Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (98 page)

Sparks of light were descending from the Rota Fortuna. The emperor's men! There were survivors on the orbital stadium and they were coming. They'd take us from Olympus Decimus.

When they looked for someone to blame—and there would have to be a scapegoat—there was no doubt in my mind that it would be to me that the fingers of the senators would point. Would they chain me and drag me back to Rome? A traitor to be cast off the Tarpein Rock as an example to others? Here was the she-wolf who had defiled the games, they would say. The woman who betrayed her house, who murdered her father. The woman who stirred the pot and threw the empire into chaos.

Dark thoughts swirled like a black tide, and a sobbing moan welled up and freed itself from my mouth. Must get up. Be upright and coherent, try to explain myself to them, at least try to bargain for some kind of pardon for Julia. Come on. Move! My limbs were slow to respond. I managed to raise myself to one knee. They were coming. What now? Would anyone care about the outcome of the tournament? I crumpled to the ground again, and wept uncontrollably. The internal tides of emotion were so powerful. The snow fell around me, and with it came the combined recollection of all that had happened on the voyage to this world, my dark transformation, the massacre, my family and then resurrection as light, the death of Marcus, the defeat of my enemies, my loss of identity. My mind was stretched to its limits just to survive this. How could I possibly face what came next?

“Accala? Accala?” It was Julia.

“Call her name, bitch. Call it out!”

“Accala?”

In the darkness I could make out a figure moving toward me. I willed myself to sit up, my fingers closing around Orbis.

It was Crassus. And Julia. She was ahead of him on all fours, a cord wrapped around her neck like a makeshift leash. His javelin was prodding the soft side of her throat with its razor-sharp point. Then he spotted me.

“You've been a bad girl, Accala. So naughty.”

This wasn't Crassus. It was Aquilinus. Gods, I was so sure I'd killed him, but he must have still had a line connecting him to Crassus. In that final moment he must have transferred everything into the one nearby host available to him. No more hanging around the fringes subtly controlling and manipulating his subjects. He'd taken Crassus over entirely, body and soul.

“You didn't think you'd get rid of me so easily, did you?”

“What do you want?” I asked as I stood shakily, trying to keep myself steady. I needed to buy time, to pull myself together.

“What else? I'm here to make a deal. You think you've won, but this is my game, my empire, and you're going to compensate me for the loss I've suffered here.”

“I've got nothing,” I said. “The ichor's all gone.”

“You're the most valuable asset on this world now, and I plan to make you mine. I have men, hidden and waiting to transport me away. They will come soon. For both of us.”

Empire's most valuable asset? What did he mean by that? I was a liability, a heavy stone about the neck.

“Your weapon,” he snapped. “Throw it away.”

I held it out to drop it to the ground, but he was quick to stop me.

“No! Throw it away. Far enough that you won't be able to recover it. You won't be needing weapons where I'll be taking you.”

I hesitated, but he pressed the javelin tip into Julia's throat, drawing blood, making her wince in pain.

“Now,” he said. He stuck the javelin in her already wounded shoulder, drawing a pained scream.

A calmness settled over me, and the image of how the crescent canyon looked from the top down flashed into my mind—a semicircle of rock with the mesa at its center, like a great eye looking up to the gods. It reminded me of a rough-hewn Colosseum. It was big, though, a long circuit, longer than I'd ever thrown, longer than anyone had ever thrown, if I wanted my discus to return to my hand. And no lapis negra breastplate to help. Just flesh and bone, tendon and muscle. Marcus. My mentor. He said I'd never have it in me to match Julius Ovidius' record cast. Now it was time to find out. I was filled with a newfound energy. One last burst of fire, and I used it to spin. Three times, gathering momentum, speed, and then I loosed Orbis behind me. I had gotten so much momentum that I nearly fell flat on my face as he left my hand. Back into the shadows of the canyon. Gone.

“Now, on your knees,” Aquilinus spat. He threw a length of rope on the ground. “Tie it around your neck, just like your friend here. Do it and I'll free her.” He pulled Julia up to his side. Her face was bulging with lack of oxygen, and she was clawing at the rope, trying to release some of the pressure as it bit into her skin. I picked it up and started to loop it around my throat. He grinned with delight.

“Now you know your place. You'll be spending a lot of time on your knees. You don't realize your own value. No normal person could contain the power they put into you. I will breed little godlings from you.” I thought back to his cursing when I found his hidden chamber aboard
Incitatus.
All his dark delusions. “There are still places where I can survive. Still places beyond the reach of the empire where I have power. You'll be a pretty prize, most useful.”

Orbis always sought to return to me along the shortest possible path the casting arc would allow. I'd put spin on my throw so that he would hug the canyon wall, gathering speed, traveling full circle. But would he make the distance? Orbis only had to strike a boulder or nick the canyon wall, and he'd lose ground and fall short. Even now, he could be spinning uselessly on the canyon floor, his journey at an end. And then I heard a faint hum, a familiar drone of the air being cut.

“Julia,” I called out. “Remember on the ship? The advice you gave me when we first met in the cabin?”

Her eyes widened in acknowledgment and she threw herself flat on the ground. Aquilinus' grip on the rope loosened for just an instant, and he pulled forward. He knew something was up. He threw his body aside as Orbis came soaring past. His neck was clear of the discus' razor edge, but he instinctively threw his left arm up in the air to shield himself. Orbis returned to my grasp in the same instant that his hand hit the ground, fingers still wrapped around his javelin.

The Sertorian surged forward, faster than I could react, roaring like an animal. He closed quickly before I could bring Orbis to bear, spitting at me, clawing at my face. I had nothing left, no fight in me, the cast had taken everything, and Aquilinus was like a rabid dog, wild and insane, every part the barbarian. His remaining hand clawed at my exposed skin, raking flesh. He hugged me close and bit my ear so hard it bled. I was trying to break free, to get him off me, but his grip was driven by mania.

“Mine. Mine,” he whispered in my ear again and again.

My reply was a scream accompanied by a sharp head butt straight to his nose. It broke and he reeled back in pain, his eyes watering, blood flowing. I cut at him with Orbis. He knocked the flat of the discus aside with his stump, opening him for me to deliver a cross to his jaw. As he fell back, I sat up and pushed forward, coming up on top of him, straddling his chest. In that moment he managed to trap my weapon hand between his upper arm and body. I howled with rage, my inner beast responding in kind, my right fist raining blows upon his face in a hammering action, crashing his skull into the hard ground. If I couldn't cut him, I was going to beat his brains out.

I caught a glimpse of a bronze raven's head on the butt of the gladius sheathed on his belt. The sword he was struggling to reach now. Marcus' sword.

The moment of distraction allowed Aquilinus to get a hand to the weapon, and he swung up at me, forcing me to roll off of him to avoid a severed jugular. We came to our feet at the same time and stood at the ready—gladius versus discus. Aquilinus was pressing his stump into his stomach to try to stanch the bleeding. It was Crassus' body, but it was the only one Aquilinus had got right now and he had to make it last. Was this it, then? If I killed him this time, would he stay dead?

Our weapons clashed as if with their own life, desperately cutting and hacking to and fro, back and forth. I blocked a thrust and then hooked Orbis' inner ring about the hilt, catching the weapon in place, stopping him from drawing it back to thrust again. I knew the gladius, I knew
this
gladius. I had its greatest exponent to model my technique from, and even at his best, neither Crassus nor Aquilinus was a match for Marcus. Before Aquilinus could recover, I used one of Marcus' moves, a follow-up cut to the face with a kick that drove him backward. I spun again and delivered a cut to his other hand, disarming him literally. His right hand flew away with the sword. Before the blade could hit the ground, I plucked it from the air.

“You don't deserve to hold his blade,” I said as I advanced on him, discus in one hand, gladius in the other.

His face was filled with fear. Only bloody stumps left to defend himself with.

I used Orbis and Marcus' sword to cut into the shell of his armor in a diagonal arc from top right to bottom left, and then spun, following up with a sword cut to his face along the opposite backhand arc from right temple to left jaw. I stepped in and knocked his head back with my elbow, opening the side of his neck for the killing thrust. This was it.

And then I was flying sideways into the snow. I looked up to see an armored figure standing over me. A shock staff crackled with purple electricity in the night—a Praetorian Guard, the lion's head of House Numerian on his breastplate. More Praetorians arrived, purple-and-black armored suits on hover platforms, racing across the ice. I was barely conscious. I tried to get back to my feet. I had to finish this. Aquilinus had to die. I wouldn't get another chance. A shock staff hit me again and I was down. On my back, my muscles in spasms.

From above, lights flooded the scene, sirens sounded. Scout ships, reinforcements, rescue vehicles arrived. Armed soldiers in purple armor flooded the canyon from all directions. One stood over Aquilinus, shock stick leveled at his body, preventing him from rising as well.

“Let her up,” a voice said, and the Praetorian who hit me couldn't act too quickly to pull me up, but only to my knees.

“Stay there,” he whispered. “The emperor is here.”

He emerged from the darkness, robes billowing.

Aquilinus suddenly started yelling. “It is I, Gaius Crassus! She tried to kill me. I am the rightful winner of the tournament. Protect me, Imperator!”

“We've have had quite enough from you today,” the emperor said, pointing at Aquilinus. A Praetorian stepped in and hit him over the back of the head with his staff, sending him falling forward, face-first into the snow, unconscious.

A Praetorian Guard tribune rushed forward to the emperor.

“Sire! Are you safe?”

“I'm fine, Brutus.”

Gods. It was Brutus Numerius Africanus, the commander of all of Rome's legions.

Next came flying cameras. The media and officials had gotten themselves together and caught up with us.

“Wait!” I called out. “Crassus! He's not…” I started to rise, desperate. I had to let him know it was Aquilinus in there, that he had to kill him now, but the Praetorian stepped forward, and the end of his staff cracked on my skull. I hit the ice.

“Leave her,” I heard the emperor order.

He came to stand over me.

“It's all right, you've done your part, Accala Viridius Camilla. Your part and more!”

I lay there, barely sensible, as a fat man, a tournament official, came up and bowed before the emperor, talking to him in an animated fashion. It was Julius Gemminus—pleading for his miserable life.

“Yes, yes, you're right,” I heard the emperor say.

A holographic seal was projected into the air above the emperor—an eagle encircled by golden laurels. The emperor raised his hand and shouted out, “I declare the Tournament of Jupiter ended!”

“But the winner, sire?” Julius Gemminus pleaded. “You must announce a winner.”

“First I'll decide who is going to live and die. Then we'll settle the matter of the games.”

Was it the Tarpein Rock, then? Let them kill me, as long as Aquilinus shared my fate. As long as the threat to Rome was removed. There was so much noise and activity, I couldn't make any sense of what was going on. My head slumped to the side, and I saw my own blood forming a pool around me. Aquilinus must have wounded me.

“Thank you, Bright Lady,” I whispered to swift-winged Minerva. She came to my aid not when I asked for it but when I needed it. An offering. I owed her an offering, and all I had left was my life.

I heard Julia calling my name, and then there was only darkness.

 

EPILOGUE

And Camillus returning with the standards. Yonder souls likewise, whom thou discernest gleaming in equal arms, at one now, while shut in Night, ah me! what mutual war, what battle-lines and bloodshed shall they arouse, so they attain the light of the living! father-in-law descending from the Alpine barriers and the fortress of the Dweller Alone, son-in-law facing him with the embattled East. Nay, O my children, harden not your hearts to such warfare, neither turn upon her own heart the mastering might of your country; and thou, be thou first to forgive, who drawest thy descent from heaven; cast down the weapons from thy hand, O blood of mine.… He shall drive his conquering chariot to the Capitoline height triumphant over Corinth, glorious in Achaean slaughter.

—Virgil,
Aeneid

Rome, Mother Earth. Four weeks later.

R
OME SHONE.
E
TERNALLY BRILLIANT,
oblivious of the ebbs and tides of the game of houses. She went on as she always did. Gleaming crystalline towers and domes, grand temples.

The people lined the streets, thousands of them, silently staring at me as I passed them by at the head of my father's funeral procession. No jeering and abuse, none of the hatred I had seen in their eyes when I left Rome. Today they looked upon me with respect, awe even. The bells tolled as we neared the temple. My father was a hero of the empire, a famous tribune. It was normal for people to respond to the priest's call by spontaneously joining the procession, crying out their feelings, expressing their grief, rushing to pay their respects. But they were all too busy watching me, wondering if I'd suddenly bring down the gods from on high. What happened on Olympus Decimus was nothing short of a miracle, but already they'd blown the story out of proportion—Athena coming down from the clouds, touching me with her spear, the gods watching from above as I carried out their will. They whispered to one another, barely able to contain their excitement as I passed. They'd been a plague since I returned, a veritable human pestilence, gathering outside the Wolf's Den, throwing flowers in my path when I tried to walk the streets to clear my head. They still called me daughter of Minerva, Lady Justice. I tried to stay clear of them now, remained locked away in the safety of the Wolf's Den while their numbers outside, chanting my name, increased day by day. I chanted my own prayers in the family temple. I made offerings to Minerva; I prayed for my mother, my brother, my father, Marcus, and Bulla.