Julius’s face went blank, and Scaurus’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
‘You’ve already made the deal, haven’t you?’
His first spear shook his head.
‘Not my place to do so, Tribune, but the officer in question tells me that he’s open to reallocating Avidus to us if we’re happy to make a modest donation to his temple.’
He stared at the wall behind the tribune and waited for Scaurus’s reaction in silence, knowing better than to attempt any form of persuasion on a man who he knew to be stubborn in the extreme once his mind was made up.
‘So you’ve offered him a bribe?’
Julius shook his head.
‘Not at all. I simply enquired as to where Avidus’s century was likely to end up, and then let slip that we’d be happy to look after them for a while. The request for the donation was all his idea. Apparently they want to put in a new altar stone …’
‘And you, Centurion? What do you think of the idea?’
Avidus shrugged.
‘I’m a soldier, Tribune. I go where the army tells me to, dig holes while unfriendly natives practise their archery skills on me, fill them in again and then start marching. As long as our pay and conditions aren’t changed, my lads and I will happily tag along with you for a while. Preferably somewhere warm?’
Scaurus frowned and turned away, looking out through the unshuttered window at the barracks buildings that faced the headquarters.
‘I won’t deny that you’d be useful to us …’ He turned to face Julius. ‘How much does this transit officer want then?’
A knock at the door interrupted Julius before he had a chance to reply, and one of Cotta’s men was escorted into the room by the duty centurion, the battered pugilist Otho. Jumping to attention, the bodyguard explained that he had been sent to inform Julius and Marcus of the fact that their women had decided to remain in the city overnight, and would they mind sending up some clothing and bedding?
‘Well now, I suppose that’s not entirely unexpected. I don’t suppose we should expect your ladies to stay cooped up in this rather stark barracks when there’s a house on the Aventine Hill going begging, should we? Perhaps we might go for a look at this place, the three of us, and you, Centurion Avidus, if you fancy a walk.’
Scaurus grinned at his officers with the look of a man relishing the prospect of a break from the usual routine.
‘And who knows, if we’re really lucky, we might get out of the gates without an escort of jealous barbarians.’
Mortiferum was hard at work on the Dacian Ludus’s practice ground when Senator Pilinius appeared at the door of the enclosed rectangle of sand-strewn ground on which they were sparring. He looked across the ranks of trainee gladiators as they toiled at the repetitive exercises that would build their strength and muscle memory, clearly searching for his comrade in the emperor’s service.
One of the three men sparring with Mortiferum noticed his glance up at the senator, and relaxed his defence on the assumption that their opponent would break off the fight to speak with such an important visitor, but the champion gladiator seized his chance with the speed for which he was famed.
‘Ignore him!’
He danced forward to attack with both swords raised, parrying the man’s clumsy defensive cut with one blade while flashing the other wide to his right, forcing the other two back as he swiftly stepped in closer and shoulder-barged his victim over a hooked ankle to send him reeling. As the helpless gladiator sprawled on the hard, sandy surface, Mortiferum lunged in, tapped him delicately on the throat with the tip of his heavy wooden practice sword, and then flung himself forward, somersaulting over the fallen man’s prone body to land on his feet with the downed fighter between them, spinning as his feet hit the sand and raising his swords to fight, shouting a command.
‘Stop!’
He looked at his remaining two sparring partners with a questioning look.
‘Look where we are. You, stay down, you’re dead! You two, what do you do now?’
The brighter of the trainees answered first.
‘We either split and come at you to either side of the corpse …?’
Their teacher shook his head.
‘Not the best answer, Felix. First rule of fighting as a pair — never fight alone if you can avoid it, or a good swordsman will simply kill one of you quickly and take his time with the other.’
‘Or we could come at you together around him to one side or the other …?’
The champion gladiator shrugged and grinned.
‘We can play at going round and round him all day, I’d say. The crowd would lose interest in that long before I would, and everyone knows what happens when the crowd gets bored.’
Felix nodded glumly.
‘We have to jump the corpse together?’
Mortiferum nodded.
‘That’s the best approach, nine times out of ten. One of you might stop a blade, but the other ought to get a chance to return the compliment, at least against a good to average opponent. In this case, of course, you’d both be dead before you could regain your footing. So, what was the mistake that Sergius here …’ He prodded the recumbent trainee with the boot of his toe, shaking his head at the man. ‘And you can stop giving me that look unless you want me to prod you somewhat harder with my sword next time. What did you do wrong that allowed me my opening?’
The fallen man, who had propped himself up on his elbows to listen, replied, ‘I followed your eyes, Death Bringer.’
‘You followed my eyes. In point of fact, you all followed my eyes, but I went for you, Sergius, for two reasons. Firstly, because you were the closest, and secondly because you were perfectly positioned so that your corpse would put an obstacle between me and these two. Get up then.’
Sergius rolled to his feet away from Mortiferum, knowing better than to put himself inside the reach of the deceptively dangling wooden swords. The champion fighter raised one of them to point at his training partners.
‘Don’t I keep telling you that watching your opponent’s eyes only tells you where he’s looking, not where his sword’s going. You need to watch the point, ladies, nothing else matters.’
Sergius cocked his head in puzzlement.
‘Don’t we need to watch the other man’s body as well?’
Mortiferum nodded, grinning back at his training partner.
‘When you’re ready my friend, yes you do. The time will come, if you’re good enough, that you’ll know what’s coming next just from the set of a man’s body, the twitch of a muscle, the way his eyes flicker-’
‘But you told us not to look at the eyes!’
The champion gladiator’s grin widened.
‘Yes. I told you that, because you’re only capable of watching one thing at a time. When I face a man, I can see everything, every twitch and blink, every little tell as to his next move, and I absorb and understand them all without ever having to think through what’s happening. I see how much blood there is on the sand behind him, and whether he might slip if I push him backwards. I see the faces in the crowd, and whether they’re shouting acclaim or just baying for blood. I see the men in the imperial box and what their mood is, so I can put him down quick if they’re looking forgiving or let him make a decent show of it if I think they’ll need convincing that he’s worth saving. I can see the wounds I’ve already given him, how much they’re bleeding and how dark the blood is, so I know how badly I’ve hurt him and whether it’d be kinder to kill him clean.’ He grinned again, shrugging at the skill with which he had been gifted. ‘I see so much more than you do, a little of which is training, but most of which is just how I was born. And now …’
He raised a hand to acknowledge Pilinius’s presence, knowing that to delay any longer would be an unnecessary and highly visible snub to the man.