GIRL GLADIATOR (2 page)

Tabiz was straining to get closer to his two fallen comrades. Crassus noticed that this had an instant effect on the woman-child – her eyes flicked wide as she reckoned distances, her hands tensed on the spear shaft and her lips pulled tight across her teeth. Crassus held up his hand to stop Tabiz because he noticed something else. As she readied herself for battle her breath shot out from her mouth and plumed white in the icy air as if from the nostrils of a galloping horse. He had heard tales of the longhaired warriors from the north who would pant like this to beserk themselves – there was only one way to deal with a mad dog. He called up the archer.

“Lethas, put one through her black heart!”

“Get out of here, Fritha!” Sharn begged her with the last of his strength.

The muscular archer got an arrow from his quiver and loaded his bow. Then, in a night of strange events, the strangest thing of all happened. The girl looked Crassus straight in the eye as if trying to memorise his features for some future time and then coolly turned her back on him. Crassus had dished out death many times before but had never seen it greeted with such disdain.

Fritha looked down on Sharn and made the soft noises he remembered from when they made love, and then she smiled, as if to say, “This is just for now, we are forever.”

The arrow flew from the bow. At first Sharn thought it had missed because it whizzed off into the shadows; but so slight was Fritha’s frame, the bolt passed straight through her. She crumpled with a sigh and fell forward onto Sharn. For the first time that night he was warm as Fritha’s life poured all over him.

Crassus called on Tabiz. “Legionnaire, cut her up and give her to the wolves.”

Tabiz nodded eagerly. “Shall I finish the other one off too?”

Crassus was about to say yes but already his new belief had started to change him.

“No,” Crassus said, “he’s just a boy.”

“She was just a girl,” Tabiz said, as he moved towards Fritha’s lifeless form, his sword at the ready.

M
aybe Sharn was dead. He felt as though he was floating and time was a blur – but he didn’t mind because it was full of visions of Fritha. He had seen inside a Roman bathhouse once in Damnonium and been amazed at the colourful frescos on the wall. And now it was as if the interior of his head was the unending wall of a Roman bathhouse and he saw scene after scene of his life with Fritha, beginning with the very first time he had laid eyes on her.

Everything was in turmoil since the Romans had invaded. Some tribes resisted and were crushed; some saw that Rome was there to stay and made an uneasy peace with them; other tribes relocated further away from the conqueror’s reach. Sharn’s own clan had fallen on hard days. They were reduced to scratching a living by going into abandoned settlements and scavenging everything that had been left behind. They were bad times – but if Sharn was honest, he couldn’t blame the Romans alone, it was his father’s drinking too.

One early spring day when the last blasts of winter were being blunted by the strengthening sun, Sharn, his father, Colun, and his two uncles, Rem and Brion, were out foraging on their ponies. They came upon an empty village, and spread out to search the huts. Sharn tied his pony to a fence and headed towards the nearest dwelling.

He pushed open the door of a wattle and daub hut and walked into the dim interior, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust. And then something started to trouble him. There was the smell of fresh smoke in the air. He crossed to the hearth and passed his hand over the ashes – they were still warm. He straightened and surveyed the room more carefully, sniffing for danger. His eyes were by now accustomed to the poor light and he looked over to the sleeping platform covered in a pile of dirty animal hides … and one of them moved.

Sharn drew his dagger and approached, pausing as the hides breathed again. He gripped his dagger tightly ready to make a quick thrust. He whipped aside the top pelt and recoiled in amazement. Pressing himself back into the bed was a boy, a sick boy from the look of him. His eyes were sunken and his face was gaunt.

“Who are you?” Sharn shouted.

But the boy just stared back at him without answering.

Sharn eyed him more closely. He was just skin and bones and in a shaft of light coming through the smoke hole, Sharn could see the crimson of fever on his cheeks.

Colun came in behind Sharn. “What’s that?”

“Just a kid,” Sharn replied, putting away his dagger.

Colun advanced into the hut. “Leave him. He’ll be dead soon.”

Colun stumbled against the lintel on his way out of the hut. Sharn could tell that his father had found some ale because his voice was thick with it.

Yes, that’s best – leave him here, Sharn thought. Times are tough and he’s just one more casualty. He’ll die and rot where he lies because nobody will be around to bury him.

Sharn leaned forward. The boy’s eyes were the weirdest colour he had ever seen – green with tawny flecks. And deep – like empty windows. But when Sharn stared into them he thought he could see shadows moving around far inside.

Colun, Rem and Brion looked at Sharn in amazement as he exited the hut carrying the boy.

“I don’t see the point, Sharn,” Colun grumbled, “he’ll die from you moving him – if nothing else.”

Sharn had no trouble hoisting the boy onto his pony – he was just a cage of bones. “Then there’s no harm done,” he said.

Rem and Brion reacted with surprise at the new authority in Sharn’s tone, and even Colun smiled. Sharn had done a lot of growing up in the last couple of seasons.

With the boy sitting in front of Sharn on the pony, they returned to their own village, jangling and clanking with all the utensils and tools they’d scavenged.

They crested a rise and saw Ryant, their dun, on the next hill. There were about thirty dwellings surrounded by a ditch and palisade. In the middle stood the roundhouse where clan meetings were held. Many of the huts were in bad repair because as the fortunes of their clan declined, families had drifted off to seek a more successful life with other kin, and some had even become servants in Damnonium, the nearby Roman outpost.

People ran out of their huts as they rode in. Colun summoned Guyleen, the village midwife and healer, indicating the sick boy and instructing the old woman to do what she could for him.

Guyleen reached the boy down from the pony. As she carried him away, he gazed back at Sharn with that same fathomless gaze.

Sharn and Colun entered their hut which was the grandest in the village, befitting the headman. Cumbria, Sharn’s sister, brought them cakes and ale. Sharn’s spirits always lifted when he saw Cumbria. She had a giggly voice, as if she was just about to burst into laughter, and she moved with a repressed energy as if she was on the verge of breaking into a run; but the thing Sharn liked most was that she reminded him of their mother, Imogen.

Sharn didn’t think he would ever recover from his mother’s death three summers ago. It was from that time that Colun’s drinking grew worse and it was about then that Sharn started to get his black moods – a terrible sadness settled on him like a huge crow blacking out the sun.

Sharn was telling his sister about the empty village and how he had rescued the dying boy, when all hell broke loose. Guyleen rushed into the hut, her gray hair flying and her arms waving. “She’s one of the little folk. She has the fairy markings.”

Sharn, Cumbria and Colun exchanged a look. What was she making such a fuss about? But Guyleen wasn’t going to hang around to elaborate – she hurried out, still screeching.

Colun was deep into his second bowl of ale and wasn’t interested in stirring. “Can you see what’s going on?”

Sharn and Cumbria entered Guyleen’s hut, the air heavy with the aroma of drying herbs. Guyleen had obviously been about to bath the boy, judging from the big wooden tub full of steaming water, but right now she was pointing at him accusingly, “She is a witch.” And with this she wrenched off the old fur the boy was clutching.

Sharn was dumbstruck. It was not a boy he had rescued, but a
girl
. She was so thin, her breasts were hardly breasts at all, and they were covered with tattoos, masses of weird swirling patterns. Sharn had coming-of-age tattoos around his arms and wrists but the girl’s tattoos were outlandish and otherworldly – row upon row of overlapping wolf fangs and stylised staring wolf eyes.

“Get her out!” Guyleen commanded.

But Sharn was still rooted to the spot with surprise. The girl did not try to cover herself but somehow she did not seem vulnerable. It was partly the athletic set of her body and partly her utter composure, despite her illness and nakedness. Sharn looked at the girl and the girl looked at him. Then without warning, she pitched forward and crashed to the ground.

“Careful – it might be witchcraft,” Guyleen cautioned as Sharn rushed forward. As he stooped down, he didn’t know why it should matter to him, but he was very relieved she was still breathing.

“Let’s take her home,” Cumbria said.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Guyleen said, “she might have the plague.” Sharn nodded. The Romans had brought new diseases with them which had caused a lot of deaths in the tribal lands.

“All right, we’ll take her to the Declans’ old place,” Cumbria agreed.

While Cumbria grabbed the fur coverings, Sharn scooped her up. Guyleen came to the door to see them on their way, muttering prayers to the gods to banish the evil spirits the girl had no doubt brought into her home.

T
hat night Sharn and Cumbria put her in a hut that had lain empty since their neighbours had left, and kept a peat fire going as she hovered near death. Sharn wrapped her in his own cloak when her teeth chattered with cold, and laid it aside when she shuddered with fever.

The next day, Cumbria was at the hearth preparing porridge while Sharn sat staring at the newcomer on the sleeping platform.

“She is a Pict, isn’t she?” Sharn asked.

“Those tattoos are Pictish,” Cumbria nodded.

“What was she doing in that Celtic village then?”

Cumbria shrugged. Despite the Roman wall, the raids backwards and forwards still went on. “She probably got grabbed as booty.”

Cumbria brought the bowl of porridge over. Sharn scooped up a spoonful and blew on it. With Cumbria propping up the head of the Pictish girl, Sharn tried to feed her. It was then that he realised why he had never heard her speak. As she opened her mouth, he saw with horror that she had no tongue.

“Oh, Cumbria, look!”

Cumbria craned forward and gasped. “It’s been cut out!” she exclaimed.

The scar had healed now, but that is almost certainly what had happened. The stranger gazed up at them, like a wounded animal overtaken by hunters. Maybe that was why her eyes said so much, Sharn figured, because they had to utter what her mouth could not.

The girl was too weak to eat much and lay back on the pillow. As Sharn and Cumbria traded troubled looks and tried to come to terms with this grisly discovery, she started to doze. They got to their feet and went over to the hearth where Cumbria poured two cups of yarrow tea, handing one to Sharn.

“Who do you think would do such a thing?” Sharn asked.

Cumbria thought about this as she sipped her tea.

“I’ve heard that if a girl is raped … sometimes the man who forced her cuts out her tongue so she can’t inform.”

Sharn thought about this, and it made his flesh creep. He was glad he was not a girl. Suddenly the Pict twitched and whimpered in her sleep.

“She looks as though she has gone through a lot,” Cumbria said as she laid aside her cup and moved back to the bed. She gently wiped a cloth across the girl’s forehead to sop up some of the fever-sweat.

Sharn glanced at Cumbria as she took the cloth and wrung it out in a pail of cold water. Sharn smiled. The arrival of the girl was making him feel closer to his sister. Cumbria was so calm and self-possessed, like their mother, and growing more like her every day. You could tell Cumbria some startling news and she would listen quietly and then say something wise and balanced. The whole village could be abuzz with vicious gossip about an unfaithful wife or a thieving youth but she wouldn’t blame, just seek for reasons why things were this way.

“Do you think she understands what we say to her?” Sharn asked.

“She’d get some of it. A lot of our words are the same.”

“I can’t follow when the Picts talk fast,” Sharn admitted. “They always sound like they’re half singing.”

Cumbria smiled. “You’ve never been a good listener, Sharn.”

Sharn brushed this aside – his sister was always teasing him. “We should call her something,” he said watching the firelight tremble on her sleeping face.

“Call her something?” Cumbria frowned.

“We’ll never learn what her real name is. She can’t tell us and there’s nobody else around who can,” Sharn answered.

Cumbria nodded slowly, accepting the truth of this.

“What about Fritha?” Sharn said.

Cumbria’s head jerked up. “Fritha!”

Sharn looked down at his hands. “It’s a nice name.”

“It was what Mum was going to call the baby – if they’d lived,” Cumbria said hollowly.

He nodded, “So do you think it’s disrespectful?”

“I think it’s a good choice,” she smiled.

Sharn was relieved. He stood and went over to the sick girl, kneeling down to take her hot hand. Her eyes flew open. “We’re going to call you Fritha. I hope you like it.”

The girl’s face brightened and the shapes deep in her eyes seemed to move forward, as if interested for the first time to peer out into the world. And as he gazed into her green eyes it came to Sharn what they reminded him of. Last winter had been particularly cold and the wolves were driven out of the oak forests by hunger. Under the cover of a snowstorm one very bold wolf had tried to take one of their sheep from the fold in broad daylight. Sharn, on patrol, managed to spear it. As it lay dying it looked up at him … and its eyes were exactly like this girl’s – alien and wild and unknowable. Sharn squeezed the girl’s hand and he felt an answering pressure, so faint perhaps he imagined it.