Colosseum (18 page)

“A lot of them will have died, too,” adds Priscus. He has never been an optimist. “Inevitably…”

“I'm under no illusions, the plague is merciless. But at the same time I refuse to give up hope,” answers Ircius.

The lanista rests his hands reassuringly on the warriors' shoulders. He looks at them both, with all the confidence of a good father facing his brave son and heir and his fearless younger brother.

“Go, men.
Go and look for the gods of the arena
. Rome might have borrowed them for a few turns of the moon, but the She-wolf is generous—she knows how to give back graciously what she has taken. Bring them back home: if you help me rebuild the silver dream from the ashes, I will reward you fairly. You have the word of Decius Ircius.”

Priscus stares at his master for a long time before getting up to follow Verus, already standing as straight as an arrow at the doorway of the tavern, and so grateful that he feels the need to bow.

“Consider it done, my lord.”

The Gaul turns his back on the past and walks alongside his friend towards a future as damnably bright as it is uncertain.

The roads of Rome are like vacant arteries, their blood long dried up. They are like jealous mothers or lovers, hiding away, coveting, holding tight, suffocating. They are like a series of locked doors, their keys lost who can say where.

Verus and Priscus must
breathe
the streets before the streets will begin to trust them.

A conspiracy of silence hangs over everything, and the two men must swallow bitterness and mistrust before the answers will begin to float to the surface. The populace fears the guards, always hunting for favors,
sestertii
or an easy lay. But in particular the people fear spies; these are harder to recognize, they are servants of power without a uniform, wolves dressed as lambs.

The people are on their guard; they hide themselves away and are loath to talk to strangers.

Only when they read the suffering of the downtrodden in the eyes and scars of the two gladiators do they begin to speak, always in a hushed voice. However, information gradually filters down the grapevine, and the pieces begin to fall into place, names and addresses appear.

Cosmos is the first person they managed to dig up. Surrounded by his cheap whores and with a cup of second-rate wine in his hand, he tries playing hard to get. He has holed himself up in a brothel that he took from Draco's men with brute force. One free “meal” at a time, he has ended up running the house of sin. He knows that soon enough the law will come to claim his freedom, and has no desire to be enslaved again.

But the call of glory is another matter entirely.

“Don't tell me you don't miss it…” says Priscus, the man's voice like a red-hot brand on Cosmos's skin, a curse. Yet almost within the day, Cosmos the champion is back in the game.

The remaining
primi
are easier to track down, partly thanks to the information provided by Cosmos's employees: Tigris the
hoplomachus
is living under a bridge and has lost a lot of weight; he needs to find his place in the world again. Marcus of Capua is a cadaver, an old man who cared for him like a son during the last moments of his life says the Imperials threw him into a common grave along with a hundred other unfortunate souls. Tempest and Bato helped each other out in order to survive, a bit like Verus and Priscus. They have even become infatuated with a couple of low-born girls, fat as barrels—at a time when even the usually chubby priests have begun to look like underfed stray cats. Tempest and Bato are sad to leave their flock, but the girls understand: a warrior's destiny is already written, and the desires of his poor, battered heart can do nothing to change it.

Columbus, last on the list of the finest, met an even worse end than Marcus. He died horribly, drowned in his own blood after a street fight. It was one of Aton's men that slashed his jugular, while the pestilence raged ferociously and each man fended for himself alone.

Seeking out the novices proves harder and more time-consuming: many of these are six feet under, of course. The plague did not look its victims in the eye. Others have been hit so hard by illness that they are no longer of use to anybody. Still others, thanks to the training received at the school and a healthy dose of self-preservation, have managed to survive, saving their skins without giving up hope even for a moment.

In the end, the reconstituted army of the arena is a solid group of about forty choice men, hardened by the passage of time and hungry for greatness. Verus and Priscus place themselves at the head of the gang and lead it back to the Ludus Argentum, the air charged with hope and desire for redemption.

When they arrive the arena has been cleared, but the stinking rabble that dwelt there during the last few months has left unequivocal signs of its passage. These are days of abandonment and atonement: the squadron works non-stop to restore the building to its former state, smuggling in cheap timber, planing rafters, and cleaning the arena's sand of the last vestiges of detritus. The fine columns regain their shape, the balustrade from which Ircius watches their endeavors has been reinforced with hardy wrought-iron nails, and a new training pole erected.

It takes nearly a month to set everything straight, thirty days during which the inexorable machine of gladiator training also gradually starts back up again. The mighty Aton proves to be a capable master-at-arms, from the way he moves it is clear he has spilt much blood on the arena's sand. He is almost forty, but his face seems ageless, his long arms those of a hungry warrior: he is the kind of son of a bitch that goes on fighting even when he is being cut to pieces. Until he rips your heart out, that is. He teaches his men how to suffer, and how to respond to low blows. How to wield weapons with valor.

Ircius is proud of the new equipment. He had it made by a team of blacksmiths from the north, experts in burnished iron. Every metal item is the color of night, from the spears of the
hoplomachus
to the Thracians'
sicae
and the
spathae
of the
murmillones
. The wide-brimmed helmets, the protective plates for shoulder and neck, the shields, the greaves. Even the
manicae
look like they have come straight from Pluto's forge.

When the
ludus
is looking like its old self once more, the lanistagathers together his
primi
and asks them to dress for the arena. He lines them up and hands each of them a bone tablet engraved with his name. None of the elders managed to keep hold of his original tablet during the grim reign of the Dark Mistress of plague.

Once the ceremony is over, Ircius asks the men for a moment of silence, and then calls Priscus and Verus to him. The Gaul and the Briton, who have been standing to one side all this time, cannot believe their eyes when their master shows them two off-white tablets, exactly like those of their veteran companions.

The names on them sparkle in the May sunshine.

“You deserve them. Welcome to the gods.”

Still unbelieving, Verus is about to grab the talisman but Priscus stays his hand. He shakes his head from left to right, and is wearing a damned serious expression on his face.

“Not yet, brother. First we must fight.”

Cosmos gives a bellow of approval from the line of elders. Aton the instructorand the rest of the
primi
take up his call. In no time at all, the entire barracks has joined in the roar of glory to salute the veterans.

Verus feels his throat tighten in a knot of pride and shame. He withdraws his hand from the longed-for prize.

Ircius waits for the cries of the
familia
to die down a little before he delivers his verdict: “So be it! Tomorrow we return to Rome as victors. You two will enter the arena and earn with blood the honor of being called veterans.”

The house of silver bursts into a deafening roar.

Verus has tears in his eyes.

And Priscus has never looked so proud.

The arena is very different from how they imagined it.

It is similar to the one that occupies a corner of the courtyard at Ircius's house, not much larger, definitely dirtier.

The crowd's embrace, though—that is really quite something.

Rome is slowly being reborn; the disease has bent but not broken her.

Rome endures, she has the will to fight.

Her people are hungry for games, for an unthinking life. They yearn to feel unburdened once more.

The Emperor has made it known that the road to the inauguration of the Amphitheater is nearing its end. The works have entered the final stretch and the celebratory games are set for August, that most delicious and terrible of months.

Gladiator schools across the city are in a frenzy: it is time to put themselves in the spotlight. There is fighting from sunrise to sunset at the four corners of the Eternal City, and every lanista thirsts for publicity. None of them intends to miss out on the great show of the Amphitheater: Titus has promised a hundred days of games.

A hundred days.

An endless river of money, enough to turn a beggar into a Pharaoh.

Today it is the turn of Verus and Priscus, their baptism of blood, in an arena that lies a stone's throw from one of the city's meaner quarters. Alongside the walls that separate civilization from Barbary, in the northeast of the city, the throng is indescribable. There are also some uniformed soldiers on hand to oversee proceedings; this is not an underground fight, and the treasury is quite happy to pay Ircius and his counterpart for their services.

The profession of lanista is widely respected across the Empire, which is prepared to shell out generously for any crowd-pleasing spectacle. Even if a gladiator dies, his owner does not lose out: the Imperial coffers reimburse the master of the school with a sum that corresponds to the worth of the man left on the ground.

The city is in ferment and the inauguration of the Amphitheater draws ever closer. Blood must flow to single out the best. Therefore, even though there are normally two men to a fight, Verus and Priscus will enter the circle of sand together to face a couple of
hoplomachi
from the House of Tetrus, lord of theBear, a gladiator school from the Velitrae colony, not far from Rome.

As the two warriors enter they are greeted by a deafening roar. The ragged crowd packed onto the rickety stands is shouting and spitting, pulling their hair out at the sight of Decius Ircius's men of iron.

Verus and Priscus are simply breathtaking, adorned in their dark metal armor. The wide brims of their helmets and the blood-red crests, the Briton's gleaming greaves, and the gigantic shield of the Gaul, decorated with Ircius's coat-of-arms, a prancing silver lion.

Their adversaries are a mess, but they look nasty and well accustomed to fighting. They wear
manicae
and helmets of faded bronze streaked with mud. The spearheads still bear the blood and shit of the guts they have penetrated. Death still clings to their sword-blades. The two men look like twins with their small round shields carried on the left arm, these too made in tempered bronze. Each has a dagger hanging at his waist, for emergencies.

They are trembling, these champions of the Bear. They are in a hurry to make a name for themselves.

The final figure looming over the arena is frightening. Nobody seems to know why he is there, standing in the middle of the action. An Alemannic giant, beard and hair as black as night, long and ragged. He wears a threadbare tunic and his skin is painted blue from head to foot. He looks like a demon from the underworld, not least because of the bone horns on his head, somehow anchored to that bushy mass of hair. He stands in silence to one side of the circle, powerful arms across the handle of an enormous war hammer.

Verus and Priscus do not say a word, but Ircius seems to read his men's thoughts. He goes over to them an instant before the butchery is due to begin, and whispers: “That is Charon, no less. He accompanies the dead to the other side.”

They would both like to say something else, but the referee in the white tunic lowers his staff to signal that the show has begun.

Annihilation time.

The two
hoplomachi
are used to fighting as a team and hence charge Priscus with their weapons held high. The Gaul finds himself with their spearheads embedded in his shield before he has even a chance to shout a curse.

Verus is on top of his enemies at once, slashing at their thighs with his
sica,
while they run into trouble attempting to back Priscus into a corner. One of the two spears snaps; the gladiator tries to pull it out of the bolt on his adversary's shield but is forced to unsheathe his dagger.

The lad knows well how to wield the short-bladed weapon, and engages Verus in a one-on-one duel, an endless sequence of lunges and dodges to which the Briton responds angrily. Only one blow in five hits its mark, but these leave deep scars on his opponent's chest.

Meanwhile, Priscus is still on the defensive and looks to be on the point of crumbling before the fury of the
hoplomachus
.Spear held over his head, the gladiator from the Bearis raining down thrusts from above in an attempt to skewer him.

Standing to one side, Charon watches the four-way dance without moving a muscle.

The referee pays careful attention: he has not indicated any foul moves—for the moment at least.

Verus and Priscus circle the sand and find themselves back-to-back. Breathing heavily, they screen themselves with their shields and jab at the enemies with their swords, drawing blood and gradually wearing them down.

Suddenly the spearman makes a headlong lunge, Priscus steps to one side and Verus spins around suddenly with his elbow held high, knocking his enemy's helmet into the sand. Charon raises an eyebrow and the referee gestures to him to stay calm.