B007IIXYQY EBOK (128 page)

Auriane and Perseus moved beneath the gladiators’ entrance with its flanking Tuscan half-columns; then they were halted in the dim passage that formed a straight chute opening onto the sands of the arena. As they waited, delayed by some unknown cause, she heard a thin, determined voice cry out above the din—“
Auriane
.”

Auriane looked toward three small, barred windows in the wall of the main passage; these were underground rooms with a viewing window just above the level of the sand, where novices were sometimes permitted to watch the combats. She peered into the confusion of the crowded chamber, and there, to her disbelief, was Sunia.

Carefully keeping her gaze on her sword, Auriane moved to the small window. Sunia’s hand edged through the grate. She saw the injured woman leaned on a knotted stick; her leg was heavily bandaged to the knee.

“How come you to be here?” Auriane demanded softly.

“They expect the hospital rooms to fill up with more valuable charges today and so they drove me out. I’m here because kitchen slaves aren’t watched that closely. There’s a measure of freedom in being next to worthless, it seems. Auriane, with your hair pulled back so, they’ve made you look bald.”

“I’ll just have to shame you with my ugliness, I suppose.” Her brief smile faded. “Sunia, I do not expect you to ever forgive me, but—”

“Forgive
you? Are you mad? I still walk under the sun because of what you did. To even think
I would hold you to account!”

Auriane felt happy disbelief. Sunia apparently had no memory of cursing her name. “That is well. Sunia, poor innocent victim of my fate.”

“Speak of it no more. Auriane, take heart—Thorgild and Coniaric are alive, as is the son of old Andar. We’ve lost only six of our people, and none from this school.”

“Praise be to the Fates.”

“Thorgild’s in here with us, but they took Coniaric off. He had a cut at the first rib, no organs struck, and an arrow wound. He’ll be about again if those vile surgeons don’t kill him with their butcher knives and poisons. We’ll be watching you—but so will Aristos. He’s in the next chamber, we saw him go in. Auriane, beware. Those eyes of night will be on you.” Sunia pressed Auriane’s hand tightly against her cheek. “Your heart is greater than mine. You must not leave us, Auriane.”

Auriane pressed Sunia’s hand to her own cheek. “May the spirits of our groves keep and comfort you,” she whispered. The passage door was thrown open, admitting a gust of fetid wind from the arena. She left Sunia then and returned to her place.

The door opening onto the sand was still barred by a guard’s javelin. At that moment two trainers of the Second Hall emerged from a side passage. One stopped as he recognized Auriane.

“Hail, Aurinia, queen of the first barrack block,” he called out merrily. “Your wealth and domains have increased in the last half hour.” He threw a bloody cloak at Auriane. She caught it, uncomprehending.

“This was Celadon’s,” he went on with a jester’s sly smile. “He wanted you to have it—he’s got no use for it anymore. Take it, it’s yours—at least for the
next
half hour. Then, who gets it?” Both laughed loudly.

Celadon,
Auriane thought, a voiceless shriek forming in her throat. Slaughtered like an animal, and unmourned.

They turned from her, still speaking of Celadon. “How dare he humiliate Acco like that, getting himself speared by a mere net-fighter. As always, those that don’t listen to us get dragged out by the feet.”

A horde of the Numidian boys employed in turning the sand swarmed in then, busy as flies, shouting and laughing, jostling everyone. Auriane was too angry to pay them any mind. She wheeled round and hurled the bloody cloak at the trainers’ retreating backs.

“Wolves! Night-crawling vermin!” Her shouts were lost in the din.

Then suddenly she understood.

The trainers were purposely distracting her. She looked quickly at her sword—and was certain it lay at a slightly different angle on its cushion. She saw that one of the running boys carried a linen bundle—and she would have wagered her life that within it was the sword with the mark of Tiwaz. She watched the boy as he ran in a zigzag path; far down the passage he stashed it behind the open door of a guard chamber.

The small procession started forward again. Auriane thought frantically, uncertain what to do. Should she protest now?

No. I will reveal Aristos’ treachery before all the people.

The javelin was raised, and the swordbearers descended to the sand. She heard a trumpet’s brazen cry, and was almost overwhelmed by a gust of the arena’s humid air, thick with the rank, lingering odors of animal flesh and human sweat and blood. The perfumed water jetting into the air did little to cover these smells; it served somehow only to make them more nauseating.

Auriane and Perseus took the last step down onto the sand.

Erato spoke truly, she thought.
Nothing could prepare you for this.

She felt she stood at the bottom of an immense funnel formed of the multitudes mounting steeply upward to the awnings and the sky. It seemed the whole world converged upon the arena, that all paths sloped down to this vortex of elemental struggle, this bottomless sand-pit that gulped the blood of strangers. Here was the heart of unholiness, the boiling cauldron of Roman savagery. Decius’ words drummed in her ears—“Never let my people take you alive.”

The vast space, nearly enclosed, admitted one thick shaft of light that slanted down from the circular opening in the
velarium.
Dark and powerful gods have taken possession of this place, she thought, gazing skyward and half expecting a booming god’s voice to come shuddering down. But she saw only a cold, misty abyss hung with the sluggish vapors of slaughterhouse scents, gathering and thickening at the high tiers, which were ghostly behind its veil. The weight of every stare was heavy on her shoulders, and she fought a powerful urge to turn round and flee—but the oak door behind her was already securely closed. She could feel, like penetrating needles, the people’s sharp curiosity about life and death as they eagerly examined the faces of those who walked into final darkness—as though they expected a voyager setting out on a journey to tell tales of it in advance.

Auriane and Perseus moved past the Gate of Death with its frightful friezes of demons over its arch. Through which Celadon just departed, she thought, refusing to look at it. At a stately pace they moved around the ellipse, approaching the imperial cubicle with its flanking, laurel-entwined columns surmounted by golden eagles in flight, its medallions of the Emperor, its brilliant tapestries that dropped almost to the arena’s floor. The colored sailcloth of the
velarium
cast
shifting shadows of pale aquamarine, rose and gold onto the sand.

Beneath the imperial box were the four undertrainers who were always present, ready to goad the reluctant with whips and brands. Erato stood at the arena’s center, his keen gaze fixed on Auriane; fretfully he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Next to him was Perseus’ trainer from the Claudian School. Each combatant normally had his own trainer present, for even the most seasoned fighter occasionally needed instructions cried to him once a bout had begun.

Across from the imperial box was the Consul’s seat; beneath it, the musicians were stationed. It did not seem odd to Auriane that the combats were accompanied by music, for she counted them a form of sacrifice, and she knew all her life that the plaints of ritual instruments drew the gods near. The drummer, the flute blowers, and the seated trumpeters were silent; only the haughty Egyptian woman standing at the water organ was energetically attacking her instrument. The lurching, wailing notes of the water organ made Auriane feel she was carried off on a jolting, runaway journey into an underworld peopled with carousing madmen. More than any other, that instrument, with its cruel, gloating sound, dark as the Styx, seemed to be the voice of this place.

Beside the musicians were two wooden caskets.

Distantly she heard the herald cry—“Perseus. Aurinia.”

Marcus Julianus did not know Auriane at first; her smoothed-back hair of burnished bronze made her seem some sleek, feral hunting creature. Those eyes were remote; she walked a battlefield. This creature was first a warrior; all else would ever be second. Yet still he saw all the vulnerability beneath. A knot of misery formed in his chest. This orphaned creature of the forest, he thought, has more nobility in one hand than all those in the seats of honor who style themselves noble.
Drinkers of blood
, he thought, looking about him at the half-sated crowd.
When will you awaken and begin to scream? Why is our country’s greatest monument a human slaughterhouse? Why do so few ask that question
?

The throng reacted variously to the tall barbarian woman and the Thracian swordsman. Those in the balcony seats reserved for the Senators looked on this match with disdain, counting it firm evidence of the growing effeminacy and perversion of their Emperor, the murderer of their own Licinius Gallus. Such silliness would never have been tolerated in their grandfathers’ day, when it was understood the gladiatorial combats were necessary to instill courage and contempt for death in all ranks of society. But they were too dignified to cry out their discontent; they confined their protest to loud mutterings and carefully arranged looks of scorn.

Those in the seats reserved for the lower ranking nobility, the men of the Equestrian class whose togas formed a wide band of white close to the barricade, looked on with sullen boredom broken by sporadic shouts of
“
Set the dogs on them!” and “Save us, Aristos!”

In the next tier of seats, separated from those below by a bright band of mosaic fashioned of precious stones depicting the battle of the Titans, were the merchants, tradesmen and plebeians. Higher still were the freedmen. In these sections, smoldering rage threatened to ignite into flame. From here, occasional showers of rotted turnips rained down; Auriane and Perseus nimbly dodged them. Perseus despised Auriane the more for this fresh humiliation. Even if he dispatched her skillfully and swiftly, he feared that after this day he would have no chance of regaining his former status.

But scattered among the plebeians were many who looked on Auriane with a pity they had shown to no other that day. This was that same gallant creature who had refused to harm the Roman hostages during the war, the spirited rebel who had pulled down Domitian’s statue. She was to them a naive force, unconscious as nature, harmless to everyone except Domitian—and this endeared her to the poor. This sprite, malign only to tyrants, was their own secret representative.

And in the upper gallery farthest from the arena, to which the women were confined, only a few shouted for Aristos. Most wailed loudly for Auriane—a cry of mourning as though she had already died. The women’s seats were so distant from the arena that they could scarce see what passed below; women’s natures were held to be too delicate to withstand the sight of gore spilled on the sand—though this was not counted sufficient reason to deny prime seats to the six Vestal Virgins, who sat in the lowest section alongside the imperial box, or to the women of the imperial family. Many of the women in the upper gallery threw tear-wetted handkerchiefs in the air and cried, “She suffers enough! Set her free!”
The kindliest among them left their seats in protest.

Auriane and Perseus halted beneath the imperial box. Auriane without knowing it was gradually gathering all gazes to herself; most looks were hostile, but still they were captive. As she inclined her head with almost maidenly modesty, all were rapt—it was as though her every movement were a delicate hand on a horse’s rein, guiding them without their knowledge. Julianus noted this with growing surprise. She is like some prodigal beast-tamer, he observed, who can quieten a dangerous animal with a touch or a look.

Domitian leaned forward slightly to better examine her face. You stubborn spawn of wild men, he thought. She is far from broken.

She seems to gaze upon an empty throne.

The Emperor signaled a guard with a curt motion of his hand and whispered a command. It was swiftly relayed to the trainers below. He had decided she must fight without a helmet so he could better observe her face. For this was a sort of rape at a distance, and his pleasure would only come when he saw that smug composure replaced by terror and humility.

Julianus fought silently with accumulating rage. She wore little enough protection for her body as it was—that leather tunic would tear like cloth—and now she was denied even protection for her head.

The dipping, vaulting wails of the water-organ skidded to a graceless halt. In the fresh silence Auriane and Perseus chanted together—
“Salutamus te morituri”
—“We who are about to die salute you.” Domitian found himself aroused by the slight roughness in her voice; one hand unconsciously kneaded the shoulder of the simpleminded boy at his feet, who looked up at him, confused.

The bearers presented their swords and shields. Perseus took up his Thracian sword, long and curved like a predator’s claw. As Auriane closed her hand round the grip of her own weapon she saw at once that the symbol of Tiwaz was not there.