It is AD 41. The savage Gaul Britomaris has defeated the best of the Roman gladiators in the arena. Now a young trainee, Marcus Valerius Pavo, the son of a murdered general, has been given a month to prepare to face Britomaris in a fight which only one man can survive. He is to be trained by veteran soldier Macro, who fears for his young trainee’s chances. But Pavo is motivated by more than a simple desire for victory or survival, and Britomaris may yet be facing his most dangerous opponent . . .

CHAPTER ONE

Rome, late 41 AD

The imperial gladiator blinked sweat from his eyes and watched the stadium officials drag away the dead bodies carpeting the arena floor.

From his position in the shadows of the passageway, Gaius Naevius Capito had a panoramic view of the aftermath of the mock battle. A crude reconstruction of a Celtic settlement stood in the middle of the Statilius Taurus amphitheatre, which was littered with the dead. Capito lifted his eyes to the galleries. He could see the new Emperor at the podium, flanked by a cabal of freedmen jostling for attention, with the senators and imperial high priests seated at the periphery in their distinctive togas. Above the podium the crowd was squeezed shoulder to shoulder on the stone seats lining the upper galleries. Capito felt a shiver in his bones as the crowd roared. He looked on as a pair of officials prodded a slumped barbarian with a heated iron. The man jolted. The crowd jeered at his attempt to play dead and one of the officials signalled to a servant wielding a massive double-sided hammer. A second official finished sprinkling fresh white sand over the blood-flecked arena floor. Then they retreated to the passageway, resting in the shadows a few paces away from Capito.

‘Look at this shit,’ one of the officials moaned as he held up his blood-smeared hands. ‘It’ll take me bloody ages to clean this mess off.’

‘Gladiators,’ the other official grumbled. ‘Selfish buggers.’

Capito frowned at them as the servant with the hammer strode over to the Gaul and towered over the fallen man, smiling gleefully as he smashed the hammer into the barbarian’s skull. Capito heard the crack of shattering bone and grimaced. As the highest-ranked gladiator of the Julian school in Capua, he took great pride in his handiwork. But this spectacle had left a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d looked on from the passageway as gladiators dressed as legionaries had massacred their opponents – a mixture of condemned men and slaves armed with blunted instruments. There had been little skill involved. He considered it an affront to his profession.

An official dragged away the last of the dead with a metal hook.

‘A bloodbath,’ Capito muttered to himself. ‘Just a bloodbath.’

‘What did you just say?’ one of the officials demanded.

‘Nothing,’ Capito replied.