Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (34 page)

Incitatus
docked at the Rota Fortuna. The emperor's ultimare-class carrier,
Horatius
, was already there, having brought the supreme ruler of the galaxy with it. Twice the size of
Incitatus,
it was stocky up front, symbolizing the lion's mane of House Numerian, streaked with emerald and Syrian purple, its cabins arranged behind, lean by comparison. Seven deceres-class carriers in total were docked about the stadium—one carrying the team for each house. Three berths down was the Viridian carrier
Scipio Africanus
. The sight of the bulky warship, streaked with green and gold, filled me with dire resolve. The Viridian team was here. Marcus also. I'd rather face the worst the Ludi Romani had to offer than what would come next—having to stand on a stage beside my lanista and my countrymen dressed in Sertorian armor with a Sertorian face, spouting Sertorian propaganda while the entire empire watched on.

Crassus leaned in close and smelled my tightly braided hair. I turned, my lips near his. I wanted to kiss him, to feel his mouth on my body. I looked at his reflection in the portal glass and imagined him with his throat cut open by Orbis' razor edge. That made me feel better. I marked every indignity he inflicted on me upon the board of reckoning I kept in my head. All I lived for now was the moment I would liberate Aulus. Then I would gather up these birds and clip their wings.

We headed off to join the rest of the team in the shuttle that would carry us to the planet below. In order to ensure that external, unofficial forces could not affect the tournament's outcome, once the Festival of Jupiter's games began the stadium's shields would be activated, enclosing the world in an impenetrable bubble. No one would be permitted to come or go from the planet's surface.

“Numerius Valentinius is a scum bucket! A filthy public toilet! No emperor at all! I shit on him! I will piss on his grave!” Crassus and I had entered the shuttle, and Mania must not have noticed us because she was jumping up and down on the spot, throwing a tantrum. Her pupils were dilated, and the muscles of her face had subtly changed, the jaw hardened. Her eyes were different too. Penetrating with a frightening intensity. But then Barbata gave her a warning nudge and the perplexing outburst ceased at once. Mania was back to her old self, like a switch had been thrown.

“Hello, Accala,” the white-haired girl said sweetly. “I'm so excited we're going on this adventure together.”

Strange. Barbata had behaved the same way when I'd stopped her killing the Hyperborean in the gym. Violently angry one moment, perfectly normal the next. None of the other Sertorians seemed to care.

The Sertorians were unhappy because they'd just got news that the emperor had forced the tournament editor, Julius Numerius Gemminus, to divert the course of the games, so that instead of running along the coast, it now followed the spine of the mountain range that ran west to east. Perhaps the new course was veering too close to the mining operations my uncle had referred to, the Sertorian search for the mother lode of ambrosia.

On the other hand, they didn't seem at all upset about the emperor's refusal to allow them to field a replacement for Lurco, and I didn't blame them. The final week of training had been the most challenging, but the end result was a team that moved in perfect unison, each athlete picking up the lead of another, each able to compensate for any sign of weakness. I prayed my efforts aboard
Incitatus
hadn't been in vain and that Uncle Quintus had received the sample Julia sent him and turned it to some advantage, because our team were like hawks soaring beneath the sun—sharp, fast, all-seeing. And I was one of them. I'd allowed them to transform me into the perfect Sertorian. I'd followed Crassus and his machine, obeyed Licinus, received my treatments from Barbata, let them shape me as they wished. I could see how they thought having me kill Bulla would be a good idea—to sever the ties to my old life—but it had had the opposite effect. It had given me something to hang on to, a fresh death of a loved one that highlighted the loss of my mother, the torment of my brother. It would never occur to them that I could love a barbarian, have feelings for my nursemaid. The coals of rage still burned brightly within my breast. Bulla wasn't the only casualty, either. The small Iceni slave Alba went missing at the end of the voyage. When I asked after her, Crassus informed me that he'd checked the records on the stone Alba used to tether me to the bed and found that on one occasion I hadn't been properly secured. “But it wasn't your fault,” he explained. “It was hers, and she took her punishment gladly, rather than have her family be wiped out.” I asked him what punishment had been administered, and he casually reported that she'd been thrown into the Sauromatae pens to double as sport and food for the lizard men.

We boarded the shuttle and commenced our descent to Olympus Decimus. Eight thousand miles in diameter and possessed of a single continent, rising out of the turbulent blue and green ocean, the same oxygen-rich waters that made the planet habitable to humans.

It seemed less like a shining pearl and more like a blind man's eye, blank and indifferent—its bright albedo reflecting away the golden sunlight that would otherwise end the small planet's eternal ice age.

The land contained inland lakes, sweeping tundra covered in a thick layer of permafrost, fissures, ravines, glaciers, and ice canals. Intricate patterns of lines, some running a thousand miles long and ten miles wide, crisscrossed segments of its surface like a cracked eggshell—the great ice canals formed by fractures in the planet's crust. Foothills gave way to clusters of mountains like jagged white teeth. The range of peaks formed a curved spine that ran for almost the entire breadth of the continent—two and a half thousand miles. The environment, combined with whatever surprises the emperor had up his sleeve, would be as much of an enemy as any of the other contestants. Frostbite and hypothermia, avalanches and crevasses would be constant dangers.

On the eastern coast lay the mountain from my dreams—Nova Olympus—towering above all other peaks. In its shadow lay the ruins of Lupus Civitas, the old Viridian capital, a black spot against fields of white snow. After the city was destroyed and the planet seized by the Sertorians, they built their own capital on the west coast, our destination, Avis Accipitridae. Seen from a distance, the new capital, all ruby and diamond, was like a shining red scab on the planet's surface.

The shuttle fired its engines as we entered the planet's atmosphere. Avis Accipitridae was a prefabricated construct dropped in on a four-square-mile hexagonal slab; the city was crammed with gaudy onyx and ruby Sertorian architecture. All the standard colonial city features were in place: a forum, a regional senate, temples, baths, a local arena and circus track, classically styled administrative buildings, lavish city houses, farming ovals, slave townships, factories, warehouses, and relay stations with massive antennas. What wasn't standard in a colonial outpost was the excessive scale of the city's ornamental features—statues, triumphal arches, and monumental columns all garishly large and overwrought in detail, loudly proclaiming the history and glory of House Sertorian. The best of everything in the wrong proportions, opulence crammed together to show off rather than reflect beauty or noble ideals. That's what you got when a no-class culture suddenly had a surplus of money to indulge bad taste.

By comparison, Lupus Civitas, before the Sertorians bombed it, was a thriving capital of simple architecture and classical beauty. Real quality and refinement didn't need to be rammed down one's throat. Avis Accipitridae would have been a real eyesore if it weren't for the transformation the emperor had visited upon it in time for the games—sparing no expense to convert the city into a winter spectacular capable of capturing the empire's attention for the fifteen days of the festival. Imperial banners lined the streets, the vibrant purple cloaks of the armed Praetorian peacekeepers made splashes of color in the snow. There was an abundance of festival wreaths, standards, and emblems emblazoned with the letters SPQR—the Senate and the people of Rome—and the tundra outside the city was lined with eight towering decorative totems carved from diamond and ice, brought from the distant corners of the eight provinces. Thirty-seven bull elephants had been transported from Mother Earth to participate in a reenactment of ancient Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. A squadron of imperial triremes and fighter craft flew impressive maneuvers over the city. These were a reminder to the Sertorians that, until the winner of the tournament had been decided, this world was under the emperor's direct control. As such, not one Sertorian flag could be flown above the city. The Sertorians had made up for this with projection billboards that filled the sky and streets of the city. The majority of them featured Crassus, arm in arm with me, Accala, the new Sertorian discus fighter, in postures that had been created from images taken of me while I trained aboard
Incitatus
and then altered to suit the purposes of Crassus and his propaganda team. Action was intercut with my recitations of Proconsul Aquilinus' precepts. Everything had been recorded and was now played back to the viewing empire. Beneath the billboards were catchphrases like
DESTINY
and
STRENGTH THROUGH UNITY.

“You look magnificent, don't you think?” Crassus asked.

“I look dangerous.”

“It suits you well. The crowd likes dangerous.”

“They're going to hate me,” I said. “They know me as a defender of Viridian values who willingly represents all she once hated.”

“You have to project a new image to the audience,” Crassus said, “and that starts here, today, right now. Remember what Tertullian said about the tournament mob:
The perversity of it! They love whom they lower; they despise whom they approve.
The audience doesn't give a fig for virtue; people will like you because you are dynamic and interesting, and if you win, if you kill, then they will love you, they will adore you for shedding blood for them. If you do that, regardless of what side you're on, or what you personally believe, then they'll stand with you through thick and thin. Or at least until someone more interesting comes along.”

Yes, there were no morals in the arena, only spectacle. I was certain he didn't intend it, but his words gave me a thread of hope. If I could keep the audience's interest through my arena display, then perhaps I could build a following, a loyalty, as I had once before with my countrymen. Any kind of following, as long as it wasn't Sertorian, might be there to support me when I made my switch back to the Viridian team.

Our shuttle landed near the forum, where crowds of spectators, tourists, and reporters had gathered to greet us. They were a droplet against the ocean of the empire-spanning audience that watched via the vox populi forum, but still there must have been at least two hundred thousand choking the streets of the city, more than enough to intimidate me after the farewell I'd been given by the howling mob of Rome.

The shuttle doors opened and a gust of air rushed over us. Even with the cold weather training aboard
Incitatus,
the air of Olympus Decimus came as a shock. So cold and sharp after the highly regulated atmosphere of the ship, it hurt my lungs to breathe. Crisp and clear, static electricity sparked against my lips like kissing a pane of shattered glass. Despite the amount of tisane I'd consumed, I felt my buzzing headache starting up again. The crowd below cheered with excitement.

“I don't know what you expect me to say,” I said to Crassus as he led me up onto a vast stage they'd prepared for the contestants. This was a media assembly, a chance for the public to see the competitors answer questions before the big event, every word and action transmitted throughout the eight provinces for the empire's degustation.

“You know the precepts now,” Crassus replied. “Keep them in mind when you speak, and everything will be fine.”

The two factions of contestants were separated to either side of the stage. Built into the floor beneath us were two large wheels, each with twenty-eight colored segments, all embossed with a competitor's name so we knew where to stand. The first wheel belonged to the four teams of the Talonite Axis—the Sertorian Blood Hawks, the Ovidian Boars, the Blue Bulls of House Tullian, and the White Rams of traitorous House Arrian. I thought I might feel an instinctive pull toward the second wheel where House Viridian's Golden Wolves stood with the Calpurnian Black Ravens and the Flavian Silver Sparrows—making up the Caninine Alliance—but my feet stayed rooted beside Crassus without the slightest inclination to stray.

My uncle, Proconsul Quintus Viridius Severus, stood beside the Golden Wolves, talking up the merits of his team before a crowd of admirers and reporters. The Caninine teams contained so many eminent heroes, so many gladiators whom I'd admired over the years. Their skill at arms demanded respect, even from their enemies. Tribune Vibius Viridius Carbo, leader of the Golden Wolves, caught me looking at my uncle and scowled. Gnaeus Viridius Metellus, an old friend of our family, stared at me, his dark eyes transmitting my father's disapproval across forty-eight thousand light-years. My cousin Darius gave me a disdainful smirk. He thought me a fool, a desperate woman who had tricked her way into the games, an easy target. There were the charioteers Titus Nervo and another cousin of mine, Trio Mercurius, young and noble of spirit. Scipio Caninus, the one-eyed bestiarii, and his counterpart, Capitulus Pavo. Then the other Viridian gladiatorii—Taticulus Leticus and his sharp swords.

Next to the Viridians were the Calpurnians. I knew their leader, the gladiator prince from the rim, Cossus Calpurnius Blaesus, who had, for a brief moment back in the Colosseum, thought I was going to fight for his team. Only a simple purple rope barrier separated the competing factions. The Praetorians who stood upon the stage, shock staves in hand, were there to manage the crowd. No gladiator would dare to cross a border marked with the emperor's sacred color. Besides, this was an opportunity for the teams to show off what they had to offer, their last chance to win audience support before the fighting began.