Arena by Simon Scarrow Page A

barbarian as he realised too late that by attacking overhead he had left his torso fatally exposed. He plunged his spear uselessly into the sand and Pavo struck him in the groin.
    Britomaris froze. Pavo ripped the sword across, the weapon making a tearing sound as if splitting open a sack of grain. The blade diced up the barbarian’s bowels and severed his femoral artery. Blood fountained out of the wound as Pavo withdrew his sword and collapsed on the ground. Ten thousand people rose to their feet around the Julian plaza, watching Britomaris. The barbarian was rooted to the spot, looking down dumbly at the blood spraying his feet. He stood defiantly for a few moments longer, then ripped off his helmet, his eyes rolling into the backs of his sockets as he gasped for air. His face had turned pale, and he was shivering and foaming at the mouth. He looked feverish. His legs buckled. Then he collapsed on to the sand with a colossal thud.
    Salty sweat dripped from Pavo’s brow into his eyes, blurring his vision. He tasted blood in his mouth. His heartbeat pulsed violently, the veins on his neck throbbing and echoing inside his head. He could hear the ghoulish whimpers coming from Britomaris as he bled out on the sand, his helmet by his feet, vomit oozing from his slackened mouth.
    There was a moment’s silence. Then the crowd broke into rapturous cheers. Pavo picked himself off the ground. He was so weary it took every last ounce of strength to stand tall. He wiped the sweat from his eyes.
    ‘Pavo! Pavo!’ the crowd chanted, over and over. The same people who had been roundly booing him only a short while earlier, the recruit thought. Up in the podium a Praetorian Guard clumsily shuffled his way past the podgy imperial high priests and whispered something into Pallas’s ear. The Greek freedman furrowed his brow, then turned to Murena and muttered something. Abruptly the two men rose from their seats and followed the Praetorian out of the arena as the master of ceremonies handed Claudius a victory palm and a box of coins to present to the victor. The Emperor accepted the coins with a cold and distant expression in his greying eyes. He looked displeased. He scowled in disgust and glanced in Pavo’s direction with stony-faced contempt as the chanting of the victor’s name swelled in the plaza.
    Pavo stared defiantly back at the Emperor. He barely noticed the officials dragging Britomaris away with a meat hook, just as they had dragged away Titus months before. They left a streak of blood stretching like a tongue from the arena entrance to the place where the barbarian had fallen. His limbs were the same pale colour as his face. The feverish look in the barbarian’s eyes, and the way he had foamed at the mouth, troubled Pavo.
    Then the pair of officials who had been stationed at the arena entrance grabbed Pavo and hurried him away from the floor towards the corridor and a flight of stairs leading up to the podium, where the trainee would accept his prize from the Emperor in person. Pavo was still running his eyes over the galleries as the officials hauled him down the corridor, the hoarse cheers of the crowd echoing off the dank walls, the air stifled with hot dust and sweat, the crowd shrinking from view.
    ‘Where the hell did he disappear to?’ Pavo wondered aloud.
    ‘You mean your friend? The soldier?’ snarled the older official with the rotten teeth. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get to see him soon enough. In fact, we’re taking you to him as soon as you’ve collected your prize …’
     
    Macro awoke with the din of the crowd buzzing in his ears. The optio shook his groggy head and acquainted himself with his surroundings. He was back in the small room on the western side of the plaza that he and Pavo had occupied in the build-up to the fight. But the two Praetorian Guards now blocked the doorway, and Macro’s young charge was nowhere to be seen. A dim image came back to the optio through the haze. He recalled