Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (93 page)

The two great houses of the empire, Houses Sertorian and Viridian, had just put advanced war machines into the field and made it official: The Tournament of Jupiter was done. Right here, right now, on the surface of Olympus Decimus, the war for possession of the empire was going to be fought out to the end.

The tanks came to a stop and held position a mile to our left, and the triremes circled around the same distance out to our right. We were trapped in between with at least two miles of ground left to cross before we'd reach the cover of the crescent valley.

They were not firing. This was a showdown. They were waiting for Lumen and me to make our move. They didn't want to risk killing him, but they wouldn't allow the other side to have him either. My mother's voice, quoting Marcus Aurelius, came to me.

If you are doing what is right, never mind whether you are freezing with cold or beside a good fire; heavy-eyed, or fresh from a sound sleep; reviled or applauded; in the act of dying, or about some other business.

“We keep going
,
” I said to Lumen, and started moving forward again. We would be safe in the crescent canyon. The height of the mountains made it near impassable from the rear, even by air, and the narrow entrance made it impossible to lay siege to from either side by land. The only way in was the narrow entrance. I could manage only a half run. It wouldn't be enough, but what choice was there? Either we stood and let them dictate our future, or I moved and kept on moving. There was hope in movement.

The Sertorians responded first. The launch bays of the triremes opened, and talon fighters swarmed out to fill the sky. The escalation had begun. In response, the thunder tanks began to slide out, rockets driving their massive weight forward, turrets crackling and burning with ionic energy.

The talons opened fire, but they were targeting not Lumen and me but rather the icy ground that was ahead of us. The chains of ion blasts swept the ice, matched only by the thunderous rounds of the tanks. They were working together to stop us, laying waste to the ground between us and our goal. Great sheets of frozen rock reared up, and the air was suddenly filled with clouds of icy pollution.

I was half pulling, half dragging Lumen behind me now. He was glowing, throwing light on every particle of dust and ice in the air, making it impossible to see the right way through. I struggled around the crater before me. Running water. The blasts had revealed a river beneath the ice. Just when I'd circumnavigated the crater, we found ourselves at the edge of another vast hole. And then a new blast hit. It shook the ground beneath us, and I toppled forward. Lumen was thrown out of my grasp and into the darkness below. There was a splash as he hit the rushing water.

Accala!

Suddenly the bombardment stopped. I was rooted at the edge of that hole, holding my breath, scanning the dark waters for any sign of him. I imagined in that moment that the Sertorians in their fighter planes, the Viridians in their tanks, the false and true emperors, the billions in the audience—all watched with bated breath. Lumen, the prize, was lost. And then I saw a small light in the darkness below as it was whisked away under the ice. I couldn't lose him. He was everything. I clipped Orbis to my belt, and taking a deep breath, I dove into the darkness.

L

I
WAS FALLING.
T
OO
long. I hit the water hard before it yielded and drew me under its surface. The powerful current carried me along. The image of me hiding behind my mother's robes, pulling at the green cloth, wrapped up in it, came to me. Being enveloped. The difference was that this kind of envelopment would kill me. I was facing backward, away from Lumen, and couldn't make out his light. Using all my strength, I moved my arms and legs to turn around. There. I started kicking in the direction of the light ahead of me, letting the current throw me after him.

Accala.

I'm coming.

If I didn't run out of breath first. The impact had knocked most of the breath out of me—my lungs were on fire. But he was only a few feet away. Straining and kicking, I stretched, and my fingers touched his foot. I willed myself another few inches forward until I could grasp an ankle. And then I pulled against the current, my hands moving up his body until I had him in an embrace. But to what end? The river must run for miles, and even if it carried us right under the mountain, we still wouldn't arrive alive. I was out of breath and Lumen was coming apart beneath me. No longer cracks in the skin, now ravines, now arms moving apart from his body, torso coming apart at the seams like an old doll. The light was blinding, filling the water. The heat he was releasing was burning my skin, driving away the freezing cold. Was it radiation, or was it a cold that was so intense that my body felt it as heat? Survival was out of the question.

Hold on,
he said.

Hold on to what? I couldn't keep hold of him. I was struggling to gather him up as he came apart, and the last of my breath was sneaking out of my mouth in small handfuls like disobedient children fleeing their teacher's whip.

Then Lumen was gone and something else was in his place. A large peglike shape, which I grasped awkwardly with my arms and legs. It was tapered at the top, sharp—a spike, perhaps? And then we were moving upward, against the rushing water. I didn't know how. The force of the underground river was prodigious, but somehow Lumen was moving against it. Suddenly there was a great cracking sound as we erupted through the surface of the ice above us. Cold air hit my wet face, and I drew deep shuddering breaths as I continued to rise, hanging on for dear life. Momentarily blinded by the glare of daylight, when my eyes focused, the first thing I saw was a talon fighter flash by. Was he flying low or…? No, I was high. Very high up.

Gods. I was atop something. A creature. Like Concretus except massive in form, a two-hundred-foot monster, a colossus like something in the ancient stories, only this one was made of shining crystal. Beneath each of the great facets I could see movement. It was bodies—interlinked bodies of Hyperboreans, thousands and thousands of them, pressed together like a puzzle, flexing and tightening, each body like a separate muscle.

Accala.

The voice that sounded in my head was Lumen's, but it was deeper, as if amplified by a great bass drum.

“Lumen?”

I've changed. They were all compressed, but since I couldn't keep it together, I've become a larger container, to keep them all inside. This new form is a kind of defense mechanism. Like the bee sting. I am a weapon, but if I hold on to this form for long, it truly will kill me.

A footfall sent vibrations up from the ground, and I nearly fell to my death.

“Lumen!”

I've got you.

The spine I was holding changed shape, his body re-forming beneath me into a makeshift saddle, a lip where I could ride, and it was moving up, carrying me from his shoulder until I was perched on his head. The crescent canyon was still a few miles away, and the fighters were still wheeling around us, but they hadn't opened fire yet.

“A weapon, you said?” I asked.

This form will break apart too, much more quickly than the first one. I need to reach Mother before that happens. But yes, in the meantime I am strong.

I could feel him, feel the entire gargantuan body crushing the ice, impacting it with each step. I could feel the thousands, tens of thousands, of bodies that were part of him. We were connected. It was almost as if I could control his movement.

You can. We are as one.

“Then run. As fast as you can.”

Yes.

And we were away, eating up tundra in a blur as we went. The footfalls of the colossus shook the ground beneath us, creating a thunderous staccato rhythm. They felt as if they were my own legs running, as if I were the giant. We'd be within the safe confines of the canyon in a minute, maybe less at this breakneck speed. I could see the temple ruins from up here.

We were completely exposed, but neither side seemed to know quite what to do in light of this development—an ice monster charging across the tundra.

There was a rumbling again, but it was not from the tanks. It was the earth itself.

My mother is impatient.

Ahead, the queen began to shed her garments. Great sheaths of granite and ice tumbled down her sides into the crescent valley below. The sudden noise was deafening. When the rumbling ceased, the mountain was gone. Beneath her stony exterior, her true form was revealed—a giant, perfect equilateral diamond with a sea of shining life swimming within it. No Roman building, no temple, no palace ever shone as brightly or reflected such brilliance.

Her body is pure diamond ichor, the same substance as your pin, condensed over eons.

The great storehouse of energy to which Lumen would provide the spark. She shone, the sun revealing her majesty—a treasure beyond price, a mountain of ichor that humans could consume and utilize. The power of the gods, without any addictive side effects.

“They can't have her,” I said.

A talon fighter got a bright idea and brought his ship in alongside for a closer look. Before I could think, I reached out for him as if I were casting Orbis. Except I was moving Lumen's body. In place of a discus, a large spiked protrusion rose up from his arm and loosed like a spear fired by a catapult. The talon was split down the middle and burst into flame. The spear kept on traveling, hitting the craft behind it too, taking both down to the ground in a ball of fire.

Another talon moved into position before us and opened fire. Then the tanks started shooting, and in an instant we were caught in the crossfire of green and red ion blasts.

They were not going all out, though. There were rows of tanks hanging back, entire wings of talon fighters. They were trying to cripple us, stop us in our tracks. But still we were moving forward, our momentum undeterred.

I ran a zigzag course, but Lumen was hit, again and again, and every time an ion blast struck home, he shed Hyperborean bodies. They fell from him like flakes of dead skin, dozens at a time, and when they hit the ground their light faded and died. Their losses were like physical injuries to me, and they fueled Lumen's desperation. The loss of comrades, of energy. Each death subtracted from the ichor pool, took away from the power they would need to flee this world.

The wind was our only ally. The whipping gusts, as the planet's weather system broke down, were picking up some talons and careening them into one another. But even with that help, we were an easy target.

A Sertorian talon slipped in on an attack vector to my left, heading straight at us. The pilot had seen me, and he'd positioned himself well. In three seconds, he'd have a clean shot. Except he didn't know that he was just inside the range of Orbis' arc.

Gripping the horn of my saddle, I unclipped my discus from my belt and, as Lumen drove forward, cast Orbis out behind me in a wide arc. Two seconds. Three. The Sertorian had the perfect shot, but just before he could take it, Orbis cut right through his talon's cockpit. I didn't know if the man died then and there, but the desired result was the same—his talon dove and shot like an arrow into the front line of Viridian tanks to my right. Two golden tanks went up in an explosion of green hellfire. Like clockwork, Orbis returned.

I waited to see if they took the bait and fired on each other, but no such luck.

One more mile.

As we closed in on the mountain, the level of incoming fire picked up. We were about to pass right in front of the tank position—easy targets. Ion blasts from tanks hit our left side, stinger missiles from the talons hit our right, and a hundred bodies flew off, littering the way behind us, the impact breaking apart their conjoined forms—sending Hyperborean body parts scattering across the ice like shards of a shattered glass bowl. We were getting too close for their liking. There was no thought of sparing us now, only of elimination. If neither side could have us, then both meant to wipe us off the face of this world. I needed to refocus them.

I made a sharp turn toward the tanks, momentarily ignoring the canyon.

Accala?

“Don't worry. Remember when I threw you to the Sertorians to get Concretus in the fight? Sometimes you have to take the long way around to get the result you want.”

The tanks suddenly stopped their barrage. Uncle Quintus was wondering why I was coming at him.

Accala.

“Just another second.”

We were a half mile off the tanks when I raised Lumen's great colossus hands and stood my ground. There. Would Quintus understand in time? That I was surrendering?

There was a lull of a few seconds while new orders came through, and then, as sweet as a gift from the gods themselves, the Viridian surface-to-air missiles flew upward and started targeting the talons. Desire made it easy to lead the greedy. And now the talons were firing back, Aquilinus desperate that my uncle not take possession of Lumen.

“Now! Run for the canyon, Lumen!”

Now that they were shooting at each other, fewer were targeting us. We'd still take additional hits, but not as many as if we'd kept rushing through the crossfire.

The way ahead was clear, but for how long?

“Charge! Give it our all!” I cried to Lumen.

Every Hyperborean entity in his body knew what was at stake, they threw all their energy into this last push. A hundred yards out from the mouth of the valley, a new chain of missiles struck us from the rear. A large chunk of Lumen's back fell away like a great mountain avalanche.

“Keep it together! Keep running! We're going to make it,” I said.

Fifty yards out from the mouth of the crescent valley, almost clear of the killing zone. Out the corner of my eye I saw a chariot come sailing at high speed along the edge of the canyon wall above us: Crassus and Julia, signaling us. What were they doing? Something was wrong.