Colosseum Read Free

yesterday Cormac got drunk and a couple of hours before sunset he was already unconscious.
    It happens.
    It keeps happening.
    Calgacos barely notices. He slips out to the storeroom round the back, rummaging through the scrap iron that has just been delivered, and pulls out the double bit in question. A remarkable tool: expert hands have decorated the double-edged bronze head with engravings of runes and scenes from the story of Sucellus, the hammer-wielding god. This weapon has been on some travels; it must have crossed the sea. Whomever it once belonged to must have been loath to part with it. Who would part with a tool like that of his own free will?
    Brogan has never mentioned anything about it. He simply turned up in the village one September evening, hugging the weapon to his chest like a hunting trophy. Perhaps he bought it from some passing merchant. Perhaps blood was spilled over who got to keep it.
    Calgacos knows nothing about it, but it is impossible not to wonder as he turns the piece over in his hands.
    His expert eyes immediately spot the cracks in the bronze, the weakness at the edge of the blade, the wear and tear. He fixes it to the anvil with some leather straps and starts to hammer. With patience and skill, he works over the damaged parts of the blade for hours on end. The heat spreads, the pressure heals, the freezing water from the bucket tempers.
    And then he starts again, blow after blow, one stroke after another.
    Until exhaustion gets the best of him. But he has still not managed to return the gleaming weapon to perfection.
    A lick of animal fat to polish the engravings, a little grease on the matted cord wound around the haft. The job is done.
    It is evening when Brogan drops by to pick up the ax, and the results astonish him. He pays Calgacos and asks to speak with Cormac: he wants to compliment him on his work.
    But the blacksmith is not in. Or rather, he is not presentable. Drunk again, he has dragged himself to the foot of the furnace, falling asleep instantly in the warmth of the dying embers. It will be hard to speak to him any sooner than tomorrow morning.
    Calgacos accepts the payment and the compliments that his master does not deserve.
    Then, at last, he takes a breather and sits down on the cool grass.
    He sips the dregs from a bowl of ale overlooked by the old man, and watches the sun dip behind the hills. Another day dies, and the boy feels reborn.
    As soon as it is dark, he checks that Cormac is fast asleep, snatches up the leather sack he hides at the back of the workshop and slips away, headed straight for the woods.
    The clearing is a thousand paces or so from the village. He found it by accident, one afternoon spent spying on Adraste and her mother as they bathed in the river. Calgacos had climbed a tree to get a better look; he could hardly bear to wait. He was dying to find out what women looked like without their clothes on. Just at the best moment, though, right when Adraste had slipped her dress over her head and was about to get into the water, the branch had snapped and the boy had fallen ass-first to the ground, in the middle of the woods. The commotion immediately sent flocks of every kind of bird skyward, spooking the two already nervous women and causing them to beat a hasty retreat.
    Calgacos, massaging his wounded behind, glanced around himself and realized he was standing in the middle of something remarkable. The enormous, circular clearing had the form of an eye, or rather a mouth, agape with wonder, amid the dense woodland. No trails led to that unnatural space; someone had created the magical site where others would not find it. In the middle stood a lone trunk, sole survivor of the purge. Taller than a grown man, two branches like monstrous arms extend from either side, ready to strike. The boy took a look at the trunk and found it was scarred by hundreds of gashes. Running his sweaty palm across the wood, he felt the ancient wounds, where savage lunges had left