Colosseum Read Free Page A

their mark.
    Calgacos did not believe in destiny. In all honesty, he did not know if there was really something or someone out there, steering the lives of men. Often, in the silence of the night, with Cormac snoring so loudly that not even milk of the poppy would have been enough to send him to sleep, Calgacos had even doubted the gods. But faced with that exquisite hole in the forest, damn it, that open-air gymnasium, he had a keen sensation that he had been granted a gift. And that someone or something had just made a decision for him. In the same way that, many years earlier, someone had chosen that name for him, charged with future promise: Calgacos, “He with the sword.”
    At that point the boy had run home and set to work doing what he had come into the world to do. He had taken an old, curved blade that had lain in the workshop since who knew which warrior had abandoned it there, leaving to go to sea or returning from the blood-stained lands, and restored to its former splendor.
    With the blade finished, he had returned to the clearing to begin training. With neither a teacher nor even the vaguest idea of how to handle a sword in combat. Swinging and lunging by the moonlight, sculpting his muscles to the sound of metal on wood.
    Since that night, the young blacksmith has never given up on chasing his destiny.
    Moon after moon he has cut, thrust, parried and dodged countless imaginary blows.
    Month after month he has transformed his own miserable existence into a wild dream.
    Year after year, Calgacos has imagined the future.
    The very future which, a few hours from now, will be denied him forever.
    But Calgacos knows nothing of destiny.
    He hacks and slashes until he cannot go on. Until the moonlight gleams on the back of his sweat-pearled neck, quietly whispering that dawn is not far off, that it is time to go and sleep.
    He is satisfied and content, exhausted but full of life.
    He follows the same path of branches and sharp leaves all the way back to the hut and, when he finds himself face to face with her, she seems a ghost.
    A spirit of the night, a vision: Adraste is there, standing in front of the closed door. Beautiful and pale, a shy smile on her lips and a flower in her hair. She is holding her hands behind her back and slowly skipping from one foot to the other.
    The boy would like to say something, but the maiden is tired, and the night is not meant for words. She takes the slightest of steps towards him and brushes his lips with hers.
    It is the first time for both of them.
    The girl turns the caress into a real kiss, Calgacos is a little awkward but he does alright.
    Tongues and playful bites, giggles, teeth, the moon still shining.
    It lasts as long as it needs to last—certainly not long enough. Calgacos wants more, and without a doubt Adraste does as well, but the time for love has just ended, though neither realizes it.
    Death, the damned witch, is already at the gates.
    It begins with a hiss, followed by a streak of fire.
    The blazing arrow lands in the workshop roof and the flames spread with unbelievable speed.
    In the space of a few seconds the hut catches fire and Cormac emerges from the doorway, half-asleep and cursing as only a British blacksmith who has been drinking since the early afternoon is able to:
    â€œBy the scrotum of Belenus! What the fuck’s going on?”
    When he realizes his world is about to be reduced to ash he wants to go on swearing, and with more imagination, but the second flaming arrow strikes his bald head, burning his flesh without compassion.
    Cormac slumps down, dead before he hits the ground.
    Adraste screams and cries, flees towards her home.
    Her father is already at the threshold, like many of the men in the village. Most are naked, long beards and hair twisted into sweaty braids. A war hammer or dagger in the right hand. It does not take the warriors long to comprehend that the hordes of Rome are at the gates: the blast of cavalry trumpets, the