Avenger of Rome

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A man’s sword could be his friend or his enemy. Every sword was subtly different. A rich man’s sword would be forged of the finest carbon-rich iron and have the edge of a surgeon’s scalpel. An auxiliary’s sword would be one of a thousand, crude and poorly finished in some provincial armoury. A poor sword might bend or break. The best swords were like the men who wielded them: tested to their very limits in the balefire of battle. The sword Gaius Valerius Verrens held was a warrior’s sword.

Valerius studied the blade in the light from the oil lamp. A simple legionary gladius, twenty-two inches long, honed to the sharpness only a veteran soldier could give it and with a leather hand-grip moulded by use to the grasp of his fingers. The gladius was a killing weapon, no more and no less. In the right hands it would harvest flesh as efficiently as a scythe would harvest wheat. Only the decorated pommel, a gleaming silver bulb embossed with a snake-headed Medusa, differentiated this sword from any other.

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