“And that was?”
“The part where I told Aeddan that he could go straight to a hell of his own choosing before I would agree to such a thing. Understand something, Fallon . . .” His expression was hurt. And more than hurt. Angry. “Something vital. I would sacrifice any chance I ever had at happiness with you if I thought that, in doing so, I would be making your life better or happier. And I’d do it with a smile on my face and a song in my breaking heart. But I will not lie to you. Ever. And telling you I don’t love you is the most flagrant lie that could ever pass my lips.”
I watched helplessly as the hurt in his gaze turned to disappointment. He shook his head sadly, and I was beginning to think I’d made a terrible mistake.
“I thought we had agreed to treat each other as equals,” Cai said quietly.
“Cai—”
“You really don’t trust me, do you, Fallon? When are you going to believe in me enough to accept the fact that I believe in you?”
“I do—”
“Back at the ludus you didn’t even tell me you were hurt.”
“What—” I sputtered. “I didn’t tell anyone!”
“You didn’t tell me.” There was a long pause. “Did you tell Aeddan?”
I couldn’t bring myself to answer him. Was he right? Did I actually trust Aeddan more than I trusted Cai? And what in all the worlds did that say about me? That I could confide weakness to the man who’d murdered my first love, but not the man I loved now? Was I that afraid of what Cai would do to my heart if I ever gave it to him fully? My silence spoke volumes, apparently.
“Right,” he said. There was a weary resignation in his voice. A dull, bruised ache.
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t handle myself,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to lose trust in me. To think I wouldn’t be able to get us out of there—”
“But I do trust you. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Until I believe it myself.”
He laughed, a mirthless weary sound. “I don’t know that I have that much breath in my body, Fallon.”
“Trust goes both ways, Cai.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Kass, I wanted to say.
But the skiff had returned. And there was no more time for us to argue.
“This isn’t over,” Cai said before Antonia and Neferet stepped ashore.
I nodded and turned to the water, watching as the two of them waded through the knee-deep froth, holding each other’s hands for support. Over the next hour or so, the beach began to slowly fill up with gladiatrices, and there was no chance for us to finish our argument. In truth, I wished it had never started. The uneasy feeling that I was profoundly on the wrong side of it was like a thorn against my skin, and every time I looked over at Cai, I wanted to take his hands in mine and kiss away the angry words I’d flung at him.
But it would have to wait.
Not far from where we landed, there was a river that emptied into the bay. The rich soil it carried down from the hills stained the pale beach sand, marking the place where fresh water met sea, and that was where we would begin our trek up into the forest of pine and cedar and olive trees. The sky overhead was brilliant blue and dotted with puffs of cloud, but beneath the trees, the deep green shadows raised gooseflesh on my arms. The hills rising up ahead of us were silent, and it seemed as if even the birds avoided this place.
My fellow gladiatrices ranged in a loose half circle around me, silent and formidable, faces and limbs marked with war paint. I could feel the designs on my own skin pull tight and tingle as I moved, and I shivered in anticipation of the battle to come, sensing the same coiled tension in the others. The battle readiness. Even Neferet, who’d sworn off ever picking up a weapon again, had a look to her that made me pity anyone who attempted to test her resolve regarding that oath. She shifted the surgeon’s bag on her shoulder, Leander at her side. He would stay with her, behind any kind of fighting we might encounter, to help with wounded—if it came to that. Knowing she was there with her bandages and instruments and potions made me feel better about what was potentially to come. About the fact that I was dragging my oath sisters into danger to rescue my blood sister. And I refused to even entertain the thought that she might not be there for us to rescue.
Arviragus had forgone the woad, but he didn’t really need it to be intimidating. And war paint would have looked a bit ridiculous on Leander—although the way he handled the blade we’d given him made me think that he’d picked up at least a few tricks, watching us all practice back at the ludus. It was almost enough to bring a smile to my lips as I watched him. The kitchen boy was finally the hero in his own tale, and he seemed determined to make the most of it.
Cai and Quint, for their part, were dressed in full battle garb, scarlet-plumed helmets waving in the breeze off the ocean. The very picture of ruthless legion efficiency. I was used to the stern, soldierly expression on Cai’s face under the brim of his helmet, but it was unsettling to see Quint’s gaze turned so hard.
“Thank you for leading us here, Quintus,” I said, before we set off.
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “You’re doing this for your sister, Fallon, but I do this for myself. And for the brother I never came back to save.”
He turned away and started up the path, and I glanced over to see Elka watching him go, her expression pensive. Her blue gaze stayed on Quint’s back until he had disappeared beneath the trees. I waved the others forward and we followed. The path wound beside a little tumbling river, over white rocks furred with moss, beneath the branches of ancient trees. It was worn smooth from many years of use, but it was steep going in places and we were all breathing hard after a quarter hour’s climb. Arviragus strode up the twisting incline in Quint’s wake directly ahead of me, the unsheathed sword in his hand swishing side to side, like the tail of a hunting cat. His head was in constant motion, eyes scanning the rugged terrain on both sides, and he was the one to sense the initial attack before any of the rest of us.
I could almost see the hackles rising on the back of his neck as he turned to me, his eyes almost black in the failing evening light as he said, “I have a bad feeling—”
And that was all he had time for.
The arrow slammed into the dirt between my feet. I yelped and dove for cover behind a stout, twisty pine, shouting for the others to do the same. I saw Ajani tackle Nephele out of the way, and Kore and Hestia ducked down behind a boulder. The rest of the girls were strung out along the path, with Gratia bringing up the rear, and I hoped frantically that our archer assailant was alone. If not, the girls would be easy pickings and there was nothing I could do about it. Cai landed in a tumbling crouch beside me as two more arrows sang through the air like hornets, and Arviragus scrambled around the other side of the tree as another missile grazed his ear.
“Damn my eyes!” he cursed, his broad shoulders jamming up against the rough bark of the tree. “I used to be a lot better at this sort of thing.” He reached up to touch his ear, and his fingertips came away bloody.
“I can’t imagine how all those years in a prison cell managed to dull your edge,” Cai said, frantically signaling Quint, who was ahead of us, taking cover with Elka.
“I think it was the wine,” Arviragus muttered dryly.
I edged around the bole of the tree, peering in the direction of where the arrow fire had come from, expecting another volley. Nothing. We waited, moving back onto the path only after a good long while had passed. The forest had resumed its eerie stillness, and eventually, Elka and Quint came loping back down the trail and the other girls climbed up to meet us.
“I think it’s clear,” Quint said, quietly. “Whoever took those potshots at us probably ran out of arrows.”
“If that’s the case,” I said, “they’ve probably run back to wherever they came from
to warn of our presence. We’ve lost any element of surprise we might have had.”
“We don’t need surprise,” Antonia said. “We are the House Achillea, and we’ll win whether our foes expect us or not.”
There was a murmur of assent from the others, and I felt my heart swell at the bravery—and loyalty—of my companions as we set off back up the winding trail. In fairly short order we discovered that we hadn’t actually lost the element of surprise. But neither had our archer, who, it turned out, hadn’t run off at all.
Although it appeared she had run out of arrows.
The large basket of fish came sailing out of nowhere, hitting Quint square in the chest and knocking him to the ground. It was followed close behind by a second basket that plummeted out of the sky as if flung by a catapult and headed directly for me, but my swords were already in motion. My right blade deflected the basket, and my left took the head clean off a nice-sized sea bream that tumbled clumsily through the air.
I had a moment to relish the excellence of my reflexes, before I realized that my momentum had carried me to the very edge of the path—which crumbled away beneath my feet as I dropped my swords and flailed wildly, grabbing at handfuls of nothing as I tried to keep my balance. I heard Cai shout in alarm as I toppled over the precipice, my own cry strangled in my throat, and then there was a sharp, painful yank on my arm that almost pulled my shoulder from its socket.
I dangled in midair, looking up into Elka’s grimly determined face.
“I’ve got this one!” she snapped over her shoulder. “You lot go after the fish-lobber so she doesn’t raise a bloody alarm!”
I heard the sound of running feet fading up the path.
“Men,” Elka muttered through clenched teeth as she strained to haul me back up. “They hinder more than they help, ja? Thalassa, Nephele—get over here and grab my legs! Hold tight . . .”
Her two-handed grip on my wrist was excruciating, but I couldn’t help but gasp a laugh as I dug my feet into the cliff face and reached up with my free hand. “Aye, men,” I grunted, struggling to climb. “Of course . . . I remember . . . a time when you yourself . . . would have hacked off . . . my foot . . . rather than help . . .”
“That . . . was before . . . we knew each other . . .”
One last heave and I was up and rolling onto my back on the dirt track. The other girls fell back on their haunches as Elka and I lay there, gulping for breath for a moment. She rolled her head and grinned at me.
“But,” she continued, “the strength of my character saved you.”
“I’ll give the credit this time to the strength of your arms,” I said and climbed shakily to standing. “Come on.”
I held out a hand to her and then, together, we turned to help the other girls to their feet. Elka stood, pushing the sweat-damp hair back from her face with her forearm, and then we all took off running, scrabbling up a near-vertical incline to squeeze through a narrow break in a rock wall. I heard Cai shouting what sounded like orders to Quint, and by the time I was through to the other side, I saw the two of them had the fishergirl down on the ground, held there by Quint’s hand on her throat. His other arm was lifted, weapon poised and about to descend.
“Quintus!” I shouted. “Hold!”
I strode forward, ignoring the fact that I was still gasping for breath. At a glance from me, Cai pulled Quint away from our assailant. Close up, I was startled to see she was barely more than a child. A dangerous child, perhaps, but she couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. Maybe younger. Younger than the girls who’d just helped Elka haul me back up that cliff. Except the look in this girl’s eyes was anything but childish. She lay there, stone still and glaring poisonously up at me, and I drew my double blades, leaning down to cross them in front of her throat.
“Thalestris,” I said, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. I saw no reason not to be direct, under the circumstances.
The girl’s eyes narrowed.
“You know her?”
She didn’t answer.
Quint stepped back up beside me and gazed down at the girl. “Just occurred to me—she might not speak Latin,” he said. “Let me try something else.”
I kept my swords at the ready as he crouched down in front of her. He spoke to her in Greek—I recognized the sound of the language if not the meaning of the actual words—and after a few moments, she answered him. Her replies were brief but seemed to satisfy Quint. He stood and turned to face me.
“She’s there,” he said. “Thalestris. She’s at the oppidum—the settlement gathering place—and she has your sister. Sorcha is still alive. Thalestris is planning on sacrificing her this very night at moonrise to their Amazon goddess, Cybele. This girl was catching fish for the celebration rites to take place after. But she will take us around and show us a rear approach to the oppidum. She says they won’t be expecting any kind of attack from that direction.”
“And why will she do that, exactly?” Elka asked, wary as always.
“Because I told her if she didn’t”—Quint grinned coldly—“that Fallon would carve her up into pieces too small to use even as fish bait.”
“But you could have told me that yourself,” the girl said to me in accented, but perfectly understandable, Latin. “Instead of having to defer to this . . . man.” The derision positively dripped from her lips, lifted in a sneer at Quint.
“You speak Latin?” I asked, trying not to show my surprise.
“I speak your tongue well enough.” She lifted her chin defiantly.
“It’s not my tongue,” I said, crouching down in front of her. “And if you understand it well enough, you should also understand when I tell you that I defer to no man. But this one speaks the truth. I am not cruel, but I am not merciful. Not this day. Not when my sister’s life is in danger. Help us and all will be well. Hinder us and you will die.”
“I guess I don’t really have much choice then, do I?” she said, dryly.
I admired her courage. It didn’t even seem like bravado as she stood and dusted herself off. Then without a backward glance, she turned and started up the path, muttering about the waste of perfectly good fish.
Cai came up beside me. “Fallon,” he said, putting a hand on my arm, a frown of worry on his brow. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, shrugging out of his grip, even though I didn’t really meant to.
His lips disappeared in a white line and he nodded brusquely. “Good.”
“Let’s keep moving,” I said, and gestured to the others to follow.
The path angled steeper the farther up we hiked. I turned to glance over my shoulder at the line of gladiatrices following me up the hill. From my vantage point, they looked like an armored serpent, twisting its way up the path, a line of round, many-colored scales upon its back. We’d decided, collectively, to bring the shields from the ship, carrying them on our backs. Just in case. I hoped we wouldn’t need them. But never again would I decline the opportunity for an advantage in a fight, and if the Amazons, like the Cantii and the Arverni and—as far as I could tell, almost anyone who wasn’t a soldier in the Roman legion—fought as individuals, then our newly learned defensive tactics might come in handy.
If it came down to a fight.
And I knew in my heart that it would.
Thalestris wouldn’t give up without one, but I wondered about her fellow Amazons. Were they really the fearsome fighting force of legend? Warrior women fueled by the magic of their gods, adversaries of legendary heroes? Our sullen young captive didn’t seem quite so mystical. I glanced around me as we ascended—at the signs of what seemed to have been a once-prosperous settlement. There were stone ruins dotted here and there beneath the trees, but no signs of recent habitation. And then the path crested a rise and opened up before us to reveal a sweeping, terraced landscape. I could see the remains of fortifications and w
alls, tumbled structures and stone pillars. At the center, there was a broad, roughly circular enclosure, like a natural arena, watched over by several tall stone sentinels carved in the shapes of weapons and warriors with stern, glowering faces. From the way Quint had described it, I thought this must be the oppidum—the settlement that had been built by the original inhabitants of the island and then abandoned, only to be taken over by the Amazons once they had escaped their Greek masters.
The place looked forsaken, silent and still, long uninhabited. Except . . .
Not far ahead, Quint had stopped in front of the hollowed-out curve of a massive boulder that formed a shallow cave that might have provided scant protection from the elements. He stood staring into the shadowy niche, and following his glance, I could see why. There were cages there, beneath the low stone overhang. Empty, but big enough to have once held one or two occupants each. I watched as Elka reached out and put a hand on Quint’s shoulder.
“Quintus,” she said quietly. “You don’t know—”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do. They kept him in one of these. I know it.”
“Quint . . .”
“It doesn’t matter now.” He shrugged off her hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I looked back at Arviragus, who had a firm grip on our young Amazon captive, and knew by the way she was staring at the cages that Quint was right. That’s exactly what they’d been used for. The look on Arviragus’s face told me he recognized them for what they were too.
“Where are your people?” I asked the girl.
She looked at me, her gaze flinty. “Don’t worry,” she said, her focus drifting over my shoulder. “They’re coming.”
“What?” I rounded on her. “You said they wouldn’t be expecting us—”
“They’re not!” she said, pointing behind me at where the pale round ghost of the full moon was just rising into the dusky sky. “They come for the sacrifice.” Then she pointed at a rough-hewn menhir in the center of the main clearing, a pillar carved from a single stone darker than the surrounding rock and taller than the tallest man. In the fading light, I realized that there were ropes circling it.