The Gladiator
Less than a day's journey from Rome, 81 AD
"Look around you, Niece. The gods are punishing you."
Pelonia raised tear-swollen eyes from her beloved father's lifeless face. From where she sat on the ground, her uncle Marcus towered over her, his mouth twisted in a snarl of contempt. Blood oozed from a gash at his temple.
Dazed by his cruel words, she watched him limp toward the torched wagons and pillaged tents of their once wealthy camp. Black smoke stretched toward the heavens. Its sharp stench singed her nostrils, burning her lungs until the fetid air promised to choke her.
Her father's head in her lap, Pelonia stroked his weathered cheek with trembling fingers. Was Uncle Marcus right? Was she being punished? Had her father been wrong to reject the old ways and teach his household to embrace the Christ?
Everywhere she looked, destruction sweltered in the morning's rising heat. All of her family's accompanying servants lay massacred along both sides of the stone-paved road. Only she and Marcus survived.
Pelonia looked toward the cloudless sky. Birds of prey circled overhead. Their hungry cries echoed in the stillness, mocking her as though they sens ... read full excerpt from: The Gladiator ebook
