Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (42 page)

I peeked out the opening of the tent just in time to see Crassus stride into Barbata's tent on the other side of the camp. My first instinct was jealousy. I wanted to to rush over there and pull him back to our tent, rip his clothes off and take him. Make him mine. Ashamed, I sat down on the edge of the bed. The pin was still in my hand and I flattened out my palm and stared at it. My mother's instructions hadn't been very specific. How could it be the key to lead me to Aulus? I tried visualizing my brother, stood and turned around with the pin in my hand to different compass points, waiting for some kind of sign, but there was nothing, not even the heat or tingling I'd felt earlier.

When Julia came to visit, I was still staring at it, trying to elicit some kind of response from the thing, getting more and more frustrated at my lack of progress.

“I don't have long,” she said. “I'm supposed to see if all your armor and weapons are okay for tomorrow's round.”

“They're fine.”

“And what about you?”

“Terrible but thank you for asking.”

“You have to play your part. What happened with Mercurius was Fate.”

She looked at the pin in my hand. “No luck yet?”

“No. Just the same as before, some heat and a buzzing at the back of my head, but that was earlier today, when I thought I spotted a Hyperborean on the field. It was the same experience with the Hyperboreans on the ship.”

“Perhaps there's a connection between the pin and the barbarians, but I can't see how that connects with what your mother said about how it would draw you and your brother together.”

“Me either. I thought it would work like a compass needle and pull me to Aulus, but so far there's been nothing, and now Crassus has scheduled his attack on Licinus.”

I filled her in on everything that had transpired.

“And you agreed?”

“I brought up the issue in the first place. It was stupid of me, but he was withholding the ambrosia and I wasn't thinking too clearly.”

“Don't worry, we might manage to find Aulus before the end of the bestiarii, but you might have made a mistake pushing him away. You need to mend your bridges with Crassus.”

“You mean you want me to whore myself out to him?” I snapped defensively. “The day I killed my cousin? A good man. You want me to let that Sertorian fuck me to celebrate?”

“Not so loud,” she warned. “Dampen your fire. You use strong words to fuel strong feelings.”

“I think
whore
is just the right word. That is what you meant, isn't it?”

“Now is not the time for fire. We need to be cool, like this world, to contain our emotions. I'm sure we'll work out how to use your pin, but have you thought about what we'll do if you can't figure it out in time? Or if it's faulty? All we'll have left then is someone who can reveal Aulus' location, and Crassus is the only Sertorian around here who happens to be smitten with you.”

“My father is here, on this world. Did you know that?”

I threw the question at her suddenly, seeing if surprise would register, but she didn't try to hide the fact that she knew.

“Your uncle told me.”

“And you didn't think to tell me?”

“He advised me not to. He didn't want you to be distracted.”

“I am nothing but distracted right now.”

She was right, though. Everything was harder knowing he was here, watching me, close by.

“And he hasn't caused any trouble? Tried to have me disqualified again?”

“No. Proconsul Severus said he would take care of that.”

“Take care of it? What the hell does that mean?”

“Not what you think. Your uncle wouldn't hurt your father. He'll just make sure he keeps out of the way.”'

“Father's like a bull elephant. Once he gets an idea into his head there's no stopping him.”

“I promise you, it'll be fine. Focus on the mission.”

“You mean sleep with Crassus?”

“Gods, Accala,
you're
the bull elephant. If it comes down to it, will you let your brother die to preserve your maidenly virtue?”

“Get out.”

“What, now you're going to make the same mistake with me?”

“No, but I need to be alone. Leave me be.”

She glared at me but complied. She wasn't happy and she wasn't confident that I could see the mission through, I could see it in her eyes, but she complied and left me alone. Julia had to understand that the Sertorians might have me on a leash, but
she
didn't. My redheaded Vulcaneum was there to support me, not order me around. Julia would learn to follow
my
lead.

It passed midnight and I tossed and turned without any hope of sleep. Despite the comfort of the tent, I started to shiver as the temperature plummeted. Even in thermal robes it was freezing. Had my ambrosia worn off so quickly? Then the buzzing headache started up again, loud and strong, and my pin was burning hot so that I could barely stand to hold it. What in Hade's name did it all mean? I hadn't moved an inch, was no closer to my brother than when I had sat on the bed and stared at the pin before. The buzzing was reminiscent of a blowfly slowly cruising around inside my skull.

Agitated, I nearly threw the pin away but decided that since I couldn't possibly be any colder, I might as well go for a walk to clear my head before I started tearing the tent to shreds. I was wrong. The cold outside the tent was much worse. Pollux was up too. He cast a cursory glance at me but didn't seem concerned by my presence.

As I walked around, I noticed that the buzzing noise once more shifted outside of my body and modulated in pitch, rising and then lowering depending on whether I moved forward or backward, left or right. Could this be it? Did the pin work only late at night? Was it just a matter of following the sound? If so, should I follow the higher pitch or the lower? I'd had a similar experience aboard
Incitatus
when I'd found the Hyperboreans in the maze. I ventured around the back of the tent, seeking the higher register, and found myself up against the dome-shaped shield wall that enclosed the camp. It glowed faintly purple in the night, warning against contact with its electrified surface. The shield wasn't the only source of light. A few feet away, some small clusters of native rock thrust up through the ice, emitting a pale light. I took two steps toward the rocks, until I was as close to the shield wall as I dared. The buzzing headache had lost its edge. Higher in tone and louder, it had become more songlike, and within the static of noise I was used to experiencing, some kind of rhythm could be discerned. I stood there for some time, despite the cold, staring out into the night at those rocks. The humming was almost like a chant, growing louder, surrounding me like an embrace.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glint and turned to see a crystalline body walk right past me. I thought my time had come, that the giant warrior from my dream in the athletes' village had found me, but it was a Hyperborean of the worker caste. No long spines on their arms, these were small, thin versions of the warriors. There was more than one; before and behind it were many more, an endless row walking past the shield wall off into the darkness.

And they glowed. A line of faintly illuminated barbarians, each with an apple-size ball of light contained in the lower part of the belly. They looked like they were pregnant with light, and considering the way they filed by without giving me a second glance, totally harmless. As each one passed, the buzzing song wavered in pitch and the pin heated up, then the volume dropped and the pin cooled again until the next one came by and the pattern repeated. A decent cast of Orbis could have shattered a half dozen in one go. There was more. I peered closely and saw that in addition to the pool of light in their bellies there were dark cracks running through their bodies, black tendrils slowly spreading through the swirling light.

The buzzing and heat in the pin vanished as the last of the line passed. What the hell was going on? As I was about to head back to the tent, I saw there was something different about the rocks. Their glow was fading. I crouched down and watched as the last of the light seeped away like the final moments of twilight. Interesting. There seemed to be a connection between the light in the landscape and the Hyperboreans, almost as if they were carrying the energy from the rocks away in their bellies. But how did that relate to the buzzing song and Mother's pin or the means to locate Aulus? Why couldn't my mother have been blessed with only a few more minutes to explain things properly?

Back in the tent, shivering like a small, hairless dog, I crawled under the covers. Although I hadn't seen him that night, I dreamed of the giant Hyperborean standing behind the workers as they walked their trail. I joined the line and when I passed the monster, he saw right away that I didn't fit in and grabbed me. I struggled as the spines in his arms slowly sank into my heart. After that I lay awake, my headache humming away in the background, unable to get back to sleep. It was more than a dream. I knew that somewhere in the darkness lay the Hyperborean warrior, waiting for me. It was like a crocodile sitting by the riverside, still as stone, until the prey wandered too close.

When Crassus returned a few hours from sunrise and climbed in next to me, I pretended I was asleep. I could smell sex on him, but him being there, anyone being there, was better than lying alone. The giant Hyperborean was out there waiting for me, and it was more terrifying to me than any of these Sertorians.

XXII

“A
CCALA, I NEED TO
speak with you.” Julia walked toward me when I exited my tent in the morning. Again, I'd been denied any fresh ambrosia until day's end and was irritable, on edge, and about to give the immune a piece of my mind when Barbata emerged from her tent and cut right across Julia's path.

“Sometimes a Sertorian man needs the kind of release that only a Sertorian woman can give,” she said to me with a wicked grin.

I ignored her. Why should I be jealous of Barbata? The whole idea was preposterous. Whatever Julia had to say must have been private because she'd moved on the second she saw Barbata and had joined up with the rest of the immunes.

The Talonite teams packed up camp. There was an air of confidence as we headed out.

Julius Gemminus appeared over us, promising a shield generator to whoever won the day, an exciting incentive to victory. Licinus made it clear that he wanted such an advantage for our team, and also to deny it to the enemy teams. I was going to give my all for the Sertorians today. What difference did it make? Perhaps if I tried my best for the Blood Hawks, I'd accidentally kill a Talonite or save a Viridian. That was how my luck seemed to be running.

We raced along the curved channel for about ten minutes, no sign of our competitors. The high walls of the canals were coated with force shield barriers, tinged purple to remind us we were at the mercy of the emperor. The same signs built into the force field walls that advertised ridiculous frivolities—Achilles' Foot Spray, guaranteed to heal all fungus and bacteria, or Bibaculus' Finest Vintage Falernian, aged twenty years with genuine elms—were electrified to shock and would kill me if I collided with them. And then our path intersected the Caninines'. The first to clash were the Ovidian and Flavian chariots. The bald scythe fighter Lucius Ovidius Calvus tried to board the Flavian chariot but slipped and slid off, slamming the back of his helmeted head on the edge of his own chariot, his scythe flying to the ice as his body fell into the jagged crop of spinning blades between the racing craft. The Ovidian slipping on his chariot had died by the hand of Nemesis, death by misfortune. The image of Fortuna Mala appeared in the sky— a bearded woman— the personification of bad luck. There was no shame in misfortune and he would be carried away with honor.

In the melee, the fighter Sextus Arrius Salinator was knocked from his chariot. His team didn't know they'd lost him, and we were bearing down on the Arrian, Barbata with her trident raised ready to finish him. Salinator looked to his chariot, in the hope they'd come about, but he knew there was no chance. Then, to my utter amazement, he turned and ran from Barbata. But ran to where? The shields were impenetrable, he could only run back along the channel. He wasn't thinking. He was panicking, running blind in the face of certain death. Damn weak-willed Arrians, there was not a backbone among the lot of them. Before the coward could flee too far, the summa rudis swung in, and his staff shocked the fighter as in ancient times arena hands would use red-hot irons to drive gladiators into the fray, but Salinator didn't get the message. The shocks only frightened him more, and he tried to rush past the flying robot referee.

The next shock was more severe. The muscles in his body painfully contracted and locked as one, and he fell to the ground, paralyzed. Barbata caught up to him, and the referee projected a force field bubble about the pair. A siren signaled that all fighting should come to a halt. The judgment would be swift, and while it was being carried out, the condemned man and the contestant with the right to execute him were immune from interference from other contestants. The sky above us filled with downturned thumbs. I couldn't see all of them, due to the walls of the channel, but it was clear the audience had no truck with cowards. The emperor's judgment followed, and Julius Gemminus appeared to deliver it, his chubby face smiling as he spoke a single word that echoed throughout the dome of the sky—
DEATH!

Salinator lay there like a newly caught fish flapping on the ground as Barbata speared him through, ending his life with a single thrust.

Lucius Ovidius Calvus had been carried away with honor. Not so Arrius Salinator, the coward.

A tall black-robed figure, powerfully built—depicting Pluto—appeared as if from nowhere and sank a large hook with a length of rope attached to it into the Arrian's body, dragging it away and onto his sled, where it would be carried off and dumped as carrion and fed to the barbarian Sauromatae so that his shame might continue in the afterlife. It gave all of us pause. It was the paradox of the arena that the gladiator must fight in contempt of life and glory if he wished to achieve them.