Indavara took his chance. Lowering his grip, he darted two steps forward and drove the makeshift spear into the bear’s chest. The dagger sank in as far as the handle. The beast yelped and shrank backwards.
Indavara pulled the pole free. The bear recovered itself and plodded forward. Indavara held his ground and jabbed for the eyes. The tiny knife missed them but sliced down the centre of the broad head, darkening the fur with blood. The bear stopped, then lunged forward again. Curved claws raked the underside of the pole but the weapon held together.
Indavara stayed on his toes, constantly shifting across the glaring sunlight, trying to confuse the bear further.
Now he used the other end of the pole as a club, smashing it twice against the bear’s head. He caught an ear, and the animal seemed stunned for a moment. So he spun the pole over, then swept the makeshift spear towards its face once more, cutting across the smooth skin at its snout. Blood ran down into its eyes and dripped from its nose.
Enraged, the bear charged. Though Indavara had forgotten the pain in his injured leg, it buckled under him. He stumbled, and had only the time to get the pole up in front of him as the bear went for his throat.
The jaws snapped shut on the pole, splitting it in two. The bear twisted in the air and one great paw caught Indavara on the chest, slamming him to the ground.
He landed badly on his wounded shoulder, and knew a rib or two had gone. The dagger-end of the pole had landed close by but he found he could hardly move. The previously isolated points of pain on his body had fused into a pressing layer of agony that suddenly overwhelmed him. He knew with absolute certainty that at any moment he would feel teeth sink into his neck. For the first time that day, he could make out individual voices in the crowd. They implored him to fight, begged him to move. He wondered if the figurine was still secure inside his tunic. He wondered if the woman who’d given it to him was there.
He could not move.
Then he realised his eyes were shut. And when he opened them, he was looking at the bear, stretched out on the sand a few yards away. The animal couldn’t see him. Blood was streaming down its face, forming puddles in the sand. It was blinking and pawing uselessly at its wounds, sniffing, trying to find him with its nose.
Hope returned, and with it a little strength. Indavara breathed in as much air as he could and got to his feet. He pulled the knife from its lashing and closed both hands around the tiny handle. Planting his feet close to the bear, he drove the blade down into the top of its head.
The beast moaned. Its eyes were glassy and still.
He stabbed the blade down again, into where he guessed the brain might be, then twisted it. The blade snapped off in his hand, and he collapsed to the ground once more.
He sat there, dwarfed by the vast mass next to him. Had there been another weapon close at hand he would have struck again at the beast; plunged another blade into its skull, cut at its mouth, its eyes, its heart.
But the moment passed. And as the bear’s great head finally slid into the dust, the rage dissolved. And he felt a kind of kinship for this poor, magnificent thing, forced to fight for its life for the amusement of others. And then something he had never felt after dispatching a human foe. Regret.
Capito was stunned by the noise. All around him people were leaping and shouting and crying. He turned, looking for one particular face. The slave-trader pointed at him, drew a finger across his neck, then disappeared into the crowd.
Indavara was dimly aware of Bonosus and the other guards around him. He struggled to his feet again. Blinking into the sunlight, he turned until he could see the northern gate. Then he felt inside his tunic. The figurine was there. He pulled it out and held it tight in his hand.
The guards made way as he limped towards the gate. The crowd began to throw money. Coins peppered the sand around him.
Indavara hardly noticed. He was occupied by a single thought.
Get to the gate. Get to the light.
Centurion Maesa was already up by the podium, gathering the legionaries to restrain the hundreds rushing for the parapet above the northern gate.
Young Vitruvius was waiting for Indavara by the tunnel, holding some bandages he had torn from a sheet. The gladiator walked straight past him but the guard managed to hang the remains of the sheet about his shoulders. It stuck to his sweat-soaked body.
A small group lined the cold stone walls of the tunnel; more legionaries, pedlars waiting for the departing crowd, cleaners waiting to tidy up. Vitruvius hurried ahead and told the gatekeeper to open the second gate. Beyond lay the city streets.
For a moment, Indavara forgot the pain. He gazed at the golden glow ahead of him. This light seemed different to the light in the arena. Brighter. Warmer.
Vitruvius swung the gate open.
Indavara didn’t miss a step. Tears slid down his filthy, bloody face as he passed beyond the iron bars.
Through the gate. Into the light.
I
September, AD 272
‘I slaughtered three elephants and a giraffe in the arena on one day; and I was killed by a wrestler who strangled me in the bath.’
‘Commodus, sir.’
‘I’m detecting an air of boredom. Perhaps you tire of “Guess the emperor”.’
‘Not at all, sir. My turn: I once served a meal of six hundred storks, then ate every brain myself with a tiny golden pin.’
‘Easy. Our old friend Elagabalus.’
‘Quite right, sir.’
‘Ah. Look there, a light. That must be it.’
Cassius Quintius Corbulo and his servant Simo had been riding south since morning. Night had brought a chill to the air and both men kept their cloaks clasped tight around their shoulders. The road was wide and well used, its edges marked by low banks of stones. To their left lay the sullen emptiness of the Syrian steppe; to their right a lake, its moonlit surface stretching far into the distance. There were few villages here, just the odd house built close to the water, usually attended by a small boat or two. Aside from the soft plodding of the horses’ hooves and the thump and rattle of heavily loaded saddles, the only sound was the melodic chirrup of some unseen bird.
The ride was the last stage of an exhausting three-week journey. The letter demanding Cassius’s return to Syria had made it clear his presence was required immediately. Departing from Cyzicus on the northern coast of Asia Minor, they had secured passage across the eastern end of the Mediterranean to Seleucia, the port that served Syria’s capital, Antioch. A messenger had been awaiting them at the dock with a second letter summoning them south. They had hired horses and set off, journeying past the cities of Apamea, Larissa and Epiphania, staying in a selection of less than salubrious inns.
Approaching the city of Emesa on the sixth day out of Antioch, they turned east and passed right through the middle of a battlefield. Here, three months previously, the Emperor Aurelian had led his legions against a force of seventy thousand Palmyrans, finally smashing Queen Zenobia’s military might. His army had then marched east and besieged Palmyra itself. The city now lay in Roman hands, the rebel queen on her way back to Rome in chains.
A rather overdramatic merchant’s wife had told the two travellers that the sand of the battle-site was stained red as far as the eye could see, that an eerie sense of dread pervaded the land for miles around. Cassius and Simo had noticed neither. Anything of value had already been claimed by the victors or opportunistic locals. All that remained were the rotting skeletons of thousands of Palmyran cavalry horses, still providing food for a colony of buzzards.