Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (82 page)

“Of course, Proconsul,” Carbo snapped. He was a military animal. There was an unquestioning chain of command. Unfortunately, I was below him on the chain, so I couldn't expect to have as much influence as I'd like, now or in the future, but as long as I could keep my uncle on side, I could manage Carbo.

“Thank you, Uncle,” I said. “When this is all over, I will kiss your feet.”

“When this is all over, we will all be heroes, assuming we can survive each other. Carbo, you're dismissed.” The tribune turned sharply, his cheeks red, barely containing his anger.

“Accala, you must give him some latitude,” my uncle said. “The changes he's undergoing. He can be prone to hysteria. I'm sure you understand how it is.”

“‘Hysteria' is the word men use to describe women when they get angry for having all their choices stripped away from them unjustly.”

“What choice do any of us have? We must play our roles to their conclusion. Now go and play yours. Remember what I have said.”

As I left, I passed Julia. “I'm next,” she said as she entered the tent.

As I was wondering what my uncle would ask her, I was suddenly struck from behind. Looking up, I saw Carbo standing over me, fists clenched.

“You've gone over to the barbarians, I know it, and the second you act in their interests over ours, I'll be there to steal your life. And next time you speak against me to Proconsul Severus, I'll rip your tongue out of your mouth and see you flogged. Your uncle commands me, but I command you. This is no longer a game, it's a military operation. You know what's at stake. We can no longer afford your chaotic antics. The crooked nail is either ripped out or hammered down. Remember that.”

I picked myself up and brushed the snow from my armor. Carbo did not scare me. Sometimes you must suffer fools in order to reach a goal in everyone's best interests. I could make this work, play my part as a loyal Viridian as well as carry out my mother's mission. The Hyperboreans must leave this world with their ichor. I felt like an ancient charioteer trying to rein in a team of horses, to get them to all pull in the same direction at the same time. I could make this work. I had to.

It was dark, and everyone who was not on duty was getting whatever rest they could. I passed by Lumen and tried to talk with him, but he did not respond and I couldn't find the song; it had reverted to an unintelligible buzzing. When I tried to come close, Concretus loomed menacingly. I left them and crawled into the shelter. I lay back into the insulated sleeping bag and turned about trying to find a modicum of comfort. Just Julia and me to share the tent, and until she finished with my uncle, I was alone.

Surrounded by the sound of the whipping wind, I felt a stirring I thought had been eradicated from my system once and for all—a hunger for ambrosia. My burned hand tingled and ached, and I longed for the relief and healing ambrosia would bring. To be free from fear and doubt, to be powerful and certain. The craving built as I lay there, becoming stronger and stronger. Was the process I underwent at the hands of the Hyperboreans impermanent? Did Crassus feel this hunger too? I had to try to get through to Lumen in the morning, reestablish our connection. It shouldn't be difficult, he was right there. I had to do something to stave off the maddening craving. I wandered out of my tent and stumbled right into Marcus. He was dressed in robes, carrying a lantern.

“Can I speak to you a moment? In my tent,” I said.

“Yes, I was just coming to speak to you.”

We stepped inside the shelter and sat down on the hard ground.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.

“I'm not going to ask what went on between you and your uncle, but I saw Carbo strike you.”

“You wanted to see if I was all right? It was nothing.”

“I know you're strong. I just wanted to give you some advice. That's all.”

“One more lesson?” I asked.

“In a sense. I've played a hand in changing the shape of the empire once before, when I had to take a stand against the emperor. When you find yourself in that situation, it's important to remember that you're not acting for your family, or even yourself. You're in a new arena; you're acting on behalf of the empire and the gods. Sometimes, in order to play the part that Fate demands of you, it is necessary to cut away other ties.”

“You're saying I should not honor my family?”

“Of course not. You are Viridian and now you are back among your own people—that must be a great relief. But remember, it was you who called out Aquilinus and challenged him when the rest of us were scuttling about trying to survive. The gods gave you the insight to act at the right time in the right way. As you started this, so it must be you that finishes it. That is Fate. What I'm saying is that no one should deny you the right to see things through to the end. The justice of the gods must be carried out and can't be hijacked by mortal demands. You'll know what I'm talking about when the time comes, and when it does, don't be distracted by the idea of pleasing others or holding on to an idea of who you think you should be. Remember—nothing must stop the arrow from striking home, nothing must divert its path.”

“I thank you. For that and for all you have given me.” I took his hand in mine. “You're trembling,” I said. “That's not like you.”

“I'm not afraid of dying. I'm a gladiator and I've been here before. In the arena. With someone I cared about very much.”

“Amphiara,” I whispered, but he shook his head. He was not talking about his long lost love, but himself and me.

“You know about her,” he said. “I suppose everyone does, though I never speak of it. What happened then, I lost a part of myself. I didn't think anything could hurt me like that again. You're not like her at all—you look, move, speak differently, but you share her spirit. I saw what you could be, poured so much of myself into you during training so you'd never choose the easy way, never be weak. Seeing her spirit in you, it's what made me want to protect you back in the Colosseum, to not let you go. But then I asked myself, What would Amphiara be without her fire? What would Accala be? You might as well be dead. Sometimes pain and suffering is the only path worth taking if it forges us into the person we are meant to be.”

“You put your heart into me,” I said, squeezing his hand.

“I thought my heart was dead, but when I heard that you'd joined their team, when I saw you in the parade…”

“I'm so sorry. I'm the one who must beg forgiveness. Ungrateful, spoiled, a traitor to my house—I felt all those things. They did things to me on the voyage over, and the ambrosia. It…”

“There's no need to explain. You weren't yourself. You are now. Nothing more needs to be said. Now it's like I've been repaired, made whole again.”

“I'm glad one of us has,” I said, holding up my ugly claw of a right hand.

He took it in his hand, cradling it gently. “That doesn't matter,” he said. “Beauty is not skin deep, it's the soul below that counts.”

My heart was racing, my cheeks burning. He needed me, and the gods only knew that I needed someone with me that night, and not just to take away the pain of the ambrosia withdrawal. I needed his warmth. I needed to feel loved.

“When I was in the tunnels with the Hyperboreans, I had time to think. I saw so many things clearly for the first time. I saw why you never took a wife or consorted with the noble ladies who are always hanging around the arena.”

He looked down at the floor, embarrassed.

“The only way for a gladiator, even a trainer, to be with a noblewoman is as a gigolo, a dalliance…”

“You're not my trainer anymore,” I said, turning down the light on the lantern until it gave off nothing but a dull glow.

I put my hand on his scarred face, the scars I gave him in the arena in Rome, and he turned away.

“I'm too old,” he said. “You need a younger man.”

“A fool like Caninus?” I asked. I turned his face back to mine and gave him the gentlest of kisses, the wing of a wren fluttering past his cheek, asking if he would return my affection.

“I can't,” Marcus said.

“Because of Amphiara?”

“No. Look at me, I'm a joke. Bloody potatoes growing from my chest.”

“What was all that you said about appearances not being important?”

“It's not just that. I passed under the yoke. Everyone saw. I'm no longer fit to be called a man anymore.”

“You believe that old wives' tale?” I asked him.

“They took my virtus, stole my manhood. How can you wish to lie with a man so disgraced?”

I reached down, into his robes.

“Your manhood feels perfectly intact to me.”

I leaned in and kissed him, and his lips pressed hard against mine. His kiss was passionate, his embrace like iron.

“I thought I'd lost you,” he said and kissed me again.

The heat of our love dispelled the cold. It was like a torrent, a blessing, washing away my night with Crassus. We took comfort in each other's bodies, an earthy connection, no electric passion like with Crassus but rather a bliss, a forgetting, an absolution.

After he fell asleep I lay beside Marcus, studying his body in the dim lantern light. My ambrosia hunger was gone. Lying with Marcus was a deep, profound experience. I struggled to define what it meant to me and in the end decided that it made me feel like an adult. Up until that night I'd felt, while not a child, that I'd been struggling to keep my head above water in an adult world. When I challenged Aquilinus, something changed. The others treated me with a newfound respect, they saw me as someone worthy of looking up to, but after a night with Marcus I felt like I'd grown up to fill out my own body. My feelings for Marcus made me larger, like the inside of a basilica, and that feeling had dispelled what lingered of the hunger for ambrosia, at least for the time being.

His body was lean and hard, covered with scars accumulated over a lifetime, and now bulging in places with vegetables, the inflictions of another mad emperor. I traced the white lines of old scars with my finger. Some of them were jagged, some thin and straight, some of them wavy like the line of a river drawn on a map. There was a smooth curve ending in a cluster like an ion blast wound, which I knew from study was the ball scythe of the old-style gladiators—a slicing cut followed by a powerful blunt-force impact. I loved these lines. Each one had forged him into the man he was today, each one had tested his body and mind, his willingness to never give in.

*   *   *

W
HEN
I
WOKE IT
was still dark. Marcus had gone back to his tent, and Julia was sleeping beside me. I gently woke her and asked how things had gone with my uncle.

“We have our disagreements,” she said, “but nothing that can't be resolved.”

“You trust him, don't you? To do the right thing and help the Hyperboreans?”

“I trust him to do the right things for the empire and I trust him to honor his deal with the collegia. Don't worry; he's under a lot of pressure, but he'll come through. Just wait and see, he'll make sure the ambrosia is taken off the table altogether. Now get some sleep.”

“Yes, he's my uncle. I trust him too and I wanted to thank you for trusting in me,” I said. “And to tell you something.” I shared the truth about the Hyperboreans, about Aulus and Lumen. “What do you think?” I asked her when I was done.

“I think that I was right.”

“About what?”

“That your brother
was
the ichor.”

“I suppose you were,” I said.

My brother. That was how I'd described Lumen to Julia and that was how I'd come to think of him. The more distant he became, the more it occurred to me that I might lose him, and the thought of my brother leaving me again was disquieting.

“See, never knock a lateral thinker. We mechanics have our own philosophy; we don't need any fancy academy education.”

“I'll admit I thought you'd have a more substantial insight to contribute.”

“Well, it's strange all right, but this mission has been strange from the get-go.” She held up her crystal hand. “I lost a hand and the Hyperboreans gave me a new one. If it's a gift from the gods, then I'll take it. I can tell you one thing. From the minute we met I could see you were falling into some terrible nightmare. Since you met this little barbarian you're heading in a different direction. This new Accala is a woman whose company I can tolerate! This whole mission is madness, and we're probably all gonna die, but you know what? Since I saw you on the cliff edge, putting your hand in the fire, I see things changing. I thought you were mad at the time but it's definitely set something in motion. We're on the right track and there's a slim chance we'll make something great, just like building a prototype engine. It's a delicate thing and it'll probably fall apart before we can get it to run at all.”

“Then why keep going?”

“Because sometimes, if you take the right risks at the right time, it all works out and you end up creating something new that no one's ever seen before. Is that substantial enough for you?”

“You're an optimist. I only just spotted it now,” I said. “That's why you hang in there with me. A gods-be-damned optimist.”

“Don't tell anyone else. Now shut up and let me get some sleep.”

Dawn was hours away, and knowing Marcus and Julia were firm allies gave me some inner peace. Just when I was drifting off, a great commotion started up in the camp. My teammates were scrambling into position, arms in hand.

“We're under attack!” I heard Caninus yell.

My hand flew to Orbis. Lumen and Concretus came rushing over to my side as I leaped out of the tent.

“Quickly!” Carbo ordered. “Send the alien to cover on the rise behind us. We'll defend him on the low ground.”