Path of the Tiger
Page 131
The General and all of his gladiators saw Viridovix’s majestic arc of flight, and as the gladiatorial champion hurtled through the air and then crashed like a meteor into the very centre of the tortoise, a vociferous cheer cascaded through the ranks of the gladiators.
‘Viridovix! Viridovix!’ they shouted.
‘Break formation!’ the General roared as he saw Viridovix disappear into the centre of the massed enemy troops.
At the same time Oenomaus and Spartacus launched pronged attacks from the rear flanks in a wide-arching bull’s horn formation, and Crixus smashed into the back of the enemy with his men.
‘Break ranks and split into bull’s horns!’ the General bellowed.
At the head of the defensive tortoise, Maharbaal and Batiatus saw what the gladiators were doing just as Viridovix came plummeting into their centre.
‘No!’ Batiatus screamed. ‘Wall, break open half a step, fling pila!’
The outermost soldiers, whose shields formed the wall, broke open the wall just enough to create gaps through which soldiers standing in the ranks behind them could fling their pila – long-tipped, armour-piercing javelins – and they sprayed these deadly missiles outwards in a flashing blitz of steel. The projectiles blasted out in all directions in a synchronised whizz, and while some of the gladiators were able to duck under them, sidestep them or turn their deadly flight paths away with a flick of their shields, others, especially those who were at almost point-blank range, were unable to avoid the missiles. Barbed points struck home, piercing armour and flesh, breaking bones and decimating vital organs.
However, inside the square, the unexpected hawk from above, Viridovix, landed in the midst of the enemy ranks, and with a tornado whirl of his wickedly sharp longsword he scattered those troops nearest him, and thus began the work of his deadly mission. So fast were the strokes of his sword and the rakings of his steel bear-claws that he had cut down five soldiers before the others even had the chance to turn around and defend themselves, and in a surge of sudden panic they spun about, locking shields against this madly spinning dervish, this vengeful wind deity, materialised from thin air, it seemed, who was unleashing his hurricane of righteous wrath in their midst. Maharbaal, cool and collected, but bristling with cold wrath, shoved his way through the troops to the centre, readying both of his sicas as he did.
‘I trained this mutt, now I’ll end his worthless life!’ he roared. ‘Badgers! Two outside, break the attacking force, two in here with me to kill Viridovix! Troops, about turn, lock shields, lock him in there, fucking do it!’
While soldiers in the tortoise fell left and right beneath the deadly might of Viridovix’s lethally arcing sword and bear-claw, the converging left and right horns of the gladiator forces crashed their combined momentum against the outside of the formation.
‘Crossbowmen, punch them out!’ roared Batiatus, who was shielded from both Viridovix and the outermost gladiators by a tightly packed stack of shields.
As scores of shieldmen fell before the furious skill and rabid attacks of the gladiators and the wall began to break, rows of crossbowmen deep inside the square aimed their weapons outward and let fly with their zooming bolts. At such close quarters, and with the scorching velocity of the projectiles, there was no hope of dodging or evading them. Bolts slammed home, their steel tips punching through helms, throats and skulls, bringing death and grievous injuries to the attacking gladiators.
Viridovix was busy fighting off multiple opponents in a crazed frenzy, with eight dead and dying men lying at his feet, when the soldiers inside the shield wall backed off and locked shields, creating a ring around him. Despite his peerless fighting prowess and superhuman reflexes, he was already bleeding heavily from a number of wounds taken in his fight against so many opponents. It was then that Maharbaal burst through the shield ring, along with two of the heavily armoured badger troops, and in a converging triangle formation they all attacked Viridovix at once, howling like hell-fiends.
‘Die, you traitorous snake!’ Maharbaal roared as he flew at Viridovix with his dual sicas spinning in his hands.
Viridovix was in full combat mode; his extraordinary reflexes had kicked into overdrive, and his almost preternatural senses were feeding his brain information at hyperspeed. Movement and time slowed down, as it always did during his most intense moments on the arena sands. The three figures assailing him appeared, in his super-sense-enhanced mind, to be moving as slowly as untrained neophytes burdened beneath the weight of too much armour. His sword danced with fluid speed in his hand, clanging with a shower of sparks against Maharbaal’s flashing sicas, and he launched his body into a tornado whirl. Using the force and speed of his spinning, he felled one of the badgers with a crunching elbow to the jaw. The other badger, however, managed to duck beneath a swipe of Viridovix’s bear-claw, and with a savage thrust he stabbed one of his daggers deep into Viridovix’s abdomen, which happened to be exposed. Without even blinking, despite the grievous wound, Viridovix whipped one of the meat knives from his belt and plunged the sharp blade with mathematical precision into the gap between the badger’s gorget and helm. The badger fell back with blood spurting from the lethal wound, staggering into the unyielding shield wall, against which he slumped as he batted feebly at his throat.
Viridovix could not afford to pause to gauge the severity of the wound he had received; Maharbaal and the other badger were still launching furious attacks, and with a howl he spun about on his heels and sprang back to avoid a wild sica stab from Maharbaal. In the same motion, however, he brought his longsword whistling down in a vertical slash that severed Maharbaal’s right arm just above the elbow. On the upswing he turned the blade and smashed it into Maharbaal’s face in a vicious backhand stroke, shattering the doctore’s jaw and sending him reeling back in shock.
It was then that the remaining badger managed to evade Viridovix’s whistling sword and plunge one of his own blades into Viridovix’s back, just as the great warrior was spinning around to take on this new threat.
The wound was deep, but Viridovix, possessed of the madness of the battle and driven on by raging adrenalin, merely flipped his sword with a deft flick of his wrist and took off the badger’s hand at the wrist. Maintaining the momentum of the stroke, he whirled and then thrust the blade in a vicious horizontal stab to his rear. The long blade ran its length completely through Maharbaal’s torso as he tried to charge in to finish Viridovix from behind, and the doctore dropped his final sica to the floor, impaled by the longsword.
Viridovix released his sword from his grasp, and Maharbaal stumbled back and collapsed, with the longsword protruding from his stomach. Before Maharbaal had even hit the ground, however, Viridovix had whipped out two carving knives from his belt, gripping one in each hand. With twin stabs, swift and precise, he plunged each blade into the badger’s weak spots – one in the throat, and the other in the groin – and then with a powerful frontal kick he smashed the fatally wounded badger like a cannonball through the shield wall around him.
With his blood pouring from his wounds and battle-fury continuing to gush unabated through his veins, Viridovix plucked his longsword from Maharbaal’s body and charged through the gap in the shield wall opened up by the careening badger. Now freed from the confines of the locked shields, he began fighting his way out towards his fellow gladiators, who had turned the tide of the battle and were now decimating the integrity of the tortoise.
As the tortoise formation disintegrated into disordered, blood-spraying chaos, Batiatus saw that the battle was lost, and amid the anarchic madness he managed to rally a few straggling survivors to his side.
‘Break formation!’ he croaked, his voice cracking with exhaustion, his earlier nausea and discomfort all but banished by the adrenalin of battle. ‘Scarlet and Green Squadrons, about turn, rear face! Reform tortoise around me! Orange Squadron, what’s left of you, to the front! Blue Squadron, take up right flank! That’s it, move, MOVE! Take positions! Lock shieeeelds … NOW!’
Behind the brazen bull, Lepidus and Claudius cowered while Octavian paced and cursed with naked fury as he watched his forces being obliterated by the gladiators. Kurush stood waiting in sombre silence, unafraid and stoic in the face of death. He was ready to make his last stand, and he held his long scimitars loosely, one in each hand.
At that moment a stray arrow streaked across the hall and buried its broadhead tip in Lepidus’s throat. The old man’s eyes bulged with sudden terror, and he reached up to the arrow, trying with feeble fingers to pull the projectile out even as frothy blood started to bubble from between his lips. He stumbled and then fell face-first into the raging fire beneath the brazen bull, writhing in agony and screaming with an unearthly shriek as the flames consumed him.
Claudius screamed shrilly too, as he watched his old friend dying.
‘The whole world has gone mad!’ he screeched hysterically. ‘It has all descended into utter chaos! All is lost! We’re all going to die! We will all be slaughtered like beasts! Oh by the gods, I don’t want to die! I’m not ready to die! Save me, somebody save me!’
Octavian, who had watched Lepidus’s death with a cool disconnect, reached down and subtly curled his fingers around the hilt of the ornate jewelled dagger he wore on his hip.
‘There is a way to survive this night,’ he murmured darkly. ‘Come, embrace me my old friend, and I will show you.’
‘How?! How?!’ Claudius bleated, trembling like a leaf in a gale, weeping and wringing his liver-spotted hands. ‘All is lost! All is lost!’
‘Not all,’ Octavian whispered. ‘Come, put your arms around me.’
Claudius placed his shaking arms around Octavian, who stood tall and firm, and held him tight. Octavian kissed him on both cheeks … and then shoved the dagger between Claudius’s ribs, burying the blade up to its hilt. Claudius gasped out in shock as the cold steel punctured his flesh, and every one of his withered muscles tensed with rigid shock. Octavian then calmly plucked the blade out, stepped behind Claudius, and then opened his fellow Huntsman’s throat from ear to ear.
Claudius groaned in agony, flapping his hands weakly and trying to speak as hot blood started gushing down his chest and frothing out of his mouth.
‘Shh, old friend, shh,’ Octavian whispered in a soothing tone in Claudius’s ear, stroking the old man’s wispy hair with his free hand. ‘I said that there was a way to live through this night … but not for both of us. I’m sorry, but all is indeed lost now … for you, at least.’
He fell back, pulling his dying friend’s body on top of him. As his friend shuddered and choked and bled out, Octavian cupped his hands, filled them with Claudius’s hot, gushing blood, and smeared it over his face and throat. He then lay back under the weight of the old man’s corpse, preparing play dead and to wait out the night with as much stillness as the now-lifeless body on top of him.
Back in the thick of the fighting, Crixus saw Viridovix trying to hack his way out of what was left of the main defensive square, with his longsword whirling about him in deadly arcs of blinding speed while he simultaneously stabbed, parried and raked with his deadly bear-claw. The mass of his enemies, however, was too great for even his mighty combat prowess, and it was clear that without assistance he would not make it out of the square alive.
‘Spartacus! General!’ Crixus bellowed gutturally. ‘To me! Our brother needs our help!’
The General grunted with effort as he caved in the helmet of a nearby soldier with his war-hammer, and he looked up to see Crixus scything a wide path through the soldiers with great whirling slashes and rolling thrusts of his long scimitars, one wielded in each hand. Spartacus, meanwhile, had just dispatched an adversary with his gladius, and he jumped up and hurdled over the falling body. Oenomaus was busy pounding a guard into a pulp with his massive hammer, and he too stopped what he was doing to heed Crixus’s call.
‘Viridovix!’ the giant boomed. ‘We’re coming!’
The four warriors raced across the floor of the hall, converging into a tight fist as they ran. Forming a wedge with Crixus at its head, they drove into the body-packed chaos and smashed through the outer ring of defenders, fighting their way with furious desperation towards Viridovix.
‘My brothers!’ he gasped hoarsely, his face pale from blood loss, and his limbs leaden and heavy now that his adrenalin and energy were almost depleted. ‘We have won! We are free men!’
At that moment a spear shot out in a rapid jab from behind one of the soldier’s shields, and the leaf-shaped blade struck Viridovix between his ribs, the steel burrowing deep into his flesh. When the spear blade was plucked out, a wash of blood cascaded out of the wound, running down Viridovix’s side in a red tide of pain.
With a viciously swung, upward-arcing blow of his massive hammer, Oenomaus smashed the man’s shield into smithereens, and then a second later he crushed the soldier’s skull on the downswing, while the General, Crixus and Spartacus fought off adversaries on both flanks, clearing a path through which the grievously wounded Viridovix could escape.
‘Gladiators! To me!’ the General roared. ‘Tight wedge, final attack; now we break them completely and win this battle!’
With deft hands he swung his war-hammer while he blocked and slashed alternately with his blade-edged shield, driving the beleaguered defenders back with the intensity and speed of his attacks as a charging wedge of gladiators came rushing in to join the final assault.
Viridovix stumbled out from the rear of the gladiator wedge and dropped his sword, his bloodied chest heaving as he gulped in great gasps of air. He had single-handedly fought off an entire square of troops, but was now paying the price, and feeling the effect of both crushing exhaustion and the many wounds they had inflicted upon him.
He glanced across the room and saw Batiatus and his almost-broken defensive tortoise square moving towards the back of the room, being harried by gladiators as they went, with shieldmen falling constantly before the swift and skilful attacks of the elite warriors. Still, the defenders were well-trained and highly disciplined soldiers themselves, and each time a defender fell, the gap in the shield wall was immediately closed.
Above the noise of the battle the brazen bull continued to bellow. Viridovix stared at it for a second, feeling a wave of gut-wrenching horror and nauseating disgust pulsing through his body.
‘Lucius Sertorius is an enemy, but that is no way for any man to die,’ he growled.
He reached down and picked up his longsword, summoned one final burst of energy, and charged towards the grotesque instrument of torture.
Kurush, standing alone to await his fate, saw Viridovix coming. He simply laughed, releasing a great belly rumble that resounded across the killing floor that was the dining hall.
‘Come champion,’ he rasped, ‘one last gladiator duel! I have never lost a fight, and I do not intend to start now. Come and meet your barbarian gods; I will send you to them!’
He swung his dual scimitars in his hands, bent his knees and prepared for the imminent clash, an arrogant sneer smeared across his scarred face. Viridovix roared with primal fury when he reached Kurush and aimed a scything diagonal cut at his opponent’s shoulder. As Kurush deflected the blow, Viridovix turned the blade and aimed a horizontal slash at Kurush’s midsection, which again the bodyguard was able to parry, and as he did this he counterattacked with a downward hack from one of his scimitars. With swift and agile footwork Viridovix ducked and sidestepped simultaneously, correctly anticipating and thus evading the thrusting attack that came from the second scimitar. As he ducked and bobbed, he aimed an uppercut strike with his bear-claw at Kurush’s throat, while i
n the same motion he lunged forward with a low chop of his longsword, aimed at Kurush’s leading knee. Kurush had to evade the potentially lethal bear-claw strike, but could not dodge the low leg cut at the same time. Even though he sprang back with catlike speed, the tip of Viridovix’s longsword managed to catch him on the side of his knee. The steel bit deep into the flesh, and Kurush stumbled back with a grunt, but at the same time he aimed a savage overhead cut at Viridovix, which whacked into one of the gladiator’s pauldrons with a loud clang, and would have taken his arm off had it not been for the armour.
Viridovix, despite his failing strength and the breathlessness that was sapping the very final reserves of energy from his body, did not ease up his assault. He aimed cut after cut and stab after stab at Kurush’s weak points, concentrating now on forcing his opponent to bear his weight on his injured knee. Kurush was blindingly fast in both his strikes and parries, as well as light of foot in his movements, but his injured knee was a lethal handicap. Fear began to show upon his scarred visage, and it was with increasing desperation that he beat back Viridovix’s unrelenting attacks with retaliatory counterblows of his own.
For every viciously fast and brutally precise attack Kurush launched, though, Viridovix, despite his flagging strength and failing endurance, would counter with a swift and almost always unconventional flurry of blows, which he was only just able to fend off. Kurush realised, for the first time in his life, that he was losing a fight. Desperation began to scuttle its cockroach swarm madness into his brain, and he pulled out, from the recesses of his memory, an attack he had last used many years ago on the sands of the arena. A complex manoeuvre that required immense skill, strength and dexterity, it had once been his signature flourish – a guaranteed crowd-pleaser at the end of a gladiatorial match, but more importantly, when launched with two scimitars in a tight space, it was almost impossible to block. Since this had been in the days before Viridovix had started his gladiatorial career, Kurush was quite certain that his opponent would not have seen it before – and would thus not be able to defend himself against it.