‘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