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now that they were within the palace of the Emperor, but they did not speak among themselves of the fact that most of them had entered by a back gate after the crowd had upset the litter of a noble senator and spilled its passengers into the dust of the avenue.

With pleasure they anticipated the banquet that would follow the marriage ceremony, and while they laughed and chattered over the gossip of the week, the bride sat stark and cold in an upper chamber of the palace surrounded by her female slaves and comforted by her mother.

“It shall not be,” she said. “I shall never be the wife of Fastus,” and in the folds of her flowing robe she clutched the hilt of a slim dagger.

In the corridor beneath the Colosseum, Tarzan marshaled his forces. He summoned Lukedi and a chief of one of the outer villages, who had been a fellow prisoner with him and with whom he had fought shoulder to shoulder in the games.

“Go to the Porta Praetoria,” he said, “and ask Appius Applosus to pass you through the city wall as a favor to Maximus Praeclarus. Go then among the villages and gather warriors. Tell them that if they would be avenged upon Caesar and free to live their own lives in their own way, they must rise now and join the citizens who are ready to revolt and destroy the tyrant. Hasten, there is no time to be lost. Gather them quickly and lead them into the city by the Porta Praetoria, straight to the palace of Caesar.”

Warning their followers to silence, Tarzan and Maximus Praeclarus led them in the direction of the barracks of the Colosseum guard, where were quartered the men of Praeclarus’s own cohort.

It was a motley throng of near-naked black warriors from the outer villages, black slaves from the city, and brown half-castes, among whom were murderers, thieves and professional gladiators. Praeclarus and Hasta and Metellus and Tarzan led them, and swarming close to Tarzan were Gayat, Zutho, and Go-yad and their three fellow apes.

Ogonyo was certain now that Tarzan was a demon, for who else might command the hairy men of the woods? Doubtless in each of these fierce bodies presided the ghost of