The River God's Vengeance(84)

Hermes was already dealing with the first man on his side. Because the passage was narrow, they could only attack one at a time, a piece of luck we really didn’t deserve. The man had a long, straight dagger, and he came in low. Hermes slung my old toga off his shoulder and it unfurled, enwrapping him like the net of a retiarius. He stepped in and his stick lanced out like a shortened trident and the muffied man folded around it, the wind blasting from his lungs. Hermes grasped the man around the waist and straightened, sending him fiying over his shoulder to hit the river with a great splash. It was done as prettily as any fight you are likely to see in the arena, but I shouldn’t have let it distract me.

The first one bulled in like a street brawler, and my punch, instead of smashing his jaw, just ripped his cheek open to the bone. He screeched and wrapped one arm around me, jamming his knife into my rib cage. I didn’t bother to block, but instead brought my own dagger up under his chin. It was like getting kicked hard in the side, but the mail shirt I wore beneath my tunic held. His chin, on the other hand, didn’t even slow my blade down. It went in to the hilt, piercing his brain, and he was dead before he hit the fioor.

Behind me I heard a blade ring against Hermes’s stick and knew that the boy was dueling with a more skillful opponent this time; but I had no attention to spare, for Marcus Caninus was almost on top of me and I was still trying to drag my dagger free of his friend, who seemed reluctant to let it go.

I let the hilt go and brought up my bronze-plated knuckles to knock aside Caninus’s first short, vicious jab. He had seen what had happened to his accomplice’s stab and didn’t bother to go for my body. He was trying for my neck as if he wanted to behead me. His weapon was a large sica with a blade curved like a boar’s tusk, and it looked eminently suitable for the task. With his other hand, he grabbed my right shoulder in a grip like a blacksmith’s tongs.

I went for his knife wrist with my free hand while I tried to knee him in the crotch, but he was an old brawler and too canny to fall for that one. He turned and caught my knee with his own thigh. I got him in the ribs with the caestus, and he grunted as one or two of them broke; but I lacked the distance and the firm stance for a full-strength punch. I had his wrist in my right hand, but that blade was getting closer all the time. I hit his ribs again, but by now he was pressing me against the railing so hard that the blow had no power. The face above me looked as if it were carved from oak, cruel and unfeeling as a crocodile’s.

I heard the unmistakable sound of smashing bone, and I hoped it was Hermes dispatching another opponent rather than the other way around. I certainly wasn’t doing well where I was. I stomped on one of Caninus’s feet, and this brought a groan of pain; but I was barefoot so the damage wrought was minimal. I knew I could feed him weak body blows all day, and I didn’t have all day. I fell back and let my grip weaken. The knife came up for the kill, his elbow rose, and with what strength I had left, I brought my caestus up into his armpit, trying for that spot which, if struck correctly, paralyzes the arm, sometimes the whole side, and can even render a man unconscious. Of course, placement is everything. If I missed by an inch, I would die in the next second.

His eyes bugged out, and he screamed. The wide blade fell from his numbed fingers, and I wrestled him to the railing. He was too heavy for me to lift, but a moment later another pair of hands were assisting me and Marcus Caninus made the biggest splash yet. Hermes and I were about to congratulate each other when the fioor shuddered and something gave way beneath us.

Horrified, gripping the railing for support, we saw the support work that Manius Florus and his crew had planted there the day before disengage, torn away by the rushing fiood, the big timbers shooting to the surface like sporting porpoises. The people lining the Sublician Bridge shouted with astonishment. They didn’t get to see a thing like this every day. I wondered whether they had been following the fight, or if we were just a trivial part of the spectacle that was Rome in a disaster.

We almost fell as the whole side of the theater began to sag.

“Let’s go!” Hermes shouted. “It’s beginning to break up!”

“No,” I said. “There’s still one to go!” I placed a foot against the face of the man I’d stabbed, grasped my hilt, and yanked the blade free. “Get out of here. I’ll attend to this and be with you shortly.”

I lurched for the crazily leaning steps and half-dragged myself up by the handrail. The theater seemed to be in continuous motion now. I wondered if Scaurus had gotten clean away, but I doubted it. A fight always seems to last much longer than it really does. The whole little battle had taken no more than a couple of minutes. I came up on the second-?oor gallery but saw no one. A fiutter of clothing caught my eye, and I saw a foot disappear from the next staircase as someone made it to the gallery above. I followed.