Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (48 page)

There was a repetitive dripping sound, multiple droplets hitting hard ground. Using the torch to scan my body, I saw black liquid running in rivulets down my arms and onto the icy ground of the well. Checking my reflection in the shiny cells of the hive I saw the substance running from the corners of my eyes, from my nose and mouth. However much ambrosia was left was now being leached from my body. But how? There wasn't time to hypothesize—with a sudden shortage of ambrosia, the withdrawal symptoms hit hard. A dizzy spell struck and I found myself on the ground, looking up at the round entrance to the cavern, out at the sky above. Then the pain started: tendons pulled tight, muscles locked, a needle lancing each pore in my skin. It was like a band of musicians had transformed my body into an instrument and were proceeding to pull and pluck, pound and stretch it to make their music. Then came the feeling of something clawing away inside my skull, through the middle of my bones. The body could do a lot with ambrosia, but it didn't deal well with the substance's sudden absence.

Somehow my mother's pin found its way into my hand and it grew hotter and hotter. I'd have dropped it in an instant if I could only make my fingers work and open my hand. The heat built, spreading to my body, burning me from the outside in. The buzzing sound increased in volume to the pin's heat, vibrating through my body until it felt like I was the queen at the heart of a beehive. If there was any ambrosia left in me, it was gone after that.

The pain gradually abated, and by the time it faded to a tolerable level, it was late afternoon, the light above fading to a brilliant gold and violet sunset. All I could do was lie there, shaking and numb, watching the golden light. Then, for the first time, without any distractions, completely exhausted and hollowed out, I could properly hear the buzzing sound that had bothered me since my departure from Rome. No buzz at all really, more like a song, a signal so densely packed with data that I'd been unable to receive and unpack it before now. I'd headed down the wrong track thinking the pin was actually leading me to the ichor. It was more like the ichor was powering the connection. At the other end of the line, like two children talking into tin cans connected by string, was Aulus. It was just a sense of him, a feeling of his presence, but it was so strong, and more, it was directional. Gods! The pin wasn't a compass; it was meant to turn me into a compass, and all the ambrosia I'd been consuming had been disrupting the relationship between antenna and signal, blocking it, numbing me so I couldn't hear the message. Julia was spot on. The heat generated by the pin was a sign the signal was blocked; unable to connect with me due to my consumption of ambrosia, the energy had to be released somewhere. Still, that didn't explain why the ichor had such a strong effect on the signal, causing a localized buzzing when I was near it. In the end I decided it was a kind of static, a powerful energy disrupting the signal, only in a different way than the ambrosia. The ichor disrupted and the ambrosia dampened and insulated. No wonder I'd been having so many problems—but no more.

I sat up slowly, scanned the ground around me with my torch. The ambrosia that had fallen from my body was gone. Despite the painful process I'd just endured, I felt surprisingly good, better than I had in a long while. My head was clear, my thoughts sharp. Not quite back to my old self, but a good way along the road.

So, what to do next? I was out here alone and if the tournament officials had sent anyone or anything to find me, so far they hadn't had much luck. Was I truly free of the games? All I'd have to do was climb out of the well and follow the pull of the pin right to my brother. I felt like a caged bird suddenly released. This was like a gift from the gods, all my petitions answered at once.

My body ached from the muscle seizures and, needing to conserve my energy, I judged it better to find a path back up to the surface rather than climb. Shining my armilla's torch, I found the tunnel entrance I'd spied before and decided to explore. It ran for a few hundred yards and led into another cavernous well. The moment I stepped into it, the feeling of connection to Aulus vanished. Even the buzzing song was gone. This space was identical to the last, with one difference.

Instead of the uniform, smooth surfaces I'd seen on the other cavern, these cells looked deformed, with strange growths protruding from the walls. Instead of the bright blue-and-white liquid crystal, these had a black-green oil slick substance pulsing inside them. Ambrosia. Having just been through the withdrawal process, I grew nauseous and nearly vomited at the sight of it. It wasn't even slightly appealing to me and yet, there it was, more than I'd ever need to kill the Blood Hawks. My own private supply. Without it I couldn't stand against the Hawks, but now that I was free, did I need it at all? Did I really need to take on Licinus and his team? I could fly under the radar, stay out of sight as the games surged on. Aulus was the goal, he'd always been the goal, and now I had a direct, uninterrupted path to him. The cavern piqued my interest though. Had the Sertorians already polluted it with their toxic canisters? No. This cavern was vast compared to the smaller wells I'd seen during the chariot rounds. A thousand canisters would have been needed to poison it. I gave the ambrosia cells a hit with Orbis, expecting them to be weaker than their ichor equivalent, but they were equally well protected. An ocean of ambrosia and no way of getting to it.

It seemed the gods were sending me a message—go to Aulus, rescue your brother. The thought of him out there, alive and well, waiting for me, was nothing short of electrifying. Yes, back to the first cavern and climb free. The future was my own to make, free of all the forces that sought to pull me this way and that for their own purposes. To my relief, as I started back along the tunnel, I felt the buzzing song start up. I was moving away from the ambrosia so the signal became strong. This was the right thing, moving toward Aulus. Finally on track with my mother's plan. To my right I caught sight of movement and brought my torch and weapon up, expecting an attack, but instead I was confronted by a horrific tableau—dozens of Hyperboreans were trapped behind the crystal wall of the tunnel, frozen in place as the black poison swirled about them, coating their forms. At certain points, alien body parts broke through the smooth tunnel wall, misshapen arms, heads, legs, sticking out at awkward angles. I stood there for a long time before I realized that they were still moving in tiny, almost imperceptible increments. It seemed to me that, with their hive polluted by the black fluid, these Hyperboreans were trying to flee, perhaps to join the little Spartacus and the others I'd seen leaving, only they weren't having much luck. Slow-motion agony—they'd never escape before the black fluid killed them off. It was like a classical description of a scene of Hades.

So if the Sertorians hadn't poisoned the place (if Licinus had known of that cavern, he'd have had the arachnoraptors scour it for every drop of ambrosia top to bottom), how had the poison come to be there in the first place? What was it that I was seeing?

I was able to use my first scan of the ichor to determine how much time had passed since the chemical makeup of the cells in that cavern had been altered by the ambrosia. The result: two years, give or take. The analysis also showed the same low levels of radiation present in the fluid from Licinus and Mania's canisters. Gods. It hit me like a thunderbolt. The black poison that turned ichor into ambrosia was the radioactive waste, the fruits of nuclear fallout—the result of the Sertorian bombing of Olympus Decimus. The substance in the canisters was residue from the bomb site. Shocked, I moved to the middle of the cavern and sat down on the cold ice to think things through.

I was still hundreds of miles from the blast site. Could the disaster I was witnessing really have happened as a result of the bombing that killed my mother? The data from the scans was conclusive, anything else would be too much of a coincidence.

As I went to get up, the torchlight brushed over a shining fluid on the cavern floor and I went to investigate. It was ambrosia, not trapped behind the hard cells but running free in the faintest, most miserly of trickles. The source was the tunnel wall. Set low into it, a few feet above the floor, I discovered that a Hyperborean worker had managed to partly breach the tunnel wall with the top half of his head, pointing face down. I knew he was dead because his skull was filled with ambrosia. The poison had mixed with the ichor in the barbarian's body to create the black fluid. It ran out of his skull from the finest of cracks, leaking out to drip to the floor below. All that ambrosia, right there if only the thin crack could be widened. I struck at the skull again and again with Orbis, but it had fused with the crystalline wall and absorbed its strength. What was I doing anyway? The plan was to leave, to climb out of the other cavern and find Aulus. It was a good plan, but as I walked along the tunnel, it occurred to me that all of my petitions had not been truly answered. I'd taken an oath to the triple goddesses of vengeance; they'd taken Lurco and Bulla as my offering. A deal had been struck and the more I thought about it, the more the fire burned within. As I went, I inspected Orbis and saw a small stain of ambrosia on his edge. I cleaned it off with my gloved finger and, before I could stop myself, put the tip of my glove in my mouth and licked it clean.

On the way back to the poisoned cavern, I formulated a new plan. I'd go back to the Sertorians after all. There was no need to choose between rescuing my brother and claiming my due revenge. I could have my cake and eat it. I'd hold off on consuming large amounts of the ambrosia for as long as possible so I could receive enough signal to find Aulus. It would be a delicate balancing act, but I was certain I could do it. Then, when I found my brother I'd signal my uncle, start up using the ambrosia again, and reclaim my fighting edge in order to eliminate the Sertorian team. Mania was the key to the whole thing. My revenge wouldn't be possible without taking possession of the treasure she guarded. My appointment with each of the Blood Hawks was written into the book of destiny. I couldn't let them off the hook. First though, I'd need enough ambrosia to brave the weather aboveground as I raced to catch up to the games.

I got down on my hands and knees and licked at the thin trickle running out from the split in the creature's skull. In the old stories Minerva was born when a rock struck Jupiter's skull, creating a hole, and she popped right out. The ambrosia drizzle was miserly, so slow that it would have taken me a whole day to acquire a phial of it, but after a short time it lit up my brain, infused my muscles with flexibility and strength. With each lap of my tongue, I grew stronger, sharper. I wasn't the same Accala; the ambrosia didn't allow the privilege of simple humanity—it turned you into something dark and powerful—but that's precisely what I needed. Just the same, it was only a small taste and the effects would wear off quickly. I had to hurry.

I scaled the cliff wall and back on the surface found the skirmisher. There was only an hour of light left. Navigation would become problematic and then the Hyperboreans might return, and the bull chief would have an advantage in the dark.

The Ludi Romani was a fast, forward-moving show, and it had gone on without me, but with ambrosia everything was possible and I was driven. I knew I could catch up if I reached the camp before morning and the next stage of the tournament. Exhaustion came on fast as I sped along. Having reintroduced ambrosia to my system, my body remembered that it wanted, needed, more or everything would go to hell. I'd been hoping that after being cleaned out I'd be able to start again, back at the beginning, where I'd enjoy the benefits for a whole day before feeling any side effects, but that wasn't the case. The addiction and its symptoms picked up right where it had left off.

I found my way back to the great scar in the landscape formed by the emperor's ion cannon. As I raced along the canyon edge, the ambrosia started to wear off and I cursed the onset of the withdrawal symptoms. I could see the remains of the dead Hyperborean hordes littered all over the ice. I followed the spine of the mountains and came across the camp just as night was falling. Two domed force shields enclosed the factions on a high plateau in the distance.

I crested a bank of snow and suddenly all the Blood Hawks were there, all out looking for me. I was dizzy with need for ambrosia and fell from the desultore skirmisher onto the snow. I clung to consciousness just long enough to feel my body being lifted up as they carried me back to hell. I'd had the chance to take the easy road, to possess the freedom I'd whined and pleaded with the goddess for, but now I saw that right there with the Blood Hawks was exactly where I was meant to be. I'd find Aulus and then I'd unleash a tide of Sertorian blood that would shock even the most hard-bitten and cynical viewers of the Ludi Romani.

*   *   *

I
AWOKE IN MY
tent, covered in warm blankets and steroid poultices. Barbata was watching over me.

“How long?” I asked.

“How long were you unconscious? It's a few hours to dawn. The last day of the chariot rounds is still ahead. We've returned to our normal scheduling.”

“I can fight,” I said.

“Of course you can, and you will,” she said, tenderly stroking my face. “It's all been cleared with the game editor, he's embarrassed that you somehow got left behind, and has written the whole incident off as a genuine mistake. Licinus, on the other hand, wanted to beat you when you woke up, but I told him that it wasn't your fault and that you'd been a good dog and come home to your master. That seemed to satisfy him. Besides, we're well ahead in the contest.”

“We are?”

“Not the Blood Hawks per se but the Talonite Axis teams as a whole. We're still twenty-four to the Caninines' twenty-one survivors, not to mention that there are no Sertorian casualties. We are still best positioned to win the games.”