The Defiant

  I glanced over at Arviragus, who managed to shrug as he continued to saw through a knot the size of my fist. “Do as she says,” he grunted. “I’ll manage this. Eventually . . .”

  I hesitated for another moment. Sorcha lifted her face to me, eyes pleading.

  “Please, Fallon,” she said, her voice raw like a wound. “I want no more dead girls on my conscience. No more blood on my hands. No more ruin . . . Make this end.”

  How? How could I do that? I didn’t even know that I wanted to. I wanted revenge on Thalestris just as much as she’d wanted it on my sister and . . .

  That’s it.

  The thought brought me up short. I realized then that, in a way, I was locked in the same cycle Thalestris was. And I had been, ever since Sorcha had first disappeared from my life when I was a girl. All I’d wanted was revenge until the moment I’d found her again, alive and whole and mine. But when she’d been taken from me a second time . . . that thirst for vengeance had reawakened. Spilled over into my quest for retribution from Thalestris and her tribe, and I’d dragged my ludus sisters straight into the bloody heart of it.

  They were getting hurt. They were hurting others. And it wasn’t even their fight, any more than it was the Amazons’. The only problem was that, as much as it might have been mine, I was one girl with two swords, and I couldn’t stop the fighting with my blades. But maybe . . .

  Maybe I could stop it with my words.

  XII

  I STEPPED AWAY from Sorcha and shouted “Stop!” as loudly as I could.

  I had to shout it three more times—twice in mangled Greek—before anyone even started to take notice. Cai and Quint, oddly enough, were the first to put up their swords. Used to taking orders, I supposed.

  “Stop!” I shouted one more time, my throat raw. “Gratia, damn it!—put that girl down!”

  Gratia looked at me like I was mad but, eventually, she lowered the Amazon girl she had lifted off the ground in a rib-crushing bear hug back down to her feet. The girl collapsed to her knees, gulping for breath, her face flushed purple. One by one, the other duels subsided. All except the one raging between Elka and Thalestris. The two of them were locked in a vicious struggle to disarm each other of their spears. With Elka distracted for the barest instant by my shouting, Thalestris managed to thrust her away, and they both backed off into defensive postures.

  Like a pair of hungry tigers, they circled each other, waiting for an opening.

  “Achilleans!” I shouted one last time. “Drop your weapons!”

  Well, then they really did think I was mad. I could see it in their faces. Disarm? We’d been winning. But then I threw my own swords—both of them—to the ground to show them just how serious I was.

  “Elka!” I strode through crowd of combatants. “Do it.”

  To her credit, my dear friend trusted me enough to do as I said. Elka dropped her spear at her feet. Thalestris went statue-still, her spear still held at the ready. But for the moment, she didn’t move. In her mind, I’m sure, my command to disarm was most likely a ruse.

  One eye still on her opponent, Elka turned to the two gladiatrices nearest her—Hestia and Kore—and barked, “You heard her. Do it. Blades on the ground!” She turned to the girl on her other side—Antonia—and glanced down at the weapon strapped to her arm. Antonia raised an eyebrow at her.

  “You can just put your arm up, maybe,” Elka said.

  Ajani stepped forward then and gestured to the rest of our girls to drop their weapons too. The moment they did, the Amazons closed in, still bristling with their blades, and surrounded us.

  Thalestris spun in a circle, howling, “Kill them!” as she brandished her spear over her head and brought it down in a lethal arc—aimed straight at Elka’s head—only to have her blow blocked by the staff of the Amazon matriarch whose nose I’d bloodied with my head-butt.

  “Hold!” the gray-braided warrior shouted.

  “Don’t cross me, Areto!” Thalestris snarled, straining against the staff.

  “There is no honor in killing an unarmed opponent,” the woman named Areto said through gritted teeth.

  She heaved like her muscles would crack and threw Thalestris off, holding her at bay with a defensive stance. The other Amazons were frozen, visibly torn by the conflict in their own ranks, but it felt as though Areto’s command was a fragile dam holding back a deluge. And if my gamble failed, they would cut me and my now-unarmed friends to pieces.

  “There is no honor in this fight at all,” I said, directing my words to the Amazons in general, but mostly to Areto.

  “You are the ones who began it,” she said.

  “No.” I pointed at Thalestris with an outstretched arm. “She did.”

  “Liar,” Thalestris snarled at me, teeth bared like a hunting cat. “I seek only to avenge a wrong and appease the goddess that we Amazons may once again thrive. Your Roman-loving sister’s lifeblood in exchange for the blood of my sister, Orithyia—precious, sacred Amazon blood—that watered the sands of the bastard Romans’ arena.”

  “Your sister died in honorable combat,” I said, then turned to address Areto again. “You profess there is no honor in killing an unarmed opponent. And yet you would sacrifice my sister to your goddess like some dumb bellowing beast trussed up on an altar? Without even giving her a chance to defend herself first? That’s what you deem your goddess’s justly deserved spoils?” I turned back to the others. “What kind of a warrior people are you?”

  “We are Amazons!” a ragged few called out. “We are—”

  “The Amazons are myths!” I shouted over them. “Relics. Painted on vases, carved on monuments. The men of Greece brought you here as slaves. But they’re gone. Why do you continue to live like slaves?”

  Thalestris went white with rage. But the others, weapons still at the ready, were listening to me. And I knew that whatever I said next could mean my death. I stood at the center of their oppidum, defenseless, and I could feel the cold iron of every blade trained on me as if they already pierced my skin.

  “What is one death supposed to accomplish?” I continued. “What kind of goddess is this Cybele that you hope to appease her and regain some measure of bygone greatness by spilling the blood of a woman who—by all rights—should be your sister?”

  “She killed my sister!” Thalestris’s voice skirled wildly upward. “Murdered Orithyia in cold blood—”

  “You mean defeated her in a fair fight!” I countered. “A matched duel that they were both forced into, against their wills, by men! And what glory would Orithyia have won for herself if Sorcha hadn’t fought for her life with every measure of her warrior soul? You said it yourself, Areto. There’s no honor in killing the defenseless. The outcome of that battle was kill or be killed. And there is no dishonor in your sister’s defeat. No stain, no shame . . .”

  The warrior women exchanged glances.

  “The only shame here is what Thalestris has done in the name of base vengeance—”

  “Retribution!”

  “Vengeance!” I took a lurching step toward her, my own fists clenching convulsively. “And to do it, you betrayed our entire ludus to a man—a man—who would enslave us once more so that he can force us to kill each other and then feed our souls to his black god!”

  That hit home. For a moment, at least.

  Thalestris’s face twisted in an expression that was half fury, half wretched anguish. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. I turned away before pity had a chance to take hold, and saw the fishergirl who’d attacked us on the path murmuring to some of the younger warriors. They shifted uncomfortably, casting frowning glances at Thalestris. Clearly, what I’d just described was not the kind of endeavor they considered worthy of their tribe.

  I turned and addressed those women directly, and the fishergirl translated my words into Greek as I spoke. “Thalestris bartered Sorcha’s life,” I said,
“for the lives of the young women warriors that she swore an oath to protect and train. Without a second thought she abandoned us to the cruelties of a man who would feed on our strengths and our souls like a leech. She did that. Knowingly.” I shook my head sadly. “My sisters are to me as yours are to you,” I said. “And I would grieve for the loss of any one of them bitterly. But I ask you this: Is one life—taken unwillingly and at the behest of a male oppressor—worth the lives of so many kindred spirits?”

  The murmuring among the younger Amazons grew.

  The older ones exchanged glances.

  “My sister told me what your Queen Penthesilea once said,” I continued, remembering clear as day the words Sorcha had recited to me when I’d stood beside her looking at the stone carving of the legendary queen and her warriors, “‘Not in strength are we inferior to men’ . . .” I took a step forward, pleading my case directly to the younger girls: “‘the same our eyes, our limbs the same; one common light we see, one air we breathe. What then denied to us have the gods on man bestowed?’” I looked from face to face. “Help me prove the truth of her words. Help me see that we are not only the equal of men, we are better.”

  Areto turned then and, in the softest of voices, said, “Lay down your weapons. We will not carry this battle any further today.”

  It could as well have been a shouted command. The response was instantaneous as every one of the Amazon warriors threw their weapons to the ground. Every one except Thalestris. Areto waited for a moment, and then stepped forward to take the weapon from her clenched fist.

  “Enough, child,” she said. “Orithyia’s honor remains unstained. Yours should too.”

  “Thalestris.” I stepped forward and held out my hand. If I could make peace with her, I would. Even if only for the simple, calculated reason that it would make for a safer path for the rest of us to walk. “Will you let go of this vendetta and help us retake what is ours?”

  She was having none of it. The grief and rage she’d carried around inside her had eaten her soul hollow, and there was nothing left there that could reconcile itself with forgiveness. Instead she just glared at me in bleak hatred.

  “How?” she ground out between her teeth, ignoring my outstretched hand. “How did you even find me?”

  I dropped my hand back down by my side and held my peace. So be it.

  After an eternity of nothing but silence from me, she broke eye contact and her focus shifted, gaze roaming over the faces of those at my back. Her glare turned narrow, and I glanced back to see that she had picked Leander the kitchen slave out of our little crowd. With all the cocky guile I’d always known, he grinned apologetically and winked at her. For a moment, I wondered if she wouldn’t just lunge for him to wring his neck, but she did nothing. She just turned her back on him—on everyone—and walked toward a cluster of small, thatch-roofed houses on the outskirts of the oppidum. She ducked low through the door of one and, a few moments later, emerged with a small leather traveling satchel slung over her torso, and a fishing spear clutched in her fist.

  She ignored the Achillea crowd and addressed her Amazon sisters.

  “May the goddess forgive you,” she said in her harsh, unmusical voice. “I won’t.” Then she walked past them all, head high, eyes flashing eternal defiance, and disappeared into the deep shadows beneath the ancient olive trees that cloaked the hillside beyond the oppidum.

  Once she was gone, it was like the air itself shivered in relief.

  “You will rest here,” Areto said. “And then you will leave with the sun’s first light.”

  There was no room for argument in her tone.

  “And Thalestris?” I asked.

  “She has made her choice, and she will not return. If she does, she knows that she will die for it. It is our way.”

  • • •

  It wasn’t that I expected my sister to throw sheaves of flowers at my feet and crown me with laurels. But a simple thank-you would have been nice. Instead, I was treated to a bitter remonstration for my reckless endangerment of myself and my Achillea sisterhood.

  “You know you shouldn’t have come for me,” she said—again—as Neferet silently tended her wounds in the house that Areto had made available for us.

  I blinked at Sorcha when I realized she was still scolding me and sighed.

  “You should have left me to my fate, Fallon,” she continued. “You should have run far and fast the minute you gained your freedom. You’re the daughter of a king. Without the ludus to keep you safe, you should have gone home, where you could have claimed your place in front of the hearth in the great hall in Durovernum and left Rome and Caesar and me to our own devices.”

  I sat there, silently fuming at people trying to ship me back home without so much as asking my opinion on the matter, but I held my peace. There was something inside Sorcha that had been damaged by her capture. Some core belief had been shaken and cracked almost to the point of no repair, and I had to be careful, or it would shatter her from the inside out. I knew my sister. I knew that she didn’t give her trust or her friendship lightly, and she’d given Thalestris both. For years.

  Now she was more angry at herself than she was at her former primus pilus, because she blamed herself for having been so blind. Of course, she wouldn’t readily admit that, and so she was taking that anger out on the next most convenient target. Me.

  “You should have thought about your own survival,” she continued. “Not mine. Did I teach you nothing, little sister?”

  “You taught me that what we do is more important than who we are or what fire we sit in front of,” I said with a shrug, doing my best to keep a leash on my own temper. “You taught me that my fellow gladiatrices—every single one of them, even you, Sorcha—deserves the chance to choose their destiny.”

  “Fallon—”

  “Those of us who escaped are infamia and rebels in the eyes of Rome and have no hope of that without the Ludus Achillea,” I argued. “The ones who are still Aquila’s prisoners? Even less so. I don’t want that on my conscience. Do you?”

  She frowned, and I knew I’d struck a nerve. “Of course not. But you still didn’t need to put yourself at risk for me—”

  “And just how, exactly,” I interrupted, “would you expect me to retake the ludus without my legendary warrior sister at my side?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” she snapped angrily. “I’m not what you think I am, Fallon! Not anymore . . .”

  I sighed in exasperation. “Morrigan’s bloody teeth! You don’t seriously think that we could leave our friends, our fellow gladiatrices—our home, damn it all—in the hands of that mad bastard Pontius Aquila, do you?”

  I could see the spark of that impulse kindle behind her eyes. But I could also see the cold fear, the hurt of Thalestris’s betrayal, and the disappointment in herself, threatening to snuff it out. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

  “He wants to pit his god against our goddess?” I said emphatically, driving home my point. “His carrion crows against the Great Raven? He’ll lose.”

  Sorcha’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at me. Her old warrior self was still there, still a faint, flickering ember. It hadn’t yet been completely extinguished.

  “You have a clever plan, little sister?” she asked.

  “I’m working on it,” I said, and left it at that. For the time being.

  But Sorcha didn’t stand a chance against me if she thought she could shy away from this fight. I would fan that warrior spark into a flame. And I would feed that flame until it was a bonfire.

  • • •

  We made camp, our backs to the hill that rose above the oppidum. I tried to curb my impatience at having to stay. But even without bowing to the offered hospitality, such as it was, there was no way we could have made it back down that path to the ship in the darkness. By the time I was done building up a small fire a
nd laying out my bedroll, Antonia had come by to tell me that Neferet and Leander were helping tend to the Amazon injured—after seeing to our own, and administering a sleeping draught to Sorcha, who’d already succumbed to a deep slumber.

  “In the morning, she should be well enough to travel, Neferet says,” Antonia assured me. “Maybe just a little slowly.”

  “Good,” I said. “All I want is to take my sister home.”

  Antonia nodded and headed back in the direction of where Neferet still worked, dressing wounds. But before she’d turned, I’d seen the hesitation and the question in her eyes: “Home where?”

  I sighed. That was going to be a little more complicated than I wanted to deal with in that moment. I looked across the fire at where Quint and Cai were setting out their bedrolls by a small, neat, no doubt legion-regulation fire and wondered to myself, What next?

  Cai saw me watching and came over to crouch beside me. He was still dressed in full kit, and his armor creaked. I breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of leather and metal, my fingers itching to reach for the buckles that held his breastplate on and undo them . . .

  “What will you do now?” he asked me.

  “You,” I thought. Not “we” . . .

  I shrugged. “I just want to go home,” I said.

  When he didn’t reply, I turned to look at him. A night bird sang somewhere far off, and the firelight danced on Cai’s face. On the calluses of his palm, which he rubbed absentmindedly. I found myself staring at his hand, remembering the charcoal-on-vellum drawing of it he’d sent me. It was tucked away in my trunk back in my cell at the ludus.

  “Home to the ludus, Cai,” I said.

  He nodded and smiled at me—an uncertain expression that I wanted to stop with a kiss. A gulf of unspoken words seemed to have opened up between us, and I didn’t know how to cross it. Because standing on the bridge over that chasm was Aeddan. And right behind him, Kassandra. And behind her . . . shadows. Shapes of those I couldn’t make out but knew, somehow, that they’d come between Cai and me.