“That’s good, Mantis. Truly.” Herclides’ voice wavered just a fraction. “But if you keep needling me, who’s going to be around to tell him? Besides, I can always grow another beard.”
“You know I can’t allow this, Velus,” Malchus said in a low and steady voice, his weapons drawn. His hands had been empty, but now, as if by sorcery, pugio and gladius circled slowly in each hand.
“Why Camilla,” Herclides said to Malchus’ gladius, “aren’t you looking bright and shiny today.” He rubbed his roughly shaved chin with a hand fairly covered with coarse, black hairs. Tufts of the same sprouted from the back of his rough-spun tunic and climbed the front of his chest to the base of his neck. “I might spare you,” he said. “But you’ll have to wait. You shouldn’t have interfered, Drusus. As many as we are now, it’ll take hours to get these lovelies back to you. Think of the time you would’ve saved if you’d have let the Mantis hand them over back at the baths.”
Valens turned to Malchus and said quietly, “The road up the hill is narrow. Easier to defend.” Then he walked up to Herclides, his sword point two feet from his chest. “You sure your blurry eye is up for this?” he asked.
Herclides shrugged. “For what? Nodding my fucking head?”
Which he did.
“Valens!” Malchus yelled. The retiarius threw his net from Valens’ left. Minucius leapt right to dodge its iron entanglement, and stepped into the braced and waiting point of the hoplomachus’ lance, a trap the two gladiators must have planned from the outset. Valens made no sound that we could hear above the hiss of the rain. Minucius dropped his sword and grabbed the wooden shaft with both hands to try with all his might, his strength sapped by agony, to stop what he knew would happen next. The gladiator pushed and twisted, then yanked the weapon out from his body with a sickening tearing sound. Minucius Valens fell dead in the street.
Many things happened either in quick succession or simultaneously, I cannot remember clearly. Malchus bellowed, switched dagger and sword hands and threw his pugio into the neck of the hoplomachus. The gladiator had enough strength to pull the blade from his throat, gripping it as Minucius had held the lance that had killed him. Then he fell to his knees, pitched forward onto our fallen friend, his own blood spreading across the back of the man he had killed.
There were only two daggers in my belt. Now one of them lodged just below the neck of the villain nearest Malchus, the thrust of his sword aborted by my blade. It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man’s life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend’s life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me.
Brutal death is a thing unnatural, a foul insult to whatever order holds sway in the universe. Or a bloody argument that we are lost in the midst of Chaos. Valens was the first victim laid upon the altar of Crassus' revenge. A man I never knew was the second. So many would follow, I weep to think of it.
Drusus screamed for us to run. We turned our backs on our assailants and fled up the hill, knowing there was no hope of escape. Livia and I did our best to shepherd our small flock away from the wolves who loped confidently behind us. Fifty feet ahead the road narrowed. If we could make it that far, we could turn and defend ourselves. It would be the most logical place for us to fight and die. Only an instant before I had wondered what kind of man gives his life for those he barely knows? I wanted to hate Valens because I was unable to find another way to end this. Because I knew such pointless bravery was beyond my understanding, beyond my emulation. Valens had once joked that a hero is a fool too afraid to have the good sense to turn and run away, but his last act among the living gave that jest the lie.
They say in moments of great fear or desperation, a man will always make a choice-either to flee or face his enemy, but choice requires thought, and in the moment when you know for certain that death is stalking you with strides you cannot outrun, there is no time for thought. You do not choose. Like Betto, or Malchus, or Valens, you act, doing either one thing or the other. Now I understood the lesson Minucius had taught us. I glanced at Livia, her knuckles wrapped white around a small club I had not seen her conceal, her features constricted with determined antagonism. I was furious and wretched to think of all the things we were all about to lose.
Then we stopped. Everyone stopped. There came a noise so startling, so magnificent, that all who heard it were compelled to seek it out, their eyes drained of will, filled with terror. If there was a herald to announce the eruption of a volcano, if the gods trumpeted a warning before the earth split apart and solid ground became as jelly, this was that noise. It was the sound that birthed all despair. It was doom proclaimed in a register so low with so many discordant voices the rain itself lost hope and abated. Malchus was first to regain himself and shout for us all to resume our flight.
The best gladiators are inured to distraction. This sound was curious, but no immediate threat to the retiarius. He turned to look behind him, saw nothing and returned to the task at hand, the task assigned to him and paid for by Velus Herclides. He hefted his trident, shifting it ever so slightly in his upturned palm to settle in that well-worn place of perfect balance. In that moment, flesh and black ash and iron were all as one. Malchus, protecting our rear and retreating backwards up the hill, made a large and unavoidable target. Thirty feet separated the gladiator from Drusus. Another sixty lay between my friend and me. I pushed Livia up the hill and ran the other way.
The retiarius was about to release his spear. He was too far away for me to risk a throw on the run, but by the time I could get close enough it would be too late. I shouted, “DOWN!” and hoped that Malchus could hear me above the din. Though he must have heard my feet slamming on the path above him, though his back was to me, Malchus did not waste time turning round to question his orders. He kicked his feet back and threw his hands out in front of him. The trident was moving through the air, but I had called my warning too soon: the gladiator had adjusted the angle of his throw. Its three barbed points would pierce Drusus through his left side. My knife was out; for this to work, the spear’s living target would be but a blink away from my own. I aimed my blade, leading my mark at a point just to the left of where Malchus’ knees were when he was standing a heartbeat before. The knife spun at an oblique angle into the tines of the spear, disrupting its flight just before I crashed into Malchus myself. His main weapon spent, the tactical situation on the ground changing in an instant, the gladiator bolted. Malchus and I scrambled to our feet; I found myself warding off our assailants with the gladiator’s trident alongside an extremely put out Camilla.
•••
The noise was unbearable. To our left, from the direction of the forum, the Nova Via emptied into the plaza about one hundred yards from our vantage point. Now, bursting from the wide avenue came a running throng. They did not stop to admire the temples or basilicas that lined its borders, but ran as if safety lay without the city walls. Many of them were shouting; some were screaming. They were pushed, almost physically, by stentorian blasts echoing and rebounding off every surface. Herclides tried to rally his men, but except for Palaemon, they had voted with the majority and were heading in a diagonal stream across the plaza to blend into the mob and escape whatever horror approached.
I saw what at first I took to be a Roman general sitting tall and imperious on a black, high-stepping stallion, both horse and rider adorned in polished silver furnishings. But no, this was no Roman, but a daemon in human guise. It was bald, yet from the top of its head sprouted two curved horns, each almost a foot in length. Its ears hung thick and low to its neck, framing a gaping, scowling mouth below flattened nose and slitted eyes. It turned to look in our direction and I flinched, fighting the urge to run. Then it pointed at us and I did shut my eyes, but only for an instant. I don’t think anyone noticed.