Free GIRL GLADIATOR by Graeme Farmer Page A

had come to kill her. She gazed down at Sharn, to fix his face in her soul.
    There was a thump between her shoulder blades as if someone had poked her hard with a stick. Her knees turned to liquid and she felt like a necklace when the thread breaks and all the beads scatter. And then she toppled into nothingness.

CHAPTER 22
ME
    F alling, falling, falling … through the endless mist into the cold darkness. Cold was the thing she remembered most in her life. Right from her first moments – when her unwed mother, still just a child herself, left her in the ice-stiff heather outside Cirig wrapped in rags. It began to snow – snowflakes tumbling out of the cold face of the moon onto her cold face. The breath started to freeze in her lungs. Just new born, she had come from nowhere and now she would return there. She knew no words, she knew no prayers, she knew nothing … except one thing – she wanted to stay here in this breathing world.
    All at once huge grey shapes appeared from the fog. Two wolves circled once or twice and lay down next to her. Their coarse grey hair pricked against her skin but she didn’t mind because they were so warm. They licked her all over, their rasping tongues darting out from between their deadly teeth, driving away death. They kept her alive till the morning when she was found by the people of the village, then they melted into the mist.
    She was sure that she would never be as cold as that again … but she was wrong. Nobody in the household that raised her showed her much love. And a life without love is worse than snow and ice. As she grew up there was only one person in Cirig who took an interest in her and that was Bredan. He invited her to join the warrior-circle and told her why. “You have the gift of cold-bloodedness. I have never come across anyone who feels no fear … it is as if you have no feelings when you have a weapon in your hand.” But he was wrong. It was not just in a fight that she had no feelings. She had no feelings ever. She had no need for them in the life she was leading, surrounded by stony people. Feelings were like shoes that were too small. That is until she met Sharn and something blossomed inside her.
    But now here she was falling into a bottomless pit, leaving behind the only person she had ever loved. Her life had been a chilly one with one short chapter of cosiness. Such a pity there were to be no more chapters of warmth – in fact no more chapters at all. And then her mind stopped, as night closed its black arms around her.

CHAPTER 23
ALIVE BUT ALONE
    I t was Cumbria’s concerned face Sharn recognised first, as she gave him cool drinks or hot broth. And there was another face, which Sharn did not recognise, a kindly face, swarthy with a curved beak of a nose. He must have been a healer because Sharn associated his visits with pain, the pain of changing the dressing on his shoulder or the binding on his leg.
    As Sharn’s consciousness sharpened, he realised he must be in the house of Crassus in the officers’ compound. There was the sound of a military bugle, the tramp of sandaled feet and the faint bark of orders from the parade ground.
    “You’re mending very well, young man,” Sharn heard a voice say.
    He opened his eyes to see the swarthy man tearing up strips of linen to make bandages. When Sharn tried to sit up, the man leant forward eagerly.
    “Fritha. Where is Fritha?” Sharn croaked.
    “The girl who killed the soldiers?”
    Sharn nodded.
    “The legionnaires fed her to the wolves. They said she was a witch.”
    Sharn closed his eyes, as the shiver of loss ran through him.
    “I am Seth, a military physician.” Seth handed him a glass of water. “Are you strong enough to hold this by yourself?”
    Sharn took the glass but needed both hands to raise it to his lips. He glanced around the room, his eyes coming to rest on the effigy of the fish. “Are you a Christian too?” Sharn asked, for something to say.
    “I am a man of science,”