Free Colosseum by Simone Sarasso

leftovers from his master’s plate with a scrap of stolen bread. The red mullet is delicious: even the food tastes of sun in this magical Gulf.
    The officer rises to his feet and rinses his fingers in a bowl of water and vinegar. Then he slips on his tunic and sandals, without even considering shaving: Neptune does not care about things like that, he is quite happy with a sincere heart, and a few queens tied to sea cliffs now and then.
    â€œAll in good time, boy. We can talk about it along the way. It’s a long walk to Rome.”
    Marcius steps outside and breathes in the beach air, as a modest boat steered by an old man with one eye draws up to the small wharf next to the officer’s quarters. The man signals to get on board and Marcius complies, dragging the excitable Ordovician with him: “Walk? I’d hoped we’d go to Rome by sea!”
    â€œ
I hoped, I hoped…
” Marcius fishes some leaves out of the small sack hung round his neck, stuffs them into his mouth and begins to chew like a donkey. “Hope, they say, is a good breakfast…you know the rest, don’t you?”
    Verus remains silent for the rest of the journey.
    The Flagship
Opis
looms closer by the minute.
    At the first retch Verus feels his throat burning like never before, with the second he really pukes his guts out. Marcius nudges the one-eyed old man with his elbow. His name is Cresus, and he enjoys a certain respect on board ship.
    â€œThey told me you were a wizard with puke, isn’t that right, boy?”
    Verus throws up his breakfast as if it were water, along with yesterday’s lunch—and the dinner he consumed two years earlier at the ceremony of the sacred Drynemeton!
    The young man has underestimated the sea—a mistake he will never make again, of this he is damned sure. He is in no condition to do anything other than throw everything up, so Marcius leaves him alone on the deck while he goes to inspect the men at work.
    On the open sea everything is in constant motion: beyond the Gulf, the currents surge into one another and make the hexareme sway like a drunken vestal virgin at the February Lupercalia. The lower-ranking
classiarii
are hard at work winding out cordage and straining at ropes. The wind is a capricious beast, like a cat, bestowing its graces only when it sees fit. Aeolus is a bored and moody god, who can fly into a rage at any moment, and then do nothing but gently stroke at your face for days on end, when what you really need is a stiff slap to bring you back from the dead.
    And so at sea one must have oars and sails, a ship—and patience. Training is the foundation of every success and Marcius’s men take their work very seriously. Contrary to what some people might believe, there are no galley slaves. Where your life and the future of the Empire are at stake, slaves cannot be trusted. Better the expert callouses of a generation of soldiers than the muscles of half-men in chains. Liberty is a vital ingredient: at sea there is no pretending.
    A single error of judgment, the incorrect observation of a fading star in the black of the night sky, is enough for you to find yourself a thousand miles off course. Neptune’s kingdom is a place of the soul, better to get that into your head before venturing out to sea.
    Verus spits the taste of vomit from his mouth and breathes in the pride, watching the crew reef the sails: the square rig raised on the mainstay only catches the wind at its center, while the lower flaps are left sagging and inert like the untrimmed hair of a street urchin. They must be wound in, this is no game. Marcius spends a lot of time drilling the men and advising them on the correct maneuvers, as the gusts cut viciously into the immense, snow-white sheet. Once the work has been completed though, the effects are prodigious.
    At once the ship has no more need for human arms, and starts to skim across the surface of the water like an unbridled foal