‘Smells like …’
He looked at Marcus, who shrugged and took a deep breath.
‘Now you mention it …’
Both men looked at Dubnus, bursting into uncontrollable laughter at his sheepish expression.
‘You lucky bastard! It wasn’t that slave girl was it?’ Horatius goggled at the Briton’s nod. ‘Mithras above us! She came to you in the night? Remind me to be a bit quicker off the mark next time those apes try to mess with her, that’s the sort of gratitude a man could use in here!’
Marcus raised an eyebrow at his friend, seeing less amusement in his face than he might have expected.
‘Her name is Calistra. And I’m going to free her.’
‘Now that’s impressive.’ Both of them turned to Horatius, who was shaking his head in new-found respect. ‘She’s only done the love thing to him, and all in the space of one quick bunk up. She must come like a fully wound bolt thrower …’
Once the gladiators slated for that day’s entertainment had returned, most of them dressed in what seemed to be more or less the standard fighting equipment for the ludus, the lanista looked about him with a hint of approval in his faint smile. The gladiators were equipped for the most part in wide-brimmed helmets adorned with griffons or crests, each with a face mask perforated by holes large enough to allow clear vision. Their sword arms were wrapped in heavy padding beneath sleeves of segmented metal of the type worn by legionaries on the Danubius frontier, and each man’s leading leg was protected by a metal greave strapped over heavy padding to protect their ankles from the harsh bite of the metal shin guard’s edges.
‘Very nice, gentlemen, you almost look like gladiators! Swords and shields will be issued in the arena, just to make sure nobody decides to start the fighting early, or looks to use their weapons in some desperate bid for freedom! And for those of you who are here as condemned men, let me remind you that the guards accompanying us will beat the blood-stained piss out of you if you so much as look like making a run for it. Come along then!’
The lanista led the group down a stairway and into a sloping tunnel lit at intervals by freshly set torches. Velox laughed at the look of bemusement on Dubnus’s face.
‘You didn’t think we were going to stroll over to the Flavian through the sort of crowd that will already have gathered, did you? We’d be mobbed the second we set foot outside the gates, and it’d take an age to push our way through. This is much quicker …’
The tunnel ran downhill at a slight gradient for fifty paces before joining another, larger underground corridor, and Marcus realised that they had reached a junction of several such concealed walkways.
‘This is where the tunnels from all of the schools meet. It’s not far from here to the arena.’
The group marched on in a direction that Marcus judged to be eastward, and after a moment’s walking the dim light ahead of them resolved itself into a stairway leading upwards into the morning sunlight, while the dimly lit tunnel ran on to the west and, he presumed, into the bowels of the arena itself. At the top of the stairs they stepped out into a crowded space filled with gladiators of all types, the city folk kept at a respectful distance on all sides by a ring of arena guards, and Sannitus raised his voice as he pushed his way into the crowd.
‘Now then you Gauls, you beast men, you fighters of the Great School, make way for the greatest gladiators in the world! Make way for the men of the Dacian Ludus!’
A barrage of ribaldry and foul language met his apparent bombast, but Marcus could see that most of it was good natured despite the obvious nerves on display among the men that would fight and possibly die that day. Another man of roughly the same age as the veteran lanista stepped forward, a giant of a man with a bald head whose scalp was scarred as if by the claws of some vicious beast, and with one eye socket concealed by a patch. He wrapped the Dacian lanista in a bearlike hug, lifting Sannitus clean off his feet with a growl of welcome, and two more men crowded in to make their greetings, mutual respect evident on the faces of all four.
‘We’re not too late then?’
The one-eyed man laughed.
‘With this lot organising the parade? Not likely.’
Sticking together in their tight group, the Dacians looked around them with the understandable curiosity of men who might well be looking upon either their victims or their killers to be. One or two of the more experienced veterans recognised previous opponents, and stepped out of the huddle to make the clasp and enjoy a moment of conversation with men who, mortal enemies though they might briefly have been, were now simply fellow professionals, subject to the same hopes and doubts with which they themselves were struggling.
‘Gladiators!’ A strong voice rang out over the throng, snapping heads round as the fighters anticipated the command to move. ‘Follow the usual path to the starting point please …’
The three friends went along with their group, most of whom clearly knew where they were going, walking around the towering arena past the eastern gate.
‘That’s the Gate of Life.’ Velox hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Win your bout, or lose well enough to avoid a fatal wound and win the emperor’s favour, and you’ll make it back to the ludus even if they have to carry you back.’ They walked on around the amphitheatre’s curved walls, and at length he pointed forward at the gate in the amphitheatre’s western side. ‘On the other hand, if you die, or lose so badly that you have to receive the mercy stroke, or simply incur the big man’s wrath for not fighting hard enough, then you’ll be carried out through that gate. The Gate of Death.’
He was silent for a moment, as the straggling procession passed under the infamous arch in silence.
‘There, see?’ He pointed to a tunnel opening close to the gate. ‘From here that tunnel runs back to the east, under the arena all the way from here to the spolarium on the far side of the Morning School. If you die in the arena, then the staff take your corpse in there to be stripped of its weapons and armour, and to keep the poor sods that weren’t good enough or fast enough from putting off the lads that haven’t fought yet. And here’s the worst part of it …’ He pointed to the crowds gathered about the gate. ‘They’ve been waiting there most of the night, making sure they get the prime spots, and get to see the dead men as they’re carried out.’
‘Fucking ghouls.’
A fighter walking before them in the smooth egg-shaped, full-face helmet of a secutor spat the words over his shoulder, and Velox laughed in response to the venom in his voice.
‘Ghouls they are, that’s true enough. But if you couldn’t take a joke then you shouldn’t have joined!’
The anonymous gladiator laughed bitterly, his face hidden by the helmet’s smooth iron face and his eyes invisible in the holes cut into the mask to allow him some limited vision.
‘As if I had any choice in the matter.’
‘Ah yes, that was true for the first few years, wasn’t it Glaucus, but it’s not quite the case these days. You’re no longer the bankrupt who was forced into the arena to pay off your creditors, are you? How much did it take to tempt you into the games this time round?’
Glaucus, who Marcus supposed was easy enough to identify despite the anonymity of his enclosed helmet given the absence of the little finger of his sword hand, turned his head to be better heard, a wry note in his muffled voice.
‘Not as much as they’re paying to see you, eh “Master of Carnage”?’
Velox grinned back at him.
‘Probably not, but I’ll bet good money that getting a nice big payment isn’t all the attraction, is it? Some of them may be ghouls, but there’s something about their adulation that just hooks us back into the game, isn’t there, even though we know we might end up leaving the arena feet first that last time?’