Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  Viridovix threw his sword down on the ground and pulled off his helmet, and as tears began to trickle down his cheeks he turned around and started walking back towards the entrance to the fighting cage.

  ‘Open the door,’ he said softly to the guard there. ‘I’m done. I’m finished. I am a gladiator no more.’

  ‘You’re fuckin’ joking!’ the guard gasped as a booming roar of disapproval and anger blasted through the crowd.

  One particular voice cut through the din with the vehemence of a scimitar blade.

  ‘VIRIDOVIX!’ Batiatus bellowed, his voice cracking with raw, blind rage that was so vociferous in its ferocity that it temporarily quelled the crippling nausea that was racking his body. ‘How dare you?! HOW DARE YOU?! You pick up that sword right now! PICK IT UP! Pick it up or by all the gods I’ll crucify you TONIGHT!’

  ‘Throw him in the brazen bull!’ someone shouted, and this sentiment was quickly picked up by the rest of the diners, who soon began to chant and bang their fists on the tables.

  ‘IN THE BULL! IN THE BULL! IN THE BULL!’

  Batiatus’s hands were trembling with the volume of pure rage that was flowing through his system, and his face had turned dark purple with wrath. The veins on his neck and temples were throbbing with an anger so explosive that he felt it might kill him. Octavian strode over to him and gripped his arm tightly with his own fury-shaking hand.

  ‘You idiot!’ he hissed. ‘He was supposed to lead my army! Now look at what he’s doing! DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING, YOU USELESS HALF-WIT!’

  ‘Get your hands off me!’ Batiatus spat, ripping his arm out of Octavian’s grasp. ‘Your army be damned! It’s nothing without my gladiators! Nothing!’

  ‘This evening has turned into a fucking disaster!’ Octavian snarled through rage-clenched teeth. ‘And it’s your fault, you blasted oaf! Fix it, fix it now!’

  ‘SEIZE VIRIDOVIX!’ Batiatus howled at the top of his lungs. ‘SEIZE HIM AND THROW HIM IN THE BRAZEN BULL! We’ll put both him AND Lucius Sertorius into it! Guards, seize Viridovix!’

  ‘NO!’

  A booming baritone voice smashed through the aural tempest of shouts, chants and screams, silencing everyone with its explosive thunderclap of undeniable authority.

  Everyone turned around in surprise to see where this strange new voice had come from – and there, standing alone in the entrance to the dining hall was the General, outfitted in his brilliantly burnished gladiatorial armour, looking both dangerous and resplendent in the flickering copper glow of the torches on the walls alongside him.

  ‘What?! What on earth?!’ Batiatus stammered, stunned with disbelief.

  ‘NOBODY will be thrown into that monstrous creation tonight!’ the General bellowed, pointing at the brazen bull. ‘But all of you will die!’

  64

  VIRIDOVIX

  ‘I don’t know how you got out of your cell,’ bellowed Batiatus, whose rage had kicked into overdrive now that the jarring shock of this unexpected interruption had worn off, ‘but I assure you this, you filthy slave, the only ones dying tonight will be you, Viridovix and Lucius Sertorius! And I personally guarantee that your deaths will be as drawn-out and as painful as I can make them! Soldiers, seize him!’

  ‘Your soldiers are as dead as you are, Batiatus,’ the General growled. ‘Archers, loose!’

  As he cried out this order he dived to the floor, and from the darkness behind him thrummed a volley of arrows, streaking through the air in a horizontal rain of death. The dining hall descended into pure pandemonium as the arrows thudded home, each deadly missile burying its hungry steel broadhead into human flesh.

  ‘Maharbaal!’ roared Batiatus, whose years of battle experience were now kicking in through the chaos of madly fleeing dinner guests and hastily mobilising troops. ‘Organise Octavian’s soldiers into a defensive formation! Shield wall, close ranks and advance on the archers, badgers to the rear flanks ready to break out and charge! And you, guard over there,’ he yelled, turning now to the fighting cage in which the bleeding gorilla and Viridovix were still imprisoned, ‘lock the cage before that one can join his friends!’

  Viridovix dashed for the cage door, but it was too late; the guard snapped the lock shut just as he reached it. He gripped the bars and grunted with frustration as he pulled and yanked at the steel, trying to force the door open, but it would not budge. The bleeding gorilla, meanwhile, simply continued to moan and howl plaintively in a heap on the floor.

  Batiatus, racked with crippling nausea while simultaneously caught in the grips of a paroxysm of rage, hobbled with wrathful urgency in his step over to one of the guards nearby, who was writhing on the ground in agony after being felled by an arrow, and clawing with bloodied hands at the wooden shaft protruding from his sternum. Ignoring the man’s rasps for help, Batiatus leaned down and snatched up the guard’s gladius and shield.

  ‘I’ll fight these dogs myself!’ he howled, his face dark with an apoplectic wrath that was as tempestuous as a mountain thunderstorm. ‘Maharbaal! Ready the troops!’

  ‘Yes boss!’ Maharbaal rasped. ‘Troops! Form up defensive tortoise! Shield wall up! Top, sides and front! Do it, ya stupid bastards!’ Maharbaal, unfazed by the chaos erupting all around him, then turned and roared out his defiance at the advancing gladiators. ‘General, you’re a dead slave! You and your traitorous, scum-eating friends! We’ll flay and crucify every last one o’ you before this night is over, ya filthy, treacherous sons o’ gutter whores!’

  The banquet was over; a seething, roiling mass of sheer anarchy was all that remained. Octavian’s soldiers were executing their clockwork-precise manoeuvre into a defensive position while simultaneously advancing through the madness of the panicking guests, who were all running in blind, directionless terror about the hall – and being felled left, right and centre by hissing arrows as they attempted to flee. Through the confusion, however, two other men besides Batiatus were striding with cold focus: Octavian and his bodyguard Kurush. With determined intent writ raw across his fury-crimson face, Octavian locked a withering stare on the prostrate form of Lucius.

  ‘There’s no way you’re escaping me this time, wolf,’ he snarled, making a beeline for Lucius, who was still dazed, bound hand and foot, and ready to be thrown into the brazen bull, which was now scorching hot from the raging bonfire beneath it. ‘Everything else has fallen to pieces, but we’ve at least got you. Tonight, whatever else happens, you will burn!’

  Meanwhile, the guests who had managed to escape the hall and run into the passageways now encountered a terrible surprise on their flight path: armed gladiators, led by Crixus, waiting in the narrow corridors with sharp and bright weapons at the ready. The butchery that followed in these small spaces was nightmarish … .and inescapable. Those who could turned on their heels and fled, screaming in wordless animal tones of unbridled fear, running back into the main hall even as their friends and lovers were being slaughtered behind them.

  In the main entrance, the General roared out a hoarse order from where he was lying flat on the floor.

  ‘Archers, cease loosing arrows and move into the second position! First wave of assault troops, form up and advance with me!’

  The storm of arrows ceased abruptly, and from the darkness behind the General a squadron of fully armoured and heavily armed gladiators charged out, the steel of their armour flashing molten ore flares as they emerged into the flame-lit hall, these beings of naked metal, freshly poured from a foundry forge, melded with combat-honed muscle, unyielding as iron. At their head, the General sprang to his feet. He was armed in his left hand – his dominant hand – with a single-handed war-hammer, which featured a blunt, mace-like protrusion on one side and a sharp spike for piercing armour on the other, while in his right hand he carried a small steel-studded wooden shield, with sharp blade edges on the sides so that it could be used as a weapon for attacks as well.

  He raised the war-hammer high in the air and fired an intense look over his shoulder at his compatr
iots behind him.

  ‘Tonight we fight for our freedom! Tonight we raise our swords against the villainy of tyranny and the scourge of slavery!’

  The gladiators bellowed out a throaty cheer in response.

  ‘Move into skirmishing formation!’ the General ordered. ‘We will break their shield wall, we will break it! Come on brothers, come on! ADVANCE!’

  Viridovix, who had observed Octavian’s troops in action earlier, noticed the crossbowmen and the badgers at the rear of the defensive tortoise readying themselves.

  ‘General!’ he shouted hoarsely, crying out as loudly as he could to try to clear the mad din of chaos. ‘Their rear flanks! An attack is coming from their rear flanks!’

  Viridovix’s attempts to warn the gladiators were futile, however. From his vantage point N’Jalabenadou could neither see nor hear Viridovix, so he continued his advance toward the shield-enclosed square of Octavian’s troops.

  Behind the fighting cage, Octavian and his bodyguard reached Lucius, who was still groaning in a semi-daze and coughing up blood from the severity of the beating he had received.

  ‘Get him into the bull,’ Octavian grunted flatly, staring down at Lucius with disgust and contempt in his pitiless gaze.

  Kurush curved his scarred lips into a sadistic, broken-toothed smile, and then he grabbed Lucius, hoisting his body up and tossing it over his shoulder as if the man were but a sack of grain.

  ‘Lepidus! Claudius! To me!’ Octavian cried when he spied his two fellow Huntsmen cowering beneath their table in terror.

  ‘Are you mad?!’ Claudius screamed, hysterical with fear. ‘We’re in the midst of a violent slave revolt, yet you’re still trying to throw that fool into the brazen bull?! We must escape somehow! We’re all going to be killed!’

  Lepidus merely stared with wide, wild eyes at Octavian, clutching in both shivering hands a meat knife he had taken from the table. He was catatonic, and while his mouth kept opening and closing, it was as the gasping of a fish ripped from its aquatic home and hurled onto dry land; no words or sounds emerged from it.

  ‘Shut up, you spineless old jellyfish!’ Octavian hissed at Claudius. ‘If you two value those saggy hides of yours, you’ll come with me right now! That brazen bull is a perfect shield behind which we can take cover while we burn this vermin inside it! Kurush will protect us from any stray gladiators who manage to escape the carnage that my troops will wreak upon them. Now get out from under there and follow me!’

  With their eyes bulging with fear and their wrinkly chests heaving as they drew in fluttery, panicked gasps, Lepidus and Claudius scrambled out from under the table and hurried after Octavian and Kurush as they strode over to the brazen bull, which was shimmering with intense heat. When they reached it, Kurush wrapped part of his cloak around his face to protect himself from the heat and the smoke, and he then turned to Octavian.

  ‘Open it up, sir, and I’ll throw this sack of shit inside!’

  With the fire and the hot metal now blaring their terrible ferocity into his face, Lucius finally started to regain full consciousness – and as he began to come to, he understood the awful peril he was now in.

  ‘No! No, no, no NO NO!’ he started to scream with hoarse, primal panic, struggling with desperate madness and writhing like a trapped ferret against the bonds that secured his hands and feet.

  Octavian reached down and ripped a section of silk off of an expensive tunic from a dying dinner guest, and he wrapped this around his face as he approached the bull. He gripped the wooden handle that opened the door built into the bull’s flank and cranked it. With a groan the door yawned open, and a hellish blast of heat belched out from the inner chamber of the brass sculpture, causing Octavian to stumble back.

  ‘Get him in there!’ he shouted, his gruff voice muffled by the tunic wrapped around his face.

  ‘Aye sir!’ Kurush gnarled, and with that he shoved the madly struggling and screaming Lucius into the scalding heat of the brazen bull’s innards.

  There was a terrible hissing and sizzling sound as Lucius’s skin made contact with the superheated metal, and he let out a scream that was the apotheosis of excruciating, unimaginable agony as his skin began to melt and bubble, while his living flesh was cooked on his bones. With a sadistic cackle, Kurush slammed the door of the bull shut behind him and jumped back from the mad heat. That was when the sculpture itself began to bellow, as the complex system of pipes inside it morphed Lucius’s unearthly howls of pain and agony into the bellowing of a bull.

  ‘Burn, wolf, burn!’ Octavian shrieked, with the hungry fire that was licking the belly of the bull dancing with psychotic keenness in his savage eyes. He then turned to Lepidus and Claudius and grabbed their tunics, one in each hand. ‘Quickly, you fools! Behind the bull! Take cover!’

  Inside the fighting cage, Viridovix was gripped with frustration as he watched everything unfolding around him in this symphony of nightmarish horror, and he dashed frantically from bar to bar, gripping and pulling at each of them to try and find a weak spot from which he could break out. In the corner the gorilla lay prone; while he was heavily weakened from blood loss, his apathy was derived mainly from a complete annihilation of any will to live, and the creature moaned protractedly and sadly, accepting his oncoming demise without any resistance.

  ‘I’m sorry, noble beast,’ Viridovix whispered as he gazed with pity upon the lamentable spectacle. ‘I only understand now what I have done, and what I have become over all these years … and I will have no more part in it.’

  Viridovix listened with horror to the frightful bellowing of the brazen bull, Lucius’s distorted death-screams soaring above the sonic chaos of the raging battle like a flock of invisible ravens taking flight, rising inexorably towards the great chimney into which the smoke was flowing. At that moment, at the height of the chaos, Viridovix heard a clear, powerful voice call out his name from the rear of the hall.

  ‘Viridovix! Are you with us or against us?!’

  Viridovix spun around and saw him at the rear entrance, with two dying guards bleeding out at his feet: Spartacus. He was standing tall and proud, with Crixus, Oenomaus and a band of gladiators behind him.

  ‘I am with you, my brothers!’ Viridovix cried out in response.

  There was no doubting the conviction in his throaty roar.

  ‘Then come fight with us! Win this battle for us! Brothers, charge!’

  Spartacus raised his sword above his head and led the band of gladiators in a charge from the rear. They swarmed around the fighting cage, and Oenomaus, with his massive steel hammer, stepped up to the cage, and with one hefty swing of his weapon destroyed the lock. Inside the structure, Viridovix snatched up his helm and longsword from the ground. With a new boost of vigour and energy, he bolted out to join Spartacus and his band.

  ‘Spartacus!’ he shouted, his voice hoarse with urgency, ‘we must take the rear of that tortoise before they clash with the General and his force! They have crossbowmen on the flanks, and heavily armed shock troops who will tear into the General’s wedge and wreak havoc on our brothers!’

  Spartacus nodded, his eyes stark white and his teeth showing in a grimace of determination.

  ‘They are about to clash now!’ he cried. ‘Gods, it’s almost too late! Men, split into bull’s horns formation! Oenomaus, you lead the left horn, I’ll take the right. Crixus, you lead your detachment to smash into their centre! Viridovix, if we can get you into the inner core of that square, can you destroy them from the inside? You’re our mightiest warrior, the one amongst us who will be most able to succeed … but I must warn you, it may well be suicide.’

  ‘Spartacus,’ Viridovix replied, smiling joyously, ‘before you and the General entered this hall I had resigned myself to death upon a Roman cross. Now, for the cause of freedom, I will gladly die pierced by a hundred Roman blades. Send me in there!’

  Spartacus gave his compatriot a brief but tight hug.

  ‘I pray to all the gods that you make it out alive,
but know that whatever happens, you are a true hero.’

  ‘I do it not for myself,’ Viridovix said quietly, ‘but for you. For all of you.’

  ‘Strength to you, Viridovix. Strength and courage.’

  With that, Spartacus turned and clapped his hand onto Oenomaus’s shoulder.

  ‘Get him into the belly of the tortoise, Oenomaus!’

  The giant rumbled a roar of approval and grinned savagely.

  ‘The end o’ that long dining table!’ he shouted, pointing to the end of a table near the defensive square of Octavian’s troops. ‘That’s where I’ll launch you from, my friend! Take as fast as a run up as you can, leap into the air an’ I’ll catapult you right into the middle o’ those bastards!’

  Viridovix nodded, gripping his longsword tightly in his right hand.

  ‘Get me in there! I will destroy them!’

  Oenomaus charged to the front of the long table and dropped his hammer next to it, while two of the gladiators sprinted along with him and protected the giant from each side as he waited for Viridovix to jump. Viridovix sprang up onto the table and swung his sword loosely in his hand as he prepared for the charge.

  ‘Those badgers have openings in their armour between the gorget and where the helm connects, and to the inside of their groins,’ he whispered to himself in the tongue of his forefathers, which he had not uttered for years. From the table he snapped up and tucked four sharp carving knives into his belt. ‘I must prevent those badgers from being unleashed. May the gods of rock, stream, tree, earth and sky give me the strength to slay these fiends! Ancient gods of my people, bestow upon me your powers!’

  With that he took a deep breath and began sprinting at full tilt along the length of the table, his thundering footsteps prompting gasps of panic and terror from the frightened guests who were hiding underneath it. The moment he reached the end of the table, he launched himself into a flying leap, aiming right for Oenomaus’s huge, outstretched hands. At the exact moment that Viridovix’s feet hit the open palms of the giant’s hands, Oenomaus grunted, and with all of his gargantuan strength he boosted the gladiator high into the air. The momentum of Viridovix’s charge, combined with Oenomaus’s springy boost, sent him sailing like a catapult-launched rock.