he wasted no time in dispatching his adversary; after spearing the man in the leg, in one flowing movement he withdrew the blade and redirected it upwards, stabbing the point all the way up through the underside of the guard’s chin with brutal precision. Lucius jerked the blade out of the abruptly crumpling body and whirled it in a flamboyant flourish above his head; his spirit was now aflame with the fire of combat and victory.

  Gasps of horror, shock and fear resounded through the hall, and people near the main doorway scrambled up from their tables and started to make for the exits, even as a fresh wave of guards began to advance on Lucius. These guards, however, were much more cautious in their approach, after having seen their comrades slaughtered in mere seconds by this elite warrior before them.

  ‘Just five of them?’ Lucius roared at Batiatus, his voice hoarse with the rage of his deeply felt injury and the bitterness of betrayal. ‘Tell me, traitor, is that how foolish you are? That you think five of these poorly trained thugs can defeat me? After I slay them, I’ll slaughter every one of you vermin! The floor of this hall will be slick with your blood!’

  ‘No it won’t, my old friend,’ a familiar voice yelled from behind Lucius. ‘The only blood spilled from here on will be yours.’

  Lucius spun around and saw Viridovix standing there in his magnificent gladiatorial armour, the burnished steel contours of it glossy like quicksilver in the torchlight, the mighty warrior looking like a biomechanical amalgam of man, metal and bear as he stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, gripping his longsword loosely in his right hand.

  ‘Friends, take your seats, and do not run, there is nothing to fear!’ Batiatus shouted smugly, an evil grin smeared across his visage. ‘Behold my finest warrior, the Beast of the North, Viridovix! He will subdue this criminal, this murderer! And then we will watch him burn inside the brazen bull!’

  Batiatus turned to Viridovix and gave him a curt nod.

  ‘Viridovix, take him!’ he commanded brusquely. ‘Wound him if you must, but do not kill him!’

  ‘Yes master!’ Viridovix cried, saluting his master with his longsword, after which he dropped the blade down low and bent his knees as he adopted an unorthodox guard.

  Lucius spun his spear in his hands and bent his knees, raising himself up onto the balls of his feet as he prepared for combat. Inside his helmet, however, he licked his lips, feeling the dryness of new fear inside his mouth. The five guards formed up in a wide circle around Viridovix and Lucius, making a human ring and giving the fighters plenty of room to move about.

  I have to keep him at a distance … if he closes in it’ll all be over. Stay calm, keep him out of striking range. And if I can provoke him into anger, if I can get him to lose his cool, I might, just might have a chance.

  ‘Come on then you mutt!’ Lucius shouted brashly. ‘Come, you flea-ridden puppy, keep on licking your master’s arsehole and do his bidding!’

  Viridovix did not respond. Instead he merely swung his sword with an almost casual deadliness in his hand and began to advance, taking measured, deliberate steps.

  Lucius jabbed his spear forward in a half-lunge, testing out his opponent’s reflexes. Not only was the assault battered away with blistering speed, it was followed up with a sudden and furious charging counterattack of three rapid slashes that forced Lucius into a stumbling retreat; this fighter’s reaction time seemed to be beyond human, outstripping even Lucius’s animal-enhanced reflexes. Knowing, however, that to go on the defensive would be to lose this battle, Lucius rapidly unleashed a flurry of scorpion-stabbing jabs as he surged forward, alternately directing the spear-point at his opponent’s face and throat, and forcing the swordsman to defend without any room for a riposte.

  ‘Come on slave!’ Lucius shouted, breathing hard now from both the exertion of combat and the flood of adrenalin dousing his system. ‘You aren’t pleasing your master like this! What’s wrong? Are your hands slippery from your master’s piss and shit? Yes, I’m sure you wipe his arse for him too, and gladly, I’ll wager!’

  With a sudden roar Viridovix smacked Lucius’s spear aside with his armoured left forearm, and he used the momentum of this blow to swivel his entire body about in a three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin, which culminated in a vicious slash aimed squarely at Lucius’s throat, a blow that Lucius was only just able to parry and spring back from.

  It’s working … the anger is unbalancing him.

  ‘Viridovix!’ Batiatus snarled. ‘What are you doing, damn you?! I ordered you not to kill him! You must subdue him, you fool, not mortally wound him!’

  ‘Oh great warrior chieftain of the Gallic tribes!’ Lucius mocked, capitalising at once on this opportunity. ‘Dance for the amusement of the Roman masters! Dance like a chained bear! Do it, you mindless slave! Make the masters happy, then go back to your dank underground kennel where they lock you up every night! What a fit throne for a barbarian king: a filthy, shit-smeared dungeon! Ha! Come on dog, come on dancing bear! You heard your master! Go lick on his balls, suck his cock, and subdue me!’

  Lucius switched to a single-hand grip on the spear, keeping it in his right hand, and with his left he drew his gladius from its sheath on his hip. He had been a dimachaeri gladiator, for one of his greatest assets in the arena had been his ambidexterity; a true rarity, most especially amongst warriors. This talent gave him the ability to wield two weapons simultaneously, or to switch stances from right-handed to left-handed in the blink of an eye, a skill that had confounded many an opponent over the years.

  Viridovix, however, was not just any opponent. He had had plenty of experience sp
arring with an even more skilled dimachaeri than Lucius – Crixus – and as soon as his adversary adopted a dual-weapon stance he opened his guard up slightly. He shifted his position so that he could wield his sword with his right hand, and then use the claw-enhanced armour on his left forearm as both a striking weapon and a shield.

  Both fighters circled the perimeter of the ring, maintaining a cautious distance, with each launching a few restrained and quickly-pulled-back attacks as each probed and analysed the other’s defences. Lucius knew that despite his ambidexterity, his natural speed and agility, and the reach advantage that his spear offered, he was up against a superior opponent, and the odds of winning this fight were slim. The only way he would stand a chance would be to play a mind game, to goad his adversary into making an error. He knew that the passionate intensity that burned inside Viridovix – even if it had been mostly broken by his years of slavery – could be awakened and then used to unbalance him. He had to ramp up his taunts and insults, and make his words penetrate and cut as deeply as any darts or arrows.

  ‘Come on slave!’ he mocked, his every syllable dripping with caustic sarcasm. ‘You’re supposed to be the best! That’s what your exalted masters say about you anyway! Gods, I remember when I first bought you from the slave trader … do you remember that?’

  Viridovix grunted and darted forward in a blitzkrieg attack, hammering with his steel bear-claw while slashing and stabbing with his blade. A lesser fighter would not have been able to counter the blazing flurry of double blows, but Lucius, with his ambidextrous hands and fast reflexes, was able to parry the attacks, albeit only just. In response, he launched a blistering counterattack of his own, which forced Viridovix onto his back foot.

  Not wishing to commit fully to an assault – for Lucius had seen in the arena how quickly Viridovix could swing a defensive manoeuvre into an offensive one, and thereby finish off an opponent foolish enough to launch an all-out assault on him – he sprang back, keeping the spear-point aimed at the vulnerable spot beneath Viridovix’s helm, where his Adam’s apple was exposed.

  ‘Ha! Is that the best you’ve got?’ Lucius scoffed, panting and sweating inside his skin of steel. ‘No wonder we Romans were able to conquer your pathetic tribe with such ease! You were a hairy, uncouth savage when I first bought you, and you know what they say: you can take the savage out of the forest, but you can’t take the forest out of the savage! Ha! You’re still nothing more than a beast, Viridovix! Strip this expensive armour off – armour that belongs to your master anyway, not you – and you’re just a stinking subhuman barbarian, nothing more! Gods, no wonder you’ve stayed a slave all these years.’

  Viridovix bellowed out a wordless shout of anger and stormed across the space between them, closing the distance with a leaping attack, the force and momentum of which smashed Lucius’s defences wide open. Viridovix’s bear-claw whistled through the gap opened by the vicious sweep of his longsword, and the downward punch of his steel paw smashed into Lucius’s helm and sent him stumbling back, stunned. Lucius was only just able to block a follow-up backhand slash aimed at his chest, and he then had to jump up and tuck his knees as the stroke was turned and redirected into a whistling cut aimed at his shins. While airborne, though, he jabbed the spear at Viridovix’s leading shoulder, and the point glanced off of the warrior’s steel pauldron, only just missing an opening in the armour.

  At this near-miss Viridovix jumped back, caught briefly off-guard, and Lucius, with his razor wits, whipped the spear down to slash the edge against Viridovix’s exposed calf muscle. The sharp point pared open the flesh, and as Lucius sprang back from the successful attack, an arc of blood traced the path of his spear-point through the air.

  It’s working for certain now … His anger has been roused, and it is unbalancing him.

  ‘Lucius Sertorius draws first blood!’ Lucius howled with brash obnoxiousness. ‘How do you like that, cur?! You’re really disappointing your master now! What’s wrong with you? Bah, nobody should be surprised anyway, because after all I’m a Roman and you’re just a primitive Gallic savage! You’ll always be the dirt beneath our Roman sandals, just dog shit to be scraped off on our streets!’

  Viridovix switched to a two-handed grip on his longsword and bent his knees, adopting a low, crouching guard as he advanced with measured caution.

  He’s trying to calm himself … He understands that this rage I’m stirring up will be his undoing. Curses! I must stoke it more! I cannot lose this fight! I will not die inside that brazen bull!

  ‘Roman,’ Viridovix shouted suddenly, ‘I made a promise to you once! Do you remember what it was?’

  ‘I remember nothing of the sort, slave!’

  ‘I said that the gods of wood, stream, rock and earth would give me your head, to roll at my feet … and now I will have my freedom and your head.’

  ‘My head is not yours to take, cur! Your master has decided to burn me in that brazen bull, so come on and do his bidding! Your promise is worth less than piss to him!’

  ‘I know what you’re trying to do with your words and taunts, Lucius Sertorius … but you see, you can’t do it, because I know something that you don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, and what is that, dog? You arse-licking mutt!’

  A sudden flare – the fire of triumph, lit as a mountaintop beacon against the backdrop of a stormy night sky – roared to life in Viridovix’s eyes.

  ‘Batiatus is giving me my wooden sword tonight,’ he replied calmly. ‘After you die in the bull, I’m a free man! And I will hack the head off of your blackened corpse, and kick it about this hall like a child’s ball when that happens.’

  All of the blood drained from Lucius’s face, and a glacial cold drenched his body. The sword and spear felt suddenly flaccid in his hands, and his limbs began to burn from the inside with a crushing exertion, as if even holding the weapons out before him was too strenuous a task.

  By all the gods … I have lost … I’m done for. I will burn in that brazen bull tonight.

  With a panicked shriek he launched into an all-out assault on Viridovix, fighting with the desperation of a cornered leopard; now the tables were completely turned, and it was Lucius who had lost all semblance of control.

  This was what Viridovix had been waiting for. He laughed as, one after another, he turned away the desperate lunges, stabs, jabs and cuts, for through his eyes the furious attacks coming at him seemed to be happening in time slowed down, right down to the trickling ooze of tree sap creeping earthwards down a rough-barked trunk. It took little effort on his part to eventually smash the spear from Lucius’s right hand, and to then batter the gladius out of his left. With laughter booming inside his helm he blocked, dodged and ducked under his screaming adversary’s bare-handed attacks, until eventually he grew tired of the sport and smashed the flat of his blade in a brutal hack against Lucius’s helmet.

  The clang of steel against steel howled in Lucius’s ears, and his vision swam with the force of the blow. He sank to his knees, and tears of defeat, terror and hopelessness started streaming down his cheeks as the pawing hands of the guards, who had all rushed in to surround him, grabbed at him, pulled and dragged him, and then began ripping his armour off, piece by piece. Through the daze of fading consciousness the mocking laughter of the dinner guests buzzed and crackled, as the relentless blows from the guards’ fists and elbows and knees and feet thumped and crashed and crunched into his body.

  Then he smelled it: the lighting of the pyre, the burning oil and the acrid, smoking wood. After that the terrible light of the flames began to shine; tenuous and timid at first, and then growing in cruel, eager stature to lick with ravenous hunger at the bronze belly of the grotesque beast.

  The beast … the nightmarish beast that would consume him in slow, unspeakable agony.

  And then, a brief respite; darkness.

  63

  VIRIDOVIX

  Spartacus breathed out a sigh of relief as the archer’s struggles ceased, and the man’s body beco
me limp in the crook of his arm. He relaxed his taut muscles, slackening his chokehold, and let the warm corpse slide to the ground. When he glanced across at the General, he saw his actions mirrored; each had succeeded in their efforts.

  A few minutes earlier both men had scaled the walls of one of the outdoor courtyards, on the battlements of which archers were posted. The General, with his deep ebony skin, had merely needed to strip off his white loincloth to be perfectly camouflaged in the dark. Spartacus, however, had had to smear himself with soot from one of the fireplaces, thus blackening his body so that he too could blend in with the tones of the night.

  The sky was cloudless, and a full moon beamed down on them; for the purposes of stealth and camouflage, they could not have picked a worse night for this mission. Despite the light working against them, however, both men had managed to scale the three-storey walls of the courtyard undetected, and sneak up behind the archers, who had been idly chatting and joking. These two archers now lay dead at the feet of the rebelling gladiators.

  ‘It is done,’ N’Jalabenadou muttered, still panting from the exertion of the kill. ‘Give the others the signal.’

  Spartacus cupped his hands and hooted like an owl three times. He waited three seconds and did this again, and then repeated this sequence once more. Across the moonlit square a crowd of gladiators began to creep, and like a clutch of freshly hatched spiders they all started scuttling up the walls in a swarm. Once they were all up on the ramparts, they huddled around the General and Spartacus.

  ‘Who here is a skilled archer?’ the General asked, addressing the group.

  Two new gladiators stepped forward immediately: a pair of slim, fresh-faced young men barely out of their teens, who had only been in the ludus for two months. Sethos and Sphaerus were identical twins from Syria, and they had been purchased by Batiatus from a conquering legion who had enslaved them as captives of war.