The Defiant

  “Ah.” The older of the women remained unmoved. “You crave adventure. You know nothing of the world of men. They will make vile sport of you in the moments before they send you to your deaths.”

  “Only if you’ve trained us to be weaker than them,” Kallista snapped, seemingly no longer caring whether or not she would be punished for speaking out. “Lesser. Is that what you’re telling me? That everything you’ve taught us has only served to render me—to render us—incapable of living and fighting in a world that isn’t just other girls with swords?”

  The older woman’s fists clenched white at her sides, and for a moment I thought she might actually strike Kallista for her impudence. But then Arviragus suddenly stepped forward into the tense space between the Amazons.

  It was a brave thing for him to do.

  “What if . . .” he began in a conciliatory tone as the Amazon leaders turned their flinty glares on him. “What if I were to suggest a compromise? A means of solution to this impasse? These young ones are the future of this tribe. It is understandable that you do not wish to simply give them over into the keeping of outsiders when you gain nothing in return. What if we were to make a bargain with you, instead? An exchange, as it were.”

  Sorcha and I shared a confused glance, and I made a grab for his arm. This was not part of my plan. “My lord, what—”

  He held up a hand to silence me.

  “Honored Warrior Mother,” he said, directing his words to the scar-faced Amazon, “my name is Arviragus of the Arverni. I was once known in the world of men as Vercingetorix. But even here, in this place, I think you will have heard of me.”

  She had. They all had. That much was obvious from their expressions—mostly surprise and wary respect—as they watched with unblinking stares while Arviragus reached over his shoulder for the shield he carried on his back and tossed it to the ground in front of Areto’s feet. He unbuckled his sword belt and threw it after the shield.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “I’ve only ever done that once before,” he said.

  “Why, then, do you do it now?” Areto asked. “Your side won this time.”

  Arviragus grinned wanly in response to the jab. “I do it as a sign of respect,” he said, “and as a plea for parley on my companions’ behalf . . . and refuge on mine.”

  “Refuge?” the scarred one asked.

  “I cannot go back to Rome,” he said. “Nor back to the lands that were once mine. And I do not wish to wander the wide world as an outcast for the rest of whatever borrowed life my gods and this brave girl”—he gestured to me without looking—“have granted me.”

  My heart cracked a little in my chest.

  Areto and the scarred woman glanced at each other.

  “Rather,” Arviragus continued, “I will pledge myself as hostage in exchange for any of your warriors who wish to join Fallon and Sorcha’s cause. Among my people, there is no greater nor more honored tradition than that of hostage exchange. We foster our young as guests among the tribes to ensure mutual peace.” He nodded to Kallista and the others. “I am not young, but Caesar himself will tell you I make a decent, mostly well-mannered guest. And if one of your girls does not return home, you may take my life as forfeit.”

  The two women turned inward and walked away from us, conversing in low tones, and Sorcha put a hand on Arviragus’s shoulder.

  “This is madness,” she said.

  I stepped up beside her. “She’s right, Arviragus—listen to her!” I said. “I’ll find another way. We’ll find another way.”

  “I don’t think there is one, bright little thing,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  Sorcha shook her head adamantly. “You’ve only just escaped one confinement—one death sentence—and you would commit yourself to another?”

  “There’s a reason I lived through that, Sorcha,” he said. “With you and Fallon as my only friends, my only comfort. I do this willingly, and I believe this is why the Morrigan let me live as long as she has. You need these girls, and I need somewhere out of the way to live out the rest of my days. Maybe I can help these women see that not all men are to be hated and reviled. Or maybe they can teach me a thing or two. Whatever the outcome, at least the sea air might do me some good, and I can get a bit of exercise fixing a leaky hut roof or two. And the honey mead here is excellent.”

  “One year.”

  I turned to see that Areto and the scarred woman had returned.

  “One year,” the woman repeated. She turned her piercing gaze on Sorcha and me. “If these young ones do not return to us here in one year, he will die. Slowly. Painfully. With fire and steel and—”

  “Understood!” I snapped, not wishing to hear a detailed recipe of my dear friend’s demise should I fail to keep safe the girls I was about to lead into extreme harm’s way.

  Arviragus just rolled his eyes and winked at me.

  “Then we have a bargain,” he said.

  He unsheathed his dagger and drew it across his palm. A thin line of blood welled up, and Areto did the same. They clasped hands, and I saw there was a gleam of respect—and maybe the tiniest spark of intrigue—in her gaze. I could hardly blame her. Arviragus was nothing if not intriguing.

  My childhood hero. My friend.

  I owed him more than I could ever repay, and I would miss him deeply.

  Again.

  • • •

  The sun was still behind us as we left the Amazon oppidum and began the trek down the twisting trail back to the bay where—I silently, fervently hoped—Charon and his boat waited. Sorcha was pale from the whole ordeal, and I saw her jaw clench as she stumbled on a stone in the pathway. But when I put a hand out to steady her, she gave me a look that told me—rather pointedly—she would be just fine, thank you, and didn’t require her little sister’s help. I grinned to myself and felt my heart lifting, beating light and strong and free like the wings of a bird in my chest. For the first time in many days, I felt as if everything would turn out all right.

  Behind us, Elka started singing quietly—a song of her Varini tribe we’d all heard her sing back at the ludus whenever she cleaned weapons or pulled duty sweeping in the stables or sometimes even when she practiced in the yard. We all knew the words, even though they weren’t ours, and one by one Elka’s ludus sisters picked up the tune and began singing with her. Even the Amazon girls were nodding in time with the cantering tune and smiling and chattering with each other in Greek as we threaded our way down through the hills.

  We’d reached the lower slopes of the hills where the path cut a channel through a ragged-walled ravine and the trees arched overhead, forming a green tunnel with their canopy. I was still keeping a discreet eye on Sorcha when Leander caught up with us, throwing an arm around both of our shoulders—something he never would have dared do back at the ludus—his grin outshining the sun. I’d told Sorcha the night before how it had, in fact, been the kitchen boy who’d been largely responsible for leading us to her in the first place, and so her only reaction was to shake her head at him indulgently.

  “I hear I owe you a debt of thanks, Leander,” she said.

  He nodded at her, dark eyes gleaming with delight.

  “Yes, domina!” he said. “But think nothing of it. I knew it would all turn out.” He waved his hands airily. “We’re heroes, after all, are we not—”

  There was a noise—a hiss followed by a wet snapping sound like a green tree branch breaking—and Leander abruptly stopped talking. His body stiffened and jerked, chest thrust forward, and the glistening red tip of a spear blade appeared as if by some evil magic, sticking out of the center of his tunic.

  Sorcha cried out, and I grappled at Leander to keep him standing.

  He turned to me, his expression one of surprise, rather than pain or horror. But when he opened his mouth to say something, all that came out was a gout
of bright blood. Then he pitched forward onto his face on the path, the fishing spear sticking obscenely upright from the middle of his back. Sorcha fell to her knees beside him, and I looked up to see Thalestris standing high above on the cliff’s edge, a black silhouette against the pale blue sky.

  She stood for a moment, staring back at me.

  I screamed her name, sending a startled flock of swallows flapping into the air as she turned, deliberate and unhurried, and vanished back into the wilderness of the Corsican hills.

  • • •

  We buried Leander beneath the gnarled branches of an ancient olive tree with all the rites due a fallen warrior.

  I stared down at the trench dug in the earth that would be his resting place, a far cry from the ludus kitchen alcove, and whispered a prayer for the Morrigan to guide his soul’s flight. As Cai and Quint lifted the last, largest stone and placed it carefully over Leander’s grave, I looked around to see that most of the Achillea girls were red-eyed with weeping. The irony of that—of Leander finally getting all the gladiatrix attention he’d ever craved—wasn’t lost on me. I hoped that his shade had lingered long enough to see, and smile.

  “Annoying little wretch,” Ajani muttered, glaring down at the grave.

  “He was fond of you too,” I said, wiping at the fugitive tear that had escaped my lashes and slipped down my cheek.

  Kallista and the other young Amazons had gone into the hills hunting for Thalestris, only to return with unbloodied weapons. I knew before they went that the search for their murderous sister would prove fruitless. In the same way I knew that Thalestris could just as easily have chosen me or Sorcha as her target with that spear throw.

  She’d chosen Leander. A punishment for him, a fulfillment of her promise.

  And a message for us. We hadn’t seen the last of her.

  I could tell from the look on Sorcha’s face as we stepped together back out onto the path to continue on our way that she was thinking the same thing.

  “I will avenge his death, little sister,” she said, at last, without looking at me. “Thalestris will pay in blood for her betrayals. For all of her betrayals. And so will Nyx.”

  I felt a sudden fierce swell of vindication at the sparks of Sorcha’s old fire I saw kindling to life. “I was hoping you would say that.”

  Sorcha glanced at me sideways. “And why is that?” she asked warily.

  “Because . . .”

  I picked up my pace, like a hound on the hunt that had finally caught the scent of the quarry. The trees opened up before us, and in the distance far below, the sparkling blue bowl of the bay shimmered into view—along with the ship, still anchored there, that would take us all home.

  “Don’t tell me . . .” Sorcha said. “It’s all part of your clever plan.”

  XIV

  OUR SHIP BOUNDED over the waves, the breath of the wind god, Zephyrus, filling our sails and speeding us on our way. There was an air of anticipation among the girls, even if there was a pall of uncertainty too. I could hardly blame them—the closer we sailed to Rome, the more I was beginning to worry that I hadn’t really thought my clever plan of retaking the ludus all the way through to its logical conclusion. For one thing, even though her spirit seemed on the mend, to say that Sorcha had been less than convinced of her part in the scheme would be putting it lightly.

  When we’d first gathered to discuss our options, I began by telling her what we were up against. When she heard everything that had passed at the ludus since her abduction, Sorcha was aghast. Furious. Disgusted and enraged by Pontius Aquila’s machinations.

  “Rebellion.” Sorcha’s lip curled as she said the word. “Within the walls of my ludus. What a load of horse manure.”

  “A lie, and a foul one,” Charon agreed. “But it’s one that resonates deeply. We all know that, and we all know why.”

  “Aye. Thanks be to Spartacus the Interminably Unforgotten,” Sorcha snorted in disdain.

  At which point, Elka had sighed gustily.

  “Will someone please enlighten me?” she asked. “What does any of this—what do any of us—have to do with this Spartacus fellow? His name keeps getting bandied around, and I can’t quite figure out why.”

  Cai turned to her. “It’s been only a few years since Spartacus, the legionnaire-turned-slave-turned-gladiator, fomented an uprising that led to a war that directly threatened the heartland of Italia,” he explained. “Some even thought he and his followers were bent on taking the city of Rome itself. The plebs haven’t forgotten, and the patricians haven’t forgiven. Talk of gladiators and rebellion in the same sentence makes people . . . excitable.”

  “Nervous,” Quint added.

  Charon nodded grimly, his gaze fixed on Sorcha’s face.

  “And now Aquila has laid the groundwork for the story of a gladiatrix rebellion at the ludus to become the official interpretation,” I mused. “We will be branded as criminals and traitors to the Republic. We will be hunted down mercilessly and crucified. Unless we stop him first.”

  “Stop him how?” Sorcha leaned forward, her eyes narrowing.

  “We use the plebs—and their excitability—against their Tribune.”

  “I’m listening . . .”

  “We can’t retake the ludus by sheer force,” I said. “Not without an army—one that Caesar would never give us for the simple fact that Aquila has possession of the written deed to the place, signed over to him by Thalestris. Even if you were to step forward now and reassert your claim, I don’t know that it would do any good. It’s unlikely to be general knowledge that Aquila has seized the ludus through deceit.”

  “The legalities are doubtless tricky,” Cai said, scratching at the stubble of his chin and thinking over the implications. “It would have to go before the courts, and that could take months if not years to settle.”

  “And Caesar,” I said, “as I’ve come to understand, is a stickler for legalities.”

  “He has to be.” Quint shrugged. “It’s all in the public perception.”

  “Right,” I continued. “So—as I said—we use the public to our advantage, and we call Aquila out.”

  Cai’s eye glinted. “Call him out?”

  “Issue a challenge. A very public challenge.” I could feel my own fierce excitement brewing over the idea. “Before Aquila has the chance to perpetuate the myth of a rebellion, we meet him head-on and quash that fiction.”

  “How do we do that?” Elka asked.

  “We announce a match,” I said. “A big one—just like the ones in the Circus Maximus—but to take place in the field outside the Ludus Achillea. Set a date and a time, and let it be known that the main attraction of the day will be a rematch between Victrix of the Triumphs and her nemesis, Nyx—a gladiatrix contest to end all contests! Throw the promise of a wolf pack of wild Amazons into the mix and they’ll be salivating for such a spectacle.”

  Elka was grinning at me fiercely.

  Cai gazed at me with something approaching amazement.

  Quint, though, wasn’t entirely convinced. “What if she doesn’t come out?” he said. “What if Aquila doesn’t rise to the bait?”

  At that, Elka laughed and slapped him on the back. He sputtered a bit and turned pink, whether from the heat of the slap or of her attention, I couldn’t tell.

  “You don’t know that bitch the way we do,” she said. “A chance to even the score with Fallon? She’d reach down Aquila’s throat and pull his guts out his mouth if he dared to stand in her way.”

  Quintus turned to me. “And you think it’s a good idea to fight this creature. Carry on, then.”

  “I have some ideas about that too,” I said, glancing over at Sorcha.

  She cocked her head and regarded me warily, but for the moment, I held my peace. Those ideas—specifically as to what her role might very well be in the whole drama—were still not fully formed,
and so I kept them to myself. For the moment. My mind flashed back, as it had done for the last few days, to the docks and the last conversation I’d had with Meriel before she’d sacrificed herself for my escape. She was right: I’d never truly beat Nyx in a one-on-one fight. The chariot crash that ended our rivalry during the Triumphs had, in many ways, been the result of teamwork. And sheer bloody-minded luck. And so Quint’s sardonic concern for my well-being in such a matchup wasn’t entirely without merit.

  I didn’t know that I could beat Nyx in a duel.

  But maybe . . . just maybe, I didn’t have to.

  “It’s an interesting idea,” Cai said, still rubbing his chin as he worked his way through the logistics. “And you’re right. It could forestall any rumors of a rebellion. But a challenge match outside the ludus still doesn’t win us back the ludus itself.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t. But while everyone’s attention is focused on the field outside the front gate of the compound . . .”

  I smiled at my friends and shrugged innocently.

  “Oh.” Quintus blinked, understanding blooming in his expression. “Oh . . . I see.”

  Sorcha’s wariness became downright suspicion. “I don’t.”

  I took a deep breath and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. “Remember when you were having the marble frieze installed at the ludus, and I told you I thought you should consider fighting again, sister?” I said. “Well, it’s time for Penthesilea to lead her Amazons onto the field of battle. And this time . . . she’s going to win.”

  • • •

  The argument that erupted between us was one for the ages. By the time it was finished—not resolved—the deck space all around me and Sorcha had cleared, and everyone else had found something to occupy themselves with that didn’t involve coming anywhere near the two of us. When Sorcha finally threw up her hands and went to go brood stormily half a ship away from me, the winds had died to a gentle breeze, and I could just make out the mainland on the horizon.