Avenger of Rome

IV

Beware of the puppy. Tiberius Crescens might have the face of a benign cherub and the bumbling awkwardness of a fledgling philosopher, but when he stripped to his loincloth Valerius immediately recognized what Serpentius had known by sheer instinct. He was facing a warrior. The young tribune had the stocky, muscular physique of a professional athlete and short, solid legs, but he balanced on his feet like a dancer. The boyish features were like the velvet glove that covered a boxer’s brass knuckles: the disguise that made you underestimate the danger beneath. There was something else, too, a fierce concentration in the eyes and a tension in the body that reminded Valerius of a bear trap ready to snap shut. The last time he’d seen the combination was at the gladiator school in Rome where he’d found the Spaniard. All that was missing was hate.

Tiberius picked up a shield and moved into position, the wooden gladius steady in his right hand. At first Valerius wondered why the boy had revealed his true self. Why not maintain the disguise and take his opponent by surprise? A hint of a smile flickered on the younger man’s face and gave Valerius his answer. It wasn’t, as he’d half suspected, arrogance or conceit: quite the opposite. Tiberius wanted him to know, because, above all, Tiberius wanted his respect. A fair contest between the unblooded boy and the seasoned Hero of Rome. No subterfuge. No tricks. Just warrior against warrior. Valerius felt a rush of energy as he realized he could be in the fight of his life.

Battle madness they called it, but there were different kinds of battle madness. He had seen British warriors drunk on blood charge into a wall of shields and try to tear out Roman throats with their teeth. He had felt it himself, in the final moments in the Temple of Claudius when the great double doors had smashed open in an explosion of fire and smoke. And there was the mechanical madness of the fighting machine that was the Roman legion, as it killed and killed again until there was nothing left to kill on the slope where Boudicca had fought her last battle. This was the white heat of war, when a man lost his mind and rose above the field of blood on a red-eyed wave of Elysian rapture.

Then there was the kind of madness Valerius needed now. The cold, detached madness of the true killer. A man had to seek this madness within. It took a different kind of courage to allow some inner power to rule heart and mind and body. To let speed and power and instinct be dictated by a force beyond understanding or design. Valerius never took his eyes off his opponent’s and he saw the moment Tiberius found what he sought. He allowed his mind to clear and his body to empty of emotion. It was like being inside a flawless diamond. The coldness started at the centre before expanding to fill him from head to toe.

‘Fight.’

To the watchers, the early movements were less a battle than a courtship. A gentle collision of sword and shield. A ritual coming and going of bare feet on boards now hot from the morning sun. A seeking without finding. Probe and counter probe. Stroke and counter stroke.

In the cold core of his mind Valerius understood that Tiberius had watched and analysed every action of the earlier bouts, and from that briefest of scrutinies had formed a greater understanding of a left-handed fighter’s strengths and weaknesses than any other man he had faced. But Valerius was a left-handed fighter and he knew what Tiberius had only seen. Each attack came from the angle he expected. When the young tribune’s deft feet carried him to an impossible position of strength, Valerius was there to meet the blow before it began to fall. A moment of comedy, with each man so attuned to the other’s movement that they appeared to be dancing.

Slowly, the tempo increased as they found each other’s measure. Sword against sword, shield against shield. Feinting right and left, up and down, always seeking that elusive opening. The cavalrymen gasped at the speed of the attacks and even Serpentius’s face wore a puzzled frown. By now the sweat was coursing over Valerius’s eyes, but his unconscious mind saw beyond it. Tiberius was like a wraith in the distance. Where the spectators saw a halo of blurred movement, Valerius experienced everything as if the two men were fighting under water. It was as though he could read his opponent’s every thought and intention, prepare for each attack and have the time to choose the exact manoeuvre that would nullify it. He wasn’t aware of effort or tiredness or pain. He was what he was. Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome.

A blade’s length away, Tiberius barely noted his opponent’s existence. He recognized the sweat-slick, muscled figure with the sword-scarred face only as a machine that countered his every move. Make one attack and three came back in reply. Find an opening and the body that had invited the sword was gone before the point could reach it. At times it was as if he was fighting two men. By now he understood they were equal in strength and speed and stamina. Their ability with the weapons matched as if they had emerged from the same womb. Still he knew that he would win, because this was what he had been born for.

The rattle of oak upon oak was a never-ending roll of thunder. The speed, which for ordinary men would have been impossible to maintain for a few minutes, had been kept up for more than fifteen. And still the swords flew and the noise grew to a climax. It could not last. Surely one of them had to give? No man was capable of sustaining such a tempo.

A snapping crash. A fracture in the rhythm. A scream of victory.

‘No!’

Valerius felt an iron grip on his sword arm. His eyes focused on Serpentius standing beside him. Tiberius lay on his back with the splintered remains of his sword in his hand and the point of Valerius’s wooden gladius an inch from his right eye. He was still smiling.

‘I think we’ve given the ladies enough entertainment for today.’ Serpentius nodded over Valerius’s left shoulder and he turned his head to look towards the curtained pavilion ten feet away. The scene resembled a marble tableau he had once seen in Nero’s private quarters in the Domus Transitoria: three young women in almost identical poses, but wearing different expressions. Domitia Longina’s two slave girls had their hands to their mouths, one in horror and the other in delight. The general’s daughter stood slightly behind them, tall, imperious and obviously fully recovered from her seasickness, wearing a red dress and a look of puzzled amusement. It was the first time Valerius had seen her face properly and something lurched inside him as he realized whom she resembled. Before the older woman emerged from the tent to shoo her charges inside he felt an almost physical pain as he remembered another momentous meeting, in the courtyard of the Temple of Claudius. A meeting that had changed his life and almost cost him it.

‘I hope I didn’t tire you, sir?’ Tiberius stood at his shoulder, his eyes on the group disappearing behind the curtains.

‘No. A pity it ended so quickly — I was just getting into my rhythm.’

Tiberius grinned at the lie. ‘Do you have any suggestions for an honest journeyman?’

Now it was Valerius’s turn to smile. It took him a few moments to remember the words of Marcus, the arena veteran who trained the gladiators, on the day he had met Serpentius. ‘An old gladiator once told me: don’t fight like a one-handed man, or a two-handed man. Fight like a killer.’ The younger man nodded solemnly. ‘But I think you already know that, Tiberius.’

The tribune’s grin deepened and he turned to walk away.

‘And Tiberius?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Never underestimate your opponent.’