Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (78 page)

“I live to serve,” the winged head of Julius Gemminus said, appearing above us.

“The rules will be the same as before: elimination of players, with a gladiatorial finale in the ruins of Lupus Civitas.”

“I agree to those terms.”

“Not so fast. I have one more condition. The old emperor liked the Greek stories, so let us have a tragic Greek ending for you if you lose. When Caligula proved that the Cretan bull could have impregnated Pasiphaë to create the Minotaur, he re-created the scene in the Colosseum with a Germanic slave strapped to a wooden frame. I'd very much like to see you suffer that fate before the entire empire. The fate of a whore and an apostate. The bull chief of the Hyperboreans shall play the part of the Cretan bull. He's got plenty of spines, we'll make it work somehow, and when it's all over, I shall keep the small barbarian child as a trophy.”

Aquilinus couldn't honestly think that there was a single bone left in my body that feared pain or disgrace. This was for the mob's benefit. He knew I wouldn't back down, no matter the cost. He was exercising dominance, reminding the mob that everything that happened in the arena was on his terms, for his amusement. And ensuring that the real prize, Lumen, would be his.

“Well?” Aquilinus asked.

“I accept. Let's get on with it.”

“Then let the games resume!”

Aquilinus' presence in the sky vanished as the empyrean erupted with golden upturned thumbs. Massive approval, the elated cheers of trillions across the empire as the tournament stakes were set back on track. Fireworks were launched. Julius Gemminus' head came hovering toward us.

“Congratulations! Your application to play in the tournament has been accepted,” the editor announced. “As you don't represent a house anymore, you'll be known as team Sub-Lupa of the Caninine Alliance.”

Beneath the she-wolf. Aquilinus wanted to remind all of them that this was about me, that if he was guilty of hubris, then this woman who dared to stand up against him was equally guilty, maybe more so.

The sky was filled with the scene of the Caninines in the course ahead of us. A carrier drone came flying in from on high and dropped their weapons into a big pile in the snow before them. They quickly scrabbled to recover them and then they were off, heading toward the southeastern border of the forest.

“Get us out of here now before he changes his mind,” Marcus said.

Marcus had been there before, playing games for mad dictators, triumphing under the constant threat of death. He was a blessing, the very man I needed beside me. Then Crassus took the reins and Marcus was pulling me into the chariot and we were rocketing away between the cover of the hills, heading for the forest. I fell back to the deck and pushed myself up against the chariot's central pole. The pain radiating from my burning hand blotted out everything else. It consumed all my attention and it was all I could do to remain conscious. Marcus gently laid me on the chariot floor while Julia treated my hand with some poultices she had stored in the compartments in her utility belts. I still couldn't bring myself to look at it.

“Gods. Go gently,” I yelped.

“Well, what were you thinking?” she demanded as she deftly dressed my hand.

“I was thinking I'd do whatever it took to keep us alive and on track.”

“It doesn't make what you did any less stupid. There,” she said, injecting me and applying a poultice. “You won't be able to use that hand, but it shouldn't hurt so much for a few hours, then you'll need another shot. You're lucky there was a full medical kit stored under the deck, and some emergency supplies.”

Lumen sat beside me, taking my burned hand in his.

Immediately I felt a soothing glow penetrate the flesh, cooling the heat, stopping its destructive advance.

I cannot spare any of my own energy, so I've used some of the power stored in your pin to stop the burning fire from penetrating further. Even so, the power left to you must be used sparingly. It too will be needed to complete the journey to Mother.

The word-image mother came as a rapid overlapping of forms—a queen bee at the heart of a hive, the tallest mountain of this world, a crown, brilliant light shining over a still lake—and had the echo of the image of my own mother. It reminded me of this being's innate alienness. Lumen was not born of a human womb, not my mother's womb.

“I thank you,” I said.

Your hand will function as before, without restraint, but I was able to preserve its function only, not its form.

“I understand
,
” I said. “I don't care how it looks, it's enough of a blessing that it works at all.”

Just the same, I was relieved Julia had bandaged it up. The sight of a blackened palm, of twisted, charred fingers, would have been more than I could bear.

You must try to rest now,
he said.
Your body has taken quite a shock.

“No, not yet,” I said. “Not until we have a plan.”

As we traveled, the sky was filled with a mass projection from the stadium: the execution of the first hundred Viridians. I closed my eyes. I couldn't watch.

“It's not your fault,” Julia said. “You were right. This is the only way.”

“He wouldn't do it unless the mob approved,” I whispered. “Whatever they think of the gods or Aquilinus, their overwhelming desire is for conflict, blood, and entertainment.”

Mourning would come later, when we had triumphed. Now that I'd chosen this path, victory was the only option. I couldn't afford to stumble or die. Like Galactic Atlas, the weight of an empire was resting upon my shoulders.

XLII

“W
E NEED TO MOVE
quickly to dominate the games,” Marcus said. “Aquilinus has agreed to this only because he needs to buy time to keep the mob at bay while he establishes power.”

“And because he can't afford to see harm come to Lumen,” Julia said.

As we went, Julia filled Marcus in on all that he'd missed, and he told us of the fall of the Rota Fortuna to Aquilinus' forces and the establishment of the yoke.

“He staged his coup when the mountainside was blown open. He canceled the games and had
Incitatus
sprayed with pure gold. The main promenade in Avis Accipitridae was prepared for a triumph, lined with rows of torture devices on either side, a unique torment for each audience member aboard the Rota Fortuna who wasn't of a house allied to the Sertorians. As he passed, lauded by their screams, he wanted to ascend in a shuttle to
Incitatus,
which would become his throne. Well, he ended up in his ship, but the coronation was postponed. Even the temptation of the ambrosia wasn't sufficient to allow the new self-proclaimed emperor to bring Jupiter's sacred games to an early conclusion. There were uprisings in pockets all over the empire; Sertorian buildings were burned and bombed. The mob demanded the games be played out, and he had to agree or face an empirewide rebellion.

“Until now he's kept the Sertorian team out of the field of play. They're supposed to be ascended gods like him now, and he brings them in only if he wants to punish us or deliver a coup de grâce to a struggling player, or pass judgment on his own players who displease him.”

“And you got the yoke,” I said. “Aquilinus reliving his greatest moments.”

“The yoke, the temples, it's all a sick joke to Aquilinus,” Marcus said. “You must understand, though, that the torment of our families and loved ones, as terrible as that was, was not what drove us through the yoke. We know our duty and we have our pride. Survival was our goal. Aquilinus isn't in the Rota Fortuna, he's in
Incitatus.
When he sends down his projection, he refers to it as riding
Incitatus,
as if it were an actual horse. He's clearly insane, no better than the ancient emperors he idolizes.”

“He always was mad,” I said. “Only now he has no compunction about expressing it.”

“We thought he'd execute us all after we went through the yoke, but we persevered. The chance to still defeat Aquilinus was our only thought, and now you've done it, Accala,” he said to me. “Lumen can mean the difference between life and death to the empire.”

“And my father?” I asked Marcus. “Have you seen him?”

He shook his head. “I haven't but he could still be alive. Don't give up hope.”

I lay back on the floor of the chariot and listened to the others talk. Julia's sedative must have gone to my head, because I could have sworn that when I looked back at Marcus, the vegetables I'd noticed hanging from his armor seemed to have a layer of skin on them and to be attached to his actual body through holes in his breastplate. When I asked him about it, he confirmed that the vegetables were in fact growing out of his body, and out of the bodies of all the members of the Calpurnian team, genetically sealed to the skin.

“It's to make us look like dullards. No more flute-playing bear and horn-playing chicken—we've become the new halftime show. After the coup, Aquilinus sent down his new Praetorian legionaries to capture us from above using tranquilizers. He took us to the Rota Fortuna. We were returned to the arena world, but we'd been genetically altered. It's a joke, you see. Our patron Saturn sows the seeds and so this is the fruit of the earth. Onions and potatoes. The vegetables can't be removed without opening mortal wounds in our bodies. He had a Calpurnian spectator altered as well. The administrator of Perfectus Salvare, the empire's largest salvage station. The Blood Eagles, as they call themselves now, were in attendance, and Licinus himself ripped a potato from the man's chest. It brought his heart out with it. The man bled to death at my feet. The surviving Flavians have little wings surgically attached to their backs—useless cupids. The wings flap back and forth as they move but can't do more than that.”

“And they made the Viridians wear women's armor,” I remembered.

“Gods! Not just women's armor,” Marcus said. “They're actually growing breasts. Aquilinus has injected them with hormones—they're undergoing gene therapy—a complete sex-change treatment.”

Crassus burst out laughing at the news. He couldn't help himself, drawing a dark look from Marcus.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A Gemini procedure, a sex change, had always been illegal under the ruling of the all-male Senate.

“The Viridians aren't taking it well. Aquilinus is stealing their virtus, emasculating them,” Marcus continued. “As if the humiliation of the yoke wasn't bad enough.”

“Gods, that's tragic,” Julia said, trying to sympathize with Marcus.

“Tragically hilarious,” Crassus said.

“Let's see you laugh tomorrow when we face whatever Aquilinus has to throw at us,” Marcus said bitterly. “He doesn't seem well disposed toward you, Gaius Crassus. I'm certain that when he comes for us, he'll have concocted something extra special for you.”

Marcus' comment ended the conversation on a dark note.

I turned my attention to the swirling snowflakes above. They were so beautiful, so many shining flakes whipped about by the winds. After days of no sky in the stifling tunnels, this was a welcome change, but I kept in mind that the increased weather activity meant one thing—danger. The more ichor Lumen took out of that world, the more chaotic the weather would become. We had to take care an avalanching ice shelf or an unexpected crevasse didn't finish us off and do Aquilinus' work for him.

Snowflakes were soon replaced by a canopy of crystal trees as we entered the forest. Fine, sentient tendrils on the branches caught the snowflakes and joined them together to form dense layers of leaves. That canopy seemed to provide us some protection from the cold; the intensity of the winds and the bite of the air seemed to have been blunted.

It is because this forest is alive with ichor. These are the lungs of this world. The trees heat the liquid ichor as it passes through, causing it to congeal, condensing its power. This is how I was able to absorb so much energy into this small frame.

“It's the strangest thing,” Marcus said. “The branches are bending aside for us, forming pathways. All Crassus has to do is follow them.”

The forest will let us pass through and then conceal the way behind us. It will shield us for now, but soon I must withdraw the last of the ichor contained within it, and then it will start to break apart.

I explained that it was Lumen's doing and that the forest would show us the best path to the ruins of Lupus Civitas.

As we took turn after turn through narrow pathways, branches bent up like trumpeters greeting a triumphant general and then slowly fell back into position the moment we passed. It'd be hard for the Talonites to follow, as the branches would not yield for them as they did for Lumen, and with luck we'd catch up the Viridians and our other allies in no time at all.

They have taken a route around the edge of the forest. They may intersect with us tomorrow.

We rode for hours until the light began to fail, but the forest continued to protect us from the harsh conditions that raged outside.

Julia treated my hand again and as the bandage was removed I forced myself to look at what it had become.

“It's improved,” she said. “Vastly so.”

The skin was discolored and had a new texture, like tanned leather, the pores melted into a smooth surface. There were splotches and streaks of dead white skin marbled across the back of the hand. It naturally took up the posture of a claw—perhaps the tendons had shortened with the injury—but as I flexed it and experimented I found it quite functional, as Lumen had promised, and that was all that mattered. Beauty be damned. I informed Julia that Lumen had a part to play in my hand's recovery and that I wouldn't be needing any more medicine for it.

Closing my eyes for a short rest, I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew Julia was shaking me awake.