Breath-taking. Or it would be, had Rufinus spare breath to take.
Wheezing and panting, clutching his side where a particularly bad burn had begun to rub painfully on the bindings, he rounded two more corners, descending to the lowest level of the city, and turned out into the wide paved area that surrounded the arena, where he was confronted by a wall of people, shoulder to shoulder, crowding the square. Children sat on their father’s shoulders. Youths climbed the colossal, hundred foot statue of the god Sol, using his pedestal and feet to gain an improved view. All but the lowest storey of the amphitheatre were visible above the seething mass of people and from this close it could be seen that hundreds of people filled the dark arches of the building, leaning around the decorative statues to wave to friends and beckon family.
And at regular intervals, all around the arches, glittering armoured figures in white tunics stood, scrutinising the crowd as they remained stolid and impassive. Rufinus stopped and shook his head. How was he supposed to get there?
‘Make way!’ he bellowed. ‘Praetorian Guardsman!’ Even at the top of his voice, the command was almost lost in the drone of thousands of excited people. A few of those nearby, at the periphery, glanced round in surprise and jostled to move out of the way. Even with the best of intentions, there was not enough room in the mass for them to adequately shift and allow him passage.
‘Make way!’ he bellowed again, voice cracking with the effort. Beside him, Acheron snapped out a loud bark, startling more of the nearby folk and causing them to open a tiny gap – not much, but all they could manage.
Rufinus peered into the passage through the crowd. It was barely wide enough for a man to move through, let alone an armoured one with a huge dog, but it was clearly the widest he was likely to get. Wincing at the multitude of aches and pains the action brought, he began to push through the crowd, shouldering his way and clamping his teeth down on the cries he issued with the pain of every jolt and jostle.
His steel-plated segmented armour battered members of the public, causing bruises and drawing blood as he forced his way ever deeper into the crowd, constantly demanding that they make way and announcing his status, the great dark shape of Acheron padding along close behind him. Here and there, despite everything, a man or woman would complain or curse at him as he trod on feet, cut cheek bones with his shoulder plates, pushed people physically out of the way with his own yelp of pain joining their cry of irritation.
No one complained at Acheron.
It was a hot, painful and interminable journey but gradually he fought his way closer and closer to the looming edifice. He struggled to make his way through the mass, but Perennis and Paternus would have a path cleared for the emperor. Likely his route would take him around the far side, looping the whole building before he entered, so that the whole crowd could see and cheer him.
He was so close now that he could see the inner arches and radiating passages echoing back from the entrances into the heart of the amphitheatre. A few of those interior vaults would hold food stalls but many seemed unoccupied and dark.
‘Rufinus?’
He missed it the first time, and it was only as the man shouted again and waved an arm that Rufinus recognised his name and his head snapped back and forth, trying to identify the source of the call. Mercator stood on the second level, next to a statue of one of the Flavian generals, waving his free arm, javelin leaning against the stonework. In the next arch along, Icarion was looking across at his friend in confusion, and then turned at a pointed finger and traced its path to see their friend pushing through the crowd toward the arena. Icarion had brought both his javelins. Perhaps he was expecting trouble?
‘Mercator! Icarion! Come down!’
With redoubled effort, he heaved his way through the crowd, crying out with every stab of pain and not caring who heard, pushing people roughly aside and causing shouts of consternation and threats to rise up around him. Acheron stayed at his heel as he moved.
Suddenly, at last, his good hand touched stone, and he grasped the amphitheatre as though it might be pulled away again by the undertow in the sea of people, the cold blocks gritty in his hand. The crowds did not stop at the outer circumference, though. The entrance corridors were packed with people, and Rufinus had to pull himself along the wall and heave through people into the passageway.
A moment more of struggling, and Rufinus found elbow room. Within the inner passageways the crowds cleared. Those who had managed to secure a seat in the stands would already now be there and watching the arena and the imperial box eagerly. The rest had gathered to see the emperor’s arrival, and would have no chance of doing so while hidden within the arcades of the structure.
Indeed, few people had any business in the tunnels of the amphitheatre, just the food and wine and trinket stalls that had set up in a few of the dead-end radiating passages, and the people rushing to buy last moment snacks before the main event. Torches burning in sconces lit the routes from seating access passages to the stall areas, whole sections remaining dark between them.
Panting wildly and wincing at the pain lacing around his body, Rufinus shook his head at the organised chaos of it all.
‘Hey, captain! You’re not going to believe this!’
Rufinus turned at the voice to see two men in drab grey tunics moving toward him. At first glance, they were no different from any other spectator, but to the trained eye, the bulk of daggers beneath the tunics was unmistakable. Rufinus stared and realised he knew one of them from the Villa of Hadrianus.
His sword was already halfway from its scabbard before the two men ran at him, knives whipped out from their hiding places. Weapons were forbidden in the public places of the city centre, with the exception of the urban cohorts and the Praetorians, but with everything that was happening today, Rufinus could imagine just how easy it would be to sneak a knife into the amphitheatre.
As he levelled his drawn blade, Rufinus realised what they had said.
‘Captain’!
He turned, unsteadily, just in time to see Phaestor’s gladius come lunging out of the darkness of an unlit radial passage. Desperately knocking the blow aside with his own blade, he turned on his heel and ducked a slash from a dagger, crying out as pain tore through him from his many extant wounds. The two men spread out to make themselves harder to target.
He was surrounded and weakening with every moment. With all his training and experience and all the medicus’ drugs, he still doubted he could successfully take on one man in a fair fight, let alone three.
Swishing his gladius threateningly though the air, tears issuing at the strain, he turned to see Phaestor’s face emerge into the light, head shaking in disbelief.
‘I saw you die.’
‘Then I must be a ghost,’ he replied in a pained, hollow whisper. He certainly sounded like one. Gritting his teeth against anticipated pain, Rufinus swiped at him and Phaestor ducked back. A dagger from one of the men behind him clattered off his shoulder plate, then there was a snarl of animal rage and a snap, followed by a scream.
‘Good boy,’ he said without looking round.
The sound of desperate human and animal struggling raged behind him as Rufinus narrowed his eyes and stepped to the side, watching Phaestor warily.
‘Fortuna’s with me today, boy,’ the captain said with a dark smile. ‘Eighty arches and you find me straight away.’
‘I could say that was my luck rather than yours, captain.’