The cheering in the arena sank to an expectant hush. The hush became a silence, a great stillness in which coughs and the occasional shout or burst of laughter could be heard clearly. Birkita felt the balance of her shield one more time and gripped the hilt of her sword. She heard what sounded like the soft sound of pissing and then she smelt the smell. Behind her, looking down, she saw that a little pool had formed on the sand. When Severus judged that the silence had gone on long enough, he said, ‘All right, out you go.’
The Cow shouted something unintelligible and plunged out into the arena like a sprinter. The Warrior and Birkita moved almost as quickly. As they did so all of the Romans charged forward. Everyone was shouting, screaming – urgent, animal cries.
Two women appeared in front of Birkita, hazy outlines in the sunlight. She feinted at the one on the right’s head. The woman raised her shield in a reflex and Birkita whipped her sword down towards the woman’s belly. The woman tried to bring the shield back down but it was too late. There was a soft sensation of resistance as the point of the blade pressed against the skin. Then the bitterly sharp steel punctured and sliced inwards easily. Blood sprayed out. Birkita’s vision was suddenly clear and sharp. The woman dropped both arms. Her legs folded. She settled for a moment on her knees looking up at Birkita with sadness on her face. Then she fell face down on the ground.
It had seemed to happen so slowly yet it must have all been very quick because the second woman was still there with her sword arm coming down at Birkita. Had it hit, the blow would have cleaved her from her shoulder, but Birkita got her shield there just in time. The sword bit into the edge of the shield, sending splinters of wood flying in the sunlight.
Birkita charged her. The move took the woman by surprise. She tried to run backwards but stumbled. Terror flashed onto her face as she realised what was about to happen. Desperately she tried to hold her shield up but Birkita kicked it out of the way. Then she plunged her sword into the woman’s heart.
Sweat ran down Birkita’s face and forehead and stung her eyes. She was already panting and felt as though her heart would burst.
She looked around. There were two other Romans lying on the ground. One was still and the other was on her side trying to drag herself away from the fighting. Her belly and thighs were soaked in blood and more poured onto the yellow sand as she moved. There were three Amazons down – one was clearly dead, one had taken a terrible cut across the face and appeared to have been blinded, the third was shaking in what looked like death throes. Where was Claudia?
Everything was moving so quickly. The air was full of dust and the smell of animals being butchered. On the edge of her vision a Roman took a blow to the head that shattered her helmet and poleaxed her in a spray of vivid red blood. Another Amazon fell to her knees and a Roman almost decapitated her with a blow. The crowd cheered every time a good blow landed or somebody was hit.
Birkita thought she saw Claudia being pressed backwards by a Roman. There was the small frame and the black hair tied up with a thin strip of green cloth. The Roman was left-handed. Birkita had told Claudia what to do if she found herself facing a left-hander but all that appeared to be forgotten now. As Birkita watched, Claudia either dropped her sword or it slipped from her hand. She uttered an animal-like cry of despair. The Roman grinned and it was as though her whole body suddenly glowed with confidence. She rained blow after blow on Claudia’s shield as Claudia stumbled backwards. Birkita ran to her, came at the Roman on her sword side and pushed the sword easily through her ribs.
And suddenly it was all over. There were no more Romans to fight. Six Amazons remained standing – the Cow, the Warrior, Claudia, Birkita and two others. All of them were panting. They stood, spattered with blood and some had cut wounds though none looked very severe. Glancing down, Birkita suddenly noticed that she had a deep gash across the front of her thigh and a sheet of blood had trickled down onto her knee. She had no idea when that had occurred. The crowd was on its feet and the cheering was deafening.
The Cow was walking purposefully from one fallen Roman to the next. Any she found alive she stabbed.
Chapter Eighteen
The Earthquake (Julia)
With swords and shields raised in triumph, and to the roars of the crowd, the six women made their way back into the tunnel.
‘I’m still alive,’ Claudia gasped in disbelief.
‘You did well,’ said Birkita. ‘Really well.’
When they returned to their room, they were surprised to find Sextus there. They were even more surprised at the state he was in. Any time Birkita had seen him, he had seemed imperturbable. Now he was like a different person. Face red, toga awry he held his face centimetres from Severus’ and screamed at him. In the light of the torches they could see his spittle flying through the air.
‘What the fuck just happened out there?’ he asked.
Severus went to say something but Sextus just kept going.
‘I’ll tell you what happened. The Roman Army – the Imperial legions – were defeated by a crowd of women. That’s what happened.’
Severus went to speak again but once more to no avail.
‘What did I tell you about who was to win? By the gods, why should I even have had to tell you? It would have been obvious to a blind, deaf and dumb man.’
‘You said you wanted sex. You wanted the Amazons to have big breasts. That’s what I did.’
Severus’ standing up for himself only seemed to make Sextus more angry, if that was possible.
‘But not at the expense of a fucking Roman victory,’ he shrieked.
‘You should have been clearer. The best fighters had the biggest tits.’
‘Oh, is that so? “The best fighters have the biggest tits.”’
Sextus mimicked Severus’ voice.
‘“The best fighters have the biggest tits,”’ he said again. ‘Well thank you for explaining that to me. Now we have the secret. I’ll be sure to tell all my friends. I’ll shout it from the rooftops. “The best fighters have the biggest tits.” I’d wondered what it was about my wife all these years. Now, at last, thanks to you, I’ve found out.’
Sextus paused to draw breath. Spittle dribbled from his lips. His eyes were flaring.
‘Right, here’s what we’re going to do. Send them back out there.’
He indicated the bloodied group of Birkita, Claudia, the Cow, the Warrior and two others in their torn tunics.
‘Six go out, one comes back.’
Severus seemed to have run out of things to try to say. A silence developed with Sextus’ face still centimetres from his. It was as though everybody had become momentarily frozen.
Then a voice said, ‘And what do we get if we’re the one to come back?’
It was the Warrior.
It was the first time Birkita had heard her speak. She had a strong, deep voice and she stood confidently, almost haughtily.
Slowly, Sextus turned his head and looked at her in disbelief.
He seemed unable to speak. The Warrior just gazed calmly at him.
Finally, Sextus raised his arm and pointed a finger at her as though it were a spear.
‘You get to live,’ he said, his voice suddenly going quiet. ‘That’s what you get to fucking do. You get to live. Now fuck off out there and give those people their money’s worth.’
Somebody – it might have been Claudia – wailed in anguish.
They returned back down the way they had come, stopping by the wooden gates again while an announcement was made outside. Birkita glanced at Claudia who stood beside her. Claudia looked at her but it was like she didn’t recognise Birkita or even see her. Claudia’s face seemed to have altered – it suddenly appeared both familiar and unfamiliar. She was no longer crying or shivering. In some ways it looked as though her spirit had already left her body – that she was already dead.
The announcement ended, the gates were opened, the women ran out, the crowd roared its approval. The women fanned out.
&nbs
p; ‘Stay near me,’ Birkita shouted to Claudia above the noise of the crowd.
She positioned herself on Birkita’s right.
In what seemed like moments, the Cow and the Warrior had dispatched the two other women. One moment they were six women standing, the next, two were lying on the ground, bloodied and unmoving.
Now the Cow and the Warrior turned towards Birkita and Claudia. The Cow immediately lunged at Claudia who stumbled backwards to get out of the way. She almost did. But then the crowd cheered, Claudia groaned and Birkita knew she had been stabbed. While the Cow was still at full stretch Birkita lunged at her but the Cow was too quick and pulled herself back out of sword range. Birkita glanced round at Claudia, expecting to see her fallen but she was still on her feet.
‘I’m all right,’ she said.
‘Get behind me,’ Birkita shouted, though she knew it was a pointless thing to do. She would be lucky to defeat one of these two; there was no way she could hope to win against both of them. They appeared to be working as a team now and suddenly it was clear to Birkita what was going to happen. They would kill Birkita. Then they would easily dispatch Claudia. After that they would fight it out between each other.
The Warrior closed in on Birkita on her left, the Cow on her right. Birkita fended the Warrior’s blows with her shield. She parried the Cow’s thrusts with her sword. All the while she backed away from them.
It went on like this with the spectators cheering every time Birkita managed to fend off another attack. But her arms were becoming heavy. They were dropping. She couldn’t keep this up for much longer.
She hoisted up the heavy shield again but the Warrior continued to strike blow after blow against it. All the while the Cow lunged at her from the right. Birkita kept on trying to watch both adversaries at once, shielding herself from the Warrior’s blows and deflecting cuts from the Cow’s sword. It was becoming impossible. It must be only seconds before she would make a mistake, mis-time a move and then it would be all over.
She continued to retreat with Claudia – she assumed – behind her somewhere. The crowd began to boo. The spectators were becoming impatient. Birkita summoned up whatever strength she had left and tried to go on the offensive. She lunged at the Cow, but the blow was easily parried, the Cow batting it off almost negligently.
But the move seemed to aggravate the Cow.
‘Come on,’ she said to the Warrior. ‘Let’s get these bitches.’
The Warrior drove forward, leading with her leg and striking several huge downward blows against Birkita’s shield, one after the other. Chunks of wood flew from the shield and Birkita thought it might have been cloven in two. The blows vibrated up her arm and through her whole body.
Then the Cow stabbed at her and caught her on her thigh where she was already cut. But this second cut was much deeper. Birkita gasped at the pain and felt her whole leg suddenly become weak as though the strength had been sucked out of it. On the downward periphery of her vision she saw bright red blood sprout from the wound.
Both the Warrior and the Cow were smiling now.
‘You know where I’m going to cut you next?’ said the Cow.
The fat woman lunged at Birkita’s groin with a vicious downward stroke. She tried desperately to move out of the way but her leg failed to respond when she instructed it to move. She stumbled backwards narrowly avoiding the sword cut as it whistled down her belly but as she did so, another crashing blow came down on her shield and finally destroyed it. Chunks of wood tumbled onto the sand leaving a small piece of timber strapped to Birkita’s arm. She just about managed to keep her feet but she knew it was the end.
But then there was a loud crack as though something huge – the amphitheatre itself – had broken. The ground began to shake. It was like what she had experienced in the last couple of days but much, much more severe. The loud crack became a steady rumbling that ran in chorus with the shaking. Screams came from the benches. Spectators rose from their seats and started to flee towards the exits. The awnings shading the crowd began to billow like ships’ sails and clouds of dust fell from them.
The Warrior and the Cow stopped and looked up and around at the tiers of spectators. Birkita could have maybe taken one of them then but she suddenly felt immensely weary. The thundering and shaking subsided but the rumbling seemed to be still echoing a long way off. A sort of calm returned to the crowds on the benches. They could be seen turning back towards the arena. Some sat down again. The Warrior and the Cow both looked into Birkita’s face and hoisted up their weapons for one last push.
But then the ground shook again. The shaking was so violent this time that it caused the Cow to fall onto her back, a sight that would almost have been funny. Her tunic flowered up, revealing flabby thighs and a vast black bush. The Warrior rocked and spread her feet to steady herself like somebody trying to balance on a small raft in a raging river. Somehow Birkita managed to stay standing.
The crowds screamed and began to flee again and this time it looked like everybody on the benches was moving. Large chunks of stonework seemed to rise up and then snap as though they were little more than chips of plaster. Then there was a deafening crack and it was like somebody had drawn a line through the tiers from the ground to the very top. The crack became a roar as a whole section of the amphitheatre, taking spectators with it, came tumbling down in a huge cloud of dust.
Out in the arena, the Cow had struggled to her feet but Birkita and the Warrior had stopped fighting and were staring in astonishment at what was happening.
Then there was another even louder crack and it was as though a long, wide trench, much deeper than a man, had suddenly appeared in the floor of the arena. Before their very eyes the trench lengthened and widened and great chunks of earth and sand and rocks tumbled into it.
The trench had opened up right behind the Cow and now she looked round in alarm. As she did so, the earth disappeared beneath her feet. She hung there for a moment as though suspended in air. Her face was a mixture of surprise and fear. Then she disappeared down into the bowels of earth as though she had been swallowed.
The great beams supporting the awnings began to sway wildly. Then, one by one in succession, the beams snapped as though they were twigs and came tumbling down onto the spectators who had not yet managed to get out of their seats. Crushing people as they went, the huge beams bounced down and eventually came to rest in the arena in a huge cloud of dust.
The Warrior flung down her weapons.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.
Chapter Nineteen
Claudia (Suzanne)
It was an easy enough thing to do. With the Warrior leading the way, they ran round the great trench in the floor of the arena and over to the wall that encircled it. The wall was only the height of a man. With her powerful arms, the Warrior pulled herself up and over it. Then, standing on top, she reached down. She towered over them with her muscular arms and columnar thighs. Birkita knew then she would never have beaten her.
‘You go next,’ said Birkita to Claudia.
Claudia hesitated and seemed to stumble. Birkita suddenly noticed that Claudia was deathly pale and she was clutching her right side where the Cow had stabbed her.
‘Your friend is bleeding,’ said the Warrior.
‘It must ... It must have been deeper than I thought,’ said Claudia in a voice thick with pain.
Birkita took Claudia around the waist and lifted her up. The Warrior did the rest, pulling Claudia up by her left arm. She gasped. Birkita followed.
Now it was simply a case of following the crowds who were fleeing towards the exits. The rumbling and shaking had subsided but huge clouds of dust filled the air where the sections of the amphitheatre had been wrecked. Birkita took Claudia’s hand as, in front, the Warrior tried to push her way through the panic-stricken people.
Pulled along by the crowd, they flowed out through an exit and reached the top of one of the flights of steps that led down to ground level. Here there was a horr
endous crush. People screamed. A man yelled for help as he was pressed against the stone balustrade of the stairway. He tried to extricate himself by pulling himself up on the shoulders of the people around him. But just as he pulled himself free and was half standing half sitting on the balustrade the crowd swayed and he fell off it, dropping to the ground with a scream. Birkita felt something soft underfoot which she knew must be a body but she was pressed in on all sides and could do nothing but stand on it. She squeezed Claudia’s hand to make sure she was still there and felt a faint squeeze back. The crowd had carried the Warrior a couple of paces ahead but Birkita could still see her since she was taller than many of the other people. But now the surging crowd lifted Birkita off her feet and she was carried down the steps. Her hand still held Claudia’s. Birkita squeezed it tight and prayed that she could hold on.
As they reached the bottom of the steps and people began to fan out over open ground, the crush suddenly eased. The spectators raced away from the amphitheatre as fast as they could. The Warrior was among them – Birkita saw her briefly before she disappeared into the crowd. But now as they tumbled out of the crush, Claudia stumbled and fell, dragging Birkita down with her.
Claudia had fallen on her back. She held both her hands against the side where she had been stabbed. Her once-white tunic was soaked in blood from her chest all the way down to its hem. Blood was bubbling through her fingers. Her eyes were closed.
Birkita found that she was still holding her sword. She dropped it in the dust and knelt by Claudia’s head.
‘Claudia! Claudia! Wake up!’ Birkita said urgently.
Claudia’s eyes opened slowly, almost dreamily.
She smiled a weary smile.
‘It ... It was too much –’
She winced as a spasm of pain passed through her. People continued to pour past them. Birkita didn’t know what to do. Cry out for help? Carry Claudia to a physician?
‘Too much to think...’
‘Don’t talk. Just rest. We’ll get help for you.’
The Paradise Ghetto Page 21
