Colosseum

Prologue

Torn Roots

The Fire of the Gods

From
mare nostrum
to the Eternal City

Wood, Sweat and Leather

The Black Death

The Blood Remains on the Blade

Rich Bastards

Coming and Going

Burning Hate

Let the Games Begin

Naumachia

Only One Will Remain

Author's Notes

Acknowledgments

All great buildings pale before Caesar's Amphitheatre, a single work will stand for the fame of all.

M
ARTIAL,
Liber de spectaculis
, I

The gods are on the side of the stronger.

T
ACITUS,
Historiae
, IV,
17

Rome,
AD
80, August

THE MAN HAS sadness in his eyes, on his tongue the taste of destiny.

As bitter as a foul day.

Deep down in those blue eyes of his, not a trace remains of the boy he used to be. The boy left a long time ago, devoured by flames and fear.

He kneels on the floor of his cell. He tests the sand with his hand, letting it run through his fingers.

Blood and sand, time passing.

And a blade awaiting him at the end of the race.

That is a gladiator's whole existence. A life exalted by many, but one nobody would dream of living.

He secures the shin guard to his left leg, a lucky charm of leather and cloth stuffed with matted wool.

Sandals strapped on tight, belt just as it should be.

On your feet, for Hercules.

On your feet; the hungry crowd is baying for death.

In the man's head an entire life, a few years that seem centuries: his cold, windswept homeland, the ivory cliffs he will never see again. The freezing sea, so far away a man could lose his mind.

The Amphitheater erupts. These are the last hours of the first day of the inaugural games. Another ninety-nine will follow, but none will compare to today. He can hear the echoes from the arena and from the surging terraces of bodies and sweat even down here, in the darkness of a cage as hot as the antechamber of Hades.

The dream of Vespasian and Titus, the hollow mountain, the behemoth of marble and bare stone.

Never before had anyone dared to imagine such grandeur.

There has always been fighting in Rome, the blood of the righteous spilled to mark the deaths of the powerful. The history of the games is as old as that of the She-wolf: a tribute to honor those who leave and will never return.

Once, gladiators had been mere servants, pawns to be sacrificed for the greater glory of their illustrious masters. Four hundred years of wounds and want, the atrocious spectacle of life at the end of life.

The elders tell that the first fights were timid or ferocious. No rules.

Innocent slaves fought one another in the streets as though there were no tomorrow, to commemorate the departure of men immortalized by glory or riches, by hubris or simple superstition. Nobody cared about the miserable ends met by individuals because they served to exalt the memory of others. Soon though, sacrifices to honor the corpses of funeral pyres were no longer enough for people. And nor were the tears of the women in black veils. They longed for bloody spectacle because courage, the authentic proof of a magnificent and fleeting afterlife, can only be found on the sand. It glistens on the oiled muscles of the warriors, slips slowly into their flesh along with their opponents' swords.

And so the crowd began to demand heroes in their own image and likeness: gods to pray to in shouts and spit, without haruspices or vestal virgins getting in the way. And the slaves—armed with leather, wood, and rusted iron—were transformed into heroes.

Every wretch from the humble
insulae
began to daydream and to bet, every woman with children under her feet and knuckles calloused from the washbasin started to repeat, like a chant between one breastfeeding and the next, those names that smacked of legend:
Ferox, Leon, Tigris, Aureolus
…

The most daring of these fools began writing the names everywhere: stone inscribed stone, the walls of the Empire became the bearers of history, sellers of cut-price dreams.

That was how it started.

And it was not long before politicians, from senators up to the Emperor himself, noticed the sensational fortune sprouting up from among the sunbaked cobblestones.

What better than a glorious show of death to distract the masses from their own destiny?

Panem et circenses
: a disillusioned orator, a
cliens
with a stomach swollen with bile, will coin the term “bread and entertainment” just a few years from now.

A loaf of bread and just the right dose of violence in the arena.

While those at the top, as always, deal with the fate of the world.

A deep shudder rattles the cell, and the roar breaks against him like a wave.

Thousands of throats reddened with dust and frenzy chant his name: “
Ve-rus! Ve-rus! Ve-rus!
”

He knows nothing of the historical path that has led him here. He knows nothing of those first gladiator battles in honor of the illustrious deceased, or the makeshift arenas.

What he knows is that in a few moments someone will lift the grate and order him to carry out what he came into this world to do.

What he knows is that today he will have to kill his best friend.

Or, if he is lucky, it will be he that is struck down, quenching the treacherous sand with his own blood. A bitch of a destiny for the man everyone calls Verus.

Here in the arena, either you win or you lose.

Tertium non datur.
There is no third way.

The man secures the
manica
armguard to his right arm: tarnished bronze and high hopes.

He tests the curved shield, a good ten pounds of metal.

The weight of a baby a few months after it is born. The baby he will never hold in his arms.

He pulls on his helmet and the roar swells, the heart of Rome thrashes and screams, the crowd is not sated yet. All day long they have been bellowing from the bleachers. There have been battles between beasts, executions at lunch time, dazzling entertainments.

But for them it is not enough.

It is never enough.

Only the blood of the righteous can appease the monster.

As the man takes up his
gladius,
the lanistaappears to tell him the wait is over.

“Your turn, Verus.”

The cell door swings open. The sun is low and the shouting endless.

In the empty eyes of the man dressed for slaughter, not a trace remains of the boy he was.

Of his violated past, of the innocence torn away from him too soon.

A sea of memories assails him, but there is no time.

Three years in a single second. His memory is like a slit artery, everything is bleeding out of him fast.

There is no time.

There never has been.

No hope and no mercy, now.

All or nothing, Verus.

All or nothing.

As it frequently happens, that men, by endeavoring to shun their fate, run directly upon it.

L
IVY
,
Ab urbe condita
,
VIII
5
,
24

Britain,
AD
77, three years earlier

THE VILLAGE IS not much, but it is his whole world.

The boy has never known anything else. He barely had time to draw breath before his mother had gone, dying in childbirth. So he grew up alone with his father, while there was the war, may the gods curse it. For all the boy knows, there has always been the war.

For more than a century, Rome has longed for his land of grass and wind, a prize just beyond its reach. The Island across the sea, the heathlands that keep senators and generals awake at night. The shining dream of a new province, yet another notch on the She-wolf's sword.

Britannia
, a name that leaves ice in the blood and fire in the eyes.

The legions of the Eagle landed before the boy was born. His people were not ready. Who could be? The procession of plumes and metal, horses and machines of death had broken the spell, the wind had sown fear like some dark sickness.

The Island's blood is tar, so much has been spilt.

The boy knows that war is a living thing, a wild beast stalking through the woods, ready to tear you to shreds without notice.

The boy has a name that carries weight: Calgacos, “He with the sword.”

The elders chose that name to protect him, since nobody would ever bother fighting to defend him. Calgacos is an orphan, and of course orphans do not have an easy life. His father had headed north one July morning, and had never returned. Perhaps he went to sea, or more likely his days were ended by a Roman spear.

But the boy must have had a lucky star up there somewhere, because eventually Calgacos made it to adulthood. Raised on goat's milk and tears in a filthy hut and sent to play in the mud, he reached his seventeenth birthday at last moonrise. Since the boy was twelve, an old madman called Cormac has been teaching him a trade, transforming into prophecy the name given to him as a wager.

Thus, “He with the sword” became the obedient servant of iron, flame, and hammer.

Calgacos is now a blacksmith, just like his strange master who, since taking him into the workshop, has polished his student with kicks in the ass and good advice. But Calgacos does not have a bad lot in life. On the contrary, he is proud of the man he is turning into, thanks to his master. The sun has just risen and the air is cold as unyielding lake water. The boy sits upright on the tired straw bed, looking at Cormac's bare feet. Deeply asleep, the master resembles more a bear than a man, so hairy he can do nothing to hide it: on his back, his legs, his knees, not to mention his face. It is everywhere but the very place it should be—the old man is as bald as a clearing after a forest fire. His pate looks just like a newborn's backside, bright red, with a crack running along the scalp: an obliging keepsake from Rome.

Twenty years back, the blacksmith had not yet lost his mind; nor had he shut himself away in his impenetrable world of fire and molten metal, locking out the rest of the world.

Twenty years ago Cormac was a warrior, like nearly everyone else in these parts. Not for nothing the blood of the Ordovices, “those who fight with the hammer,” ran in the villagers' veins. A warlike race from cradle to grave, these sons-of-bitches were not to be messed with.

The Eagle learnt that lesson fast. Back when the first legionaries landed there had been no fear, only swagger in the hearts and beneath the
braccae
of every adult male in circulation. The islanders felt unbeatable because they served under a true leader: Caradoc the Invincible. But the history of Rome's enemies is littered with unbeatable warriors who have ended up with their head on a pike, their wife served up to the common soldiery, and their riches going to pay for the slaughter of yet more invincibles.

And good old Caradoc was no exception.

On the banks of the Severn, the troops of Publius Ostorius Scapula, son of the first commander of the Praetorian Guard and of the Queen of Egypt's brothels, demolished His Majesty Caradoc the Invincible's defences, cutting most of his soldiers to shreds.

Cormac the Fair—that was how they called him in those days—was among the lucky ones. He survived, but only just: the blade that would have split his head in two stopped before it had completed its work, leaving him a permanent reminder of Rome's fury. The blacksmith is not proud of his scar. That is why in fifteen years nobody but Calgacos has ever seen the man's head uncovered.