Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (8 page)

No one had ever survived the obstacle course in Mare Byzantium's famous aquatic arena. If Marcus could make it through to the end, defeating every beast and gladiator, then he would be granted the rudis, the wooden sword of freedom, after which he could make a single request of Oceanus, anything he liked, including possession of Amphiara. Marcus turned out to be a natural gladiator; his years of combat experience, instinctive quick thinking, and a dose of good luck ensured his triumph. Oceanus, unsatisfied, made Marcus fight again and again until Amphiara, admiring Marcus' courage as well as wishing to spare her people, convinced her father to let him take her. On the return journey the pair fell in love, and although she obeyed the emperor, the old man saw how Marcus and Amphiara looked at one another and took to beating her to expose Marcus' feelings. A man of honor to the last, Marcus remembered the oath that he would protect Amphiara and reminded the emperor of the deal made in his name, warning him to stop. The emperor, displeased at being lectured, ordered Marcus killed, and the man had to slay his own commander and ten fellow Praetorians before leveling his sword at the emperor's throat in warning, though his own vow to protect the emperor prevented him from carrying out an execution.

The emperor had the pair of them thrown into the Ludi Romani—that year's being a re-creation of the slave uprising and subsequent massacre of Illyricum Novinus—with the intention that they should die terribly, hunted down and humiliated before the whole empire. Against near-impossible odds, Marcus and Amphiara succeeded in surviving the gladiatorial teams by mobilizing the six-legged Hexapoda, a highly intelligent insect species, each one the size of a ten-year-old human child, into an effective fighting force. Amphiara hit upon the idea of using smoke to disrupt the spread of a naturally produced fear pheromone that had caused the alien uprising to fail in the first place. The ploy worked, but only because Amphiara sacrificed her life to buy Marcus the time he needed to set a forest alight. The image of him, triumphant and howling with grief as he cradled her body, the untouchable winner of the tournament, was transmitted across the empire. Marcus' fate led to a mass outcry. The houses opposed to Julius Heliogabalus, including my own, used the tragedy of Marcus and Amphiara as a rallying point and led the charge to overthrow the Julians.

Refusing all honors and a generous commission to join up for another twenty years, Marcus completed the last few months of his military service under the Numerian emperor before being discharged with the rank of centurion, dozens of medals, and the standard retirement offering of an allotment of land on the galactic frontier. He traveled the many gladiatorial arenas of the galaxy, competing in some but mostly studying different fighting styles. On returning to Mother Earth, he sold his land and purchased a share in the Ludus Magnus. Why, after all of the grief he had experienced by way of the arena, he should choose it as a new career, no one could say.

He had a will of iron and was an experienced killer. When it came down to it, could I defeat him? If I hesitated for even an instant, he could turn the tables and steal my life.

My armilla slotted into the right bracer, becoming part of my armor. Finally, I snapped open my weapon case, revealing Orbis. My near-unbreakable discus, his razor-sharp edge rotated within a circular moat of black restraining gel—a mercurial silver eye, slowly turning, impatient for speed and action.

Orbis was a rare thing. A slender ring one and a half inches high near the center, tapering out to a thin edge. Forged from the semisentient mineral lapis negra, he was sharper and harder than steel and light as a feather. About the body of the circular blade were four thin grooves, evenly spaced to improve aerodynamics and also produce a frightening hum as he took flight.

After my father's legion had crushed an uprising of the barbarian Mandubii of Quatrus Negra, their chieftain had given him the homing discus as tribute. Orbis had been fashioned by the first Roman settlers there during the seventh republic, more than two thousand years prior. Father could have sold it to a museum or collector for a small fortune, but he wanted to save the discus for my brother, Aulus, a rare weapon to enjoy when he became a man. Mother convinced him to let me have it, though. “You never objected to me continuing my research and no bad luck has come of it. Trust me, I know how to help Accala find her path,” she counseled, and he accepted her wisdom, as he always did, though not without complaint, and all through my childhood I had the memory of my father bemoaning his misfortune, how the boy in the family took after his mother while the girl was feisty, argumentative, always turning household objects into weapons. Mother was a pacifist and philosopher, but she knew that Aulus didn't have a fighting bone in his body, he was a natural scholar. On the other hand, she knew intuitively that Orbis was meant for me.

I picked up Orbis gently, and he blunted his edge to accommodate me as he always did, whether I was gripping him for close combat cutting and thrusting, or snatching him from the air as he returned to me after a cast. The homing discus was temperamental, difficult to wield, but after years of hard work my weapon and I had achieved a symbiosis of sorts, where Orbis could sense my position and work with my body, enhancing my combat strengths. He was eager to be free, created to cut through the air in deadly, sweeping arcs, not to be constrained in a box. “There, be still,” I said in a soothing voice. “Soon you'll have your chance to fly.”

*   *   *

I
STARTED LIMBERING UP
but soon found I was too impatient to work through all my exercises. Where was Marcus? The longer he took, the more chance there was that Father would receive word that I'd fled the Wolf's Den and seek me out, and he wouldn't be easy to deal with. The loss of Mother and Aulus changed him, and the war that followed had only made things worse. He had become overly cautious, paranoid, and easily angered. He drank too much and didn't sleep well. Most of his waking hours were spent at the Senate dealing with matters of war and the affairs of the empire, trying to keep House Viridian from collapsing like a house of cards under the strength of the Sertorian advance. He'd managed me at a distance through Bulla and the other household staff. Perhaps because I shared too many of my mother's features, I reminded him of what he'd lost. In his heart, I was certain, he wished I'd gone on the trip to Olympus Decimus in place of my brother. Then he would have a son to follow in his footsteps, a real warrior instead of a daughter who knew only how to shame him.

My thoughts were wandering into dark places. Already, I was ignoring Marcus' advice to focus on the present, but every moment my lanista failed to appear, I felt less self-assured, less capable, and then, just when I thought he would never come and that I was abandoned, he returned.

“We're on,” he said with no more drama than if he were ordering some food off a street vendor.

Now I saw what had taken him so long. He'd stopped to get changed into his own costume.

Marcus was dressed as a murmillo. His helmet was crested with a stylized fish, and he also wore a manica and light armor, black streaked with patterns of silver designed as an abstract representation of a bird's wings. His weapons were those of a soldier, the tower shield (that would be projected from his armilla) and a short twenty-five-inch gladius. Marcus took the only traditional weapons that were part of a legionary's basic equipment and turned them into an artwork of attack and defense.

“The committee's on board?” I asked.

“I had to assure them a real blood match,” he said.

“So whoever wins, if the crowd turns against the loser…”

“The Colosseum sand will soak up the blood,” Marcus said, “as it has for millennia.”

“I'm ready.”

As we headed back into the arena, we passed the emperor's cousin being carried out on a stretcher, bruised and bleeding.

The crowd chattered loudly in anticipation of our match. The She-Wolf fighting to regain her place and against her own trainer.

V

W
E STEPPED INTO THE
bright light of center stage. A separate spotlight illuminated the announcer.

“Next up, Accala Viridius Camilla—Lupa She-Wolf—and Ludus Magnus' Marcus Calpurnius Regulus—The Regulator—who is making use of his trainer badge to enter the contest. Lupa is competing for a place on the Calpurnian team!”

The crowd howled with excitement, chanting Marcus' fighting nickname again and again. My reputation was solid, but Marcus' was solid gold. Here was a living legend reentering the arena after refusing to fight for so long.

The arena floor could be reconfigured in thousands of ways by the game editor to cater to the competitors' strengths and weaknesses. For Marcus and me, they'd arranged three floating platforms, each level higher than the other, with stairs running between them. On each platform were half-a-dozen translucent high-wall formations, each in the shape of an equal-armed cross, providing corners that would give Marcus the advantage if he could manage to maneuver me into them. There were also an equal number of metallic posts that I could use to ricochet my discus off of as well as position myself behind to keep Marcus at optimal range.

The media spherae swung in lazy arcs above us, green eyes glowing, capturing every moment, every word. How many citizens were watching? A surprise match like this could summon an empirewide flash audience, and when there was a buzz on the vox populi, who knew who many would tune in? The referee called us to take up our positions center stage. The crowd grew silent.

“Show me that I haven't wasted my time on you,” Marcus said.

My heart raced. Everything rested on this. I offered a silent prayer to Minerva. We donned our helmets, saluted one another, and then turned to salute the emperor.

From down on the arena floor, the galaxy's most powerful man seemed a long way off, but the moment he stood, the glass enclosing his private balcony magnified his image imposingly. As he was in attendance, we were bound to follow tradition and make the ancient call. We raised our weapons and together called out,
We who are about to die salute you.

Emperor Numerius raised his hand to return the salute. I'd heard that some people had a strong reaction to being in the presence of the emperor, but I was determined to keep a level head. Except the hand holding my discus was trembling and my heart rate was going through the roof. Deep breath, focus on the match. The slightest tremor could affect Orbis' path and give Marcus the advantage.

Marcus adopted his fighting stance and activated his shield. It was the energy projection of a full-length tower shield, tinted bronze and translucent, so he could see his opponent through it. It covered him head to toe; its shimmering surface featured a classical spiral styling that the Calpurnians favored to remind everyone of their ancient Gaulish origins. My armilla was just as capable of generating a shield as any other, but it generally didn't suit my style of play and got in the way of casting and retrieving my discus, so I tended not to use it.

The audience buzzed with excitement, eager for the no-holds-barred blood match to begin, and to have their say in its outcome.

We faced off, the referee between us, hand raised and ready to signal the start of the fight. Marcus' sword and my discus, deadly line and circle ready to clash. A tingling sensation passed across the skin of my palm as Orbis absorbed the sweat, improving my grip. This was just another opponent. Not my teacher, not a man I admired, not a fight for my life. Just another match. At the exact moment the referee cut down with his hand and stepped back, the image of my mother embracing Aulus as the flames burned them to cinders flashed into my mind. Then he yelled, “Fight!”

I took Marcus at his word, no quarter, and threw my discus right at him, forcing him to take cover behind his shield. Marcus had always taught me to simultaneously play to my strengths while denying the opponent the opportunity to bring his to bear.

Marcus surprised me by retreating, jumping up to the first platform and then heading up the stairs toward the second, challenging me to follow. He wanted to take the fight to the cross-shaped structures on the higher platform where there was less room to move. My best strategy would be to hold my ground, to wait him out, but I started after him at once. I couldn't just stand around. A good arena match had to burn from the first clash and build in intensity. If I wanted to keep the audience on side, I had to keep up the pressure on my opponent, and if Marcus reached the second level as I tried to climb to the first, he'd have the high ground and could pin me down with his shield.

As soon as my boots hit the second platform, he turned and charged. I cast Orbis to try to slow his advance, but he batted the discus aside at the last second, angling it away behind him so Orbis would take longer to return to my hand. I was exposed and unarmed. Marcus had closed the range between us to five feet by the time my weapon returned. I threw a new kind of cast I'd been practicing—a spin shot. As Marcus went to ward the discus away, Orbis nicked the edge of the tower shield and then spun about the shield's edge, hitting Marcus' shoulder guard. The force knocked my lanista off balance, sending him back onto one knee. Orbis returned, and I threw again at once, right past Marcus. Orbis struck a post and rebounded toward my opponent, forcing Marcus to turn away from me to defend. Rushing forward, I closed the gap and launched a high side kick at Marcus' head. He turned to block my foot with his shield just in time, but my kick had all my body weight behind it and the impact still sent him flying. He landed hard on his back, arms flying wide in a ready-to-be-beaten position.

I regathered Orbis as I fell onto him. Too late I saw it was a trap. As I landed on top of his shield, he turned and sent me falling down over the edge to the first platform. Now it was my turn to land on my back, except I wasn't pretending. It was a six-foot fall, and the impact knocked the wind out of me, leaving me gasping for air like a fish on dry land as Marcus leaped after me, the point of his sword aimed at my chest. I rolled aside at the last moment and jumped to my feet, only to find myself trapped right in the corner of one of the transparent cross-shaped walls. Marcus was fighting two steps ahead of me. He pressed me into the corner with his shield, and a blossom of pain erupted in my side as his gladius made rapid-fire thrusts at my torso. Somehow I managed to raise Orbis, using him to ward the short sword aside, buying me a vital second so I could turn my way out of the corner.