Below, he’d looked up at the edge for a few seconds, waiting to see Marcus appear. Just as he’d thought it would never happen, a small figure shot into the air, leaping high. Gaius had scrambled out of the way as Marcus crashed into the hay, winded and gasping.
‘I thought you were too scared to do it,’ Gaius said to the prone figure, blinking in the dust.
‘I was,’ Marcus had replied quietly, ‘but I won’t be afraid. I just won’t.’
The hard voice of Suetonius broke into Gaius’ spinning thoughts: ‘Gentlemen, meat must be tenderised with mallets. Take your stations and begin the technique, like so.’
He swung his stick at Gaius’ head, catching him over the ear. The world went white, then black and when he next opened his eyes everything was spinning as the string twisted. For a while, he could feel the blows as Suetonius called out, ‘One-two-three, one-two-three …’
He thought he could hear Marcus crying and then he passed out to the accompaniment of jeers and laughter.
He woke and went back under a couple of times in the daylight, but it was dusk when he was finally able to stay conscious. His right eye was a heavy mass of blood and his face felt swollen and caked in stickiness. They were still upside down and swinging gently as the evening breeze came in from the hills.
‘Wake up, Marcus – Marcus!’
His friend didn’t stir. He looked terrible, like some sort of demon. The crust of crumbling river mud had been broken away and there was now only a grey dust, streaked with red and purple. His jaw was swollen, and a lump stood out on his temple. His left hand was fat and had a blueish tinge in the failing light. Gaius tried to move his own hands, held by the twine. Though painfully stiff, they both worked and he set about wriggling them free. His young frame was supple and the burst of fresh pain was ignored in the wave of worry he felt for his friend. He had to be all right, he had to be. First though, Gaius had to get down.
One hand came free and he reached down to the ground, scrabbling in the dust and dead leaves with his fingertips. Nothing. The other hand came free and he widened his area of search, making his body swing in a slow circle. Yes, a small stone with a sharp edge. Now for the difficult part.
‘Marcus! Can you hear me? I’m going to get us down, don’t you worry. Then I’m going to kill Suetonius and his fat friends.’
Marcus swung gently in silence, his mouth open and slack. Gaius took a deep breath and readied himself for the pain. Under normal circumstances, reaching up to cut through a piece of heavy twine with only a sharp stone would have been difficult, but with his abdomen a mass of bruises, it felt like an impossible task.
Go.
He heaved himself up, crying out with the pain from his stomach. He jackknifed up to the branch and gripped it with both hands, lungs heaving with the effort. He felt weak and his vision blurred. He thought he would vomit and could do no more than just hold on for a few moments. Then, inch by inch, he released the hand with the stone and leaned back, giving himself enough room to reach the twine and saw at it, trying not to catch his skin where it had bitten into the flesh.
The stone was depressingly blunt and he couldn’t hold on for long. Gaius tried to let go before his hands slipped so he could control the fall back, but it was too hard.
‘Still got the stone,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Try again, before Suetonius comes back.’
Another thought struck him. His father could have returned from Rome. He was due back any day now. It was growing dark and he would be worried. Already, he could be out looking for the two boys, coming nearer to this spot, calling their names. He must not find them like this. It would be too humiliating.
‘Marcus? We’ll tell everyone we fell. I don’t want my father to know about this.’
Marcus creaked round in a circle, oblivious.
Five times more, Gaius spasmed up and sawed at the twine before it parted. He hit the ground almost flat and sobbed as his torn and tortured muscles twitched and jumped.
He tried to ease Marcus to the ground, but the weight was too much for him and the thump made him wince.
As Marcus landed, he opened his eyes at the fresh pain.
‘My hand,’ he whispered, his voice cracking.
‘Broken, I’d say. Don’t move it. We have to get out of here in case Suetonius comes back or my father tries to find us. It’s nearly dark. Can you stand?’
‘I can, I think, though my legs feel weak. That Tonius is a bastard,’ Marcus muttered. He did not try to open his swollen jaw, but spoke through fat and broken lips.
Gaius nodded grimly. ‘True – we have a score to settle there, I think.’
Marcus smiled and winced at the sting of opening cuts. ‘Not until we’ve healed a bit though, eh? I’m not up to taking him on at the moment.’
Propping each other up, the two boys staggered home in the darkness, walking a mile over the cornfields, past the slave quarters for the field workers and up to the main buildings. As expected, the oil lamps were still lit, lining the walls of the main house.
‘Tubruk will be waiting for us; he never sleeps,’ Gaius muttered as they passed under the pillars of the outer gate.
A voice from the shadows made them both jump.
‘A good thing too. I would have hated to miss this spectacle. You are lucky your father is not here, he’d have taken the skin off your backs for returning to the villa looking like this. What was it this time?’
Tubruk stepped into the yellow light of the lamps and leaned forward. He was a powerfully built ex-gladiator, who’d bought the position of overseer to the small estate outside Rome and never looked back. Gaius’ father said he was one in a thousand for organising talent. The slaves worked well under him, some from fear and some from liking. He sniffed at the two young boys.
‘Fall in the river, did we? Smells like it.’
They nodded happily at this explanation.
‘Mind you, you didn’t pick up those stick marks from a river bottom, did you? Suetonius, was it? I should have kicked his backside for him years ago, when he was young enough for it to make a difference. Well?’
‘No, Tubruk, we had an argument and fought each other. No one else was involved and even if there had been, we would want to handle it ourselves, you see?’
Tubruk grinned at this from such a small boy. He was forty-five years of age, with hair that had gone grey in his thirties. He had been a legionary in Africa in the Third Cyrenaica legion, and had fought nearly a hundred battles as a gladiator, collecting a mass of scars on his body. He put out his great spade of a hand and rubbed his square fingers through Gaius’ hair.
‘I do see, little wolf. You are your father’s son. You cannot handle everything yet though, you are just a little lad and Suetonius – or whoever – is shaping into a fine young warrior so I hear. Mind yourselves, his father is too powerful to be an enemy in the Senate.’
Gaius drew himself up to his full height and spoke as formally
