Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (95 page)

You see,
she said, pointing to the scene of me holding the notification of my mother and brother's deaths in my hand, staring blankly at the legionary delivering the news.

At this moment, you were dead. Your heart had stopped beating, it was quiet in your chest, heavy and useless like a broken clock.

The color resumed after the caves, after I was beheaded and put back together.

Lumen brought you back to life in more ways than one. Your heart was a stone, and he squeezed it until it began to beat again.

I looked down at my breast, and for the first time since entering the mountain I remembered that I was wounded. Mortally wounded. The area around the wound was stained red. Blood was pumping from the hole in my chest, the hole in my heart.

But the aspects of your soul that you require for mortal survival still cling to you. Your body is still close.

Her fingers of light stretched out, cradling my heart as it beat weakly like an exhausted bird, desperately flapping against the wind.

This heart is worn out,
she said.
It's had to come too far too fast. A long journey in such a short space of time.

“Am I going to die now?” I asked.

Life or death is not about whether your heart continues to beat,
she replied.
There is an essence that exists before, that remains after.

“Droplets in the sea.”

Yes. Life is forever present. It is something we turn away from and must turn back to. This choice transcends the flesh. It is about how we live each moment. This is the gift of the gods to our children. Now look again.

The band turned in space, running like a belt on an old engine, and I saw that on the flip side of the strip that held all of the scenes of my life there was another sequence. Ancient Rome. The rise of the Romanii. The battle with the Etruscans. The conquering of the tribes of Italy, the conquest of Europa, Phrygia, the galaxy. It was the history of the empire.

There were broken faded scenes along its length too. The death of Julius Caesar, the battle for the republic, the mad emperor Neo Heliogabalus. And in between them were moments of heroism. Mucius Scaevola, Horatius on the bridge, Scipio Africanus defeating the Carthaginians.

You see. There have been moments when the empire's heart has stopped too. Moments where it could have died and has been revived by heroes. By those who chose to live. It takes only one man or woman, the right word, the right action at the right time, to restart the heart of a civilization, to reignite the creative fire of hope and inspiration. The empire is like a person, a civilization a little like a god. A vast container of ideas, of hopes and dreams and energies.

“But you are bound by the material now. The world of things weighs you down.”

Yes, we have been pulled too close to the material, and its gravity has earthed us, held us down. We have to return, to travel back to where we came from. To a place where we can help balance the creative forces that govern the universe. Your mother longed for a golden age. While the creative seeds of the universe are earthbound in this place, that can never come to pass.

“Then let me fix it. Let me help you. Let me stop the empire's heart from freezing. I'll die if I can keep it beating, keep it turned toward life.”

The strip moved around my heart. My heart and that of the empire overlapped.

I will keep your heart here for now and give you another,
she said.

She reached out and past the side of my face, like Lumen performing one of his magic tricks. My hair tumbled down over my shoulders.

She held her closed fist out before me and slowly opened it, light leaking out between her fingers. There was my pin, the pin she sent me.

We saw you from far away. Saw that your path led here. We sent you this pin to carry you to us like a cast spear. To aid us in our hour of need.

The brilliant golden pin shone in her palm, and then my mother's form withdrew into the light, and something else came out. The pin grew into a spear of light that flew as if from a great distance, gathering light as it flew, and hit me in the heart, right where I'd been wounded. It entered me like a needle, like an arrow hitting a flying bird, fast and sharp, and took my breath away. Pain wasn't the right word. It was like the point of orgasm, the point of dying, the point of being born. How could she stand to hold so much power in place? This single splinter was splitting me apart. Then suddenly things aligned, like overlapping circles all lining up into one form. I felt new, consumed by a numinous light.

I was not Accala anymore. I was the archetype of Accala, the perfect, realized Accala. A crystal lit by a small sun.

Go and close the loop,
she said.
You wish to save the empire? Your people? Then act without fear or desire. Be the unwavering arrow and strike the target true. If you weaken, the power will destroy you. If you can act as a judge for a higher court than the human heart, your empire will survive.

And then, without any sense of movement, I was standing outside the mountain again, surrounded by biting winds and the fires of war. I was back in the real world, and yet nothing was the same as when I'd left it. I could sense the streams of ichor in the ice all around me, running back into the mountain. Eddies and currents that conveyed a malleability that I was oblivious of before. Where I had seen only solid rock and ice, now I saw liquid potential, substances that could be shaped with thought, word, and motion. My body was free from pain, my thoughts like mercury, quick and sharp and penetrating.

Crassus and Julia had turned the turret of the partially ruined Wolf tank toward the canyon mouth and were firing into the gap. There was a burning pile of tanks nearby. They'd held the tanks at bay so that the Sertorians could pick them off from above. I moved past them without a word. I was in a dream. My feet barely touched the ground.

The canyon was shining like a brilliant mirror. Something was lighting it up, driving away the shadow of the mountain. It was me. I was glowing like a small sun, brighter than the light of the portal, more radiant than the strobing flashes of energy and fire around me as the battle of houses continued to play out.

“Are you glowing?” Julia called out as I passed. “Or have I just taken a hit to the head?”

“Yes.”

“So what do we do now?” she yelled. Fear was in her voice. She could sense I was different, that something had changed, that the fight was far from over. I could see so many things with this small splinter of the queen's power. I knew that back in the hall, the Hyperboreans were still milling through the portal, rejoining the mountain. I saw now that the mountain would soon become a spear of pure energy, and Lumen was the lens, both ignition and focal point that would direct the energy into the pool. The accumulated ichor of this world would leave this place in an instant and reappear somewhere else, far from here.

“Julia? I'm going to need to split my concentration, and it's going to weaken me. I need you now more than ever. Use your hand. Seize the ships' navigation systems. Keep them from laying down so much fire.”

Julia reached out. In a moment she would begin careening talon fighters into one another. Crassus used the immobile tank to shoot through the canyon mouth—together they could hold their position and protect the Hyperboreans as long as someone was taking the brunt of the attack on the field outside.

Now there were no more distractions, nothing to disturb the conversation I intended to have with Tribune Licinus and his fleet. Everything was so clear; so much confusion was caused by a lack of perspective.

I stepped out of the canyon on the open tundra. The howling snow and wind settled as I passed through the burning ruins of the thunder tanks. The firefight had reduced the ruins that peppered the snowfield to smoldering heaps of stone and steel. They looked like funeral pyres. I walked until I reached a clearing, a clear white canvas upon which to paint my picture. Above me, the Sertorian attack fleet hung in the sky, waiting. I stood alone before them, one tiny speck amid the burning tundra, a bright and shining target to every talon fighter, trireme, and bomber up there. The ships had reoriented themselves so that they now faced me head-on, ready to commence their bombing raid, and at the lead was Tribune Licinus. Nuclear payload hung beneath his ship, ready to inflict nuclear fire upon the surface of Olympus Decimus once again.

Behind them was Emperor Aquilinus, the holographic god, so large only his torso was visible, sky-embracing arms encircling his bomber fleet, his massive projection generated by
Incitatus.
Aquilinus' real body was aboard
Incitatus
, his flagship at the rear of his fleet, high above the surface, hovering in the empyrean, the borderline of sky and space. He thought he had the upper hand, literally. This was his greatest re-creation, the bombing of Olympus Decimus. The same number of ships, the same fleet, the same leader, the same bomb. But this time it was going to be different. This time I was here.

LII

T
HE BOWL OF THE
sky had become the new arena from which the stadium audience looked down on us. I could feel them, hear their thoughts. They were watching me. They'd seen me die twice now. They were wondering if anything could save them from the wrath of the gods. Even the Numerian emperor was apprehensive—but admirably not for his own skin but for the fate of the empire in his care. He truly feared what would become of his subjects under the rule of the Sertorians.

The conversation began. Talons came first, testing me. I held my ground as missiles and charges impacted upon me, around me. The icy ground was scorched. When the clouds of steam evaporated, I stood in a crater of black and melted ice, unharmed. My armor had been blasted away. I was naked, clothed only by my radiance, my black hair blowing in the wind.

A buzz started up among the viewing audience. Even some of the bomber pilots thought it. Their assault should have killed me. I was not human. The title given by the audience back in Rome's Colosseum sprang to their lips—Minerva's daughter, the handmaiden of justice. They were fearful, excited. Terror and wonder at the same time. They thought I'd come to judge them, that they'd committed hubris by throwing in with Aquilinus. They were right.

Aquilinus had styled his Ludi Romani team as an extension of his body, and the fleet seemed to be positioned with a similar logic. Licinus' bombers were the body, the triremes and talons were the wings, and
Incitatus
was the head. One great coordinated Sertorian form assembled to strike down a single woman. I had to gather my courage, hold to this state between life and death. That was the only way to beat such a being.

It was my turn to respond. I began the dissection of the talons using Orbis as my scalpel. The lapis negra mineral he was forged from was capable of absorbing large amounts of energy and was nearly indestructible—the perfect instrument. I infused my discus with energy and sent him out. He flew up, trailing an arc of light and heat. His arc passed through a row of neatly positioned talons, destroying each one in turn. Orbis returned to me having transformed six Sertorian ships into shooting stars. They tumbled from the sky, adding to the piles of burning wreckage. Back in the canyon, I could sense Julia and Crassus, working together to hold other talons at bay, shooting down any that came near their post. Julia had gotten the hang of her job. She was doing better than I ever imagined, redirecting ships into one another, or angling them so that Crassus could finish them off with the cannon.

We were making an impression, letting Aquilinus know we were serious. I sent Orbis out on another killing arc while the enemy responded with more missiles and energy fire. While I awaited his return, I sought out Licinus' mind.

I found it easily. It stood out, geometrically neat lines of anger and action. Here was a mind that was trained to rage and destroy all that it didn't understand in the most efficient manner, and right now I was at the top of his list. He knew I had power, though. He was frightened by what I intended to do, confused by the inability of his talons to kill me. But he was consoled by his bomb and eager to release its fire again, to scorch the earth and his enemies.

Licinus sensed me, which was a surprise. His finger was hovering over the button to drop the bomb, but he immediately switched to a different panel and fired two stinger missiles at me. I returned my concentration to my body as they came screaming down. These had more power than the weapons the talon fighters used, and I didn't know how much damage this body could take. I didn't want to waste the queen's power. Lumen had taught me that every ounce must be treasured for when it was truly needed.

I raised Orbis like a conductor's baton and made a sweeping movement. The ground before me broke, and a great shelf of ice reared up like a shield. The missiles struck it in place of me, blasting it to pieces. I walked through the debris unharmed. I reached out and directed a powerful geyser, which broke through the ice beneath Licinus' ship and shot upward, striking its black-and-red underside, and then moved around it. As I closed my fist, it solidified, forming a large version of my own hand, holding Licinus' frozen bomber in place. His thrusters burned, trying to drive up, to break the grip of my ice hand, but it took only a little of my power to hold him and his bomb in place. As he recognized his helplessness, Licinus' thoughts became erratic. If he fired, it would be a suicide mission now. He'd die in the resulting explosion.

Surprisingly, for all his evil, Licinus was a warrior, and I saw that his greatest fear was to die an ignoble death, struck down from a distance instead of in the heat of battle with a sword in his hand. And there was more. Like the conflict I saw raging within Crassus, there was confusion, a foreign presence that he struggled with for control over his own fate.