IGMS Issue 29

As the hulking rhinoceros gored and trampled its way through the gladiatorial market in New Rome, there was one thought I couldn't get out of my head:

The carnage was impressive.

When the bestiary guards caught up with it, they unloaded more than sufficient rounds from their tranq-dart rifles to down the savage creature. Unwarranted, perhaps, but unsurprising; they had let it escape from its pen. The men who were shackled to me breathed sighs of relief.

I had, during the rhino's rampage, felt a twinge of worry. Chained as I was, I could neither have run nor fought, but the same would be true in the arena. I have no illusions about my own abilities. When I'd heard my sentence, to be fodder for the games, I knew I'd be dead soon enough; why not enjoy the unexpected entertainment? I just wish it had lasted longer.

"Where's the surgeon?" One man cried out, then another, adding their voices to the screams and whimpers of the injured.

For a moment, I thought they meant me. But they found their surgeon soon enough, what was left of him. His spirit was awaiting its final passage across the river Styx.

"We need a surgeon," a panicked voice cried. "We'll lose the merchandise."

That's when I raised my hand, and shouted, "Over here."

I've never been one to waste an opportunity.

Coal soot smeared the sunset into haze by the time I yanked tight the last stitch of thread through living flesh.

"Six men still live today because of you," a man said. He spoke with authority, and wore the clothes to match - an ankle-length black top coat over a winged collar shirt and tweed breeches. "What's your name?"

"Caro." The blood was beginning to dry on my hands. I let it. "They live for now, but I can't say for how long." It wasn't a sterile environment, not even close. "Infection's a killer."

"I'm Silus, Lanista of the Emperor's personal gladiatorial school. My aide tells me you're one of the
damnati ad mortem
, and that you were among a shipment we have already purchased for the opening hours of next week's Imperial Games."

I smiled.
Damnati ad mortem
. "I would have that honor." To be released weaponless into the arena to fight any number of strange and ferocious beasts. To die to whet the appetite of the crowd. It was the currently fashionable sentence for all men convicted of capital crimes.

"A waste." The man tapped his fingers against the buttons on his waistcoat as he looked at the stacked corpses being loaded onto a wagon. "We're in need of a surgeon. Where'd you receive your training?"

"At university, and in practice. I worked ten years at a hospital before my . . . conviction."

"Which university, which hospital?"

The answer to both was the same. I'd grown up but fifty miles from here, among the factories on the east side of the Thames, worked hard to earn the coin to live on the west side, but the city that sprawled both sides went by one name. "Londinium."

Silus's sudden intake of breath, the newly bulging vein above his left temple - I found that first flush of recognition never failed to arouse me.

"The Butcher. You're the Butcher of Londinium."

"I prefer Caro Carvetii, but yes, that is the phrase the papers coined."

"You only killed women? No men. No . . . others?"

"Just whores," I said. "Mothers who traded favors to feed their addictions." I didn't expect him to understand, but his concerns were otherwise engaged.

Silus looked between me and the cart that trundled off with the surgeon's body. "I might stay your sentence so long as your skills dictate. There will be no pay, of course, for such as you. And if you fail in your duties, or otherwise garner unwanted attention, the arena will be waiting for you."

After a night spent in my new cell at the Emperor's Ludus, just a stone's throw from the Colosseum, I made my way down the underground tunnel that connected the two to check out my new working quarters. The main room was larger than I had expected, though between the shelves and cabinets lining the walls, and the three cots marooned in the center, it seem crowded. Not one of the many oil lamps was lit. Pale light bled into the room through two air shafts, the only source of ventilation, and not enough of one to mute the stench of whisky in the room.

Someone coughed from behind one of the cots, a phlegm-filled wheeze, followed by a gulping sound. The source of the whisky smell, no doubt.

I rounded the cots and looked down on a man sitting splay-legged with a bottle clutched in his hands. He had a fretwork of broken capillaries across his nose and cheeks, and tear tracks on his none-too-clean face. If it was not for the metal-framed spectacles perched on his nose, I would have thought him a vagrant who had snuck past the guards.

"The new surgeon?" he asked, slurring his words. "Come to claim his place already?"

I have no patience for drunks. I never have. "And you are?"

"His aide." The man brushed at the snot crusting his nostrils. "Yours now. Name's Blaesus." He tried to stand up, but only made it as far as his knees before he took another swig from the near empty whisky bottle. "I heard it was a rhino what got him. Killed by some beastie like a common criminal." He weaved in place when he finally made it to his feet, his bloodshot eyes blinking wearily at the glass bottle. "I've been drinking to him all night. You wouldn't have a fresh bottle, to make a toast to him yourself?"

I shook my head in disgust. "Does he have a book around here - an inventory of the items in stock?"

"No book, no list. He didn't write, and I . . ." He pointed a wavering finger at his forehead - his ear - his forehead. "I keep it all up here." He stumbled over to the nearest cot and crawled on to it, curling up in a ball with the bottle cradled in his arms. "Just need a bit of shut eye's all." Moments later he lost consciousness; it would be a misnomer to say he fell asleep.

I found a stack of blank papers, a nib and a bottle of ink, and spent the next few hours taking an inventory of the location and number of the items in stock while Blaesus snored away on a cot. I'd just finished with the cabinets lining the back wall of the room when I became aware that I was not - Blaesus aside - alone.