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Spaniard was staring at him with the same expression he’d seen on the face of a half-starved leopard in the circus.
    ‘Ready?’ Marcus demanded.
    Valerius nodded.
    ‘A legionary, eh?’ Serpentius spoke so quietly that only his opponent could hear. ‘Legionaries killed my family.’
    ‘ Fight .’
    The practice sword was twice the weight of a normal gladius , but for all the trouble it gave Serpentius it might have been a goose feather. Somehow, the point was instantly past Valerius’s guard and only a desperate lunge with the shield knocked it aside and saved him from a bone-crunching thrust to the heart. Before he could recover, the point was back, jabbing past the shield at his eyes, his belly and his groin. He managed to parry the first thrust and block the second with the shield, but the third caught him a glancing blow on the inner thigh that would have unmanned him if it had landed square. Already the sweat was in his eyes blurring his vision, and he struggled to keep pace with the dancing figure beyond the shield. For the first five minutes it was all he could do to survive. He took hits to the shoulder and a strike that might have cracked a rib. But he fought on, spurred by pain and pride, never touching Serpentius, until gradually his senses came to terms with the speed of his opponent. His brain began to match the thrusts as they were launched, and the sword and the shield anticipated the Spaniard’s attacks.
    Serpentius felt the change, and altered his tactics. Now he used his speed to wear Valerius down, always keeping him turning to the right so that the Roman’s sword could never reach him. Constantly changing the line of attack. Now high, now low. A painful crack on the ankle left Valerius hobbling for a few seconds, but the stroke was only a feint. Serpentius’s real target was the eyes. A practice sword might have an edge that wouldn’t cut a loaf of bread and a point barely worth the name, but it could still take your eye out, and Valerius saw more of the tip of Serpentius’s sword than he cared for. By the time Marcus called the first break he knew every splinter and notch intimately, and it was only good fortune that had saved him from being blinded.
    He crouched down, his chest on fire, the breath tearing his throat. Marcus knelt beside him as the Spaniard stood a few yards away drinking from a goatskin and barely sweating.
    ‘You’ve got your sword in your left hand, but you still think like a right-handed fighter,’ the older man said. ‘You’re allowing him to dictate every move and you’re a yard slower than he is. If you keep going like this he’s going to kill you.’
    ‘Will you let him?’
    Marcus let out a bellow of laughter. ‘He’s a gladiator. He could die in the ring tomorrow or the next day. He’s a slave and you are a fucking overfed, underworked lawyer. He wants to kill you, and what are they going to do to him if he does? It’s not a question of will I let him. Will you let him?’
    Valerius nodded. ‘You’re right.’ He started to get up, but Marcus put a hand on his shoulder.
    ‘Don’t fight like a one-handed man, or a two-handed man. Fight like a killer.’
    Serpentius heard Valerius laugh out loud, and wondered what the joke was. The Roman wouldn’t be laughing in another few minutes. He was tired of waiting. It was time to finish it.
    Valerius waited for the command. Think like a killer. Don’t think like a cripple. Think like the man who stood before the bridge at Colonia and dared Boudicca’s hordes to come to him. Think like the man who slaughtered the bastards by the dozen. He remembered the tattooed champions, tall and proud, who’d fallen before his sword. He remembered a man with burning eyes who ran a hundred paces to kill him, but had died under his shield. Think like a killer.
    ‘Ready.’
    Before Serpentius could move he smashed the shield towards the Spaniard’s body with all his weight behind it and felt the satisfying crunch as the