The Valiant

  In the early part of the day, there were musicians and the bawdy antics of comic actors to entertain the crowds. That was followed by displays of “exotic” animals. Unlike the larger venues closer to Rome, the smaller arenas avoided using rare and expensive beasts in favor of what amounted to wrestling matches between handlers and trained bears with trimmed claws and wildcats that weren’t particularly wild. Still, the crowd loved the theatrics.

  Next up after the bestiari were the male gladiatorial contests. The combatants were from two regional ludi and were clearly well-known, judging by the cheers and catcalls that filled the air. Most of the matches were draws or, in the cases where there was a clear winner, nonlethal. Gladiatorial bouts rarely ended in death. Only if one combatant performed exceptionally poorly—or one performed exceptionally well—did a match end in anything other than a win, loss, or draw in which both fighters left the field alive.

  I saw only one lethal fight that day.

  One gladiator’s trident had gone straight through the guts of his opponent. Two of the tines stuck out obscenely from his back, dripping red. I watched, my heart in my throat, as the wounded gladiator sank to his knees in the sand. He clawed his helmet from his head, face rigid with pain, and gestured for the mercy blow. The crowd held its breath as his opponent saluted him solemnly, then picked up his sword where it lay in the sand and thrust the point down through the other man’s neck.

  There was a moment of respectful silence. Then the gladiator’s body was dragged from the arena by hook-wielding men dressed in outlandish headdresses meant to resemble long-eared desert dogs. I had heard from Kronos that the men were playing the ritual part of an Aegyptian god of the dead called Anubis, whom the Greeks and Romans had adopted as a kind of guide for lost souls to their underworld. I shuddered as the jackal-men trudged past, dragging their burden behind them, leaving a trail of blood.

  They will never take me out of the arena like that, I vowed. Never.

  The men’s fights concluded, and there was a midday break.

  We were up next.

  I swallowed nervously to ease the tension in my throat, glancing around to see if I could gauge how the others were feeling. I wasn’t surprised to find Nyx and her crew positively champing at the bit to get out and do some damage.

  Nyx had already proved herself a consummate performer. The leather straps of her armored kilt were just a little shorter than those of the other girls, and they were oiled, supple, and spaced so that when she moved, there were flashes of sun-browned thigh. Her helmet lacked a visor to fully cover her face, and I noticed she had carefully painted her eyes with dark kohl and stained her lips a deep red. Even the curves of her breastplate were more exaggerated.

  I had to admire the way she played to the crowds. Flirting and fierce, confident, arrogant. When we’d first been led across the arena sands to the gladiator trenches, she’d paused to blow a kiss to a little boy sitting with his father in the first row of seats. Both of them had blown kisses back, and the crowd had cheered in delight.

  Just before the first bout, I noticed Sorcha standing near the judges’ bench, arguing vehemently with the games master. It surprised me. During the games, the master’s word was law in the arena, and any dissention, even from the lanistas, could result in heavy fines or disqualification. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I saw my sister throw her hands up in disgust and walk briskly toward me.

  “Be careful,” she said, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder hard. “And remember this: The most dangerous adversary is the one who already thinks they’ve nothing left to lose.”

  She left me standing there, and I turned to look at the girls from the opposing ludus, the Ludus Amazona. I could tell just from their equipment that they were well-funded. Two or three of their girls wore heavier gear and would likely be matched with our retiarius fighters, like Meriel. Most of the others were kitted out thraex style—with shield and sword—and I would probably be paired with one of them. None of them looked as though they fought dimachaerus-style.

  The Morrigan willing, that would give me an edge.

  As usual, Elka knew more about what was happening than I did. She trotted over and threw herself down beside me, her armor shimmering in the sun. Ajani had loaned her a tunic of scale mail that fit her reasonably well but made her look a bit like some kind of sea nymph, albeit one with a wickedly accurate throwing arm. Elka begged the roster of fights from the games master’s assistant and was kind—or maybe cruel—enough to point out my match to me.

  “She’s from your part of the world.” She pointed to a gladiatrix standing at the far end of the other trench. “Well, near enough, anyway. Eire-land.”

  “Really?” I squinted in the direction she pointed.

  “Calls herself Uathach,” Elka continued.

  I groaned and gazed skyward. “Wonderful.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not her name,” I said. “Unless she had a particularly hateful upbringing. It’s a title. It means ‘Terrible One.’”

  “Huh,” Elka grunted. “Everyone else calls her the Fury. She’s a local favorite. Probably because she’s a complete lunatic. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  Looking at her, I didn’t find that at all hard to believe.

  The gladiatrix was short and skinny and terrifying to behold. She stood with her helmet resting against a cocked hip, all wiry limbs and leather armor, wearing a tarnished chain-mail tunic trimmed with bunches of long black feathers. Her head was shaved, exposing a pale scar that puckered her scalp in a long seam above her left eyebrow. Her nose had been broken at least once, and she was missing an ear. And there were whip marks—both fresh and faded—on her shoulders and upper arms and on the backs of her legs.

  “That’s an impressive collection of scar tissue,” I murmured.

  “I heard she got most of those souvenirs from the ludus guards,” Elka said. “Not from other fighters. She’s tried to escape over a dozen times, and the last attempt was right in the middle of a bout!”

  I blinked at her. “You’re joking.”

  She shook her head. “Leaped right over the wall and into the crowd. Tried to hack her way through the plebs to freedom. Each time they’ve flogged her to within an inch of her life, and that time they did it right in the middle of the arena in front of the cheering mob. She laughed and laughed through it all. Like I told you, they say she’s mad.”

  “And she’s my very first opponent.” A shaky sigh escaped my lips. “The Morrigan hates me.”

  Elka frowned at me. “You shouldn’t say such a thing,” she admonished. “Your goddess has brought you this far. Maybe this is her way of telling you she thinks you’re worth the effort.”

  I grinned wanly at her. “If that’s the case, I wish she was just a bit less sure.”

  The shrill bray of the horns brought the crowd to its feet, and then it was our turn. The first of the gladiatrix events wasn’t a combat but a competition: target shooting from the female archers of the competing schools. This was Ajani’s domain, and I was on my feet with the rest of them, cheering her on as she sent arrow after arrow arcing with almost inhuman accuracy into the heads and hearts of the straw targets that had been set up at one end of the arena.

  The archery contests were followed by a heart-pumping two-horse chariot race between three female drivers. Nyx drove for the Ludus Achillea, and she was both terrifying and exhilarating to watch as she took a turn on one wheel and cut off her opponents with a daring final burst of speed to win the race. Watching it made me long for my own days of riding behind Mael as we raced along the floor of the Forgotten Vale. It also bolstered my grudging respect for Nyx.

  After the race, it was time for the bouts. The games master stepped to the center of the arena. The first name he called from the Ludus Achillea was Elka’s.

  “Go!” I gave her a slap on the shoulder. “Keep your big feet
moving, and don’t do anything stupid.”

  She grinned and thumped the butt of her spear on the ground, then slammed down the visor on her helmet. Pale blue eyes glittering fiercely behind the metal grill, she turned and loped out into the middle of the sand floor of the arena. Her opponent was a retiarius—fighting with trident and net—and she was good. Elka was better, but she still wound up on her back when the net took her legs out from under her. I jammed my fist against my mouth to keep from shouting curses as Elka rolled frantically from side to side, trying to avoid getting impaled on the trident’s tines. After a near miss, the retiarius had to wrench hard to free the weapon from where it stuck in the ground, and Elka brought her spear up in a great sweeping arc. The butt of the spear shaft caught the other girl on the side of her head and, even helmeted as she was, sent her sprawling. The trident flew from her grip to land just out of her reach. Elka sprang up and kicked away the net. In a single long leap, she stood looming over her opponent, spear raised high for a killing blow.

  With a sharp blast from the cornua—and a shout from the referee—the bout was over. Elka’s arm muscles, tensed and ready to deliver the blow, twitched once, and then she lowered her spear to the applause and cheers of the crowd. She lifted the visor on her helmet and held out a hand to help her downed opponent to her feet. The girl grasped her wrist and stood with a nod of acknowledgment. Elka turned to the crowd and thrust her spear into the air in triumph, then stalked back to the Achillea bench, head high.

  She threw herself down on the bench beside me, grinning smugly.

  I shook my head and raised an eyebrow at her. “What did I tell you about your big clumsy feet? She almost had you there, you know.”

  “That was strategy!” she protested.

  “Really. I didn’t know ‘clumsy’ qualified as an actual tactic.”

  “Wait until you get out there,” she snorted. “It’s different with a crowd watching.”

  The matches continued one after the other, some good, some bad, none of them fatal. Then it was my turn. The Fury—Uathach, or whatever she was called—strode into the middle of the ring, her gait low and loose like a hunting cat’s. I took a deep breath, adjusted the two swords in their scabbards on my hips, and squared my shoulders.

  Elka saluted me with a fist to her heart. “Luck.”

  I saluted her back. “And two good sharp swords.”

  I stepped onto the sand, feeling the heat through the soles of my sandals.

  I could feel Cai’s gaze on me, just as hot.

  Mine was the last match of the day. The crowd was both restless and seething with anticipation. What would the Fury do this time, they wondered?

  And who was the hapless gladiatrix they’d sent to fight her?

  I felt like bait on a fishhook, and it made me angry. I reached for my swords and drew them with a fast, showy flourish. The crowd wanted spectacle? I would give it to them. I threw my arms skyward, clashing the swords above my head, gazing defiantly. The crowd threw up a smattering of encouraging cheers, nearly drowned out by heckling laughter.

  The Fury drew back her lips in a feral snarl and waited. She wasn’t armed like any of the other gladiatrices; she bore no shield, no sword, no spear or trident or net, just a pair of axes held tightly in her scarred fists. I frowned, wondering what she would do with them—and then leaped madly out of the way when she threw one at my head! I barely had time to realize that my bout was already under way as the Fury sprinted past me to retrieve her thrown axe. Without breaking stride, she plucked it up from where it had stuck, haft pointing up, in the sand. Then she turned and charged straight at me, axes whirling as she swung them side to side.

  I distantly heard Sorcha and Elka shouting commands at me.

  It took me a few desperate moments of frenzied blocking and ducking to realize that Uathach’s way of fighting wasn’t very different from mine. Different weapons, to be sure, and the curved blades of the axes gave her a greater chance to hook my swords away, but the movements—the side-to-side slashing and the wide dual swings—followed a similar flow. The axe blades caught the sunlight at the edges of my vision, and my own blades flashed up to meet them. Sparks flew, pale in the bright air, as we chased each other back and forth across the sand. We were nearly evenly matched, and I didn’t think it was the kind of fight the Fury usually encountered. At first, I wondered if she would grow frustrated, but I only saw in her eyes the slow-dawning light of pure joy.

  Oh, this one truly is mad, I thought.

  And yet, there was a secret part of me that understood that joy. This was the kind of warfare I’d dreamed about as a little girl. The strength, the speed, the skill . . . this was the dance I’d longed for—

  Maybe without the kick to the stomach.

  I was down on all fours in an instant, sucking sand-gritty air through my teeth. The crowd roared, sensing yet another victory for the Fury. I reared back and slashed wildly at the space in front of me with both swords to ward her off, but she wasn’t there. Uathach had spun away, retreating to a far-off distance. I could barely hear the hoots of the crowd over my own wheezing gasps. But when my adversary threw back her head and howled a bone-chilling battle cry . . . that I heard.

  I lifted my head and, in that moment, saw what she truly was.

  Shoulders hunched, head jutting forward, arms stretched out like wings with iron feathers, shrieking and wide-eyed, she was Death. The Terrible One. She was Vengeance. She came at me. Legs pumping, arms raised and ready to bury those axe blades in my head and heart, she ran. There was nothing else for me to do—I couldn’t block, I couldn’t slash . . . I was on my knees and out of breath. In the very last instant before her attack, I slammed the hilts of my twin swords together and thrust them out before me.

  The Fury never even broke stride.

  She impaled herself on my blades.

  Right through her heart.

  That’s the thing about good sharp swords. Given the right conditions, they will cut through almost anything—even armor, always flesh. Mine had found the weakness between the links of the Fury’s ragged chain-mail tunic and then the space between her ribs. Her forward momentum did the rest.

  I flinched, and then her body slammed into me, throwing me back down to the ground. For a horrible moment, I lay pinned to the sand by the weight of her, and I felt panic rise in my throat. I thrashed and struggled and heaved her off me. She rolled limply away, and I saw that there was still that strange, joyous light in her eyes. But it was fading fast.

  “No,” I murmured, crouching to hold her face between my hands as blood bubbled up and spilled out the sides of her mouth, staining my fingers.

  “Yes,” she whispered back. She lifted a weak hand and pressed it to my heart. “It’s yours now. Thank you . . .”

  Her face relaxed into a peaceful smile. And then she was gone.

  The crowd was shocked into silence at the sudden demise of their favorite whipping post. But they shook themselves free of that spell as I clambered to my feet, painted in the Fury’s blood. The arena echoed with demands for my blood too.

  I reached for my swords, still buried in Uathach’s chest—they slid free with far less effort than I thought it would take—and I staggered in the direction of the Ludus Achillea bench. Catcalls and insults rained down as I tore the suffocating helmet from my head with one hand, dropping it in the sand behind me. I was almost back at the dugout when the two attendants with their grotesque jackal masks and their corpse hooks strode past me to drag the body from the arena. At the sight of them, I thought my heart would burst into flame. I turned and ran back to where the Fury lay sprawled, still and small.

  “No!” I shoved aside the jackal-man. “You will not touch her!”

  The crowd grew suddenly still again.

  “She deserves a better honor than your kind,” I snarled. “Get away!”

  The attendants backed off, look
ing to the games master for direction. I slammed my still-bloody blades into the sheaths hanging on my hips and bent down. As gently as I could, I slid my arms under her lifeless legs and shoulders. Even though she was smaller than me, I’d expected her to be heavy and hard to lift because of her powerful strength. But emptied of all her fire and fight, the Fury’s body was almost feather-light.

  I cradled her to my chest and walked across the sand toward the yawning maw of the archway that led to the infirmary—and the arena morgue. Enraged as I was, it took me a moment to notice that the angry silence of the mob had melted into a swelling wave of applause and shouts of approval.

  “Victrix!” they cried. “Victory!”

  Just like that, I had gone from villain to hero at the whim of the mob.

  They knew nothing. I knew what I really was.

  I was an instrument of the Morrigan’s will.

  Once I’d laid the body out on a low stone bench in the dark vault of the morgue, I knelt beside her on the dirt floor. I vomited until there was nothing left, but still my body rebelled against me—against the thing I’d suddenly become—dry-heaving until it felt as though my ribs would crack.

  “It’s not as if she gave you a choice,” Elka said quietly from behind me. I hadn’t even heard her come in, but she was sitting on a stool beside the door. “You’ll forget this in time.”

  “And what of you?” I leaned back against the cold stone bench support, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “What about the man you killed that first day, on the stage in the Forum? Do you still think of him?”

  “Think?” She shook her head. “No. I don’t have to think of him. His shade visits me almost nightly in my sleep. We’re so familiar with each other now, he’s almost a friend.”

  She said it half as a joke, but I could see the distant horror of the act in her gaze. After a moment, she shook herself from her reverie and stood. Then she held out a hand, helping me to my feet.

  “If Uathach was so desperate to escape her life as a slave,” I said, “if she saw that much more freedom even in death, then why didn’t she just let one of her opponents kill her in any one of her bouts before me? Why fight so hard? Why even fight at all?”