The Killing Sands Read online

places. Linen had been strung hastily around his leg, an inept attempt to stem the flow. Dark spots lay in his wake, weaving a trail over the sandy ground.

  The gate grew in height and the crowd rose in voice as I neared the patches of light streaming through the bars and striking down on the dirt. I felt like I could just reach out and wave a palm through the scatterings of dust rising and falling through the beams of light. But every step had its own lifetime; its own children and grandchildren, every movement placing a strain that turned my sinews to wood. Six more figures stood in front of the entrance, dwarfed by its size, features darkened against the sun’s brilliance. The outline of Roman legionary attire still clear in the darkness. One soldier raised a hand as I finally neared the falling light.

  ‘Not yet, Thracian.’

  I stopped short and peered behind the guards. Carcerus was a favourite here in Rome, having already fought across many arenas in the capital. The narrow view offered by the gate did not reveal much beyond the gate on the far side, and the glimmering white of Roman togas that packed the tiers around it, but I knew my opponent was already there. A well-liked gladiator would always be given the first, grander entrance. He would likely be playing to the adoring masses, leaving me in the shade a while longer. This was his first fight in this mammoth structure, still only a few days having passed since the opening of the inaugural games. I supposed I should feel pride for having a role to play so early in the beginning of a wonder that would surely stand straight and unflappable against the war of time.

  Movements on the sands caught my attention, near the other side of the arena. The heat of the afternoon sun struck up a relentless haze across the edges, but I made out four figures in dark cloaks loping towards a body. A trident lay a few paces from the fallen Retiarius, the bloodless pronged tips of the weapon making known the story, the failure, of its past wielder. The man was forgotten, a faded blot on the dirt to all except the slaves tasked to dispose of him. The four men quickly rolled the limp gladiator onto a stretcher, and hefted him up. They appeared to be dressed in the likeness of the Di Inferi, the gods below. And it was to the underworld that they were taking the dead man, to the smaller exit lying at the centre of the opposite end, the Gate of Death that stood open in gaping darkness. In moments they were gone and the gate rolled shut, silent against the thunder, patiently awaiting its next victim.

  I waited on the edge of the shadows, willing myself to be still. The guard to the far left sought me out with curious eyes, while the others stared blankly ahead into the gloomy depths. I slowly wrapped my fingers around the sword hilt and clutched it tightly, listening for signs among the clamour beyond the gate. There was a voice sounding above the others, but barely so, faint shouts of defiance amongst the bristling storm. Most likely the orator, spewing out superfluous tributes to the Emperor in an effort to make sure the crowd knew to whom to send their gratitude. I had not grown to a place where the shady figure of royalty could mean anything to me. Not as a farmer, on the edge of the sloping hills far away in the south, free in its remoteness from the reach of the capital. Not as a gladiator, the faceless Thracian. But now he might have my life to play with, at the turn of a godly thumb. Now he might matter. An Emperor, a farmer, and a gladiator share the same grasp of the present moment; so I never held a man above myself and thought myself as anyone’s equal throughout the precipice of circumstance. Yet reality was undeniable; Titus was the figure of Nemesis, and I was the head being ground beneath his heel.

  Each roar of approval from beyond the gate struck a jarring chord to churn through my gut. This was a mismatch. One victory against nineteen. A middle-aged man from Tarentum who hadn’t held a blade with an edge sharper than a sickle for much beyond the six months of training, sent to challenge a champion who had played the game for most of his mature life; a hero of the sands, a legend that walked still in his prime. To carry the victorious blade would bring me to become a man unmatched by all that I had been before, in all the years I had sweated in the fields that stretched out from the villa. A legionary could go a year, daring to survive the rainy nights in the muddied forests of Germania, and his purse would still not compete with the winnings of one fight in the Colosseum. The death of a gladiator was the greater spectacle, and wandering the crooked line of fatal chance brought its own reward. But success felt unimaginable in its distance, the promise of another day in this life well removed from the flailing arms of a mired reality.

  I had proved my worth to the trainer, the doctore. I had steadily risen to become the best of the recruits in the Ludus Magnus. I might have even begun to enjoy the feel of battle, controlling the unpredictable with measured and darting thrusts. But where did that leave me? This was my reward, a funeral with an audience. To be graced with a role in a show of the might of the city, the legionary against the savage from the east. A failed farmer against one of Rome’s finest, whose likeness was undoubtedly found on lamps, paintings, mosaics; in houses throughout the city. The numbers were rarely overturned, and only when the skill and poise of the veterans were met with youthful vigour with the rawness of its edge, newly blooded men who didn’t know when to stop dreaming. I had seen enough of life to fear its reach, to fix my eyes on the ground in search for the bottomless chasms that nature may set down along my path. Ten summers ago, I might have caught sight of a spark flitting in and out of my view. A chance, a ladder that could take me to heights I had never thought to consider. But a decade back, I had no need for this trade.

  My hands were trembling from the force of their grip around the weapons that lay quivering at my sides. The guard on the left stole glanced my way, as if he had a bet placed and wanted to know its worth. Sweat fought to break over my brows and sting my eyes. The helmet felt heavier, tighter, by the second. My heart frantically tried to escape its cage. A man, a slave to his own emotions, dragged by the wanderings of his body, was a man fit to lose. I had to free myself of it all.

  Flickers of the past lunged at me through the cascading rays, and I embraced them from the murky shade. Etchings of a life I lost all those months ago. The time felt closer to the count of years than six months, since I had last held them, my family, in my gaze. Every day they seemed to grow fainter, the colours retreating to a paler hue. In some quiet moments that flirted with tranquillity, curled under thin blankets after a sore day beneath the unbending stare of the sun, the paintings of my past would return with a glorious happy vengeance, like a forest breaking into spring. In those brief flashes of time, I found my peace. In peace I found my strength.

  The gate rattled and the reverberations around me found yet a higher pitch, like broken rocks crashing down the side of a mountain, taking more and more along with it in its tumbling pursuit, until the mountain itself shakes from the discord. A cacophony of trumpets blared their way through the tumult. The Bear must be ready, his gladius coiled for action. Now all that remained for the battle, was his opponent.

  Two guards now moved to the cranks positioned on the either side of the wall, and began furiously turning the levers. The chains rustled and the looming gate creaked its submission and slowly ascended, throwing the sun’s rays into fiery scatterings of confusion. Amongst it all, I held my thoughts close. The teasing giggles of Lucretia and Priscilla as they pranced around the atrium of the villa, splashing their way into the rain pool that lay at the centre of the room, shimmering under pure sunlight, golden ripples rushing to find the edges. Aurelia, my wife, fighting to keep her mouth from twitching as she scolded her impish daughters. The terraces of plum trees and vines that spread out, line after line, to the furthest reaches of the farm, bending to the weight of ripe, glistening fruit. The lazy roll of the hills as they rose from the farm, the cleared ground soon disappearing beneath a muddle of beech and oak trees. The tiny glade that I had found in one of these forests, half-way up a hill, touched only by the riotous sprawl of wildflowers, their mazy colours shining under dappled sunlight, a small stream pattering its way down the gentle slope. The memories murmu
red to me of a life that was worth living. What happened after, I chose not to remember.

  I didn’t need the guard’s cold prodding hilt in the small of my back to let me know the time had come, to step out into the burning light. The gate had vanished into the arched ceiling, leaving my route bare of any obstacles, anything that could delay my destiny as it crashed and tumbled along a sheer descent, dragging me along with it. And I had to embrace the thread that the Fates had spun out for me, whether it meant being seized by the tempest I now found myself in or breaking out into the calm waters that lay beyond the rocky cape. I barely sensed the beat of my heart now, the thrashings forgotten beneath a soft but sure rhythm. The control was returning to me, which had fled my grasp again and again in the murky reaches of the labyrinth. Now I could act.

  Finally I led myself out of the shadows, to face the dazzling glare of the sun that now made itself known to me, still not far gone from the climax of its journey. My eyes refused to leave the memory of the comforting gloom that had accompanied them for the past few