The Valiant

  And yet, even as I watched, I had to admit that she certainly fought like one. There was something thrilling about the way the Lanista fought, something unique and undeniably compelling to watch in the way she angled her body in defense, the way her head craned sharply to one side when she attacked. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. I wondered where she’d learned her technique, but it could have been anywhere, from anyone. Since the day we’d arrived in Massilia, I’d heard more indecipherable tongues and seen more shades of flesh and hair and eyes than I’d ever imagined possible. As far as I could tell, the slave traders catering to their Roman patrons were more than happy to sell all the tribes of mankind.

  I knew that this sparring session was a private one and that I probably wasn’t supposed to be there, but I still stood there, peering around the column with fierce curiosity. I’d only ever seen the woman who owned me at a distance. The Lanista had a terrace that overlooked the practice grounds, and that was where she watched us from, a shadowy shape beneath an awning. Her palla was always pulled up over her head like the hood of a cloak, even on hot days.

  I’d heard from Ajani that the Lady Achillea had once, not too long ago, been celebrated far and wide, the toast of Rome’s arenas. She’d built a reputation in only a few short years as the best gladiatrix the world had ever seen. But then there’d been an accident, a terrible crash during what had been a particularly wild chariot race in the Circus Maximus, and she hadn’t been seen in the arena since. Morbid curiosity made me wonder if she’d been deformed by her injuries. Simmering resentment made me hope she had. It was childish of me, I knew—after all, it wasn’t her fault I’d gotten myself taken by slave traders in the first place—but I couldn’t help it.

  I realized, suddenly, that the sounds of dueling had died away, and I glanced over to see that the two women had ended their match. And they were both staring at me standing dumbly in the breezeway. I could feel their gazes on me even though I couldn’t see their eyes behind the metal grates of their visors. I jumped and would have scurried away if the Lady Achillea hadn’t said something to Thalestris, who gestured for me to stay where I was.

  I waited as the Lanista, still in her helmet, gathered her gear and left through a far archway without a backward glance. Thalestris sheathed her sword on her hip and lifted off her own helmet, tucking it under her arm, and walked toward me. I expected some kind of punishment, or at least a thorough tongue-lashing, for having intruded, but she just smiled at me coolly.

  “Perhaps one day you will fight like that, yes?” she said.

  “Like you? Or the Lanista?”

  She laughed, a throaty chuckle that sounded almost like a warning growl, and shook her head. “You should have seen her back in her arena days,” she said. “After her accident she retrained herself to fight in a way that turns injuries into assets, weakness into strength. But you should have seen her then. She was the original, and she was the best.”

  “What do you mean, she was the original?” I asked, suppressing the urge to boast that one day I would be best. Better than both of them.

  “The original gladiatrix.”

  “She was?”

  Thalestris nodded. “Caesar sent her into the arena as the first woman ever to compete in the ludi—well, the first of two—and the mob in the stands went wild with excitement.”

  “Who did she fight against?” I asked.

  “She fought against a Scythian captive like myself—the Greeks and the Romans call us Amazons—and she won the day brilliantly.”

  “Did you know the other warrior?”

  “She was my own sister.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Thalestris looked at me. “She lost the day,” she said. “Not quite so brilliantly. I honor her memory.”

  I stared at her. “Achillea killed your sister and now you work for her?”

  The very idea was abhorrent to me. I could barely stand living in a place owned by Caesar, the man whose soldiers my own sister had died fighting. The thought of working closely, day after day, with someone who had my kin’s blood on their hands was unthinkable. Amazons were either heartless or spineless.

  But even though I knew my disgust must have shown in my expression, Thalestris’s eyes never wavered from my face, and her gaze remained placid as she said, “When Caesar eventually gave her this ludus to run on his behalf, the Lady Achillea came to me and asked for me to be her Primus Pilus—her First Spear—the head trainer of the gladiatrices. She respected my skills as I respect her.” She lifted her head proudly. “Of course I accepted. I am descended from an eternal line of warrior women. I cannot not fight.”

  I thought of all the times I’d said almost those exact same words—to Mael, to Sorcha . . .

  “I came to Rome a captive just like you,” Thalestris said. “And I am still a slave. But now, thanks to this place, I am also a teacher. I’m proud to have been given the opportunity to pass along the skills and knowledge of my ancestresses. And the gladiatrix in the arena, thanks to us, is no longer a freakish curiosity as it was in the early days of Achillea’s first fights. Even the men, the gladiators of the Ludus Maximus, respect us now.”

  Maybe so, I thought. But even from my limited interactions with the Romans, I also knew perfectly well that those same gladiators were still considered infamia by the patrician class and the plebs alike. Dishonorable. On a level with the whores and the gravediggers, those who fought and died in the arena were considered tainted. So what did it matter if they respected us or not?

  “Go.” Thalestris put a hand on my shoulder and nodded toward the barracks. “Sleep. Wake. Eat. Fight. That’s all you need to do until tomorrow night.”

  She left me there in the darkness, thinking about what she’d just said.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, but when I turned to go back to my quarters, there were shadows in the alcoves of the courtyard that hadn’t been there before. One of the shadows stepped forward, and I felt a warning flutter trace up my spine. My thoughts spiraled back to that night in Alesia.

  Only these were no brigands.

  These were my “sisters.” Or, at least, they would be if I was chosen to take the oath.

  Behind me, I heard the sharp crack of a chariot whip, and I understood instantly that Thalestris and the Lanista weren’t the only ones I had to prove myself to. My hand dropped automatically to my hip, but I wasn’t wearing a weapon. I didn’t even have my dagger stuck in my belt. I cursed silently and took up a ready stance, wondering where the first attack would come from.

  I didn’t have to wonder long.

  Another crack of the whip, and a line of fire licked across the backs of my legs. I fell to my hands and knees with a grunt. A ring of laughter echoed around me, and I blinked away sudden tears of pain trying to see who, exactly, my attackers were. There were four or five of them—it was hard to tell in the darkness as they circled me—and they all wore visored helmets. But I was fairly certain I knew who at least two of them were just by the weapons they wielded.

  Nyx and Meriel.

  I clambered back up to one knee and staggered forward to avoid the next sting of Nyx’s whip, only to trip over the web of a retiarius net as it slapped viciously against my shins and sent me tumbling back to the ground.

  Where I was defenseless.

  The girls kicked and punched at me in the darkness, and I curled into a ball to try to avoid the worst of it. I could tell by the way they avoided my head and stomach that the blows they rained on me were designed to bruise, not brutalize. But that didn’t make them hurt any less as I clenched my teeth to keep from crying out. I suspected that what they really wanted was to leave me battered and sore enough so that my performance the next day at practice—my last chance to impress the Lanista—would suffer.

  Lady Achillea would see me fighting lame and would judge me on my diminished performance—enough, maybe, that
I would be sent from the ludus. And I decided, in that moment, I wasn’t going to let that happen. Stay or go, it would be on my merit or the lack of it, not because of some petty ambush by girls who thought they were better than me.

  They weren’t.

  Beneath the laughter and taunts, I heard a guttural, animal howl of protest. It was me. My voice. As it rose in volume, I pushed myself up off the sandy ground and shook off my attackers. Their circle fractured, and I sprinted past two of them toward a pair of torches set in a sconce on the courtyard wall. I grasped the flaming brands and spun back around, wielding the things as if they were my dimachaerus blades.

  “Get away from me!” I snarled as I spun circles of flames in the dark air, batting the whip away from me and almost setting the retiarius net aflame. “Stay back or burn, you jackals!”

  One girl screamed in alarm as my torch set her tunic hem smoldering, and she quickly fell back, slapping at the cloth. The firebrands flared and flamed in my hands, trailing smoke and embers in the dimachaerus patterns I’d practiced, as my attackers backed off. When I lunged straight at the girl with the whip, she turned and ran, melting back into the night, the other girls following close on her heels. I shouted after them to come back and face me.

  In truth, I was just as glad they were gone.

  My arms and legs throbbed as I let the torches drop to my sides.

  I squeezed my eyes shut to clear the afterglare of fire blindness. When I opened them again and lifted my head to the cool night breeze, I saw a figure, cloaked and hooded, standing on the balcony above the courtyard, watching me. The Lanista. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew it was her. I could feel her gaze on me, sharp and appraising. I straightened up, standing as tall as I could, and met her gaze. She stood there for a long moment. Then she turned without a word and disappeared into the darkness.

  I ground the torches in the sand, snuffing out their light.

  • • •

  The next day, I hobbled out to the practice yard, where the throbbing, livid bruises on my legs and arms went glaringly unremarked upon. Except, of course, by Elka when she saw me in the armor shed. I could only guess the meaning of maybe half the stream of Varini invective that spilled from her mouth, but I still got the general idea. And I agreed wholeheartedly.

  “At least Meriel was right,” I said through gritted teeth as I sat on the bench, carefully buckling up my shin greaves. “I do bruise pretty colors.”

  “You hold her down and I’ll be happy to see if she does the same!” Elka spat.

  “I don’t even know for certain if it was her last night—I know, I know”—I held up a hand—“of course it was. And Nyx, and probably Lydia and Gratia. I know. But I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me so much as wince today.”

  “Like you’re doing right now?”

  “Hand me my helmet.” I settled it on my head and lowered the visor. “There. Now no one can tell.”

  Elka snorted and shook her head, then held out a hand to help me stand.

  It was the longest day I’d ever had at the ludus.

  I was terrible. My routines were stiff and clumsy, and every blow I landed hurt me far more than my partners. And when I finally returned to my quarters that evening, bone-sore and heartsick, I was certain I would find my trunk packed and waiting outside the door of my cell. They would send me off, back to the auction block, and I would be sold off in disgrace. Or maybe I would be turned over to the kitchen steward, to spend my days scrubbing trenchers and making meals for the girls who fought in the arenas.

  By the time I got back to my room, I had thoroughly envisioned every wretched scenario imaginable . . . only to find a new, neatly folded tunic lying on the lid of my trunk. Beside the tunic, there was a broad crimson leather belt that cinched tight with fine bronze buckles, and a pair of red-dyed leather sandals that laced all the way up to the knee. There was also a lamp—a fine new oil lamp to replace the dim little lump of tallow candle that sat in a clay dish on my windowsill.

  I remembered the lamp the Lanista had lowered into the grave of the gladiatrix Ismene, and a shiver ran up my spine. I had been chosen to swear the oath. The lamp would light my cell until the day I won my freedom.

  Or died.

  I lit the wick, setting it carefully up in the window as the light from the setting sun faded. There was a burning tightness in my throat, but just then Elka burst through my door, and I swallowed my tears. She glanced from me to the lamp in my window to the tunic on the trunk.

  “Ha!” she exclaimed. “I knew it! I knew we’d both be chosen to take the oath. That cow Nyx can choke on it! And so can her little gang of thugs.”

  She’d brought her own lamp from her room and thrust it at me. “Look at this!”

  It was made of polished, translucent stone that looked as though it had been carved from a block of winter ice. The flickering flame within glowed gently, blue and gold. Like Elka herself. I wondered if the lamps were chosen to suit each girl.

  “Alabaster,” Elka murmured, mesmerized. “I’ve heard of this, but I never expected to own something made of such magic.”

  Her blue eyes were wide with wonder, and maybe something a little like joy, as she cradled the delicate lamp in both hands. I felt a surge of happiness for her. Whatever else the Ludus Achillea was, it seemed that it might one day prove to be a place Elka could call home.

  But I also felt a pang of envy hiding beneath my happiness for my friend. The lamp that had been chosen for me was shaped like a bird, with delicate glass pieces—bright greens and blues and yellows—set into the wings, and it reminded me of summer days spent running wild through the Forgotten Vale. It also reminded me of one of the many lamps that had hung from the rafters of my house—the one that had been my favorite when I was a little girl. For a moment, as I stared at the bright-shining flame within, I was back there, in that place, listening to Sorcha tell me stories about the spirits that lived in those lamps.

  Home for me, it seemed, was still Durovernum.

  I suspected, in my heart, it always would be.

  “We are going to put the Ludus Achillea on the map, you and I,” Elka proclaimed with airy disregard for the academy’s already stellar reputation. “The arena crowds aren’t going to know what hit them!”

  Then she hugged me and hurried off to get ready for the oath swearing, her breathless excitement carrying away some of my own anxiousness. As I stripped off my plain-spun tunic and shrugged the fine linen sheath over my head, I tried to speculate not on what was to come in the future but just on this one night. I’d been told that the male gladiators took their oaths in daylight. With the harsh eye of the sun looking down on them, the men stood in sand circles and said the words that would bind them to that life, until either death or their hard-earned winnings set them free.

  But the women of the Ludus Achillea swore their oaths at night.

  Under the light of the Huntress Moon.

  When I got to the practice yard, I saw it had been decorated for the occasion. Garlands of green leaves and sheaves of lavender and lemon verbena hung between the pillars of the courtyard colonnades, perfuming the night air with heady scents that mingled with the smoke from the braziers. There were torches on poles set in a wide circle, and the sand of the yard had been raked smooth.

  Elka and I and the five other new recruits entered through the archway, dressed in identical white linen tunics and belts and sandals. We wore our hair unbound and our faces unpainted. All the other girls—full-fledged gladiatrices—waited for us, dressed in the same white tunics, but the resemblances ended there. Over the course of innumerable bouts in arenas large and small, scattered throughout Rome and the surrounding countryside, each of the girls had accumulated trophies and keepsakes and ornaments. Not surprisingly, there was an abundance of weapons and armor. The gladiatrices of the Ludus Achillea wore them proudly that night, as badges of well-
deserved honor.

  I looked around at all the swords, daggers, tooled-leather wrist bracers and greaves, and armored girdles and breastplates decorated with symbols and scenes. Some of the girls wore torcs about their necks, like the one I’d left in the embers of my hearth fire back home, and some wore no jewelry at all but had painted the skin of their bodies with swirling designs or had woven feathers and beads into their hair.

  There were seven of us being formally inducted into the ludus that night, and we wore nothing to distinguish us.

  We hadn’t earned that yet.

  The intoxicating scent of stone pine incense drifted through the indigo night as we walked out into the circle of torches. I recalled the same scent from the gladiatrix graveyard, and I remembered the anonymous, snickering disdain I’d heard mixed in with the sounds of weeping that night. I wondered fleetingly if Ismene had made more friends here than enemies before she’d died.

  Will I?

  I stopped myself from reaching up to touch the raven feather I’d tied into my hair before leaving my cell. The thing had become almost a talisman to me. In the darkness a war horn sounded, like the Morrigan herself blowing her bronze carnyx, and I felt the cold finger of fate trace up my spine. As the shrill, shimmering notes died to silence, we stood, shoulder to shoulder, facing the ranks of gladiatrixes we would soon join.

  Beneath the training-ground portico, I could see a group of men sitting in carved wooden chairs, speaking in low tones, aristocratic heads bent together. Dignitaries and lanistas from other ludi invited for the occasion, they would be entertained with a lavish feast in the ludus guest residences afterward. I recognized one of the men who stood there, the one with the silver hair and hawkish features that they had called the Collector. He’d tried to purchase Elka and me at the auction, and had stormed off after being outbid by the Lanista. He looked even more unhappy now than he did then, and he seemed to be actively trying to avoid another man in the gathering.

  I’d seen enough of his stone likenesses scattered around Rome to guess his identity from his torchlit profile, but even if I hadn’t, I would have known him instantly. Here was a man who wore power like a cloak, effortlessly, comfortably. The thrill I felt at having been chosen to swear the oath conflicted with the raw dread of knowing just who, exactly, I was swearing my oath to. Gaius Julius Caesar, proconsul of Rome, the great dictator himself, had come to the ludus to attend the oath swearing of his newest crop of thorny wildflowers.