Saviour of Rome [Gaius Valerius Verrens 7] by Douglas Jackson Page A

watered, and the occasional woman. If you’re good enough you might even be handed the
rudis
and your freedom. If not, we’re all going to die anyway. With Fortuna’s favour it’ll be quick. A sword in your hand and a friend by your side, right?’
    ‘Right,’ Serpentius said uncertainly. ‘But how does Nestor do it?’ He shook his shackled ankle.
    The answer was that Nestor was one of the smaller gladiators, with correspondingly small feet. With the help of a little oil and the loss of a few inches of skin he could work his feet through the shackles. Serpentius had been born lean, and his calling had transformed him into a lethal blade of bone, sinew and muscle, but he had normal-sized feet. In time, he could do what Nestor did, but at greater cost.
    Now, in the mine, he began working at the ring on his left ankle, twisting and pushing at the same time.
    What seemed a lifetime later sweat was running down his body and his heel and the front of his foot were a ball of agony and rubbed raw. Blood caked his hands, but he was nowhere near freeing the ring. Twist and push. Twist and push. How many times had he done it? Two hundred? Four? Twist and push. Ignore the pain.
    As he worked he whispered instructions to Clitus.
    ‘Your job, and the job of the others, is to look after the jailer. Hemust not make a sound. You’ll have one chance. Don’t worry about the guards. I’ll take care of them.’
    ‘But your chains, you can’t—’
    ‘Trust me.’ Serpentius gritted his teeth to stifle his groans. Twist and push. Twist and push. Flesh is only flesh. Iron is iron. If he’d had a knife, he’d have cut the solid pad of his heel away. Could a man walk without a heel? But he didn’t have a knife. Twist and push. Mars and Jupiter, would it never end? Twist and—’ He slumped back, resisting the urge to cry out as the bloody ring slipped over his foot to free his left leg. It could be done. But how long had it taken?
    He reached for his right ankle.
    According to Vegeto, the free workers made their way to the mine at dawn. That meant, on this day, flushing-out day, the jailer and the guards with the water pipe should appear an hour before dawn. Dawn. Serpentius raised his eyes to the invisible ceiling of the sleeping chamber. He’d lost count of how long he’d been here. How many days was it since he’d seen a dawn. Forty? Fifty?
    One way or the other he vowed this would be the last.
    He crouched in the darkness to one side of the entrance, his agonized feet deep in the filthy ooze. Surprise was the key. If the jailer noticed a gap in the bodies on the floor he’d alert the guards. To ensure he didn’t, Clitus and the others had shifted together to mask the space where Serpentius usually lay. Could they take the jailer? That couldn’t be his concern. He had enough to think about. His heart thundered in his chest and he willed it to slow. If ever he’d needed calm it was now. He ran through what was about to happen in his mind, trying to establish the rhythm that would govern his actions and reactions. To identify the imponderable that would imperil his plans and what he must do to negate it. His fingers shifted their grip on the nail.
    Voices echoing in the main shaft. A man complaining about the weight of the pipe. The jailer would enter first to light the oil lamps. The guards would follow close behind carrying the pipe, their spears laid aside just this once.
    A soft glow of light in the entrance. Serpentius pressed himselfback, trying to make himself one with the wall. Still. Be invisible.
    First, the jailer, muttering to himself, his starved rat’s face illuminated by the oil lamp he held in front of him, eyes only for the first lamp in its niche in the wall. One, two, three steps. The first guard appeared hauling at the leather pipe and grunting. The jailer reaching up to light the lamp with the one in his right hand, the bucket of slops in his left. The second guard giving the pipe one last heave and