‘First position, boy. Stand like a soldier, if you can remember how.’
Marcus relaxed into the first position, legs shoulder-width apart, body slightly turned from full frontal, sword held at waist height, ready to strike for the groin, stomach or throat, the three main areas of attack. Groin and neck were favourites as a deep cut there would mean the opponent bled to death in seconds.
Renius shifted his weight and Marcus’ point wavered to follow the movement.
‘Slashing the air again? If you do that, I’ll see it and pattern you. I only need one opening to cut your throat out, one blow. Let me guess which way you’re going to shift your weight and I’ll cut you in two.’ He began to circle Marcus, who remained relaxed, his eyebrows raised over a face blank of expression. Renius continued to talk.
‘You want to kill me, don’t you, boy? I can feel your hatred. I can feel it like good wine in my stomach. It cheers me up, boy, can you believe that?’
Marcus attacked in a sudden move, without warning, without signal. It had taken hundreds of hours of drill for him to eliminate all his ‘tells’, his telegraphing tensions of muscle that gave away his intentions. No matter how fast he was, a good opponent would gut him if he signalled his thoughts before each move.
Renius was not there when the stabbing lunge ended. His gladius pressed up against Marcus’ throat.
‘Again. You were slow and clumsy as usual. If you weren’t faster than Gaius, you’d be the worst I’d ever seen.’
Marcus gaped and, in a split second, the sun-warmed gladius was pressed against his inner thigh, by the big pulsing vein that carried his life.
Renius shook his head in disgust.
‘Never listen to your opponent. Gaius is observing, you are fighting. You concentrate on how I am moving, not the words I speak, which are simply to distract you. Again.’
They circled in the shadows of the yard.
‘Your mother was clumsy in bed at first.’ Renius’ sword snaked out as he spoke and was snapped aside with a bell ring of metal. Marcus stepped in and pressed his blade against the leathery old skin of Renius’ throat. His expression was cold and unforgiving.
‘Predictable,’ Marcus muttered, glaring into the cold blue eyes, nettled nonetheless.
He felt a pressure and looked down to see a dagger held in Renius’ left hand, touching him lightly on the stomach. Renius grinned.
‘Many men will hate you enough to take you with them. They are the most dangerous of all. They can run right onto your sword and blind you with their thumbs. I’ve seen that done by a woman to one of my men.’
‘Why did she hate him so much?’ Marcus asked as he took a pace away, sword still ready to defend.
‘The victors will always be hated. It is the price we pay. If they love you, they will do what you want, but when they want to do it. If they fear you, they will do your will, but when you want them to. So, is it better to be loved or feared?’
‘Both,’ Gaius said, seriously.
Renius smiled. ‘You mean adored and respected, which is the impossible trick if you are occupying lands that are only yours by right of strength and blood. Life is never a simple problem from question to answer. There are always many answers.’
The two boys looked baffled and Renius snorted in irritation.
‘I will show you what discipline means. I will show you what you have already learned. Put your swords away and stand back to attention.’
The old gladiator looked the pair over with a critical eye. Without warning, the noon bell sounded and he frowned, his manner changing in an instant. His voice lost the snap of the tutor and, for once, was low and quiet.
‘There are food riots in the city, did you know that? Great gangs that destroy property and stream away like rats when someone is brave enough to draw a sword on them. I should be there, not playing games with children. I have taught you for two years longer than my original agreement. You are not ready, but I will not waste any more of my evening years on you. Today is your last lesson.’ He stepped over to Gaius, who stared resolutely ahead.
‘Your father should have met me here and heard my report. The fact that he is late for the first time in three years tells me what?’
Gaius cleared his dry throat. ‘The riots in Rome are worse than you believed.’
‘Yes. Your father will not be here to see this last lesson. A pity. If he is dead and I kill you, who will inherit the estate?’
Gaius blinked in confusion. The man’s words seemed to jar with his reasonable tone. It was as if he were ordering a new tunic.
‘My uncle Marius, although he is with the Primigenia legion – the First-Born. He will not be expecting –’
‘A good standard, the Primigenia, did well in Egypt. My bill will be sent to him. Now I will indulge you as the current master of the estate, in your father’s absence. When you are ready, you will face me for real, not a practice, not to first blood, but an attack such as you might face if you were walking the streets of Rome today, among the rioters.
‘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