The Celt stood over him like a young god, his chest heaving and his body bronzed by the sun. Beside him, Rufus felt bedraggled and somehow unworthy as he swayed, dripping into the stream. He remembered the death he had been promised, and hoped it would be quick. Perhaps he should kneel, and Dafyd might consider taking his head off with one merciful blow, rather than the gutting stroke he appeared to be preparing for. Rufus had seen men die from stomach wounds and it wasn’t an experience he was eager to share. His whole body began to shake in anticipation of the terrible violation about to be done it.
Dafyd smiled and spat in his face before launching into a rambling monologue which must have been some paean he had composed to his father. Rufus closed his eyes. Get on with it! Please. Just get on with it. The words ran through his head, over and over again. Was this how Fronto had felt when he watched Caligula’s executioners folding the chains with which they were about to beat him to death? He tried not to cry. Not to plead. But the tension was becoming too much. Was the last thought he would take to the Otherworld that the Celts would never use one word where ten would do just as well?
There was a sharp ‘thunk’ close by: the wet sound of a butcher chopping a piece of beef. At first he thought Dafyd must have struck and that his body was declining to pass on the message. Then something splashed into the river beside him. He looked down to see the staring eyes and gasping mouth of the warrior who had been at his back. The man was struggling and wriggling like a beached fish in the reddening water and his hands flapped helplessly at the emerald-flighted arrow buried in his throat.
Rufus glanced up into Dafyd’s face. The astonishment in the Briton’s eyes mirrored his own. As the young warrior hesitated, something flashed over his shoulder and fell into the water at Rufus’s feet. It was one of the long swords the Celts used, a twin to the one in Dafyd’s right hand. Slowly, never taking his eyes from his enemy, Rufus bent to pick it up.
‘Now we’ll see if you can fight as well as you can talk, Roman.’ Verica was sitting casually on a large rock a few feet behind Dafyd to his right. The British warrior half turned in surprise at the sound of the voice. He stared at the Atrebate prince and then his eyes flickered to the man with the arrow in his throat, who now lay deathly still, before finally returning to Rufus. Without warning he swung his sword in a mighty, sweeping slash that was designed to cut his opponent clean in half. Rufus was momentarily distracted by Verica’s unlikely appearance, and the contest should have been over in a single blow. But the British blades were heavy and the cut was laboured, and he was given a fraction of a second that allowed him to step back as the edge missed him by the width of a piece of parchment. The power Dafyd had invested in the blow made him stumble and that gave Rufus time to take the measure of his opponent. They were of a similar height and reach, but the Briton was undoubtedly the stronger, and Rufus realized that strength could be a deciding factor in this contest. He was outmatched, and he knew it, but strangely he felt no fear. Somewhere, he knew, Cupido was watching over him, and that was enough.
He caught Dafyd’s next cut on the blade of his own sword with a ringing clash that echoed from the valley walls, and the power of it almost broke his wrist, confirming his earlier judgement. In this kind of fight the stronger man would simply bludgeon his weaker opponent until his guard was overwhelmed. It was the British way. But Rufus didn’t fight the British way; he fought Cupido’s way.
For the next few attacks he allowed Dafyd to force him backwards. It was a dangerous strategy and it was all he could do to stay alive, parrying thrusts and roundhouse cuts with deft movements of his sword that deflected the Briton’s blade without allowing it to bring its whole power against his own. With each step he tested the ground beneath his feet. He understood he couldn’t win on these treacherous, slippery rocks that could have a man on his back and at the mercy of his enemy before he knew it. He needed firm ground and he thought he knew where to find it.
Just below the point where his path had been blocked he remembered a flat area of dry sand beside a deeper pool. Every step he retreated took him closer to it. But every step he took also increased Dafyd’s confidence, and the more confident the Briton grew, the more dangerous he became. Rufus heard Verica hoot as one thrust ripped a hole in his tunic and came close to disembowelling him. Bastard! He’d teach him a lesson — if he survived. Still the same weed-slick rocks. Make it soon. Make it… Sand. Lovely, firm, packed sand. He almost smiled, but Cupido never smiled. Cupido only killed. Three more steps and he was ready. The British way was raw power. Cupido’s way was speed. Now Rufus could move, dancing away and around his opponent, knowing no slippery pebble was going to betray him. Dafyd snarled his frustration and turned to follow him. When the Briton’s sword swung it found only air, and each fumbling stroke opened his defences to Rufus’s counter-attack. But it was still too soon. Rufus made no attempt to take the fight to his opponent. His own sword was as heavy as Dafyd’s and he knew the weight would sap his strength as it was already sapping the Briton’s. He was content to twist and turn, keeping his distance and watching the anger and the confusion grow in Dafyd’s eyes. One chance. He only needed one chance.
But so did the young Catuvellauni, and over-confidence was Rufus’s enemy just as it was Dafyd’s. In the next instant, the Briton twisted left when he should have turned right and luck brought him within range of Rufus with a low cut that would have hamstrung the Roman if he hadn’t jumped two-footed into the air. Enough.
That was the moment Dafyd came for him with all the speed of a charging leopard. The Briton’s arms were numbed by the constant labour and his legs were beginning to tire. He knew he had to strike soon. This time Rufus let him come, and when Dafyd raised his sword to strike the Roman made a disguised thrust towards the British warrior’s exposed throat. Now it was Dafyd’s turn to step back, slightly off balance. As he did, Rufus deftly switched his sword from his right hand to his left. Cupido had been expert with a sword in either hand and it was the first skill he had taught Rufus in their endless sessions in the Palatine gardens. He had never become as adept as the gladiator with either right or left, but he had learned enough. He saw the confusion on Dafyd’s face turn to panic as the Briton saw danger from an unexpected angle and was forced to make the awkward parry Rufus had been waiting for. The young Roman screamed in triumph. Now.
It was a terrible blow. A fearful blow delivered with all the strength of fear and anger and frustration. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be in danger and he didn’t want to kill. But if he must he would. He swung the blade from low to his left beneath the pathetic defence of Dafyd’s flailing sword, using the power of his wrist to sweep upwards, turning and twisting the blade as it went. The razor edge took the young Briton in the V where his legs met and sliced up through soft flesh and hard bone, through muscle and sinew, and up again through offal and lung until with a sudden wrench Rufus ripped it through his enemy’s already dying heart. It was as if Dafyd had exploded. Blood and torn guts erupted from the obscene cavity the long sword had created. The Briton’s life fled from him in a moment of horror that transformed him from a bronzed young god into a grey-faced, drooling old man; the way his father must have been when the legionaries took away his life in the battle of the valley. The thing that had been Dafyd collapsed backwards into the pool, where the current slowly turned him, dead face to the skies, arms spreadeagled, until he floated gently away, to be caught between two boulders in the shallows a little downstream.