Calgaich the Swordsman (43 page)

“Your secret is safe with me. By allowing us to train as legionnaires, to have a fair chance against our opponents, you've perhaps given us a chance to survive. We owe you much. At the same time, if we cover up for your escape our debt is paid to you.”

Quintus nodded. “I believe you, Calgaich. Come, there is still plenty of wine. The night is young. Let's see which of us can drink the other under the table.”

It was almost midday in Rome. The sun was blazing; the sky was cloudless, except toward the east where puffed thunderclouds hung over the mountains. The full light and heat of the sun lay heavy upon the great city. The winding streets were almost deserted save for those near the Flavian Amphitheatre. This was the day Procurator of the Games Aemilius Valens had been promising all Rome for over a month. The day when the condemned legionnaires were to show the Roman mob how to slaughter the crude barbarians by dint of superior valor and skill-at-arms.

All morning long the roar of the crowd had surged up at irregular intervals from the Flavian Amphitheatre. All morning the slaves had been busy dragging the bloody corpses of men and beasts from the arena through the gateway of the dead, the Porta Libitinensis, named after Libitina, goddess of burials, to the
carnaria,
the deep burial pits dug on wastelands not far from the amphitheatre. All morning long the living, both men and beasts, had been fed into the bloody maw of the arena. There were some victories for the men; there were none for the beasts.

A slow trickling of victorious gladiators came from the Porta Sanavivaria, the gateway of the living, to the Meta Sudans, the fountain that threw up misty clouds of spray exquisitely tinted in rainbow hues by the rays of the sun. Here the gladiators washed the dust, blood and sand from their faces and bodies. Latecomers hurried past them toward the amphitheatre, calling out the names of their favorites as they recognized them. There, too, were the girls and women who favored these brutal fighting machines and who were willing to do anything to please them.

During the midday lull in the games, the company of barbarians was marched unarmed from the Ludus Maximus through the Via Labicana to the Flavian Amphitheatre. They wore their traditional clothing, long trousers crossgartered to the knees, and tunics that reached to midthigh. Their attire had been made to the specifications of Calgaich through the orders of Quintus Gaius.

Calgaich looked back at his command as they marched with heads erect and free-swinging strides past the gaping Romans who lined each side of the Via Labicana. There were Lutorius; Guidd One-Eye; Lexus, the giant Gaul; Niall, the redheaded Selgovae; and Chilo, the Greek tutor. Big Loam, of the Brigantes; Girich, the son of Aengus, the Pict; Conaid, die Little Hound, of the Damnonii; Garth, the Silurian harper; and Eogabal, Muirchu and Crus, a trio of Northern Picts from the tribe of the Niduari, were others numbered among the company. The brothers Catrawt and Onlach were from the border Votadini. Ottar, a young Saxon chieftain, was in the ranks. There were others, a miscellaneous group of border and central Britons, some Gauls, a few Saxons and a Jute. They had been trained rigorously and secretly in legion tactics. Nine of them and Calgaich would fight as barbarians when the shield wall of their opponents was broken.
If
it was broken.

Quintus Gaius marched at the head of his guards, preceding the barbarians. If any man had risked his life in the past weeks of secret training, it had been he. If Aemilius Valens had ever found out what was happening, the life of Quintus would have been forfeit. Perhaps not publicly, for Valens still feared the power of the mob and knew that the gladiator master was far more popular with the city rabble than he himself was. But there were other ways—undetectable ways—by which a man could be assassinated.

The amphitheatre towered above the marching barbarians, dwarfing them and the Romans in the surrounding streets. Swarms of food and drink peddlers, male and female prostitutes, and plump little boys with rouged and painted faces, who rendered their services to whoever desired them, all crowded under the shadowed arcades of the amphitheatre. Grinning Romans, waiting in long lines to enter the amphitheatre, jeered at the barbarians.

"You'll get yours this day, barbarians!" a man shouted. "Well, you don't speak a civilized language, so you don't understand me, anyway!"

"Up your pimply ass!" Lutorius snarled back. "You misbegotten degenerate result of a mating between a diseased
spintrian
and a knock-kneed male camel!"

The crowd roared at Lutorius’s retort. "He has to be a Roman with a comeback like that!" a prostitute cried.

Lutorius grinned. "No thanks, sweetheart! I'm a Romano-Briton and proud of it. What's your name and address?"

"Callina! This is my beat!"

"You’ll never live to screw her!" an older prostitute shouted. "This is your last day!"

Lutorius gave her the finger as he passed her.

The column came to a halt at the command of Quintus Gaius. Another marching column coming from the other direction had reached the entry gate just ahead of them. They were led by a centurion who bore his vine staff of office.

Quintus looked back at Calgaich. "Your opponents, barbarian."

There was no mistaking them. The stamp of the legion was on them, from their precise marching discipline to the helmet-strap galls on their jaws. Their centurion looked sideways from under the rim of his helmet. His hard eyes met Calgaich's.

"It’s that prick Montanas," Lutorius breathed. "I'd give my left testicle to get a crack at him in the arena this day."

"He's yours," Calgaich agreed. "But if you don't make it today, Bottle Emptier, I want him for myself."

They marched through a crowded corridor into the vast, cavernous interior of the immense structure. The air was filled with the miasma of the arena, compounded of fresh and stale perspiration, animal dung and blood. The stench of blood dominated the atmosphere.

The barbarians entered a large, low-ceilinged room. The door was closed behind them and guards took up their positions outside. The odor in the room sickened the barbarians.

"How can men live in such places as this,
calo?”
Calgaich asked.

Lutorius shrugged. “Most of them who come to the arena spend little time in here. They come in living and are taken out dead.”

“How long has this madness been going on?” Garth, the Silurian harper, asked.

“For about two hundred and eighty years,” Lutorius replied. “As long as the politicians and the emperors satisfy the blood lust of these city Romans, they won't be thinking of revolt, or wondering what the hell is going on in the Senate and the government. It costs cart-loads of
sesterces
every week. But it's better than having the mob come looking for them with blood in their eyes.”

“Give them bread and circuses and they'll keep quiet,” Calgaich added.

“Half the population of Rome is on the free bread list,” Lutorius added. “So, if they haven't any work to do, what else have they? The Games! It's a great life—as long as it lasts, and to hell with tomorrow!”

Quintus came into the room followed by attendants carrying Roman legion helmets, armor, shields and weapons. “You've got about an hour,” he announced. He looked at Calgaich and Lutorius and beckoned them out into the corridor. They stepped behind a buttress. “No one seems any the wiser yet,” he said in a low voice. “I have your barbarian weapons in another room, under guard. It is rumored that Valens didn’t want you to have them. Then someone told him that in order for you to make a good showing you'd need them.”

“Who said that?”

“I heard it was Morar. The gossip around Rome is that she has Valens under her spell and is leading him around by his prick, but, of course, that could be only gossip.” Lutorius shook his head. “I believe it.”

“But there's another rumor that it was a Roman woman of high rank who suggested it,” Quintus added.

“Antonia?” Calgaich asked.

“I've heard it said she hasn't fully recovered yet from her bout in bed with you.” Quintus clapped Calgaich on a shoulder. “You're a dangerous man, barbarian.”

There was a sudden blasting of trumpets from the arena followed by the roar of the crowd.

Quintus looked up. “The afternoon begins.” There was a faraway look in his eyes. "How many times have I stood here in this very corridor and heard that sound, knowing that within a short time I would enter onto the sands, never knowing whether I'd be hauled out dead by the hooks of the Mercuries, or live to run around the arena holding the palm branch of victory?”

Quintus then led Calgaich, Lexus, Guidd, Girich, Niall, Catrawt, Onlach, Muirohu. Eogabal and Crus to the room where their barbarian weapons and shields had been stored. Quintus closed the door behind himself and pointed to the weapons.

Calgaich's eyes glistened as he saw his sword and spear. He fastened the sword belt about his waist, then withdrew the sword from its scabbard. The light of the oil lamps shone dully on the fine polished metal of the blade. He swung the sword about himself and as he did so, he seemed to be transfigured into someone none of them, with the exception of Guidd, had ever seen before, not even on the day he had won his three victories in the Ludus Maximus.

"Enough, barbarian!” Quintus cried. "Save that for the arena!”

Calgaich seemed to return slowly to the physical world. He tapped die sword against the stone wall. He placed his ear to the metal.

"‘Does it speak to you, Calgaich?” Guidd asked in a hushed voice.

Calgaich nodded. He suddenly seemed to be aware of the others crowded into that stifling room.

Calgaich's party then armed themselves with long-bladed swords and daggers. They slid their left arms through the loops of the wooden lime-whitened shields and took long spears from the rack. After weeks of training with the traditional weapons of the arena, a slow and subtle change came over them as they felt their familiar weapons. Calgaich led his party into the corridor. Lutorius marched up behind Calgaich’s group. He and each of his men had been equipped with the
scutum
, the big curved shield of the legionnaires. It was constructed of light, tough wood that was covered with leather and reinforced with iron plates. They wore the rounded iron helmet and the
ocrea,
or greave of bronze, on their right leg only, which was advanced while fighting. They carried the famed sword of the legions, die pointed
gladius Hispanicus,
which was about two feet long and several inches wide. It could be used for both cutting and thrusting, but the legionnaires preferred the thrust because it caused fearful wounds. Their sheathed swords hung at their right sides from shoulder belts. A dagger hung at each of their left sides. The legion spear, the
pilum,
was no less famous than the sword. Its slender metal shaft was longer than the wooden shaft to which it was attached. The metal shaft was forged of soft iron, and hardened only at the point, so that once it was hurled in the onset, or charge, the barb would stick in an opponent’s flesh or shield, while the soft metal shaft would bend so that it was almost impossible to get it out during the press of combat. Thus the
pilum
would form an encumbrance to an opponent while the legionnaire charged in for close-quarter fighting, which was preferred by the Roman legions.

“Get ready, barbarians!” an attendant shouted down the corridor.

Calgaich looked back along the ranks of his command. He saw no fear on the faces or in the eyes of his barbarians. They were a mixed lot, a mongrel grouping, but they were unified for one purpose—
survival
.

Quintus Gaius came along the crowded corridor. “You’re carrying the honor of the Ludus Maximus into the arena this day, barbarians.”

Lutorius spat to one side. “Shit,” he said succinctly.

Calgaich raised his spear. “The gods help us all, sword brothers. This day we fight together, despite our origins. We are only ‘barbarians’ to that howling mob out there. It’s victory or death for us. Are you ready?”

“We are, Calgaich!” they roared as one.

Calgaich turned to Quintus Gaius. He nodded.

Quintus Gaius then led the way to the gateway that opened onto the sands of the are
na.

The shrill sound of trumpets carried into the dimly lit corridor. The unit led by Montanas stood at attention just behind the large double gate which opened into the arena. Quintus Gaius held up his arm to halt the unit of barbarians behind the ex-legionnaires.

Montanas stepped to one side of his command and looked back at the first ten barbarians. He noted that the unit led by Calgaich was armed as he had been told they would be. He smiled slightly, ever so slightly.

Out in the arena a brazen gong was struck slowly three times. Both doors of the entry gate then opened to let in a flood of sunlight.

Quintus Gaius spoke to Calgaich out of the side of his mouth. “Montanas suspects nothing.”

Decrius Montanas shouted out his command to march, then stepped out into the glare, which streamed down from the oval opening in the center of the huge awning that covered the amphitheatre. His men tramped steadily after him.

Quintus Gaius turned to Calgaich. “It’s all yours, barbarian. May the gods be with you this day.” He smiled and placed his right hand on Calgaich’s right shoulder while he looked deep into Calgaich’s eyes. “This is goodbye, Calgaich. I think you know what I mean.”

Calgaich raised his shield arm. He gripped the right wrist of Quintus Gaius with his left hand. “May the gods be with you, too, this day, Quintus Gaius.”

The gladiator master stepped back. He cupped his hands about his mouth. “To
the sands!”
he shouted. ^

Calgaich looked back at his barbarians. “Forward!” His strong voice echoed hollowly within the long corridor and

the sound of it was instantly drowned out by the solid tramping of nailed sandals on the flagstones of the corridor.

Calgaich and his command marched out on the saffron-colored sands. The roar of the crowd had swelled as the ex-legionnaires had marched into the arena. Few of those many thousands in the amphitheatre had ever seen a legion unit marching. No legion command was ever stationed in Rome or in the home country itself. It was too dangerous to have such highly trained professionals near the seat of government, particularly if they had a popular and ambitious commander. A number of emperors in the long history of Rome had already been established on the throne by the strength and power of their legions.