Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (54 page)

I hadn't seen any sign of the Caninines. Just when I was sure we'd lost them in the near infinite combinations of the labyrinth, Barbata's voice breathed into the speaker in my helmet.

“I've spotted them. They're traveling one node to the right on a parallel course with us.”

I checked the side mirror and, just as we entered the next tunnel, spotted Marcus' chariot coming up fast behind the Ovidians at the rear of our convoy. Instead of engaging, he broke off to the left. But why?

“Keep up your pace!” Licinus barked in my helmet's speaker. “Don't slow for anything.”

“I think the Caninines are traveling on parallel tunnels on either side,” I said. “They're setting a trap.”

We were trying to avoid combat, but the Caninines seemed to have no compunctions about targeting us.

“Keep moving!” Licinus insisted. “Drive ahead, no stopping and no response unless they engage. We want dead beasts—Romans can come later. We want to win the round. We're coming up on your rear to lend support. Make as much ground as you can before we're forced to stop.”

He wanted me driving forward, gaining as much ground as possible before the Hyperboreans could form a coordinated response to our sudden invasion of their home.

We passed through another two tunnels before the Caninines made their move. As we approached a crossroads, Marcus' and Carbo's chariots suddenly pulled ahead of us from either side, riding the high curve of the walls. Darius' golden bow and Pavo's crossbow rained down fire upon us. Barbata got her shield up at once, but I took an arrow in the arm before I managed to do the same. The pain was sharp, it felt much worse than Crassus' javelin thrust into my belly the previous night, but there was still enough ambrosia in me that it was only a flicker of what it should have been. I swung out with Orbis before I could think, severing Darius' hand at the wrist, his bow falling to the ground as we continued to speed through the tunnels. I ripped the arrow out of my shoulder, feeling the hot ants inside my body start to patch me up, but they were slower than last night. The ambrosia was wearing off.

“Rejoin the chariot,” Licinus commanded. “But do not dismount.” I complied with relief, falling back from the firing line. Barbata and I locked our skirmishers back into the chariot's body as it sped forward to meet us.

The Viridian and Calpurnian chariots suddenly slowed, allowing us to hurtle past them. They were targeting the Arrians behind us. Pavo kept up his stream of crossbow bolts, now joined by Caninus with his long steel throwing darts. Piso the Arrian driver took a bolt to his helmet that pushed it up above his armored shoulders, just an inch. A split second later one of Caninus' darts hit home in the exposed spot, stealing his life, and their primary charioteer, Cynisca, pushed her predecessor aside, rushing to seize the reins before the craft crashed, and in the process knocked their bestiarii, Ancus, into the line of a javelin cast by Marcus, taking him in the shoulder. Before the others could fall prey to the trap, a side tunnel appeared and Cynisca pulled them out of the convoy and clear of the attack.

Now the Wolves and Ravens drove forward up the tunnel sides, gladiators hanging out from their chariot's pole. Marcus came up on my right, mighty Metellus, the Viridian trainer, to the left with his club. They were going to isolate and trap us, one chariot at a time, and attack from either side. A clever tactic but risky.

“Accala! Barbata! Break and full thrust forward!”

We obeyed, though I couldn't see the strategic value of the move. We broke away and shot ahead again, pulling out of harm's way, leaving the rest of our team behind, exposed on both sides.

In the side mirror I saw Marcus swing and cut Pollux in the side of the neck, sending blood spraying out. Metellus clubbed Crassus, who dodged but still took a hit to his left arm. I heard the bone crack, the strike was so powerful. The Calpurnian chariot fell behind the Viridians. And then I saw the Dioscurii perform another amazing maneuver. Without warning they hit the brakes and dropped back, then the central part of the black chariot split. With the weight of the chariots greatly reduced without the desultore skirmishers, they swung up the sides of the tunnels in an arc, so that for a split second they were directly above the Wolves and Ravens. They were swapping positions with our enemies, coming down on either side of them with the same trick they tried to use on us.

I had to do something. House Viridian was about to be eliminated entirely from the tournament. Carbo and the others were sitting ducks. As the two halves of the Sertorian chariot came crashing in, spikes in their interior edge struck the gold and green armor of the Wolves, piercing it and tearing great holes in the sides of their craft. The hoverplate from under the Viridian chariot was dislodged as the Dioscurii pulled away, sending it skittering out of control and smashing into the Calpurnians behind them.

Licinus ordered us to re-form the chariot. The two halves reconnected and the two skirmishers rejoined, then we pulled away at once, heading down a tunnel that would take us south and away from our rivals.

I couldn't believe that just happened. Every Sertorian instinct that they'd drummed into me told me that we should go back and finish them off.

We carried on downward for more than an hour before we came to a stop. Mania placed her palm against one of the internal storage lockers on the chariot. An illuminated outline of her hand appeared on the surface, and a second later the lid slowly opened. She reached inside and drew out her black casket and removed a phial of ambrosia. Mania guarded it carefully, her small body encircling it like a mother hen protecting her chicks. Once again, everyone was given a taste but me.

“I performed back there,” I complained to Licinus. “You've got me running point. I can't concentrate on finding a way through unless you give me ambrosia.” And I wasn't lying. As Licinus had predicted, my muscles and tendons were stiffening, pulling so tight it felt like they would warp and snap my bones. The pain that started as we entered the tunnels had been increasing with each passing minute. I wasn't sure how much longer I could bear it.

Licinus looked me over and, seemingly satisfied that I was telling the truth, told Mania to give me a taste but no more. I studied the small woman intently. As if from nowhere, she produced something that looked like an eyedropper, sucked a small quantity of the fluid from the phial, perhaps an eighth of an ounce, no more, and gave it to me. I raised the glass receptacle and squeezed the bulb at the top, releasing the miserly quantity onto my tongue. The relief was instant; it took the edge off, stopped the pins and needles, the consuming numbness, the tightening muscles, but it would be short-lived. Within an hour the suffering would begin again, but I wouldn't beg and moan. I only needed to buy time in hours; their time was nigh.

We continued on, Barbata and I again leading the way. Now maps from the Dioscurii's central navigation computer were sent to our skirmishers, showing a definite path. The end point was still a long way down. We were heading to their mining operation, I was sure of it. As we progressed downward, the size of the caverns increased. Some ran up into shadowed ceilings, so high that I imagined that beyond, in the darkness, they must go on and on, encompassing the entire interior of the mountain. Hours passed, and the bull chief and the other Hyperboreans who were the supposed guardians of these hives were noticeably absent. Whatever purpose these caverns served, they'd been evacuated now, and the Hyperboreans who dwelled in them were somewhere else. Watching out for them in each new tunnel and cavern wore on my nerves, already frayed by the increasing desire for ambrosia. Another hour, and it was almost with relief that we finally found our Hyperboreans. But no warriors, only workers. At first we saw only a few at the other end of the cavern, glowing in the darkness. As the light of our chariots added to theirs, another fifty or so before us were revealed. The glowing ones took off into the tunnels while the others moved toward us.

“Strike quickly!” Mania screeched. “Before they can alert the others.”

We crashed into them, weapons working like scythes in a wheat field. They fell by the dozen with each pass, their bodies like glass cabinets, hollow and fragile. These were like scarecrows in a farmer's field, but made of glass instead of straw. I almost felt sorry for them as they made their futile stand, but it would be foolish to pity that which has no mind. They were drones, obstacles, nothing more.

We cut them down left and right, our armillae chiming points awarded with each death. They offered no resistance other than to keep marching toward us. They were buying time for the others to escape, the glowing Hyperboreans.

“What now?” Barbata asked, when we were surrounded by dead crystal bodies.

“Now we get the hell out of here,” Crassus said. “We'll have only a few minutes before any warriors in the area come. They come when you attack the ichor, like stepping on a line of ants, except here it sends out a signal to summon the warriors to protect the substance. Just like soldier ants protecting their nest.”

We cruised through the tunnels for several more hours without encountering any other conflict, from the aliens or our fellow contestants. The mazelike quality of the place made it as much of a challenge to navigate through the interlacing network of tunnels as it was to survive the inhabitants. Julius Gemminus appeared in miniature, projected from a custom-made small media sphera—calling an end to the day's match. The new rules stated that there were no fixed camps like in the essedarii round. Here we camped with our own provisions and established a watch roster to ensure no enemy took us by surprise. Here we had to survive whatever the environment threw at us.

Some of the spherae that traveled with us acted as relay stations, keeping us in touch with the stadium and transmitting the score to us from on high.

Julius Gemminus announced that the Blood Hawks had a score of three hundred seventy-one alien kills to date and the Caninine one hundred eighty-two, but most of the other teams' kills were warriors, whereas the cruel Talonites were massacring mostly helpless workers, worth only half as many points. The result was an almost even score. It would have been very different if Licinus hadn't adopted his strange new strategy.

There was no telling day from night, but we made our camp with the other Talonite teams according to the clock, and I was grateful for both the lack of privacy and Crassus' veneer of gentlemanly manners that prevented him from making any advances on me. I was ordered to take my shift at the watch with the silent Pollux.

We were taking our turn in the last hours of the night when noises of battle—the clashing of arms, the cries of pain—came echoing into the cavern via the tunnels.

“It seems as if the Hyperboreans have found the wolf pack,” Licinus said, waking.

We rapidly packed up camp and followed the sounds. The noise led us to discover the Caninines fighting for their lives against a half dozen barbarian warriors in a light-filled cavern. Five led by the bull chief himself—the crystal spines rising up from his forehead like the Minotaur's horns. He smashed a crystal fist the size of a war hammer down into the nose of the Viridian chariot, crushing it like tin foil and throwing Nervo, Carbo, and Pavo out onto the ice, causing the two chariots behind them to crash and stall.

New Hyperborean warriors swarmed into the cavern, overrunning the Flavian chariot from the side while the chief assaulted it from the front.

The Flavian spearman Fimbria died in a flash, overrun by alien warriors whose spiny arms rent his flesh again and again like a flock of squabbling vultures. Then Garamantus the Calpurnian was down too—ambushed by an alien who appeared from the shadows of the wall beside him—his head wounded before he could raise his black-bladed gladius to defend himself. Marcus was up from the ground, warding the claws of the Hyperborean warriors before they could steal Pavo's life.

“Drive the barbarians back,” Licinus ordered. “The wolf pack won't die today.”

The Ovidians and Arrians obeyed, but the Tullians couldn't bring themselves to follow the order. “We need to get our beast count up, I'll grant that,” Potitus Tullius Silo said, “but let's wait for the barbarians to wear them down before we get our hands dirty.”

Licinus sent out his whip so that it licked the cheek of the Tullian leader. “I don't give a damn about slaves. What I want is for you to fucking listen to me when I give an order. Now get in there, you bone-headed ox!” Licinus yelled and they reluctantly complied.

I couldn't believe he was ignoring the chance to score points and let the enemy die. There was no charity in his orders though. Whatever plan he had in mind, it involved keeping the enemy team alive, at least for now, and that suited me fine.

The Blue Bulls were right to hesitate. With a swipe of its claws, the Hyperborean chief stole the life of Ancus Arrius, and just as the Tullians came up on his rear the crystal giant spun about, avoiding the thrust of their chariot. The monster plucked the stocky gladiator Labeo Tullius from his post. Before Labeo could free himself, the giant hoisted him up, pushing him right into the crystal wall that lay behind. Not against it but actually into it, like it was made of water. Labeo struggled, his mouth opened as if to scream, but no sound penetrated the crystal wall. The bull chief withdrew his hands and a crystalline cell formed about the big gladiator, a body-size transparent gem that enclosed his entire body like an indestructible capsule. His movement slowed as the wall resolidified, locking him in place. The inner structure of the crystal cell began to grow into his body. His face wore an expression of agony as thin crystal veins extended into his body from a hundred directions, and from out of those invasive points a shining green light emerged, running back along his veins, out of his body, and into the crystalline cell that surrounded him. The ambrosia. The Hyperboreans didn't want to kill us just for entering their hive. They wanted the ambrosia from our bodies.