Calgaich the Swordsman (46 page)

Every Roman in the stands was on his or her feet. The handful of survivors from the recent combat stood back from the two duelists, watching with keen and professional interest each nuance of swordplay, for here were two masters of the art in its varying forms—the professional Roman legionnaire and the wild barbarian from the farthest northern reaches of the Roman Empire.

Ulpius closed in, always pressing the attack against his tiring opponent. Chips flew from Calgaich's shield. His left arm was numbing from the strain of holding up the shield and the intense battering it was taking from the incessant sword blows. He could feel the blood trickling down his back and from the slit wound on his right thigh.

A powerful blow split Calgaich's shield from upper rim to boss. Ulpius grunted in satisfaction. He drove in hard, smashing his shield boss against that of Calgaich's parrying sword blade like a smith at his anvil.

Suddenly Calgaich shifted. He darted to one side, risking a killing slash of the
gladius,
and brought down an overhand sword stroke on top of the Roman's helmet His sword rebounded from the helmet and struck Ulpius's left shoulder a glancing blow. Immediately, blood soaked through the Roman's white woolen tunic.

An animallike roaring went up from the audience as they saw the blood. Lady Antonia stood up and approached the iron fencing in front of the podium. She clasped the gilded fence and peered between the bars in absorbed fascination as her beloved only son fought against her most recent lover.

The two opponents circled. Their breathing was harsh and erratic. Their sandaled feet were reddened from scuffling through the bloody sands. Sweat streamed from their flushed faces. Again and again the Roman pressed his steady, disciplined attack, and again and again Calgaich's magnificent long sword seemed to be in just the right place to take the clashing blow of the short, thick-bladed
gladius.

The crowd quieted. They were watching two past masters of their trade. But surely no barbarian could long withstand the Roman's skilled and technical assault.

Calgaich's shield was split in two. He cast the pieces to one side. It had become too tiring to bear the weight of it.

Ulpius Claudius stepped back. His chest rose and fell erratically. His left shoulder was red with blood. Sweat dripped from his handsome face.

“Do you want another shield, barbarian?" Ulpius asked.

Calgaich shook his head.

Ulpius searched Calgaich's scarred face for a sign of weakness. Rather than kill this proud barbarian on his feet, like a man and a warrior, Ulpius would have preferred to see him {all to the sands, weak from his wounds and exhaustion, and extend a clenched fist with one finger raised for mercy. He saw no signs of weakness on Calgaich's face.

Calgaich drew his long-bladed Celtic dagger and held it in his left hand.

They circled. Ulpius plunged into the attack. He charged and thrust his shield forward. He slashed out with a sweeping sword stroke. Calgaich parried the stroke with his dagger and brought his sword down over the top of the tribune’s lowered shield in a smashing blow that rang on Ulpius’s helmet and drew a shower of sparks from it. Ulpius staggered. Calgaich leaped sideways. He thrust his sword under his opponent’s and raised it high, while thrusting hard with his dagger behind the inner side of the Roman’s shield. They broke apart from each other. Ulpius staggered backward. There was a strange look on his flushed face.

Blood dripped from Calgaich’s dagger. Calgaich looked into the eyes of the tribune, seeking the slightest hint of the glazing that shows there from a mortal wound.

“Not yet, barbarian,” Ulpius grunted thickly.

They were both close to exhaustion. The heat within the arena was now more intense than it had been before the sudden thunder shower that had momentarily cooled the city and the amphitheatre. The air was thick with humidity, and breathing was difficult for both combatants.

The huge bowl was inordinately quiet. Perhaps it was because for the first time these jaded Romans were actually seeing the type of barbarian warrior who had been hammering at their frontiers for hundreds of years.

Ulpius attacked. This time there seemed to be more desperation than cool skill in his attack. No matter where and how he attacked, however, there was always that pair of flashing blades between him and the set, scarred face of the barbarian. A burning hatred crept through the tribune. This was no ordinary man he was facing. Then, mingled with the hatred, there came a hint of fear, which grew by the moment and almost turned into green panic.

Desperate, Ulpius threw all caution aside. He charged. He thrust out his shield and flailed wildly with his sword. Every stroke of his sword was met by a skilled dagger parry or a sword counterstroke. He fell back. His clothing was soaked with sweat and blood. His legs trembled with fatigue. His chest rose and fell spasmodically. Sweat burned his reddened eyes.

Calgaich began to prowl around the exhausted Roman like a hunting cat. Calgaich was limping now. His left arm was hanging by his side. Ulpius Claudius turned slowly so as to keep facing Calgaich. A chilling fear of this master swordsman had taken possession of him.

“Verbera! Verbera! Verbera!
Lay on! Lay on! Lay on!
Iugula! Iugula! Iugula!
Slay him! Slay him! Slay him!
Occide! Occide! Occide!
Kill! Kill! Kill!” the mob mouthed in roaring unison as they stamped their feet in time to their bloodthirsty chanting.

Calgaich looked beyond the exhausted tribune up toward the sea of red and sweating faces rising tier upon tier to the uppermost rim of the amphitheatre. A slow realization came to him. The fickle mob wanted
him
to kill Ulpius. They were rooting for him, Calgaich, the barbarian, and
not
for the Roman tribune Ulpius Claudius!

Calgaich looked at Ulpius. The Roman had narrowed his eyes in puzzlement. He took his eyes from watching Calgaich and looked about the vast bowl filled with shouting, gesticulating humanity.
Then he knew
. . .

Ulpius charged so swiftly he caught Calgaich unawares. His sword got in under Calgaich's sword. He slammed his shield upward to hold the sword while he thrust hard with his sword for Calgaich’s vitals. Calgaich's dagger deflected the thrust. The sword slid under the flesh over Calgaich’s left ribs and then protruded from the rear left side just above the pelvis. Calgaich grunted in savage, sickening pain.

Calgaich wrenched himself sideways. The sword would not tear free from the wound. Ulpius hung onto his sword and was dragged sideways along with Calgaich. The Roman tried desperately to withdraw his sword, knowing full well that if he let go of it he would die instantly. Either way it was a deadly mistake.

Calgaich's dagger came up unseen and penetrated under Ulpius's rib cage to strike into his heart. For a fraction of a second the tribune straightened up. He looked into Calgaich's eyes, only a hand's span from his own eyes. His mouth squared. It poured forth a gushing of thick blood. Ulpius fell backward, releasing the grip on his sword. His helmet fell off. His arms were outflung as he fell onto the bloody sand. He looked up at the sky with staring eyes that did not see.

The Lady Antonia’s frenzied scream rose even above the roaring voices of the crowd. She turned and stared upward at the sea of faces with an uncomprehending look on her face and complete and permanent madness in her eyes.

Calgaich withdrew the
gladius
from his side and threw it toward the podium. He raised his sword for a two-handed stroke and brought it down, flashing redly in the bright sunlight, to sever Ulpius Claudius’s head from his body.

Calgaich picked up the head by its short-cropped hair. He raised it and turned about so that the vast mob could see it.
“Abu! Abu! Abu!
To victory! To victory! To victory!” he shouted hoarsely. He fell forward over the body of the tribune and lay still.

Calgaich lay in one of the cod, marble-lined chambers of the healing shrine of Aesculapius, located on an island in the Tiber. For at least a week the days and nights had seemed to run together, so that he could hardly distinguish one from the other. He had only the vaguest memories of being taken on a litter from the arena with the palm branch of victory lying across his breast while the roar of the vast audience had dinned in his ears. The uproar had been for him, Calgaich, a barbarian and a prisoner of war, for having defeated a patrician Roman in front of his own people. He vaguely remembered Guidd and Lutorius limping alongside the litter as it was taken through the Porta Sanavivaria. There had been another man waiting for him outside of the gate—Rufus Arrius Niger.

Calgaich had dim memories of shaven-headed priests bending over him. There had been that dull and persistent throbbing in his left side. His left shoulder had been stiff and sore. There had been a burning sensation across his right thigh. That had been days past. Now the pain was gone, but there was a great lassitude within him, so that he could hardly move his limbs or raise his head. He had been drugged, he was sure, by the priests of the shrine.

Several times he opened his eyes to see the grinning faces of Lutorius and Guidd looking down at him. One night very late, he saw a cloaked figure standing in the shadows of his chamber. Superstitious fear coursed through him. He thought it was someone from the afterlife who had come to guide him there. Only when the man stepped into the dim rays of moonlight from a small, high window did Calgaich recognize his grandfather.

The days were long and uneventful except for the visitations of the healing priests and the frequent baths that were an important part of the treatment. He began to look forward each evening to the person who attended him after his bath. She was a
balneatrix,
or bath attendant, a statuesque, ebony-haired Cyprian with lustrous eyes like those of a doe. Each evening she would have him placed on a table of cypress wood covered with white Egyptian cloth of byssus. She would rub him down and massage his naked body with her fine, supple hands, using unguents and perfumed olive oil. She never spoke or smiled.

After his bath and massage he would be carried by attendants to his room where he would most often fall into a dreamless sleep, into a sort of never-never land through which, at times, voices would sound close at hand, but seem to come from disembodied spirits.

There came a day when he felt that he was recovering. The intermittent fevers had left him some days past, but the resultant weakness, coupled with the healing drugs which he was given, seemed to have drained much of his usual great vitality from him. Temple attendants carried him on a litter to the baths that evening and lowered him into the
tepidarium,
or warm water bath. He was left alone, because there seemed to be no other patients in residence in that part of the temple.

The tepidarium
was lighted dully with a few flickering oil lamps whose flames were reflected in wavering lines on the large pool. Calgaich swam slowly back and forth. He was looking forward with pleasure to his nightly massage and rubdown by the beautiful Cyprian. There were other idle and sensuous thoughts in his head, but something about the beautiful silent creature held "him from propositioning her.

She came into the room on noiseless bare feet. She spread the cloth of byssus on the table and placed her pots of unguents and jars of oil on the cloth. She looked expectantly at Calgaich, and then came to the side of the pool to help him out. As she bent down to him he looked over one of her shoulders to see a shaven-headed priest swiftly enter through a side door. The priest brushed past the table in his great haste and one of the pots of unguents fell clattering to the marble floor.

The Cyprian turned quickly at the sound. Her eyes widened. A curious gurgling sound came from her throat. The priest whipped out a
sica,
the short, curved and deadly Roman knife, and ran toward Calgaich. The woman threw herself at the priest. She staggered to one side as his knife rose and fell with vicious force. Blood spread widely on the breast of her white gown, but she threw herself at the priest again. Again the knife rose and fell. Then it was thrust in under her ribs. She fell sideways into the pool, dragging the priest with her.

When the priest surfaced, he found himself staring into the orbs of death—the cold gray eyes of Calgaich. One of his hands gripped the priest's hand that held the knife, while the other closed on the man's throat, crushing his larynx. Quickly he sank to the bottom.

Calgaich swam to the dying Cyprian and pulled her to the side of the pool. He crawled from the pool, and with the last of his strength, pulled her from the water. Later, several true priests came running into the
tepidarium.
They found Calgaich seated cm the floor cradling the dead woman in his arms. His eyes were brimming with tears.

The priests of Aesculapius were badly frightened. The bright morning light shone through the entrance of the shrine and reflected from the polished
cuirass
and plumed helmet of the prefect of the watch. They were frightened enough of the officer; after all, they were but meek and peaceful men, who had dedicated their lives to healing the sick. It was the other man who had come with the prefect who had put the fear of dire punishment into them.

“Who was that assassin?" Rufus Arrius Niger demanded harshly. “How did he get unseen into the temple? Surely some of you must have known he was not one of you! Or was one of you bribed to admit him into the temple? Perhaps a door was left unlocked on purpose? Speak up, any of you!"

Salvius, the head priest, spread out his small white hands. “Surely, Senator, you don't believe we would have allowed the assassin to enter the temple? We are men of healing. We have nothing to do with the vice and corruption of the world beyond our island. We allow no armed men within our temple at any time.” He looked toward the sword that hung at the side of the prefect. Rufus nodded to the prefect. “Wait outside, Veturius.” Rufus then followed the head priest to Calgaich's room. Calgaich was sitting up in bed. The memory of the beautiful and silent Cyprian weighed heavily upon him. She had died to save his life and yet he had not even known her name.