Path of the Tiger, стр. 411

flares as they emerged into the flame-lit hall, these beings of naked metal, freshly poured from a foundry forge, melded with combat-honed muscle, unyielding as iron. At their head, the General sprang to his feet. He was armed in his left hand – his dominant hand – with a single-handed war-hammer, which featured a blunt, mace-like protrusion on one side and a sharp spike for piercing armour on the other, while in his right hand he carried a small steel-studded wooden shield, with sharp blade edges on the sides so that it could be used as a weapon for attacks as well.

He raised the war-hammer high in the air and fired an intense look over his shoulder at his compatriots behind him.

‘Tonight we fight for our freedom! Tonight we raise our swords against the villainy of tyranny and the scourge of slavery!’

The gladiators bellowed out a throaty cheer in response.

‘Move into skirmishing formation!’ the General ordered. ‘We will break their shield wall, we will break it! Come on brothers, come on! ADVANCE!’

Viridovix, who had observed Octavian’s troops in action earlier, noticed the crossbowmen and the badgers at the rear of the defensive tortoise readying themselves.

‘General!’ he shouted hoarsely, crying out as loudly as he could to try to clear the mad din of chaos. ‘Their rear flanks! An attack is coming from their rear flanks!’

Viridovix’s attempts to warn the gladiators were futile, however. From his vantage point N’Jalabenadou could neither see nor hear Viridovix, so he continued his advance toward the shield-enclosed square of Octavian’s troops.

Behind the fighting cage, Octavian and his bodyguard reached Lucius, who was still groaning in a semi-daze and coughing up blood from the severity of the beating he had received.

‘Get him into the bull,’ Octavian grunted flatly, staring down at Lucius with disgust and contempt in his pitiless gaze.

Kurush curved his scarred lips into a sadistic, broken-toothed smile, and then he grabbed Lucius, hoisting his body up and tossing it over his shoulder as if the man were but a sack of grain.

‘Lepidus! Claudius! To me!’ Octavian cried when he spied his two fellow Huntsmen cowering beneath their table in terror.

‘Are you mad?!’ Claudius screamed, hysterical with fear. ‘We’re in the midst of a violent slave revolt, yet you’re still trying to throw that fool into the brazen bull?! We must escape somehow! We’re all going to be killed!’

Lepidus merely stared with wide, wild eyes at Octavian, clutching in both shivering hands a meat knife he had taken from the table. He was catatonic, and while his mouth kept opening and closing, it was as the gasping of a fish ripped from its aquatic home and hurled onto dry land; no words or sounds emerged from it.

‘Shut up, you spineless old jellyfish!’ Octavian hissed at Claudius. ‘If you two value those saggy hides of yours, you’ll come with me right now! That brazen bull is a perfect shield behind which we can take cover while we burn this vermin inside it! Kurush will protect us from any stray gladiators who manage to escape the carnage that my troops will wreak upon them. Now get out from under there and follow me!’

With their eyes bulging with fear and their wrinkly chests heaving as they drew in fluttery, panicked gasps, Lepidus and Claudius scrambled out from under the table and hurried after Octavian and Kurush as they strode over to the brazen bull, which was shimmering with intense heat. When they reached it, Kurush wrapped part of his cloak around his face to protect himself from the heat and the smoke, and he then turned to Octavian.

‘Open it up, sir, and I’ll throw this sack of shit inside!’

With the fire and the hot metal now blaring their terrible ferocity into his face, Lucius finally started to regain full consciousness – and as he began to come to, he understood the awful peril he was now in.

‘No! No, no, no NO NO!’ he started to scream with hoarse, primal panic, struggling with desperate madness and writhing like a trapped ferret against the bonds that secured his hands and feet.

Octavian reached down and ripped a section of silk off of an expensive tunic from a dying dinner guest, and he wrapped this around his face as he approached the bull. He gripped the wooden handle that opened the door built into the bull’s flank and cranked it. With a groan the door yawned open, and a hellish blast of heat belched out from the inner chamber of the brass sculpture, causing Octavian to stumble back.

‘Get him in there!’ he shouted, his gruff voice muffled by the tunic wrapped around his face.

‘Aye sir!’ Kurush gnarled, and with that he shoved the madly struggling and screaming Lucius into the scalding heat of the brazen bull’s innards.

There was a terrible hissing and sizzling sound as Lucius’s skin made contact with the superheated metal, and he let out a scream that was the apotheosis of excruciating, unimaginable agony as his skin began to melt and bubble, while his living flesh was cooked on his bones. With a sadistic cackle, Kurush slammed the door of the bull shut behind him and jumped back from the mad heat. That was when the sculpture itself began to bellow, as the complex system of pipes inside it morphed Lucius’s unearthly howls of pain and agony into the bellowing of a bull.

‘Burn, wolf, burn!’ Octavian shrieked, with the hungry fire that was licking the belly of the bull dancing with psychotic keenness in his savage eyes. He then turned to Lepidus and Claudius and grabbed their tunics, one in each hand. ‘Quickly, you fools! Behind the bull! Take cover!’

Inside the fighting cage, Viridovix was gripped with frustration as he watched everything unfolding around him in this symphony of nightmarish horror, and he dashed frantically from bar to bar, gripping and pulling at each of them to try and find a weak spot from which he could break out. In the corner the gorilla lay prone; while he was