The Gates of Rome

CHAPTER SIX

‘As officers, you will ride to the battle, but fighting from horseback is not our chief strength. Although we use cavalry for quick, smashing attacks, it is the footmen of the twenty-eight legions that break the enemy. Every man of the one hundred and fifty thousand legionaries we have in the field at any given moment of any day can walk thirty miles in full armour, carrying a pack that is a third his own weight. He can then fight the enemy, without weakness and without complaint.’

Renius eyed the two boys who stood in the heat of the noon sun, returned from a run and trying to control their breathing. More than three years he had given them, the last he would ever teach. There was so much more for them to learn! He paced around them as he spoke, snapping the words out.

‘It is not the luck of the gods that has given the countries of the world into the palms of Rome. It is not the weakness of the foreign tribes that leads them to throw themselves onto our swords in battle. It is our strength, greater and deeper than anything they can bring to the field. That is our first tactic. Before our men even reach the battle, they will be unbreakable in their strength and their morale. More, they will have a discipline that the armies of the world can blood themselves against without effect.

‘Each man will know that his brothers at his side will have to be killed to leave him. That makes him stronger than the most heroic charge, or the vain screams of savage tribes. We walk to battle. We stand and they die.’

Gaius’ breathing slowed and his lungs ceased to clamour for oxygen. In the three years since Renius had first arrived at his father’s villa, he had grown in height and strength. Approaching fourteen years of age, he was showing signs of the man he would one day be.

Burned the colour of light oak by the Roman sun, he stood easily, his frame slim and athletic, with powerful shoulders and legs. He could run for hours round the hills and still find reserves for a burst of speed as his father’s estate came into view again.

Marcus too had undergone changes, both physically and in his spirit. The innocent happiness of the boy he had been came and went in flashes now. Renius had taught him to guard his emotions and his responses. He had been taught this with the whip and without kindness of any kind for three long years. He too had well-developed shoulders, tapering down into lightning-fast fists that Gaius could not match any more. Inside him, the desire to stand on his own, without help from his line or the patronage of others, was like a slow acid in his stomach.

As Renius watched, both boys became calm and stood to attention, watching him warily. It was not unknown for him to suddenly strike at an exposed stomach, testing, always testing for weakness.

‘Gladii, gentlemen – fetch your swords.’

Silently, they turned away and collected the short swords from pegs on the training yard wall. Heavy leather belts were buckled around their waists, with a leather ‘frog’ attached, a holder for the sword. The scabbard slid snugly into the frog, tightly held by lacing so that it would remain immobile if the blade was suddenly drawn.

Properly attired, they returned to the attention position, waiting for the next order.

‘Gaius, you observe. I will use the boy to make a simple point.’ Renius loosened his shoulders with a crack and grinned as Marcus slowly drew the gladius.

‘First position, boy. Stand like a soldier, if you can remember how.’

Marcus relaxed into the first position, legs shoulder-width apart, body slightly turned from full frontal, sword held at waist height, ready to strike for the groin, stomach or throat, the three main areas of attack. Groin and neck were favourites as a deep cut there would mean the opponent bled to death in seconds.

Renius shifted his weight and Marcus’ point wavered to follow the movement.

‘Slashing the air again? If you do that, I’ll see it and pattern you. I only need one opening to cut your throat out, one blow. Let me guess which way you’re going to shift your weight and I’ll cut you in two.’ He began to circle Marcus, who remained relaxed, his eyebrows raised over a face blank of expression. Renius continued to talk.

‘You want to kill me, don’t you, boy? I can feel your hatred. I can feel it like good wine in my stomach. It cheers me up, boy, can you believe that?’

Marcus attacked in a sudden move, without warning, without signal. It had taken hundreds of hours of drill for him to eliminate all his ‘tells’, his telegraphing tensions of muscle that gave away his intentions. No matter how fast he was, a good opponent would gut him if he signalled his thoughts before each move.

Renius was not there when the stabbing lunge ended. His gladius pressed up against Marcus’ throat.

‘Again. You were slow and clumsy as usual. If you weren’t faster than Gaius, you’d be the worst I’d ever seen.’

Marcus gaped and, in a split second, the sun-warmed gladius was pressed against his inner thigh, by the big pulsing vein that carried his life.

Renius shook his head in disgust.

‘Never listen to your opponent. Gaius is observing, you are fighting. You concentrate on how I am moving, not the words I speak, which are simply to distract you. Again.’

They circled in the shadows of the yard.

‘Your mother was clumsy in bed at first.’ Renius’ sword snaked out as he spoke and was snapped aside with a bell ring of metal. Marcus stepped in and pressed his blade against the leathery old skin of Renius’ throat. His expression was cold and unforgiving.

‘Predictable,’ Marcus muttered, glaring into the cold blue eyes, nettled nonetheless.

He felt a pressure and looked down to see a dagger held in Renius’ left hand, touching him lightly on the stomach. Renius grinned.

‘Many men will hate you enough to take you with them. They are the most dangerous of all. They can run right onto your sword and blind you with their thumbs. I’ve seen that done by a woman to one of my men.’

‘Why did she hate him so much?’ Marcus asked as he took a pace away, sword still ready to defend.

‘The victors will always be hated. It is the price we pay. If they love you, they will do what you want, but when they want to do it. If they fear you, they will do your will, but when you want them to. So, is it better to be loved or feared?’

‘Both,’ Gaius said, seriously.

Renius smiled. ‘You mean adored and respected, which is the impossible trick if you are occupying lands that are only yours by right of strength and blood. Life is never a simple problem from question to answer. There are always many answers.’

The two boys looked baffled and Renius snorted in irritation.

‘I will show you what discipline means. I will show you what you have already learned. Put your swords away and stand back to attention.’

The old gladiator looked the pair over with a critical eye. Without warning, the noon bell sounded and he frowned, his manner changing in an instant. His voice lost the snap of the tutor and, for once, was low and quiet.

‘There are food riots in the city, did you know that? Great gangs that destroy property and stream away like rats when someone is brave enough to draw a sword on them. I should be there, not playing games with children. I have taught you for two years longer than my original agreement. You are not ready, but I will not waste any more of my evening years on you. Today is your last lesson.’ He stepped over to Gaius, who stared resolutely ahead.

‘Your father should have met me here and heard my report. The fact that he is late for the first time in three years tells me what?’

Gaius cleared his dry throat. ‘The riots in Rome are worse than you believed.’

‘Yes. Your father will not be here to see this last lesson. A pity. If he is dead and I kill you, who will inherit the estate?’

Gaius blinked in confusion. The man’s words seemed to jar with his reasonable tone. It was as if he were ordering a new tunic.

‘My uncle Marius, although he is with the Primigenia legion – the First-Born. He will not be expecting –’

‘A good standard, the Primigenia, did well in Egypt. My bill will be sent to him. Now I will indulge you as the current master of the estate, in your father’s absence. When you are ready, you will face me for real, not a practice, not to first blood, but an attack such as you might face if you were walking the streets of Rome today, among the rioters.

‘I will fight fairly, and if you kill me you may consider yourself to have graduated from my tutelage.’

‘Why kill us after all the time you have –’ Marcus spluttered, breaking discipline to speak without permission.

‘You have to face death at some point. I cannot continue to train you and there is a last lesson to be learned about fear and anger.’

For a moment, Renius looked unsure of himself, but then his head straightened and the ‘snapping turtle’, as the slaves called him, was back, his intensity and energy overpowering.

‘You are my last pupils. My reputation as I go into retirement hangs on your sorry necks. I will not let you go improperly trained, so that my name is blackened by your deeds. My name is something I have spent my life protecting. It is too late to consider losing it now.’

‘We would not embarrass you,’ Marcus muttered, almost to himself.

Renius rounded on him. ‘Your every stroke embarrasses me. You hack like a butcher attacking a bull carcass in a rage. You cannot control your temper. You fall for the simplest trap as the blood drains from your head! And YOU!’ He turned to Gaius, who had begun to grin. ‘You cannot keep your thoughts from your groin long enough to make a Roman of you. Nobilitas? My blood runs cold at the thought of boys like you carrying on my heritage, my city, my people.’

Gaius dropped the grin at the reference to the slave girl that Renius had whipped in front of them for distracting the boys. It still shamed him and a slow anger began to grow as the tirade continued.

‘Gaius, you may choose which of you will duel first. Your first tactical decision!’ Renius turned and strode away onto the fighting square laid out in mosaic on the training ground. He stretched his leg muscles behind them, seemingly oblivious to their dumbstruck gazes.

‘He has gone mad,’ Marcus whispered. ‘He’ll kill us both.’

‘He is still playing games,’ Gaius said grimly. ‘Like with the river. I’m going to take him. I think I can do it. I’m certainly not going to refuse the challenge. If this is how I show him that he has taught me well, then so be it. I will thank him in his own blood.’

Marcus looked at his friend and saw his resolution. He knew that, as much as he didn’t want either of them to fight Renius, it was he who had the better chance. Neither could win outright, but only Marcus had the speed to take the old man with him into the void.

‘Gaius,’ he murmured. ‘Let me go first.’

Gaius looked him in the eye, as if to gauge his thoughts.

‘Not this time. You are my friend. I do not want to see him kill you.’

‘Nor I you. Yet I am the fastest of us – I have a better chance.’

Gaius loosened his shoulders and smiled tightly. ‘He is only an old man, Marcus. I’ll be back in a moment.’

Alone, Gaius took up his position.

Renius watched him through eyes narrowed against the sun.

‘Why did you choose to fight first?’

Gaius shrugged. ‘All lives end. I chose to. That is enough.’

‘Aye, it is. Begin, boy. Let’s see if you have learned anything.’

Gently, smoothly, they began to move around each other, gladii held out and flat-bladed, catching the sun.

Renius feinted with a sudden shift of a shoulder. Gaius read the feint and forced the old man back a step, with a lunge. The blades clashed and the battle began. They struck and parried, came together in a twist of heaving muscle and the old warrior threw the young boy backwards, sprawling in the dust.

For once, Renius didn’t mock him, his face remaining impassive. Gaius rose slowly, balanced. He could not win with strength.

He took two quick steps forward and brought the blade up in a neat slice, breaking past the defence and cutting deeply into the mahogany skin of Renius’ chest.

The old man grunted in surprise as the boy pressed the attack without pause, cut after cut. Each was parried with tiny shifts of weight and movements of the blade. The boy would clearly tire himself in the sun, ready for the butcher’s knife.

Sweat poured into Gaius’ eyes. He felt desperate, unable to think of new moves that might work against this hard-eyed thing of wood that read and parried him so easily. He flailed and missed and, as he overbalanced, Renius extended his right arm, sinking the blade into the exposed lower abdomen.

Gaius felt his strength go. His legs seemed weak sticks and folded beyond his control under him, rubbery and painless. Blood spattered the dust, but the colours had gone from the courtyard, replaced by the thump of his heartbeat and flashes in his eyes.

Renius looked down and Gaius could see his eyes shine with moisture. Was the old man crying?

‘Not … good … enough,’ the old gladiator spat. Renius stepped forward, his eyes full of pain.

The brightness of the sun was blocked by a dark bar of shadow as Marcus slid his sword under the sagging throat skin of the old warrior. One step behind Renius, he could see the old man stiffen in surprise.

‘Forgotten me?’ It would be the work of a single thought to pull the blade back sharply and end the vicious old man, but Marcus had glanced at the body of his friend and knew the life was pouring out of him. He allowed the rage to build inside him for a moment and the chance for a quick death disappeared as Renius stepped smoothly away and brought up his bloody sword again. His face was stone, but his eyes shone.

Marcus began his attack, in past the guard and out before the old man had a chance to move. If he had been trying for a fatal blow, it would have landed, as the old man held immobile, his face rigid with tension. As it was, the blow was simply a loosener and the life in the old man came back with a rush.

‘Can’t you even kill me when I hold still for the strike?’ Renius snapped as he began to circle again, keeping his right side to Marcus.

‘You were always a fool – you have a fool’s pride,’ Marcus almost growled at him, forced to pay attention to this man as his friend died in the heat, alone.

He attacked again, his thought become deeds, no reflection or decision, simply blows and moves, unstoppable. Red mouths opened on the old body and Marcus could hear the spatter of blood on the dust like spring rain.

Renius had no time to speak again. He defended desperately, his face showing shock for a second before settling into his gladiatorial mask. Marcus moved with extraordinary grace and balance, too fast to counter, a warrior born.

Again and again, the old man only knew he had stopped a blow when he heard the clash of metal as his body moved and reacted without conscious thought. His mind seemed detached from the fight.

His thoughts spoke in a dry voice: ‘I am an old fool. This one may be the best I have trained, but I have killed the other – that was a mortal blow.’

His left arm hung, flapping obscene and loose, the shoulder muscle sliced. The pain was like a hammer and he felt sudden exhaustion slam into him, like the years catching up with him at last. The boy had never been this fast before, it was as if the sight of his friend dying had opened doors within him.

Renius felt his strength desert him in one despairing sigh. He had seen so many at this point where the spirit cannot take the flesh further. He warded off the battered blade of the gladius without energy, batting it away for what he knew would be the last time.

‘Cease, or I will drop you where you stand,’ came a new voice, quiet, but carrying somehow through the courtyard and house.

Marcus didn’t pause. He had been trained not to react to taunts and no one was taking this kill from him. He tensed his shoulders to drive in the iron blade.

‘This bow will kill you, boy. Put the sword down.’

Renius looked Marcus in the eyes, seeing madness there for a moment. He knew the lad would kill him and then the light was gone and control had come back.

Even with the heat of his own blood warming his limbs, the yard seemed cold to the old man as he watched Marcus glide backwards out of range and then turn to look at the newcomer. Renius had rarely been so certain of his own death to come.

There was a bow, with a glinting arrowhead. An old man, older than Renius, held the bow without a shiver of muscle, despite the obvious heft of the draw. He wore a rough brown robe and a smile that stretched over only a few teeth.

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