Free Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage by David Gibbins

hook, but they all knew that the new arrival Gaius Paullus was about to have his day of reckoning. He had been standing rigidly to attention, staring at the centurion. When Petraeus was like this, nostalgic about past battles, his hand clenching his staff, he was like a man stoking himself up for an evening in the taverns; only it was not the prospect of wine that was making his eyes gleam, but the prospect of blood. Today was the day of the month when criminals due for capital punishment were paraded into the arena, and the boys were allowed to use weapons on live victims. Today, Gaius Paullus would become a killer, if he had the stomach for it. Scipio knew the centurion would be as ruthless with Gaius Paullus as he had been with each of the others when he had first made them push cold iron into the chest of a living man.
    The centurion slammed his staff down, put his helmet on and grasped the pommel of his sword. He scanned the room, his breathing harsh and quick. ‘Now then,’ he snarled. ‘Are we ready to play?’
    He snapped his fingers and pointed at the nearest of three slaves standing against the wall holding trays, a tautly muscled, brown-skinned young man who looked Assyrian, his hair dark and curly and the wispy beginnings of a beard on his chin. The slave paused for a moment, uncertain what to do, and the centurion beckoned him forward. ‘Put down the tray,’ he growled. ‘Come over here.’ The slave did as he was told, and then the centurion fingered Scipio and Fabius. ‘Hold his arms,’ he said. Fabius took the slave’s left wrist, feeling the sinewy muscle in the forearm, and twisted it behind his back as he had been taught to do with prisoners in the arena; Scipio did the same on the other side. He could feel the slave tensing, expecting a beating. It would not be the first time the old centurion had used slaves to demonstrate a wrestling hold or knockout blow, an occupational hazard for slaves who had the unlucky lot of working in the Gladiator School.
    The centurion drew his sword. It was a gladius, but with a more elongated leaf-shaped end than the usual Roman form, a shape they knew the centurion had ordered copied from the Iberian blades he had encountered in campaigns against the Carthaginians in Spain, before Hannibal had crossed the Alps into Italy. He held it up and put his forefinger on the tip, drawing blood, and then held the flat of the blade down on the palm of his hand, aiming the point at the slave’s upper abdomen. ‘Not to the heart,’ he said. ‘I want him to live long enough for you to see how the muscles of the body react to a blade pushed deep into it. This is how you learn.’
    The slave had gone wide-eyed with terror, his mouth open and drooling. He cried something Fabius did not understand, words in his native tongue, and gazed imploringly at them. The centurion grunted, looked around and then snatched a scroll Polybius had been holding and ripped off the papyrus, thrusting the wooden spool sideways into the slave’s mouth to act as a gag. The man made a terrible noise and then retched, bringing up a dribble of vomit that sent a distasteful odour through the room. His head lolled forward, and the centurion gestured for Fabius and Scipio to grasp each end of the spool with their other hands to hold the slave’s head up. His knees were shaking and buckling, and Fabius felt the weight of his body. He saw a streak of brown drip down the man’s inner leg and smelt it, turning away and swallowing hard.
    Gaius Paullus stood at the front, shorter and slighter than the others, looking barely old enough to be there, rooted to the floor and staring at the slave. The centurion pointed at him. ‘You. New boy,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t think I don’t know who you are: Gaius Aemilius Paullus, nephew of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, father of Scipio and the greatest living Roman general. I served under your father