‘Mine!’ The guttural Germanic roar was punctuated by a butcher’s block slap that registered the moment Victor’s long cavalry spatha took the man’s head off at his shoulders. As the torso collapsed, Valerius’s worst nightmare loomed over him. ‘The remaining hand, I think. We will start with the hand.’
Victor raised the sword high as Valerius lay helpless. The Roman looked into his killer’s eyes and saw a madness there that told him the hand was only the least of it. He groped frantically for his lost gladius. Instead, his fingers connected with something obscenely soft, with the slimy texture of a fresh-caught eel. He threw the still-warm guts of the anonymous gladiator into Victor’s face and the Batavian reeled back, but recovered when he realized what had struck him. A savage smile wreathed his face as he made the decision to end the games. All around them was chaos and slaughter, the screams of the dying and the victory cries of their killers. From nowhere, a bay horse, out of control with its Pannonian rider dead in the saddle, galloped blind-eyed with panic towards them and Valerius rolled away from the flashing hooves. He heard Victor curse even as he found his escape blocked by the bulk of the auxiliary commander’s dead mount. A kaleidoscope of images: blue sky, blood-soaked earth, a dead man’s staring eyes, a glint of bright metal. The sword flashed down and he twisted desperately to one side, some voice screaming a message at him that his mind struggled to decipher. The sharp slap of metal slicing into muscle, but surprisingly he felt no pain and he realized Victor’s blow must have struck the dead horse. Without conscious thought, his hand wrapped around the shaft of the broken spear embedded in the ground to his left. His arm whipped round and he felt the moment the point tore through cloth into the sucking embrace of flesh, the crunch of iron scraping on bone and then the breakthrough into the softness beyond. An agonized shriek that combined pain, torment and frustration filled his ears and he looked up as Claudius Victor’s shuddering body collapsed on top of him.
The random, panicked thrust of the spearhead had taken Victor deep in the groin, slicing through the big artery there and into his lower stomach. The Batavian’s body shuddered uncontrollably with each wave of shock and agony. He knew he was dying, but the animal instinct to destroy his foe was overwhelming. Powerful warrior’s hands fought their way to Valerius’s throat and the Batavian’s eyes bulged as he used the last of his strength to throttle the man who had killed his brother. Trapped beneath the armour-clad body, Valerius struggled to free his good hand and somehow prise the iron grip of the fingers from his throat. His vision blurred and he heard the sound of a rook cawing and knew it was the sound of his dying. Claudius Victor’s face was in his, and he felt the other man’s spittle on his cheek and remembered the foul breath of his enemy from their previous terrifying meeting in the woods of Germania. His mind screamed at him. He … would … not … die. His fingers closed on the object at his belt and somehow he forced his left hand upwards between their two bodies. Victor was oblivious of what was happening, his mind lost in the divine, unearthly madness of victory and death. He barely felt the point of the knife that forced its way through the skin beneath his chin. Only in the lightning-flash moment when it entered his brain did he accept defeat.
Blood surged from the gaping jaws over Valerius’s face and he almost vomited at the foulness of it in his mouth. A moment of relief, darkness and finally despair threatened to overwhelm him, but he took the time to cut the leather strip holding the golden boar amulet that had hung at Claudius Victor’s neck and push it into his tunic. What seemed like much later rough hands dragged him clear of the body and he heard a familiar voice in his ear.
‘Can’t lie about here as if you’re already in the Senate, lord,’ Serpentius chided.
Someone put a sword in his hand as Juva placed a giant arm round his waist and between them the Nubian and the Spaniard half carried him through the fighting and the heaped bodies of the dead and the dying. Somehow they found themselves among a group of gladiators still battling for their lives.
‘The First’s eagle?’ Valerius demanded.
Serpentius shrugged and the Roman knew it was gone. A pain pierced him that was more terrible than anything he’d suffered this day as he remembered his promise to Benignus. But he was their leader. He could not surrender to despair. ‘We fight on. Otho’s reserve will be here soon. While we live, there’s still a chance.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Serpentius’s voice was bleak. The first time Valerius had heard it bereft of hope. Because Aulus Caecina Alienus had thrown in his reserves to finish it.