Arthur Imperator Read Online Free

slave poured for us from a flagon of Rhenish wine. “Here’s to a good parade, and better donatives,” I said. “Polish your best helmet,” I teased him, knowing he never wore armour. “We should be in Londinium in a week or so for Chlorus’ final performance. You want to look warlike for that. By the way, brace yourself.” He looked nervous. “It’s eels for dinner.”
     

 
    V Sentenced
     
    Davius Perseqius Ansonii was lolling in a wineshop, enthralling a handful of young soldiers with gory tales of his occupation. They pressed leather cups of rough red Gallic wine on him, and in return, he recounted the death struggles of the mad, the bad and the unlucky. For Davius was an official carnifex , crucifixioner to the emperor, and he’d nailed up, chopped up, sawed up, burned up, strangled or bled out hundreds of the doomed during his career.
    He’d come close to adorning a crucifix himself a few months before, and he inwardly shuddered to consider that. Davius had been sent out from the port of Bononia, which was then held by Arthur, to execute a score of Bagaudae bandits captured further along the coast of northern Gaul. During his absence, the emperor Maximian’s forces had unexpectedly struck and laid siege to the citadel.
    The general Constantius had ringed the whole of Bononia with palisades, blocked the harbour entrance and trapped the garrison without hope of relief. Davius and his escorting troops had returned, cautiously come close, seen the impassable siegeworks and quietly slipped away again, knowing that they would join those selected for painful death once the Romans breached the walls.
    The platoon moved steadily west, commandeered a fishing boat and crew at spear point and sailed across the Narrow Sea to Britain, a reunion with their legion, and safety.
    This day, Davius was in a tavern in London, readying for the execution of a Caesar, and he was explaining some of the finer points of his craft to the open-mouthed soldiers. “Crucifixion hurts a lot,” he said. “You flog the perp with a metal-tipped flagellum to bleed him, weaken him a bit, then you make him carry the crosspiece to the execution place. There, you already have an upright waiting. It has a squared end at the top, and there’s a squared hole cut in the middle of the crosspiece, so they fit together nicely, like a big letter ‘T.’
    “You fasten the perp naked to the crosspiece. You can rope him to it, but it’s better to use nine inch nails and you knock them in either through the forearms or just under the fleshy bit of the thumbs, angling them through the wrist. If you just nail straight through the palms, the perp’s weight pulls the fingers off and you have to do it again. Keep the nails straight so you can re-use them, or sell them: people use them as charms if someone’s died on those nails.
    “When you have him snugged on the crosspiece, you haul him up and drop it onto the squared end of the upright. Then you nail his feet to the sides of the upright, nailing through the heels sideways. It’s best to put the nail through a little block of wood first so the heel can’t be jerked loose.
    “If you want the perp to last longer, you can fasten a block of wood near his feet for him to take his weight. You can also make him sit on a spike, to make the blood and crap run. That brings the insects and adds to his punishment with a bit more humiliation. The whole point of crucifixion is to provide a long and painful death, to encourage the others not to do whatever the perp did. Do it right, and he can last two or three days, and the sight concentrates the minds of the onlookers wonderfully. Of course, if someone gives you a small incentive to be kind, you can break his legs so the weight goes on his arms and chest and he’ll suffocate in an hour or so.”
    One of the young legionaries licked his lips and asked: “Will this be how you do the Roman general?”
    Davius looked pointedly at his wine cup, which was hastily