Colosseum (13 page)

Bato shouts with fury before pouncing at Tempest, who weaves to the right and runs a blade up his opponent's arm. Bato's blood pounds at his temples and dribbles down out of the baking helmet. He charges head first into his enemy, who lands on his ass, and kneels on top of him, slicing at his chest with the half-moon blade.

He gets a little too carried away, so Rubius jumps over the terraces, runs into the arena and lands him a kick strong enough to knock him over. He does not even see where the blow comes from, but he feels it alright. He loses his balance and the battered
retiarius
takes the opportunity to regain his feet.

The master warns Bato: “Go easy, I need that little eunuch alive!”

The instructorreturns to his place, it is anybody's fight again.

Tempest clutches his trident like a battering ram, aiming for the iron stomach of the scissor, who has been slowed and somewhat dazed by Rubius's surprise attack. Bato judges his reaction time poorly and ends up with a couple of inches of polished iron in his foot.

The pain is excruciating and Bato screams like a little girl. Tempest is breathing hard but has a smile on his face—low blows are his specialty. Bato gets to his feet and calls for the physician. Meanwhile Ezius Tortonus has dragged himself from his lodgings to the arena with his usual complete lack of interest. He even offers the
retiarius
a scornful round of applause.

“Well done, dickhead. He'll be out for a month now…”

Decius Ircius shakes his head and abandons the arena.

Rubius climbs over the terraces once more, just as the
untores
aided by the physician carry the scissoraway, his foot gushing like a fountain at the public baths. The instructorwalks up to Tempest, looking him straight in the eye.

“Think you're a man, eh?”

Tempest does not know what to say. The instructorscares him.

“Fight then, you nobody. Fight with me, now.”

Rubius is unarmed, Tempest goes to lay his trident and dagger on the ground. But Rubius shakes his head.

“Come on…”

The
retiarius
looks to where Ircius normally sits, but he has gone.

All eyes are on the gladiator. Verus and Priscus have stopped striking each other and are now watching the scene, their breath laboring.

Tempest has no choice. The burning on his chest is driving him crazy. He attacks with a thrust, aiming to harm.

Rubius does not even break a sweat. He dodges to the right and smashes his forehead against his opponent's nose. It breaks with a clean snap.

Tempest falls to the ground, a stream of red leaking from him.

Now Rubius is over him, his hands behind his back. He disarms the gladiator and starts kicking his ribs with his bare feet. Finally, he drops down onto breastbone of the terrified and battered
retiarius
, feeling a couple of ribs give way under the weight of his knee.

With his hands still behind his back.

Tempest's eyes are wide open, but those of Rubius look like dark wells.

The instructorhead-butts the gladiator.

And again.

And another one.

Until the
retiarius
loses consciousness. Until everybody understands, in case it was not quite clear before, who is in charge in the arena of the Ludus Argentum.

The instructorwears an expression of disappointment and disgust as he gets back up. Thirty pairs of eyes look on as he stares down at his hands, free again from their imaginary bondage. Rubius spits on the ground. He walks off towards his lodgings, but not before ordering: “Bring on the next two.”

Cosmos and his adversary prepare themselves to enter the circle of blood and sand.

From their post at the end of the courtyard, Verus and Priscus have just grasped that there is still a long way to go. A damned long way.

Days, weeks, months.

Like circus animals, performing monkeys, caged lions.

It is a game of knees, asses, and elbows.

Knees, asses, and elbows.

Ass counts for a lot. A man's ass and a man's balls can save his life.

The barracks is a strange little universe unto itself. There are no women but that does not mean there is no room for sex. Men make do.

Verus noticed it early on, one night when Tempest slipped into his bunk and stretched out his hands. For a little while, Verus let him. But then, when he opened his eyes and realized what was happening, the Briton reacted without thinking. “By Mercury's ball sack!” he shouted, landing a stiff elbow in the lothario's face.

Tempest's nose was a mess, with fragments of bone and cartilage moving around in it like galloping Imperial messengers. The blow stunned him and the pain laid him out for the count. Neither one of them has spoken of the incident in the days that have followed.

But the echo of sex is everywhere—blue balls are a serious problem for a bunch of twenty-year old men. At night, in the darkness of the cells, flesh sounds on flesh. The veterans have greater freedom: there are no bars for those who win in the arena. Guards and
untores
turn a blind eye when the
primi pali
seek solace in one another's arms.

Verus does not think about it very much, but for his part, Priscus's heart thaws with each passing day. He has never been a great seducer, Priscus. Women have always thrown themselves at him, only natural for a man of his ilk. His eyes, his hair, his square chest all tell of a destiny that is already written, in cunning and easy smiles. The memory of a few stolen kisses and a couple of nights with not a lot to tell for them are the sum total of his experiences when it comes to talking to his friends about his encounters with the fairer sex.

In here though, he feels better.

Every day, his relationship with Verus grows closer. They are both brothers and partners in life.

Priscus is not the brooding type, but nor is he as dim-witted as the Briton. Priscus is ice. Verus is fire.

The two have trained together every single day, with persistence and zeal.

They have lived on sweat and adrenaline, gritting their teeth to breaking point.

They have fought.

Every day the instructorpairs them up so they can learn to survive.

Every day the two of them lay into one another with wooden swords: naked skin and the will to dominate. Fighting looks an awful lot like sex, but only Priscus seems aware of this. It is different for Verus—he does not think of love. Or sex. He has the future on his mind. Especially since they swore the oath.

After months of desperation and exhaustion, of abuse and food picked up off the floor, of sweat and too little water, they finally swore the oath.

Heads bowed before their seniors and their master, Verus, Priscus, and the rest of the novices pronounced the magic words: “I will submit to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, to be killed…”

They repeated it three times, turning the string of words into a revelation, their own miserable existence into pure dedication.

The Briton and the Gaul have begun their true
tirocinio
, the real training; finally, they have become genuine
tirii
. In terms of their daily life not much has changed: fighting and running all damned day, the usual slop for lunch and dinner. But now they eat at wooden tables, albeit still separate from the veterans, and those who wish to may sleep together. Neither Priscus nor Verus has given up sleeping alone, but from time to time they stay up all night together, telling of faraway islands and forests, of eyes that take the breath away and of hunger for glory.

The best part of not being a novice any more is the weapons.

An unusual frenzy has gripped the school in the days following the oath. A thick stench hangs over everything, notably sweeter than the usual stink that rises mercilessly from the latrines. Each sunset sees more mice in the courtyard and not even Ircius's greedy housecats, noted for their undeniably sharp hunting instincts, are managing to keep up with the unwelcome guests. They sit about the edge of the arena, fat and sated with stomachs stuffed with prey, scratching at non-existent bites, their ears as clean as a vestal virgin's thighs.

The air is dense and stuffy, men keep coming down with fever. Already this week, three
untores
have not been able to get out of bed. The instructorcoughs a lot during training, but nobody really notices. Rubius has the strength of Hercules and the balls of Jupiter.

But the change is not the air, nor the malaise.

The weapons are what change everything.

The weapons, damn it.

The instructorhas gotten a good idea of his lads. Verus has great determination and gives it everything he has, right to the limit. He is not very gifted from a technical standpoint, but his body is strengthening, and every so often he seems to think clearly enough.

With those qualities he is cut out to be a
murmillo
, it has been decided.

Priscus, on the other hand, is thickset and brutal. He strikes to cause harm, yet knows what honor is. He does not like to take advantage of a situation, preferring to fight with his principles intact. He saves his strength, but does not hold back when the decisive moment arrives.

He is destined to be a Thracian.

Verus and Priscus are the perfect couple; they are made to fight one against the other.

They are fire and ice, it is their nature.

The training fights grow ever more intense, in part because the master at arms announced ten days ago that a couple of
tirii
will be picked for the first official fight. Two recruits will have the chance to become veterans, fighting one another in an arena a short distance from the Forums.

Since they heard the news, Verus and Priscus have thrown themselves into their training with even greater energy. More than once the Gaul has drawn a smile from the instructor's lips, in between one coughing fit and another.

It is normally the man of ice who wins the fights. He has a natural advantage, being both larger and stronger than the Briton, but the real difference is inside their heads. Verus often lets himself get carried away by his emotions; when he does gain the upper hand, he tends to throw away his advantage in his haste to finish the bout.

And Priscus seizes his chance. Every damned time.

The afternoons slip by, one much the same as another, with the cold of winter on the threshold. The icy touch of Corinthian helmets and the steel
manicae
on skin sharpens the senses. Verus and Priscus think back on their months of ferocious training. And all the while the temperature drops as they cover one another's bodies with scars, showing all the diligence of eager students. Those nets of mended skin are the map of a friendship that is becoming a bond between brothers.

The Gaul and the Briton are killing time, lined up in the courtyard with the other recruits.

It is dusk and the rats seethe in every corner, like cockroaches blinded by the sun. In the last seven days their numbers have swelled yet further, along with the stale smell that lingers beneath the mist.

Ircius and the physician have already been there for some time—everyone wants to see which two names have been picked for the first fight.

The chosen pair will go out there to make a name for themselves, surrounded by the crowd.

The one who comes back will be classed a veteran.

From then on, nothing will be the same.

There is excitement in the air, great excitement.

Every
tiro
carefully lined up in the middle of the courtyard has prayed for the blessing of gods and
lares
. Every last man hopes that he will be the chosen one.

The waiting slices and gnaws away at them, like the teeth of the big brown rat digging into the ribs of a dead cat in that very moment, a few paces away from the reddened eyes of Decius Ircius.

Enraged, the lanista grabs a
sica
from one of the gladiators and slices the animal in two. Black blood gushes from its corpse, along with the smell of shit and death. A black shadow spreads over the waiting rabble. Something has just snapped; the tension is palpable.

“Where the fuck is Rubius?” Ircius blurts out, shaking with anger.

They rarely see him like that.

In fact they never do.

Ezius answers that he does not know and the lanistacalls Verus and Priscus over to him. The master sends them to look for the instructor
.

The master at arms is not in his lodgings. Nor is he in the armory. He is not in the baths, nor in the canteen.

Verus and Priscus picture the moment when they find him, intent on having his way with some two-bit hooker, to hell with the house rules. Naked ass and leering face, up to his balls in some middle-aged redhead. Rubius goes crazy for the more senior ladies, especially the slatternly ones.

He is not in the larder.

Nor on the second floor, where Ircius lives.

One place is left, and only one.

As usual Verus does not sense anything amiss, feeling nothing except frenzy and agitation. He wants to get this over with quickly, find the master at arms and get him to come outside. That way he can finally make the announcement about who will have the honor of first blood.

The young man has worked too hard for too long to imagine anything other than glory. He has bet his heart and his balls on the gaming table that is life in the barracks. And now he is ready to cash in.

But Priscus feels the rotten shudder of horror down in his guts. The man of ice has grown up in the shadow of the worst. In his mind the arena is a thousand miles away, bronze greaves and
manica
are more of a burden than ever and his hefty weapons only add to the weight of destiny.

Frenzied swarms of rats surge along the gymnasium corridor.

They are running in the opposite direction to the determined steps of Verus and Priscus, catapulted over the walls like flying rocks, towards the only room they have yet to check.