Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (92 page)

“It is the only alternative, the only hope of recovering power.”

“Power is a nightmare. That's the game we've been playing all this time, and it's a cosmic joke. Look at us. This is what comes of power for the sake of power. It's self-inflicted torture, not something to be desired. The only reason to wield power is to serve. It's a weight the gods put upon you, and you endure it for the benefit of others for as long as you can bear it.”

“Words are only words,” he said. “Action speaks louder.”

He was set in his ways. I was set in stone. He was dead already, thanks to the poison. I couldn't allow him to take me with him.

Like rams locking horns, we clashed. Pike against discus. I was faster, but I was worn out, and judging from his speed and strength, they'd fed Father ambrosia. The moment our weapons touched, mine became suddenly heavy. He had tricks, skills; he could transfer his body weight into the weapon just enough that it made mine hard to wield and manipulate, but not so much that he was off balance and I could use his weight against him. Suddenly I was moving through mud, and he was sticking to my every move, waiting for the opening that would allow him to slide the point of his pike through my guard. He was good. Better than good: He was great. I was faster, but he was sneaky. A lifetime of tricks and strategy. I had the advantage of youth, but he had experience, and that was a powerful ally. He was holding back, though. The pace picked up. The torture must have taken its toll because his guard was starting to drop. I had a clean shot at his neck and let it go, and he grunted in disgust. I guess I was holding back too.

I stepped away, disengaging, and lowered Orbis.

“What are you doing?”

“I won't stop, but I won't harm you. You'll have to kill me. We'll die together and join Mother in the underworld. Do it.”

“If you were really fighting for the empire, you wouldn't stop for anything,” he criticized.

“And if I don't yield to you, then I'm an obstinate daughter who thinks only of herself. There's no victory. The emperor was right, you were right. I'm a gladiator, but I'm also a daughter, your daughter. Strike me down. Wash away your disgrace if you believe it's best for the empire. I won't marry Aquilinus, but I'm tired of fighting with you. I can't do this anymore.”

His eye shone, and he looked at me strangely. An expression I couldn't recall seeing before.

“You were a pigheaded little girl,” he said. “You never accepted my authority before, not even when you were a knee-high toddler. My brother said I should have beaten you, but I knew he was wrong. Some spirits don't bend, they break.”

“I broke, and they put me back together. I learned how to bend, to to live my life for something other than myself.”

“Raise your weapon,” he said.

“No.”

“Raise it and fight. You want to pass me? You want to prove yourself to Rome? They're all watching. Show them. No quarter.”

“I won't kill you.”

“I'm already dead, but I see you, Accala. Probably for the first time. I see that those qualities I objected to in you, the determination and bullheadedness, are my own. They're qualities that have allowed me to persevere and triumph in times of difficulty. I can't believe I didn't see that before now.”

His expression. It was pride. He was proud of me.

“I've never surrendered in my life,” he said. “Not once. I never learned how to yield even a little, and perhaps I'm a worse man for it. And you, you are a gladiator and possessed of some skill. You know how to swing that discus better than I ever could. Strike quickly, warrior to warrior, and do not dishonor me.”

“Please, Father.”

“Show me!”

He swung, and Orbis flew up as if of his own accord. The cold air froze my tears before they could run. We fought. I showed him no quarter, nor he me. Back and forth like a dance.

“Yes. That's it! Good!”

There was a fire, an exchange of martial heat. The cold and snow forgotten. Only the dance. My skill matched his. He warded off a swing, and I pressed down on the shaft and slid up to his throat, grabbing the weapon's tip with my free hand, locking it in place. It was a fatal blow, and he didn't try to stop the discus but rather turned his neck slightly and seized my wrist with his right hand, stopping the final, lethal movement from finishing him.

His hand locked over mine. I couldn't move Orbis; it was trapped between his pike and hand. He controlled me now, but he couldn't move either. My body was wound up, ready to deliver all its energy into the strike. The second he let go, the stored momentum would drive Orbis through to the conclusion of his path.

“Don't do this,” I said. “You know I love you. I don't want to lose you. Not like I lost them.”

He smiled weakly at me, his eye sparkling.

“The gods stand with you. I'm sorry it took me so long to see it. My daughter. A hero.”

“No!”

He let go and reached out to touch the side of my face, a tender, fleeting touch before the discus slipped forward, cutting through one half of his neck, severing his jugular and brain stem in one stroke.

I dropped Orbis as his hands went slack. He fell to the ground, lifeless. I cradled his body, my hand closing over the artery that pumped his lifeblood out, his heart still beating, forcing the blood out between my fingers in great red pulses.

I didn't know how long I knelt there, but when I rose, my hands were covered with his blood, my white armor splattered and streaked with it—a clear handprint in the center of my chest, his handprint, his parting gesture.

Accala!

The voice sounded loudly in my head. Lumen. He was failing. I laid my father's body down and rushed to gather up the small Hyperborean. Mourning would come later. Always later. I picked him up like a child, holding him across my arms, ignoring the pain from the wounds I carried. I had to keep moving forward.

“The crown!” the crowd chanted. “Seize the crown!”

“You still think this is a game?” I cried out to them. “This is no game, this is a sin against the gods, and you are complicit. You get the leaders you deserve. You have welcomed evil, and so you must endure it. You don't get to sit on the fence anymore. You've made your choice.”

The boos and heckles of the virtual crowd followed me as I carried Lumen past the podium, Orbis in hand. I'd won, only it wasn't official until I seized the crown and held it aloft. Those were the ancient rules. The gladiator with crown in hand is Jupiter's chosen champion. I walked past the podium. Let the crown rot, let them all rot if they thought I'd dance to their tune after their complicity in my father's death. Since my time in the caves with Lumen, winning the games had been important to me only as a means to an end. I had to help the Hyperboreans by getting Lumen to the mountain. That was the only path to redemption. Lumen and I approached the exit gate to the Colosseum, where a green energy field barred the way.

The crowd suddenly roared with excitement as Crassus shot out into the air, emerging from one of the ramps that led into the arena from below. He was riding the chariot we'd abandoned at the entrance. There was someone aboard. It was Julia! He'd rescued her. He was heading for the arena's northern exit, but as he passed by the central podium, he pulled up. The crown was there, right in front of him.

“Crassus! Don't you dare! Don't even think about it,” I yelled.

I instantly regretted not seizing the crown when I'd had the chance. I'd spurned the mob and the very idea of the contest, to try to teach them a lesson, to show them what was important, but it hadn't occurred to me that I'd left it open for another to claim victory. I started to head back toward him, but he'd already leaped from the chariot and plucked the crown from its pedestal. The ghost audience screamed its approval, howling with delight. Before remounting the chariot, Crassus stooped and picked something up off the ground—a gladius with a shining raven emblem on its butt—Marcus' weapon.

And then Crassus was off, hurtling back out of the arena before Aquilinus could stop him, laurel crown tucked under his arm, Julia in hand. If I saw him again, I was going to kill him. I'd had enough of Crassus. Julia was right. I should have taken his life long before now.

Please. Keep moving forward. To my mother. I can't contain the power much longer, but I can put what spills out to some use. The force field won't stop you.

I passed through the energy field that barred the exit without harm. No resistance, no electrical charge. Behind the arena, the ruins of the city spread out before me. Aquilinus had no defenses in place, no hidden surprises. He hadn't expected me to get this far. I started to run toward the mountains, cradling Lumen in my arms. Perhaps two miles away, maybe three. A few miles of ruin-scattered tundra was all that lay between us and real victory. Lumen was emitting so much energy that I could barely see in front of me for the intensity of the glow. Every step came with the expectation of destruction, that Aquilinus would rain down a cascade of ion bolts from the station and end my life. That's what the mob, like some jilted lover, would have him do, it's what would grant him universal support. They hated me now more than ever. I'd spurned them, lectured them, held up a mirror to their own darkness, but I was holding Lumen, and even now Aquilinus wouldn't risk destroying him. The sun was high over the mountains. The others had sacrificed themselves so that I could be there. By the time the golden sun set, this would all be over, one way or another.

 

ACT VIII

LADY JUSTICE

Tell the stars in their arising:

be thy charge, O Roman, to rule the nations in thine empire;

this shall be thine art, to lay down the law of peace,

to be merciful to the conquered and beat the haughty down.

—Virgil,
Aeneid

XLIX

Q
UICK.
H
AD TO BE
quick. Get out of Lupus Civitas and to my goal. Get Lumen to the mountain. Only my legs wouldn't work right, and Aquilinus was coming. The Blood Hawks were finished, but Aquilinus was far from done. He'd send everything left in his arsenal to stop us. He couldn't allow us to reach the mountain. I saw the orbs hovering, greedy red eyes still blinking, still filming. The whole empire was watching to see what happened next.

We traveled to the city limits without any threat or obstruction. There was no sign of danger. No Praetorians, no ion cannon. No Crassus. The mountain stretched up into the clouds ahead, unexpectedly steep and sharp, like a spear tip, piercing the heart of the clouds that gathered around its heights. I understood now why the first colonists to this world dedicated it to Minerva, why they built a temple into the mountain's base. Somehow, despite its spearlike quality, there was something embracing about the mountain, something feminine. The mountain was encircled by a crescent-shaped canyon. The colonists saw Minerva when they looked at it and hoped and prayed that she would protect them.

Just a few more miles and we'd have made it. But now we would be exposed, crossing open tundra without the cover of the city ruins. The canyon could be entered only through a narrow mouth. Once we were in there, we'd have all the cover we needed. Then Lumen would be home.

Images flickered across the screen of my mind as I walked. Our mother, the goddess Minerva, a bird flying free from a cage, a ship sailing over the horizon. Freedom. Home. Mother. All those things.

Minerva. Her ruined temple awaited. Just three more miles.

A coughing fit wracked my body, and I nearly dropped Lumen. He was heavy in my arms, so heavy. Come on, legs. Stop burning, get moving.

We had barely made it fifty feet when Lumen began to writhe in my arms, twisting in pain.

“Are you going to make it?” I asked.

A flurry of images replied. Moths, cocoons, goblets overfilling with water, dams busting, insects dragging crackling transparent husks of their old bodies behind them. Things that were too small to contain what was within them. Change. Containment failure. Metamorphosis.

Keep moving. I no longer cared if the Hyperboreans were servants of the gods or just desperate aliens who needed to escape this world. I owed them and I needed them. Needed to serve something bigger than my fellow Romans tearing apart the empire from the inside out. Needed to believe in light and beauty, that in the mountain ahead there might be something as perfect as the alien city I'd helped destroy.

A great rumbling sound filled the air, like a thunderstorm rolling over us. Coming in high over churning ocean waters—
Incitatus'
black-and-ruby triremes—a hundred ships, each carrying a dozen talon fighters. They cleared the waters and circled above us like a flock of vultures, casting an ominous shadow out across the shining plain. The sight of them filled me with dread. I'd dreamed of them hundreds of times, but none of that prepared me for the fear I felt at the sight of them now, at the sight of the command ship, a large black-gray trireme with a white underside and red double-bar markings. It was Licinus. Now I knew where he'd run off to. He was reprising his most famous role, at the helm of his Black Peregrine command bomber. It was from the belly of that craft that nuclear fire was dropped on this world. He was here as a threat. Either I stopped and gave up Lumen, or this world would burn again and no one would have its precious ichor. Aquilinus was through bargaining and playing games. The opinion of the mob was irrelevant to him, as was any attempt to present himself as a beneficent and enlightened ruler. For him it was all or nothing now. The will and power to achieve victory at any cost.

But triremes never make noise—they are silent killers. So where was the rumbling sound coming from? The answer came from the hills of the north. A platoon of golden thunder tanks with metallic green markings came rolling out from the foothills. Despite their antigravity plates, they were made of such heavy, dense armor that they needed noisy rocket engines to drive them forward. The green sensor eyes slid back and forth along the front shield screens of the tanks as they advanced. My uncle had made it to his hidden base and was coming with what remained of his Caninine alliance to claim his prize, armed to the teeth with the weapons of the old twenty-fourth legion Viridius that once guarded this world—the Thunder Wolves. There were four command tanks, and the surviving Viridian team members—Carbo, Caninus, Nervo, along with my uncle—each controlled their own tank, plus an additional dozen that trailed just behind. Fifty-two in total. The slave tanks were programmed to mimic the attacks of the four commanders. Each one was armed with ion cannons and surface-to-air missiles. Enough to give the triremes a run for their money.