Arminius Read online

  For Leo and Jodi Fabbri, wishing you a long and happy life together. Welcome to the family, Jodi – and, of course, that bean, Carl!

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IIII

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter VIIII

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIIII

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  RAVENNA, AD 37

  ‘ TO FACE SYNATOS the retiarius, I give you the secutor, Licus of Germania!’

  The crowd’s roar of approval drowned out the games-master’s voice; but to Thumelicatz it was a muffled drone that just penetrated the bronze helmet encasing his head. He strode into the arena, raising his short sword to the ten-thousand-strong crowd as they chanted ‘Licus! Licus!’, the shortened form of his Latinised name: Thumelicus. Pumping his sword in the air in time to the chant and holding his semi-cylindrical rectangular shield, emblazoned with a boar’s head, before him, he acknowledged all parts of the oval, sandstone arena.

  Thumelicatz had learnt early on in his five years on the sand from his lanista, Orosius, his owner and trainer, to work the crowd, despite his feelings for them: a popular gladiator with the support of the mob had the edge in any fight and, if he was defeated, could expect their mercy. Orosius had a wealth of experience having been granted the wooden sword of freedom fifteen years previously, after fifty-three fights; today Thumelicatz would come to within one fight of that total, thanks mainly to his lanista’s teaching. Thumelicatz held his sword towards his mentor sitting in the crowd; Orosius, once an object of fear and loathing but now one of grudging respect, inclined his head in acknowledgement.

  Finally, shouting the prescribed words of a gladiator about to do mortal combat, Thumelicatz saluted the games’ sponsor, seated beneath the only canopy around the arena. With a gracious gesture of one hand, the sponsor, the newly installed prefect of the small, provincial town of Ravenna, indicated his readiness to see blood spilt; he adjusted his white toga bordered by a thin purple stripe, indicating his equestrian rank, and held his palms out to accept the accolade of the crowd.

  Sweat rolled down Thumelicatz’s face from under the felt cap beneath his helmet; he blinked and turned his head, searching through the two small eye-holes in the blank face-guard for his opponent, the helmetless, net and trident wielding retiarius, Synatos. Finding his foe he kept his eyes firmly fixed on him, knowing that the lighter and more agile fighter would try to use his speed to unsight him. Weighed down with helmet, shield and wide leather belt securing his loincloth, along with thick padded linen guards on his right arm and lower right leg as well as a greave of boiled leather on his left, the secutor was comparatively slow; Thumelicatz knew from long experience that it was crucial to finish this fight quickly before exhaustion claimed him.

  He touched the hammer amulet hanging around his neck. ‘Donar, hone my blade, guide my hand and give me strength, Great Thunderer.’

  The rudis, the wooden staff held by the referee, the summa rudis, flashed down between the two fighters; the crowd quietened. Thumelicatz’s sharp breaths, amplified in his helmet, came fast as he tried to extract as much oxygen as possible from the stifling atmosphere that surrounded him. He stamped his left leg forward, pulling his sword arm back overarm so that the blade was angled down, level with his eyes, and presented his shield, staring over its rim at Synatos. The retiarius stared back, eyes squinting against the loose dust that matted his black curls; he crouched, leading with the left of his sculpted, oiled body, flicking his weighted net in front of him with his right hand, and probing with his trident in the left, protruding from the thick linen that protected that arm – a chainmail shoulder-guard above it completed his meagre protection.

  The rudis remained between them; Thumelicatz held Synatos’ gaze, trying to guess his first move; they had fought together many times in the ludus, the training school, and knew each other’s styles well; they had also met once before in the arena. On that occasion, five months before, Thumelicatz had won after a hard fight, eventually disarming Synatos and giving him the puckered scar that ran down his right forearm; the crowd had shown their appreciation by granting the loser his life. Thumelicatz had been relieved. Despite a retiarius being looked down upon by all sword-wielding gladiators as not being a gladiator at all in the strictest sense of the word, Synatos was as close a friend as Thumelicatz would allow himself in the enclosed ludus where men were trained to take life indiscriminately.

  He'll jump to his left and thrust his trident at my unprotected right thigh, Thumelicatz thought as he noticed a slight movement of the eyes to that part of his anatomy. Then he’ll flick his net at my hand as I block the blow, trying to dislodge my sword.

  With a barked command to fight, the summa rudis raised his staff; the crowd roared in anticipation of blood. Synatos leapt to his left and, with a lightning jab, powered his trident at Thumelicatz’s right thigh. Already expecting the blow, Thumelicatz thrust his sword down, at an angle, between two of the barbed points of the trident; with a spray of sparks and a metallic rasp, the trident grated up his blade, coming to a clanging halt on the oval guard. Punching his shield out, he deflected the net aiming to ensnare his right hand. Pushing forward, Thumelicatz tried to close with his adversary, the retiarius having nothing but a pugio, a short dagger, for closequarters work. Synatos saw the danger and jumped back leaving his net, like a circular shadow, on the ground in front of him to trip Thumelicatz should he try to follow up.

  A trident jab to the throat forced Thumelicatz’s shield up and he stepped back as the three evilly sharp barbed points skewered into the leather-covered wood, cracking the rim back to crash into his face-guard; his ears rang as the clang resounded around the helmet. He yanked his shield away, hoping that the trident was firmly embedded and that he could haul it from Synatos’ grasp; it came free as the net landed over his head. Thumelicatz felt the draw-cord around the net’s perimeter instantly begin to tighten, threatening to entrap him. The secutors’ helmets, being completely smooth with no extraneous rims, fins or guards, were designed to avoid being caught in the retiarii’s nets. Thumelicatz pulled his head back, slipping it from under the net, and raised his sword so that the blade seared through the twine. Backwards he jumped, blocking repeated trident thrusts, rending the net in two until he severed the draw-cord, rendering the weapon next to useless.

  Again the trident slammed into his shield as Synatos attempted to cover his discarding the net and grabbing the long shaft with two hands. With the extra strength of a double grip the trident became a fearsome attacking weapon; to the crowd’s raucous approval, Synatos thrust it down again and again towards Thumelicatz’s unprotected bare feet forcing him into a dance of necessity and to bring his shield ever lower, hacking with his sword at the metal head and thick shaft as he waited for the inevitable.

  When it came he was ready.

  The triple spikes abruptly raised and flashed over his lowered shield towards the base of his throat; he ducked and heard the trident scrape over the crown of his helm as he pushed forward, punching his shield before him into the chest of his opponent. With an explosive exhalation, the wind was knocked from Synatos’ lungs; he staggered but brought the shaft of his weapon cracking down onto Thumelicatz’s shoulders as he, in turn, thrust his sword towards the retiarius’s heart, jolting his aim so that the point punched harmlessly into Synatos’ shoulder-guard. Both gladiators crashed to
the ground, sand immediately sticking to their sweat-lathered bodies. The clamour of the crowd rose even further as they contemplated a to-the-death scramble to savour between two men who quite evidently had each other’s demise in the forefronts of their minds.

  With a bone-jarring crack, Synatos pulled the shaft of his trident, two-handed, down again across Thumelicatz’s shoulder blades; grunting in pain, he slammed his sword-weighted fist into the side of the retiarius’s unprotected head whilst pressing down with his shield on his already empty chest, denying him breath. He felt Synatos begin to change his grip on the trident behind him, bringing the points round to plunge into his spine; he exploded up onto his knees astride his prone opponent, knocking the weapon from his weakened grasp. A searing white light of agony flashed before Thumelicatz’s eyes as Synatos brought his shin crunching up between his legs; disobeying every urge of his body to double over to protect that precious part of his anatomy, he flung himself backwards as the pain seared up through his lower abdomen like the repeated manic stabbing of a stiletto blade. His chest heaved and vomit squirted from his mouth over the inside of his face-guard.

  Grabbing his pugio from its sheath, Synatos pushed himself up, jumped to his feet and threw himself at Thumelicatz. Still hyperventilating with pain, Thumelicatz just had the presence of mind to punch his shield up, deflecting first the blade and then the body wielding it; he rolled away to his left and struggled to his knees as Synatos hit the sand and, with the agility of a lizard, flicked himself back round to face his opponent. Using his sword as a stick, Thumelicatz forced himself to his feet; he was too weak to prevent Synatos scrambling to regain his trident. Now, with his principal weapon in his right hand and the dagger in his left, the retiarius squared up to Thumelicatz. The crowd’s roar was deafening, penetrating even into Thumelicatz’s bronze-encased ears, as they cheered the prospect of renewed hostilities with both gladiators back on even terms; and then the chant of ‘Licus! Licus!’ broke out above the wave of sound.

  Still in pain and more weighed down by his equipment than his opponent, Thumelicatz knew that he had to finish it soon before he tired beyond the point of effective attack. He let his shield sag, sword arm drop and knees buckle slightly as if he had already reached that stage of exhaustion; with a snarl of triumph the retiarius lunged forward, thrusting his trident at chest height. With a fleet, violent motion, Thumelicatz smashed his shield across the path of the weapon knocking it aside and hacked his sword up at the dagger following it, sending it, with a resounding metallic ring, flying skywards as he continued his right arm’s trajectory and slammed his fist, still gripping his sword, into Synatos’ face, flattening his nose with a wet crunch of cartilage. The retiarius arced back, blood tracing his path through the air, trident flying from his loosened grip, to land with a lungemptying jolt on the arena floor. Thumelicatz stood over his victim, who looked up at him and immediately raised his right index finger in submission; the summa rudis brought his staff across Thumelicatz’s chest bringing the fight to a close. He breathed deeply of vomit-reeking air, in ragged bursts; sweat stung his eyes as he looked down at the man, who was almost a friend, lying defeated at his feet.

  It was now up to the sponsor of the games to judge the mood of the crowd and decide upon Synatos’ fate.

  The chorus of ‘Licus! Licus!’ continued as he raised his sword to the sponsor in a gesture that all present understood to mean: life or death? The prefect got slowly to his feet, his right hand balled into a fist across his chest; he looked around the amphitheatre.

  The tone of the mob changed; slowly at first but inexorably, the chant became: ‘Death! Death!’ Their memory was long and they were not prepared to spare a man defeated by the same opponent twice.

  Synatos’ face registered the call for his cold-blooded despatch and he turned his head slowly to the sponsor; their eyes met. Holding the gaze for a few moments as the crowd hushed, the prefect of Ravenna thrust his right arm forward, fist still clenched with the thumb held tight against it, in imitation of an undrawn sword. Pausing for dramatic effect as silence fell around the oval he inhaled deeply, savouring the power of life and death; abruptly his thumb flicked out, horizontally, from the fist in imitation of a drawn sword: the sign of death.

  Synatos gave a faint smile of resignation to Thumelicatz and got to one knee.

  The crowd howled their delight, many visibly excited beneath their tunics, toying with themselves – some frantically, some with unhurried relish – as they contemplated another life extinguished for their pleasure.

  Thumelicatz held his sword aloft and slowly turned on the spot; the disgust he felt played freely on his face obscured by his helmet as his eyes took in every member of the crowd: bakers, clerks, petty magistrates, professional sycophants, shopkeepers, whore-boys, merchants and more, all equally as unmartial as the women they ploughed. The useless fat of empire – whose only justification for existence was the physical fact of their birth – baying for the life of a man who could end most of their miserable existences in less than ten heartbeats. Was this what the Romans had forged their empire for, so that the timid and the flabby could live their martial fantasies vicariously, spilling their seed as the blood of better men was spilt upon the sand?

  Thumelicatz approached Synatos and stood before him.

  The condemned retiarius took a firm grip of his right thigh and raised his head, staring straight into his executioner’s eyes. ‘Make it clean, my friend.’

  ‘Do you not want a weapon in your hand?’

  ‘No, I travel a different path to yours; mine leads to the Ferryman not Walhalla.’

  Thumelicatz inclined his head, took his sword and placed it vertically between the base of Synatos’ neck and collar-bone, just next to his shoulder-guard; his left hand clasped the top of the hilt over his right.

  The noise of the crowd had reached almost impossible heights.

  Synatos swallowed, looked briefly at the sun burning in a blue, cloudless sky and then nodded.

  Using all the power in his shoulders, Thumelicatz drove the blade down through skin, flesh and lung until the point punched through the muscled wall of the organ now pumping at thrice its normal rate. Synatos’ eyes rounded with pain, his chest heaved, exhaling a deep grunt that was violently curtailed by blood exploding into his gorge. Thumelicatz felt the dying man’s grip on his thigh tighten, his fingernails breaking the skin; he took no notice, it always happened. With a twist of his wrists left then right he shredded the heart and then, gripping Synatos’ right shoulder with his left hand, yanked the blade free with the liquid slurp of lessening suction.

  Synatos remained upright for a few moments, blood seeping from his open mouth and nostrils, trailing in long strings down from his chin, eyes sightless, expression rigid: dead. The crowd let out a satiated moan, bestial in its rawness; the corpse collapsed back onto the sand.

  Thumelicatz raised his sword in the air, saluting the objects of his contempt, wishing for death to visit every life deemed to be inadequate; which was most of them. Without a glance down to his victim he turned towards the gates; they began to open. Eight auxiliary archers filed in, four left and four right, arrows nocked but bows undrawn.

  Thumelicatz stopped and threw down his sword.

  Two silhouetted figures, one draped in a toga, followed the archers in.

  Thumelicatz recognised the bulked-muscled outline of his lanista, Orosius; a quick glance up to where the sponsor of the games had been sitting confirmed the identity of the second. The prefect of Ravenna raised his arms as he strode out to the centre of the arena; Orosius remained in the gateway, watching.

  The crowd cheered their prefect with the reserve of people lauding a man more known for his power than his popularity; if the prefect realised that, he gave no sign of it on his face. He approached Thumelicatz and gestured for quiet; the crowd was happy to oblige.

  Although it shocked him, Thumelicatz could guess what was about to happen but could feel no excitement, no pride, no relief aft
er five years of having to fight for his life on a regular basis. He had one thought and that was of his homeland, the land that he had never seen; the land he never thought he would see. It was a land he knew only from the tales his mother, betrayed to Rome whilst she had been pregnant with him, had told him in the brief years that he had lived with her before he had been taken away, at the age of eight, to train for a life in the arena, where, because of whose son he was, he had expected to die.

  The prefect had begun to address the crowd but Thumelicatz could only hear his words, not concentrate on them. The mental image of the father he had never met burnt in his mind as he contemplated returning to the land that his father had liberated from Rome six years before Thumelicatz’s birth: the land of Germania Magna. Over four days his father, Erminatz, known to the Romans by his Latinised name, Arminius, had destroyed Publius Quinctilius Varus’ army of three legions and their auxiliaries in a series of running battles in the Teutoburg Wald; his mother had told him great stories of the massacre. Three Eagles had been captured and Rome had retreated across the Rhenus. Thumelicatz would go back to a land of free men; a land where a man’s worth was judged by his prowess and where smallhearted men were of no account, no matter how much silver they held.

  He felt a hand pulling at his elbow and his thoughts were jerked back to the present; he heard the prefect speak in a tone as if he were repeating himself. ‘Remove your helmet, Licus of Germania.’

  Thumelicatz slid his thumbs under the rim and pushed up; the bronze helmet slipped off and the air became easier to breathe. With pale blue eyes, squinting in deep sockets beneath thick, black eyebrows, he looked down at the prefect who winced. Thumelicatz wiped the back of his hand over his clean-shaven face, removing as much of the half-congealed vomit sticking to it as possible before pressing a finger to his long, sleek nose and clearing each nostril of acidic fluid.

  The prefect looked at him in distaste. Thumelicatz wondered if he would go back on what he had planned but then realised that the prefect would lose face should he decide not to grant freedom to a gladiator just because he found his appearance after combat unsavoury; he hawked and spat a mixture of blood and phlegm on the sand.