Arena

CHAPTER FORTY

‘Slow down, lad!’ Macro bellowed at training the following morning in the grounds of the imperial ludus. ‘You’re supposed to attack the palus. Not chop the fucking thing in half.’

Pavo appeared not to hear his mentor. He thrust his training sword manically at the wooden post, gripped by an uncontrollable rage as he mentally imposed the face of Hermes on top of it. There was a dull thwack as the tip of his sword struck the palus at the point of an imaginary neck. Beads of sweat flowed freely down his back. He had been hacking and stabbing aggressively at the palus since Macro arrived at the ludus at dawn to commence the day’s training. He’d worked up a fierce sweat despite the bleak winter chill. His muscles were still sore from participating in the group fight and the flesh wound on his chest had formed a lumpy scab. But the dull throb of his injuries was nothing compared to the leaden feeling in his guts. Pavo had not been able to sleep the previous evening, tossing and turning in his cell as he pictured his father’s severed head on a stake, mocked by his enemies. His desire for revenge had twisted into something darker, an unspeakable urge to maim Hermes. He did not merely want to kill the champion of Rome. He wanted to make him suffer, as he himself had suffered these past months. Snarling through his gritted teeth, he slammed the blade of his sword against the heavily scored palus, as if hacking through Hermes’s neck, his muscles tensed with rage. The sword splintered down the blade as it clattered into the training post. Macro immediately snatched it from Pavo’s grasp.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at, lad?’ he bellowed impatiently.

Pavo glared back, chest heaving. ‘Training, sir. As per your instructions,’ he replied bitterly. ‘You did order me to take out my anger on the training ground.’

Macro snorted and shook his head. ‘I told you to use your rage as a motivation, lad. All you’re doing is blindly hacking at the palus. Good gods, you’re not even practising the moves I taught you. If you try hacking at Hermes like this in the arena, he’ll cut you down before you’ve broken into a sweat.’

Grief and frustration overwhelmed Pavo. He lowered his head and his shoulders slumped heavily. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he panted. ‘But Hermes is a step too far. He’s unstoppable.’

Macro seized Pavo by the shoulders and looked him hard in the eye. ‘Hermes isn’t a god, he’s a scum gladiator. He’ll have a weakness. We’ve just got to work out what it is.’

‘You saw the fight against Criton,’ Pavo protested. ‘He didn’t seem to have any weaknesses that I saw.’

‘Criton hardly launched an attack worthy of the name,’ Macro countered sternly. ‘We’ll make a better fist of it. And look at it this way: if you lose, at least you’ll go down fighting. Do your old man proud, eh?’

Pavo nodded without conviction. In moments like these he cursed his upbringing. For all his knowledge of the Greek tragedies and the history of Rome and his fancy fencing lessons, he lacked the ruthlessness and determination to survive of a true warrior. One could not learn how to be tenacious and brave from lessons in school. Macro had both these qualities in abundance, a result of the many years he’d spent as a soldier fighting on the bloodied frontiers of empire. The optio possessed the kind of education one could only hope to acquire through hard graft, Pavo reflected.

‘Perhaps I should have chosen freedom over revenge,’ he said softly. ‘When the Emperor gave me the chance.’

Macro was about to reply when a faint roar erupted from the arena east of the imperial ludus. He knew what the roar signified: the day’s schedule of beast fights had begun. The optio shivered in his bones and looked sharply away from the direction of the arena.

‘Pull yourself together, lad. You’ve come too far to piss it all away now. Besides, you don’t want that showboating tosser stealing the glory, do you?’

‘No,’ Pavo said coolly. ‘But how in the name of the gods am I supposed to beat him?’

Macro paused for a moment and mulled it over. He was interrupted by a voice shouting at them from the opposite end of the training ground.

‘Macro! Pavo!’

Turning in the direction of the voice, Pavo squinted and saw a tall, lean man marching towards them from the administrative building to the left of the gates. ‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Cornicen … the bastard.’

‘The imperial lanista?’ Macro raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s got it in for you, eh?’

Pavo nodded grimly. ‘He’s close to Hermes and Cursor. Too close for my liking.’

Since Pavo had been housed at the imperial ludus at the start of the games, Gnaeus Sentius Cornicen had done everything within his paltry powers to make the young gladiator’s life a misery, giving him two rank meals a day and the coldest, dampest and filthiest cell to sleep in. It was a cheap tactic, thought Pavo, and characteristic of the officious lanista. Cornicen seemed especially eager to pander to the wishes of those who wielded real power and influence while he oversaw the Emperor’s prized collection of gladiators.

Macro grunted. ‘Probably trying to please those slimy freedmen of Claudius.’

Cornicen drew near to the optio and his charge.

‘Put down your weapons and stop training, Pavo,’ he snapped.

Macro glowered at the lanista with barely disguised contempt. ‘You’re interrupting our training session.’

Cornicen stared at him for a moment. ‘I don’t answer to you, Optio. And I’ll interrupt you when I damn well please. Especially when a member of the imperial household requests your presence. The aide to the imperial secretary, no less.’

Murena, Pavo thought, shivering at the memory of the aide.

‘And I’d like a Syrian tart and a jug of good Falernian, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?’ Macro responded smartly, dismissing Cornicen with a wave of his hand. ‘Whatever Murena wants, it’ll have to wait until we break for a rest.’

The lanista cleared his throat. ‘Training is over for today, Optio. Report to the imperial palace immediately.’

‘But we have to train!’ Pavo protested.

‘Not my problem,’ Cornicen said with a sneer. ‘Frankly, the sooner Hermes gives you the chop, the better. You’ve been nothing but trouble since you set foot in the ludus. This is a place for true champions, like Hermes. Not argumentative brats who can’t keep their damn mouths shut.’

Pavo stared at him for a moment before Macro grabbed him by the arm and led him after the lanista, who was marching hastily towards the gates at the opposite end of the ludus. They swept past the other gladiators training at the two dozen paluses arranged further to the north. Hermes briefly stopped attacking his palus and glanced darkly in their direction. Cornicen had ordered Hermes and Pavo to train separately, clearly fearful of a repeat of the brawl outside the Circus Maximus. Keeping them apart was at least manageable, since Hermes was a freedman gladiator and he was not required to be billeted at the imperial ludus. Pavo had learned from one of the other fighters at the ludus that Hermes had been loaned the use of a lavish villa beyond the city walls. The villa belonged to a senior magistrate apparently seeking favour with the Emperor by tending to the needs of his prized gladiator.

Cornicen ordered the guards to open the gates of the ludus, and Macro and Pavo stepped out on to the Flaminian Way. The gates slammed shut behind them. The guard towers on either side cast long shadows over the flagstones as the sun fully rose. Shafts of sunlight cut through the thick cloud, casting golden bars of light over the ornate facades of the temples arranged on the slopes of the Capitoline Hill to the south.

‘What does Murena want with us now?’ Pavo seethed.

Macro shot Pavo a look. ‘How the fuck should I know? Whatever it is, I can promise you one thing, lad. It won’t be good news.’

Pavo bit back on his anxiety as they proceeded down the Flaminian Way. The ludus had been constructed in the shadow of the arena. Presumably, thought Pavo, so that the organisers in charge of the games could conveniently usher gladiators and condemned men from their cells to the arena with less risk of them escaping. Flies buzzed around the two men as a handful of attendants slung the mutilated corpse of a wild boar on to the side of the street. Several animal carcasses lay in a heap next to the boar, their flanks stripped clean by starving Roman citizens desperate for a scrap of meat. As the two men headed towards the imperial palace, Pavo’s mind kept returning to the scene of his presentation at the imperial box

You will pay for this, Murena had warned Pavo. I’ll make sure of it.

His neck muscles stiffened as it occurred to him that the aide had summoned them to the palace in order to exact his revenge. He and Macro would not be the first Roman citizens to disappear in the reign of Emperor Claudius, and Pavo dimly understood that Murena would do anything to prevent his fight against Hermes from going ahead. For a moment he wished that he had the chance to fight Murena and Pallas in the arena instead. Their deaths would give him almost as much pleasure as revenge over Hermes.

He followed Macro down one of the many alleys leading from the main streets. Ahead of them stood the wrought-iron gates at the front of the palace, the impressive marble steps visible beyond. Guards stood on duty outside the entrance. Macro approached the gates ahead of Pavo and gave his name; the guards promptly nodded and waved both men through. A household servant escorted them up the marble steps. They climbed four more flights of stairs before heading down a wide corridor with an intricate mosaic on the floor. In one corner a clerk sat at a desk, writing with a stylus on a wax tablet. At the sound of their footsteps he glanced up from the tablet and nodded to a door at the far end of the corridor.

‘He’s waiting for you,’ he said brusquely.

The servant opened the door and ushered Macro and Pavo inside. Then he turned and departed down the corridor, leaving the optio and the gladiator to consider the splendour of the office. A high window overlooked the Forum. Animal skins trapped the heat rising from the hypocaust floor, warming Pavo’s numbed feet. In the middle of the room stood a large oak desk overflowing with scrolls and wax tablets. Murena stood up from the chair behind the desk and greeted his guests with a smile, his teeth gleaming like marble in the sunlight streaming through the window.

‘Greetings, Macro,’ he announced grandly. ‘You haven’t been in the office of the imperial secretary before, have you?’

‘The gods have spared me that particular delight until now.’ The optio cast his eyes over the furnishings and grunted. ‘This is where you and Pallas scheme and plot against your enemies, is it?’

Murena laughed weakly and flicked his gaze towards Pavo, his thin lips curling at the corners. There was a gleam in his eyes as he studied the gladiator. ‘You’re looking well, young man.’

‘What the hell do you want?’ Macro spat, his chest swelling with fury.

‘That’s no way to greet a friend,’ Murena replied with fake cordiality as he calmly folded his hands behind his back. ‘Really, Macro, your manners are rather boorish, even for a man of the legions. No wonder that promotion to centurion has proved so elusive. You appear to lack the necessary political skills.’

Macro looked stonily at the aide. ‘To Hades with your politics. I’m a soldier, not a fucking senator.’

‘Eloquently put. As ever.’ Murena paced round the desk and considered his feet, a deep frown creasing his face. ‘Tell me, how did our esteemed champion, the pride of Rome, perform at the Circus Maximus yesterday morning?’

‘You mean Hermes?’ Macro clenched his jaw. He preferred the economical language of the legions to the flowery prose employed by the imperial aide. ‘He beat Criton to a pulp and then snapped his neck. Not that Criton tested him. I reckon your average Praetorian would have put up a better fight.’

‘I see,’ Murena responded quietly. ‘A pity. I had rather hoped Criton would provide a more thorough examination of Hermes’s abilities.’ The aide paused for a moment, his lips pressed tight as he continued to stare at his feet. Murena had changed, thought Pavo. Perhaps it was the stress of organising the games for the Emperor that had taken its toll. The aide seemed frail and visibly drained. His hair was unkempt and the arrogant glint in his eyes had dimmed.

‘What the hell is this about?’ Macro demanded. ‘If you’re hoping to rope us into another of your schemes, forget it.’

Murena feigned innocence. ‘Calm down, Optio. I have come here with the blessing of the imperial secretary — to offer our assistance in your endeavour.’

Macro frowned. ‘Eh? Get to the point. We’ve got a fight to train for.’

Murena stared at him for a moment. ‘I’m glad you mentioned the fight. That is precisely the purpose of this meeting. It concerns our mutual foe.’

Macro’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’

Murena smiled wanly. ‘I’m here as a friend … to help you beat Hermes.’