Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (28 page)

“Well, go and get some,” I yelled at the Iceni. “I'm not fucking kidding. I need to wake up if I'm going to fight. You tell our lord and master Gaius Sertorius Crassus that I'm not going to perform today if he's going to mess about with my diet.”

“I don't think—” she started.

“I'm not asking you to think. I'm telling you to obey! Now go and don't come back without it!”

“Yes, domina.” The small creature bowed and left.

“Hold your horses,” Julia said. “It's not the Iceni's fault.”

“Did you say anything to them?” I said, rounding on Julia. “You were the one pushing me to stop. Did you tell them I'd had too much? Are you here working for Crassus?”

I had her up against the wall, my forearm pressing against her throat. She was using all her strength to try and push it away, but to no avail.

“Well? I want the truth.”

“And I want to know how you suddenly turned into just another gods-be-damned Sertorian,” she hoarsely whispered. “Gonna kill me for something I didn't do?” I released her and walked off, hammering the wall with my fist. It was hard to clear my head and think straight. My vision was blurry, and the buzzing headache was only getting worse.

When I confronted Crassus, he assured me he had played no part in the decision.

“It came down from Licinus. He's probably received reports saying you're fond of it and is playing games with you. My advice—ride it out. Jump through the hoops until we get to the arena world and then get your own back. In the meantime have a cup of tea or some wine,” he said.

I slapped him hard in the face. I was slowing down. He saw it coming but let it land anyway and then floored me with a right cross.

“Really, you have to do something to get rid of all that pent up tension, Accala. If you don't have tisane, there are always other options,” he said suggestively.

I struggled through practice without it and Lurco regretted teaming up with me. I let him take the lead, setting up the kills while I did the easy job and finished the beasts off.

It was a hard day and it was only going to get more difficult. The next morning there was no tisane to be had either, and I could barely put a coherent thought together, thanks to a splitting headache. Like when a mosquito buzzes above your bed in the dark, I couldn't pinpoint the exact point inside my head that the buzzing noise originated from, but it was busily needling away like a dentist's drill.

The final day of the week arrived and Lurco and I were sent into the maze again. What a waste of time. I'd been forced to run the same maze each day with Lurco, and although I'd progressed as a killer of barbarians, I hadn't improved my maze navigation skills or found Barbata's safe way through. That day, though, something was different. Struggling without the tisane, I followed behind Lurco and noticed that the buzzing ache had shifted to a point that felt, strangely, outside my body. Somewhere just away from me. As I moved through the maze, the buzzing oscillated, growing stronger when I moved to my left and weaker when I moved to the right. Experimenting, I found that it was definitely directional, as if the sound were originating from a specific location. When the noise seemed the loudest, I came to a full stop alongside a length of maze wall. Lurco was engaging some beast ahead, but I let him take care of it. The source of the sound was directly opposite me, on the other side of the wall. I reached out to touch the surface, and my hand passed right through it. There was no wall; it was a projection. Stepping through, I found a long corridor on the other side, a straight path to an exit, right out of the maze and back to the hangar.

But between me and escape stood a cluster of five Hyperboreans. Right there before me, the indigenous beings of the arena world. Finally I'd found Barbata's path. Only I had to kill the barbarians to exit the maze. There were none of the workers Mania had taught us about, they were all warriors, seven to eight feet tall, each one twice my width. And the sharp spines, so many points to kill an opponent upon. They looked dull, weakened compared to the ones I'd seen on the holovids, but what Mania's instructional holograms had not reproduced well were the beautiful swirling liquids and gases that moved within the crystal forms. Like an opal or shining mother of pearl, the dance of subtle, shifting color was captured and reflected by the crystal prisms that formed the shell of their bodies.

As I walked toward them, instead of turning to confront me as the other beasts had, these parted like water to either side, opening a way to the exit. They were completely nonhostile. It seemed so strange when every other barbarian that week had been set on ending my life. I walked past them, wary but not sensing any threat, and cleared the long corridor.

To my surprise, they followed along behind me in a neat line. The Sertorians cheered when the Hyperboreans trailed out, whooping and jeering.

“Would you look at that! The mother wolf has lost her cubs and found ducklings instead!” Licinus roared.

“You magnificent bitch!” Barbata yelled, but it didn't sound like her at all. Her voice sounded completely different. “You found them and tamed them!”

“Go back,” I hissed, trying to wave them back into the maze with my discus. “Go away.” But they kept coming until they all stood in the gymnasium, surrounding me.

“Right, get on and kill them,” Licinus called from the gantry above.

“But there's no fight in them,” I argued.

“So what? This is a beast hunt, not a petting zoo. You found the hidden way out, and the only thing standing between you and victory for the day is killing those ice monkeys.”

“Get on with it!” Crassus yelled.

“I'm bored already,” I heard Barbata say, and then an electrified net fell over one of the Hyperboreans and the dark-haired retarius had leaped down from the gantry and was sprinting toward it. Just then, Lurco emerged from the maze and charged the barbarians as well.

“Defend yourself,” I hissed at the creatures, but they just stood there, facing toward me, oblivious to any danger.

Suddenly the alien warriors sprang into action. They were surprisingly fast and dangerous, slicing at Barbata and Lurco with their ice-pick arms and grabbing with their sharp claws.

“That's more like it!” Mania yelled.

Strangely, they seemed to avoid me altogether. I had an easy opening to take the fourth, but it just stood there before me as if waiting to be cut down.

Barbata pushed past me, trident raised and ready to strike. Without thinking Orbis flew from my hand, ricocheted off some terraform rocks and, just before Barbata's weapon could arc down, Orbis struck the forked end and knocked it right out of her hand. The trident clattered to the ground and at the same time spun Barbata aside. She missed the stationary barbarian and fell awkwardly.

“You dare, you filthy little bitch?” Gaia Barbata screamed at me. Vicious abuse and insults streamed from her mouth, and her usually beautiful features were twisted with rage.

“Hold!” Licinus commanded. “Barbata and Lurco, back off. Retreat from combat.”

The two of them stepped away, leaving me to face the Hyperboreans, but instead of attacking together, they reverted to their previous state, standing and staring dumbly at me.

“Mock Hawk, you called the kill when you stole it from Barbata.”

“Quickly, Accala,” Crassus called out. “Kill! You've got no future here unless you kill!” There was an edge of desperation in his voice.

I had to keep my little brother in mind; nothing mattered but saving Aulus. I spun two, three times and let Orbis fly. He went out on a line before the spin kicked in and he arced back. It was more like stationary target practice than a fight. Orbis cut into them, one, two, three heads were severed and fell to the hard floor. The bodies remained standing upright, the swirling opalescent gases inside their bodies leaking out into the air around us, creating a rainbow cloud that hung above the gymnasium. The fourth was already down, struggling out of Barbata's net, and the moment Orbis returned to my hand, I fell upon it.

The net's charge had faded away and the barbarian reached out through the holes to grip my hand. Sharp claws held me tightly, cutting into the meat of my palm, as the creature pulled me close. My buzzing headache vanished; I'd forgotten it was there at all in the rush of action, but suddenly I felt like a perfectly clear pool. An image flashed sharply into my mind, like someone had activated a holographic projector only inside my head. It was a mountain, immense and majestic, and I knew it at once—from my dreams and from my research—the arena world's largest peak, Nova Olympus.

It was only there for an instant and then my hair was grabbed and I was dragged off the alien, kicked in the back, and tossed aside. Barbata pushed past, burying her trident in the creature's neck. A kill shot. The gases floated up from the puncture holes, joining the cloud above before the vapors were sucked into the air vents set into the ceiling.

I was so tired I could barely get to my feet. My mouth was dry, my vision swimming.

“A magnificent display from both gladiators,” Crassus announced, trying to keep the peace. I expected Barbata to come at me, to spew more invectives, but her face was strangely calm.

“Good practice,” she said to me. “Keep it up.”

I couldn't believe the sudden change in her. A second ago she wanted me dead, there was no doubt about it, and now it was like nothing had happened at all. Crassus took me aside and congratulated me on my performance.

“You came out ahead of Lurco for finding the right path and I was able to convince Licinus to let you have a reward. It'll be waiting for you back in your quarters.”

Back in my cabin I lay on the bunk and wept for the dead barbarians. I'd executed beings that meant me no harm, had stood by while a being that was trying to bond with me was executed, for I had no doubt that the mountain image was some effort at communication. The pot of tisane, my special treat, lay on the bench. I waited for Julia to come back. She'd advised cutting down on the amount I consumed, but the last few days without it had been a living hell. The second she came in, I could talk to her, ask her to help me. It bothered me that I felt compelled to drink it; every nerve, every muscle longed for the relief the tisane would give. Where the hell was she? But she didn't come. Maybe she was sore about being slammed up against the wall and screamed at. I couldn't take it another second. I tore the top off the pot and drank the whole thing in one go, steaming hot, burning my throat and stomach, but I didn't stop. It spilled over, ran like rivers down the sides of my mouth. I didn't care, I just wanted to stop all feeling. When it came to insulating my heart from fear and sorrow, the tisane had done the trick before, and just like magic, it did the trick again.

XV

T
HE THIRD WEEK BEGAN,
my final week to prove myself to Licinus. My dreams were no longer of fire or ice but solely of water. Drowning in a red-and-purple sea, I heard my mother call out my name, but I couldn't see her or keep my head above the water long enough to find her.

Each morning, when Alba brought her offering of tisane, I swallowed it greedily. The strong dreams gave me no rest, no chance to recharge as I slept, but the tisane made up for it. Crassus had started feeding me more and more of the stuff in our sessions in the domed room, and if I had to be honest, I had never felt better. This was where I had to shine and show my real value or, by the end of the week, when we exited the last Janus Cardo, I'd be out of time and so would Aulus.

But I wasn't concerned. This was my area of expertise—gladiator fighting! Both one-on-one and team-versus-team timed matches. I worked hard to make an impression.

Suddenly I was no longer the weakest. I defeated Mania in one round by disarming her and then beat Barbata on points. I couldn't harm her, but she couldn't harm me either. Within two days I progressed to being among the strongest. I was on a roll. Maybe my luck had changed, so I decided to test Fate and see what would happen.

“Come on,” I goaded Licinus after practice. “I'm holding my own against the others, but you and I haven't fought a one-on-one match yet.”

“You're calling me out?” he asked in disbelief. “Are you really that deranged?”

“The way to get to be the best is to challenge the best.”

“You don't remember what happened last time? You're taking a great risk that I won't just out-and-out kill you for your impudence,” he said, stepping out onto the gymnasium floor, steel whip in hand, “but come, I could use a laugh and it'll keep morale high among the others.”

It was all over in twenty seconds. I warded the biting tip of his weapon and sprinted in to close the gap, but his whip curled back, and before I could strike, it wrapped about my chest and pulled me off balance. Instead of pulling up, though, I let myself go with it and pretended to fall, running right into him and sending us both flying over. I got lucky; he wasn't expecting me to lose my balance (or pretend to) and I landed on top of him. He rolled me off, drove the hard butt of his whip into the side of my skull, and before I could regain my feet, set about launching hard kicks into my lower back and kidneys.

“Don't break her spine,” Crassus suggested. “She might not heal up in time for the tournament.”

“You'd better not fuck up like that again if you want to live, Mock Wolf.” Licinus spat on me and stormed out of the gym.

Twenty seconds, but that was all the time I needed. When I fell on him, I'd pressed my armilla against his. Returning to my cabin that night, bruised and sore, I checked and confirmed that I had, in fact, scanned a bundle of security access codes from Licinus' armilla.

Despite my humbling at Licinus' hands, Crassus was pleased with my performance and laid off on his demands for recitations of the precepts. He was supportive, encouraging, bringing me tisane when I asked for it. I still despised him, that had never changed, but there was no denying he was handsome, noble, ruthless, just like a hawk. Despite his delusions and planet-size ego, there was a certain magnificence to him, an enviable confidence.