Gladiator Read online

  ‘Cerberus, no!’

  But it was too late – the dog shook himself, spraying the entrance corridor with drops of water, just as Marcus’s mother emerged from her room to see who had entered the house.

  ‘What on earth!’ She held up her hands to shield her face from the spray of droplets.

  Cerberus finished shaking and looked round at his master with his tongue lolling out.

  Livia lowered her hands and glared down at her son as she hissed, ‘What is that wet dog doing in my house?’

  Another figure emerged from the far end of the corridor, and Titus laughed as he took in the scene. ‘No shelter from the rain indoors or out, it would seem!’

  His wife turned her glare towards him. ‘I’m glad you think it’s funny.’

  ‘Well, yes, it is.’ Titus scratched his head. ‘Very funny, actually.’

  He winked at his son and both of them laughed. Livia scowled. ‘Men and boys, I don’t know which are worse. If I had my way –’

  She was interrupted by a panicked cry from the gateway. The laughter died in Marcus’s and his father’s throats.

  ‘Master!’ Aristides shrieked.

  Livia clutched her hand to her face.

  Titus ran down the corridor into the courtyard and Marcus followed him. Over by the gate, the goatherd was slumped against the archway. An arrow protruded from his chest. Blood spread down his tunic. He leaned his head back and groaned as the rain splashed down on his face and straggly beard. As Marcus and Titus reached him and knelt at his side, his eyes flickered open. He raised a hand and grasped Titus’s sleeve.

  ‘Master, they’ve come back!’

  He coughed, and frothy blood hung from his lips. He groaned again as he dropped Titus’s sleeve and shuddered. Looking up, through the gate, Marcus stared along the track, now running with tiny rivulets. He saw movement under the olive trees. With a blinding flash of white, another bolt of lightning lit up the sky and there, frozen like statues, he saw several men armed with spears and swords – one had a bow, which he was holding up, ready to loose an arrow towards the house. Marcus saw the arrow fly, even as the lightning vanished, and just before the thunder crashed out he heard a thud. He looked down and Aristides stared back, wide-eyed. The arrow had struck him in the neck. The bloodied arrowhead had burst out the far side, a hand’s breadth from the skin. The goatherd opened his mouth, but there were no words, just a gush of blood before he slumped to one side.

  Titus reacted instantly. ‘Get my sword!’

  Marcus ran back towards the hall, where the weapon hung from a peg. He glanced over his shoulder to see his father heaving the solid wooden gate round on its hinges to close it. Through the narrowing gap Marcus could dimly see the men bursting from the cover of the olive trees and sprinting across the narrow strip of open ground towards the gateway. He turned away and ran into the hall, slipping on the flagstones. His mother grabbed his arm.

  ‘What’s happening?’ She saw the goatherd lying on the ground. ‘Aristides?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Marcus replied flatly, then pulled free as he reached up and grabbed his father’s sword by the hilt, wrenching it free of the scabbard.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Livia asked in alarm.

  Marcus did not reply, but clapped a hand to his thigh as he glanced at Cerberus. ‘Come!’

  The two of them rushed out of the hall into the rain. On the other side of the courtyard Marcus could see that his father had almost managed to shut the gate. But by the time Marcus reached him, the first of the attackers was squeezing through the gap.

  ‘Father! Your sword!’ Marcus held it out, hilt first.

  Titus snatched it, threw his left shoulder into the gate and thrust his blade around the edge. There was a howl of pain and the pressure on the gate eased momentarily, allowing Titus to push it back several more inches. Marcus braced his feet and added his weight against the door.

  ‘Marcus! Get out of here,’ his father growled through gritted teeth. ‘Run. Take your mother and run. Don’t stop for anything.’

  ‘NO!’ Marcus shook his head, his heart torn. ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  ‘By the Gods! Do as I say!’ Titus’s angry expression crumpled into fear and anxiety. ‘I beg you. Run. Save yourselves.’

  Marcus shook his head again, his feet scrambling on the wet ground as he tried to help his father. On the other side, the attackers were steadily forcing their way in. Cerberus stood behind his master, barking wildly. Inch by inch, Marcus and his father were being forced back. Titus tried the same trick as before, stabbing round the corner of the gate, but this time they were ready and his blade was parried away with a sharp ring of metal on metal. He hurriedly drew his arm back and looked down at Marcus.

  ‘We can’t stop them. We have to fall back. Grab Aristides’ staff, then be ready to fight when I step away from the gate.’

  ‘Yes, father.’ Marcus felt his heart beating wildly. Despite the rain coursing down his face, his mouth felt dry. Was this how soldiers felt in battle? he wondered briefly. Then he ducked down, scurried around his father and snatched up the staff lying beside the body of Aristides. His eyes met those of the nearest of the men outside. The man’s lips parted in a sneer and he reached a hand towards Marcus.

  ‘Cerberus! Take him!’

  The dog responded to the command at once, pouncing through the gap and jumping up to seize the man’s hand in his powerful jaws. He bit down hard and bone and flesh were crushed between his teeth. The man screamed and tried to snatch his hand back but he could not break free. Marcus called out again.

  ‘Cerberus! Leave!’

  The dog released its grip and backed away, snarling. With a last fruitless thrust of the gate, Titus paced backwards to his son’s side and went into a crouch, sword held ready. ‘Hold the staff like a spear,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Strike at their faces.’

  Marcus nodded and tightened his grip as the gate, with no resistance from the inside, suddenly flew open. Two of the men fell sprawling into the courtyard. Titus leapt forward, striking one with a vicious cut to his shoulder. The bone cracked as the blade bit in. Then he yanked it free and slashed to the side, slicing into the face of the other man. He toppled to his side, hands clutched to his head as he howled in agony. More men spilled through the gap, and one of them thrust his sword at Titus. The veteran just managed to parry it in time, but was caught off-balance and had to fall back a pace.

  Marcus stepped up and thrust the staff into the face of the man who had tried to strike a blow. He felt the impact jar his arms, right up to the shoulder. The man’s head snapped back and he fell to the ground, unconscious, his nose crushed by the end of the staff.

  ‘Good work!’ Titus yelled, his lips drawn back in a frightening grin.

  For a moment the other attackers hesitated, but then Thermon’s voice sounded from the back. ‘What are you cowards waiting for? Get them!’

  As they rushed forward, Marcus yelled. ‘Cerberus! Take ’em!’

  There was a blur of drenched fur as the dog jumped in, snapping at legs and hands. But there were too many of them. They came forward in a mass. Titus managed to strike once more, thrusting deep into a man’s belly, before he took a spear point in his shoulder. He stumbled back, then another man hacked at his sword arm and the blade cut through, shattering the bone. The sword dropped from his fingers. Another blow caught him in the knee and with a grunt he slumped down.

  ‘Father!’ Marcus glanced round, lowering the staff a little. He stared at his father in terrible anguish.

  ‘Keep your weapon up!’ Titus bellowed. ‘Face front!’

  His booming voice caused the attackers to pause, and they stood back, in an arc around him, weapons poised. Marcus was at his father’s side, staff raised once again, daring them to take him on. Cerberus had sunk his teeth into another man and was savaging his arm until the man, who was wielding a long club, swung it down and smashed it on to the dog’s head. Cerberus dropped to the ground and lay on his side, his head in
a puddle, as the rain splashed around his muzzle.

  ‘Cerberus!’ Marcus called out in horror – but the dog lay still. Marcus wanted to go to him, but just then Thermon pushed his way through his men and stood in front of Titus.

  He smiled cruelly as he patted the flat of his sword against the palm of his spare hand. ‘Well now, Centurion, it seems the situation is reversed. How does it feel to be beaten? To lose your final battle?’

  Titus looked up, blinking away the rain. ‘You can’t get away with this. Once the governor hears what you’ve done, he’ll have you crucified. You, your men here and Decimus.’

  Thermon shook his head. ‘Only if someone is left to tell the governor what happened.’

  Titus stared at him for a moment and then muttered, ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Really?’ Thermon pretended to look surprised. Suddenly he swept his sword arm out and thrust with all his strength. The tip of the blade punched into Titus’s chest, burst through his heart and crunched against the ribs in his back. Titus let out a gasp and then a deep sigh. Thermon braced his boot against Titus’s shoulder and yanked his blade free.

  ‘Father!’ Marcus looked down in disbelief as his father’s body slumped against his leg and then Titus toppled face first on to the ground. ‘Father!’ Marcus cried shrilly. ‘Don’t die! Don’t leave me! Please … Please don’t die.’

  At once someone snatched his staff away. Rough hands grabbed him by the arms and pinned them to his sides.

  There was a scream. Marcus turned and saw his mother, hands clasped either side of her head as if she was trying to shut out a bad sound. She screamed again. ‘Titus! Oh my Gods! Titus …’

  ‘Take her!’ Thermon ordered. ‘Put ’em all in chains. Then search the place for any valuables. Decimus wants anything that can be sold.’

  Marcus looked down at his father’s body, numbed by what he saw. But then, as one of Thermon’s men strode towards his mother, he felt something snap inside. He bit down on the arm of the man holding him. The man cried out and loosened his grip, and Marcus snarled as he clamped down with his jaws and lashed out with his feet.

  Thermon turned towards him. ‘Someone deal with that little brat.’

  The man with the club, the one who had struck down Cerberus, nodded and turned towards Marcus. Without a moment’s hesitation he raised the club and swung it at the boy’s head. Marcus never felt the blow. His world suddenly exploded into white and then there was nothing.

  5

  At first Marcus sensed a dull pounding pain in his skull. Then there was an uneven jolting and the regular shrill squeal of an axle. He became aware of light, and warmth on his face, and he slowly stirred, blinking his eyes open. The world was blurry and juddered about and he felt sick, so he closed them again.

  ‘Marcus.’

  A hand cupped his cheek gently.

  ‘Marcus, can you hear me?’

  He recognized the voice as his mother’s and there was anxiety in her tone. Marcus opened his mouth but his tongue and lips felt too dry to speak.

  ‘Just a moment,’ she said, and then something pressed lightly to his mouth and he tasted water. He took a few swallows before he turned his face aside and licked his lips.

  ‘Mother, I’m all right,’ he managed to croak.

  Marcus opened his eyes again and forced them to focus. He was staring up at a metal grille. Raising himself on his elbows, he looked around and saw that he was in a large cage on the back of a wagon drawn by a team of mules. A dirty leather covering was tied over the top of the cage, providing shade for the occupants. Besides him and his mother, there were four others, two of whom – tall, thin men – had skins as black as charred wood. The others were two teenage boys, perhaps five or six years older than Marcus.

  ‘Don’t try to stir so quickly,’ his mother cautioned. ‘You had quite a crack on the head.’

  Marcus raised a hand to feel for the place where his skull was hurting and winced as his fingertips discovered a large, solid lump. He struggled to remember what had happened to him. Then it all came flooding back, in a terrible rush of images. Aristides, Cerberus … and his father. He looked at his mother, eyes wide with pain.

  ‘Father.’

  She gathered him up in her arms and held him to her breast, stroking the back of his head.

  ‘Yes, Titus is gone. Murdered.’

  Marcus felt a dreadful pain course through his body, as if his heart had been torn out of him. He wanted his father as never before. Wanted him right here and now. Wanted to feel safe in his strong arms, to hear his hearty laugh once more. The pain was unbearable and he buried his face into the folds of his mother’s cloak and sobbed.

  ‘Hush, child,’ his mother said after a while. ‘There’s nothing you can do. He’s gone. His shade has joined his comrades in the underworld. Titus is at peace. He is watching us now. You must show him that you are strong. So dry your eyes.’ She paused a moment, then continued, ‘Make your father proud of you. You must honour his memory, even if you don’t yet know …’ She stopped and eased him gently back. Marcus’s eyes were sore from his crying, and his head felt worse than ever, pounding away inside his skull. She stared directly at him and he nodded.

  With great difficulty he controlled his grief and looked around the cage again. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘They’re taking us to Stratos.’

  Marcus frowned. He had never heard of the place. ‘Is that far from home?’

  She nodded.

  He looked out through the bars. The wagon was rumbling along a broad road. On one side hills rose up, covered in dense forests of pine and oak. On the other, olive groves stretched out. Through the gaps he occasionally caught sight of the sea sparkling in the distance. He did not recognize the landscape.

  ‘How long have we been in this … cage?’

  ‘Three days. You’ve been unconscious while we were taken by boat to the mainland and put on to this wagon.’

  Three days! Marcus was shocked at the thought. They must already be further from his home on the farm than he had ever been. He felt afraid.

  ‘Marcus, listen – we’re being taken to the slave market,’ his mother explained as gently as she could. ‘Decimus has ordered that we be sold as slaves to cover the debt. I think Decimus is trying to take us far away from Leucas so that there’s less chance anyone will discover precisely what he has done in order to get his money back.’

  Marcus listened to her words with difficulty. The thought of being sold into slavery had hit him like another blow. Of all the fates that could befall a person, slavery was one of the worst of them. A slave was no longer a person, but a mere object. He looked up at his mother. ‘They can’t sell us, we’re free. We’re citizens.’

  ‘Not if we can’t pay Decimus his money,’ she replied sadly. ‘In that respect alone he is acting within the law, but he knows if word got out that he had killed one of Pompeius’s veterans and enslaved his family, then life might become very difficult for him if Pompeius came to hear of it.’ She lifted his chin with her hand and stared directly into his eyes. ‘We must be careful, Marcus. Thermon said that he would have us beaten if we uttered one word about the situation to anyone. You understand?’

  Marcus nodded. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Do? Nothing for the moment.’ She turned her head away and her voice continued, broken and despairing, ‘The Gods have forsaken me. They must have. After all that has happened, to return me to slavery is a cruel blow. So cruel.’

  Marcus felt a chill in his heart. What could his mother mean? Return her to slavery? ‘You were a slave, mother?’

  She kept her face turned from him as she replied, ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I was a child, Marcus.’

  ‘No.’

  She nodded. ‘I was sold into a household in Campania when I was four years old, south of Rome. I was a slave for over sixteen years, until Spartacus and his rebels came to the estate and set us all free.’

  ‘Yo
u joined Spartacus?’ Marcus’s mind filled with memories of the stories his father had told him about the great slave revolt. And all the time, his mother had kept her silence. He cleared his throat. ‘Did father know?’

  She turned her face back to him with an expression of bitter amusement. ‘Of course Titus knew. He was there at the end. At the final battle. He found me in the slave camp when the legions sacked it after the battle. He claimed me as spoils of war.’ Her tone had turned bitter. She swallowed and continued more calmly. ‘That’s how we met, Marcus. I was his slave. His woman. For the first two years, until he gave me my freedom, on condition that I became his wife.’

  Marcus was silent as he reflected on what she had told him. It had never occurred to him that his parents could have met in such a way. They had always been there, constant and unchanging, and the idea that they might have led quite different lives before was something he had never really considered. True, his father had told him tales of his life in the legion, but in Marcus’s eyes the hero of such stories was not a young man, just a different man. Marcus had always imagined his father as he was now. He felt a stab of grief as he corrected himself – as his father had been when he was alive.

  Then something else struck him and he looked up at his mother again. ‘The slave revolt was ten years ago, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I’m ten. If you married father after two years, then that means I must have been born a slave.’

  She shook her head. ‘Titus had it declared that you were his son, and therefore free, the moment you were born.’

  ‘I see.’ Marcus was not certain how he felt. This was all painfully new to him, in addition to what had happened since the men arrived at the farm. His thoughts were interrupted by a bitter laugh from his mother. He looked at her in concern. There was a slightly mad look in her dark eyes.

  ‘Mother? Mother, what’s so funny?’

  ‘Funny? Nothing’s funny.’ Her lips quivered. ‘It’s just that I was born free, in Thrace, then enslaved when I was an infant. Then Spartacus freed me, then I was a slave again, until your father freed me. And now? A slave once again.’ She lowered her head and was still for a moment. Then Marcus saw a tear drip down on to her thigh. He shuffled round so that he could put a hand on her shoulder.