by Camilla Monk
A distant part of me understood that it was my turn. This was the cliff I must now climb if I was going to live another day. I looked at Fishtail’s grinning face, his bad, yellow teeth. I didn’t see him. He was Servilius; he was Arun, Victrix, Clearchos… all of them and no one, just an obstacle I needed to jump. Fear still clung to me like a cold, sticky veil, but most of all I felt angry and empty. By now I was starting to recognize it as a good thing. No one had to push me or punch me; I walked toward Fishtail and Clearchos of my own will. My gaze fell on the dull sword lying on the mud. I no longer cared to remain silent. I said, to no one in particular, “Why do we get this kind of sword? Are you afraid to get hurt?”
“Not good enough for you?” Fishtail growled.
There was a murmur fluttering through the crowd above us. They seemed unsure whether to cheer or shut up as long as Clearchos stood in the center of the pit. His pale gray eyes gauged me. “You’ll earn the blade you deserve once you’ve proven yourself,” he said in that soft voice he draped in false kindness.
I clenched my teeth and looked past him, at the torches lining the wall. “I had a sword. Victrix stole it from me.”
His good eye blinked. The other remained stuck open, trapped between two folds of mangled flesh. He closed the distance between us in a few slow, predatory strides. He was barely taller than me; he didn’t have to bend to whisper in my ear, “Do you want to die here like a man?”
I didn’t reply—I’m not sure my lips could have moved in that moment, even if I’d had anything to say to this. I could feel his breath in my ear, smell leather and some sort of strong woodsy scent that I found slightly nauseating. I thought it might be perfume, and I wondered why a man would wear any.
He nodded once, to himself, maybe, and called out to Victrix. “Give the boy his sword back.”
Shock, then rage registered on Victrix’s features, but he bowed to Clearchos. He walked to me and unsheathed the soldier’s long sword. It must have been polished again; the blade was smooth, turned to liquid gold by the light of the torches. He tossed it to me. I barely caught it by its leather-bound hilt and bit back a hiss when the razor-sharp edge of the blade nicked my left thumb. It wasn’t deep, but it stung, and already, blood beaded along the cut. I clenched my hand tight to stop the bleeding and directed my attention to the sword I gripped in my right hand, testing its weight and balance.
Fishtail was no longer grinning, and when Clearchos returned to stand near the stairs, the crowd erupted in howls and whistles. He had given them what they truly wanted: the promise of more death. I closed my eyes briefly to block the noise that felt like pans clanking inside my head. I focused on my legs. The terrain was shitty; I could feel my boots sink in the mud. It wouldn’t help. My eyelids fluttered open to the sight of Fishtail’s blade raised above his head. The men’s shouts were hammering through my chest. I think I reached a point where I was so scared—so sure I’d die—that the fear lost its meaning, and with it, its edge.
Fishtail sprang forward. He was through playing and entertaining his friends; I reckoned instinctively that this was all he had to give, the lean muscles of his arms bulging from the strain of wielding his sword. My legs tensed, a familiar energy accumulating in my calves. Definitively not a good terrain to run. I leaped in my turn, only to land on my knees to his right, gliding easily in the mud. My sword skills were nearly nonexistent, but it didn’t matter; I was too low for him to strike. I saw his blade slice the air uselessly above me, a flash of gold against the night sky. I slid past him and his surprise gave me a fleeting window to strike. I did, taking a clumsy swing that nicked his thigh.
I registered his strangled yell as I jumped back to my feet, my skull pounding from the screams, the insults hailing on me. I had touched him. Blood ran down his thigh, dripping into the glistening mud. His face was distorted by fury, like that of a rabid dog.
Someone threw a small bone at me from above that hit me square between the eyes. My left hand flew to my face to shield it. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a heartbeat, but already he was barreling again at me, fueled by rage. His strides were slow, inefficient, maybe because of the wound on his leg—in truth, he was clambering more than running. I only saw his blade, though, and I couldn’t imagine parrying even a single blow from him. This time my fear rushed back with a vengeance and took over my limbs. I was vaguely aware of the uproar as I bolted across the pit, chased by Fishtail. Coward. Mollis—words that weigh little in your mind when all you want is to take another breath and live.
The torches flashed past me; Fishtail shouted that he’d hack my limbs one by one. I knew I was spinning around a cage, that there was no escape, but I couldn’t stop. My calf muscles ached, and I felt breathless, dizzy. I was slowing down. If I couldn’t find it in me to keep running, he’d catch up with me and—
I didn’t see the blade. Pain flared in my left shoulder, like something had just lashed at me, only ten times worse than Servilius’s leather strop. I stumbled, fell, and struggled up, the initial flash of agony turning into incandescent waves where he’d struck me. I saw blood—mine—a remote part of me wondered if maybe I was dying. I wasn’t. I was simply desperate and in more pain than I’d ever known. The crowd’s cheering washed over me like a storm, yet in the midst of it I found a renewed energy, a focus I’d never known I possessed. I spun around. Fishtail stood slightly hunched, his entire body seemingly pulled toward his sword. It was his center, I realized. He was ready to finish me, and I read in his eyes that he was tasting victory already.
My shoulder hurt and my surroundings were a little blurry, but I was calm—or rather, unaware that I was, in fact, lost to a shocked trance. My eyes must have been wide: they felt as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. I gripped the hilt of my sword with both hands like Fishtail did, aligning my body with the blade. We were a straight line: me, him. The flames around me seemed to be spiraling toward him, that single point. His body uncurled as he raised his sword with both hands. To kill me. If any tendril of fear still clung to my bones in that moment, I didn’t feel it. The pain in my shoulder, too, had become little more than a dull ache. His grip was high; mine was low. He would strike down, and I’d need to strike up.
Time stretched like sticky sap between us as his sword descended toward me. I leapt aside and felt it slash the air, a hairbreadth from my left arm. As if my sword hand was nothing but a slingshot of bones and tendons, my own blade drew a fiery upward arc in the same instant. I knew even before steel met his flesh that, like the hare, Fishtail would be too slow. He was the prey. I saw his neck, the pulsating veins under his oily skin, and I knew I would slash across his throat, that it was too late for him to dodge. I wanted that.
The flesh and cartilage were unexpectedly sturdy. I experienced a chill of surprise and panic when the edge of my blade caught and didn’t slice through him as easily as I’d pictured it would—I didn’t yet know how to properly kill a man. Still, the wound opened, dark and glistening. He let go of his sword and his hand twitched weakly as if to reach to his neck. Hot blood gushed in dark ribbons, splashed on my arm, my tunic. A little on my face too. The arena’s continuous howl became a distant buzzing as I watched Fishtail die. His eyes were boring into mine, mine into his. I was aware of my heart beating everywhere in my body.
He collapsed to his knees and fell to his side in the mud, like a dead horse. I don’t remember if Clearchos’s men went silent before or after Fishtail hit the ground. I blinked back to my senses. The sword was still in my hands, now hanging low. The pain of the cut he had inflicted to my shoulder was coming back full force, and that’s when it dawned on me that I had killed a man. I rolled panicked eyes at the silent audience, at Victrix, Clearchos, and the others. Victrix looked simultaneously appalled and confused, his eyebrows bunching together as he took in the scene before him. Clearchos had left his position against the pit’s wall and moved closer to the center of the pit at some point during the fight: I had forgotten h
is very presence until now.
I couldn’t tell what he was thinking; the good part of his face was frozen clay. My breathing came in shallow pants, and I braced myself for whatever punishment awaited me. Fishtail had been one of Victrix’s companions; he must have been someone important around here. They’d surely kill me for this.
Clearchos joined me, his eyes set on the sword in my hand. The silence crept under my skin, suffocated me, reminding me that this place he ruled over was a tomb. His gaze trailed over Fishtail’s prone body, before he spoke in a quiet voice. “You could have avoided that cut easily. You were sloppy.”
My fingers tightened around the bloody hilt of the sword in response.
“And you’re holding that blade like a churn dasher.”
No doubt about that: I had more experience churning butter than crossing swords, after all. “I’ve never killed anyone,” I told him, chewing out each word. I wasn’t sure why it was important to let him know. My head hurt, and it was the first thing that came to my mind as I stared at the wolf on his cuirass.
“Now you have,” he noted.
I had. And that reality wouldn’t set in yet, even as Fishtail’s body lay at my feet, still warm.
Clearchos looked up at his men who awaited his verdict in complete stupefaction, as if they’d all turned to stone. “May this be a lesson,” he bellowed, “to never underestimate a man with a sword.” They welcomed his warning in tense silence, until he added in a cheerful voice, “And that it takes a special kind of idiot to be killed by a farm boy!”
That produced the desired effect: a roaring wave of laughter that washed over his legion and seemed to shake the very ground. Victrix, however, wasn’t laughing with the others as he gazed at me. The hate had receded in his eyes, replaced by a kind of watchful curiosity.
I still held the sword, grinding my teeth from the effort not to shake, when he shouted to his legion, “I say this one is one of us! What do you say?”
9
I was pulled, swallowed by the horde like Felus had been. It was a nauseating sea of dirty tunics, armor, hands patting my good shoulder, sometimes the bad one too, making me grimace and want to curl up. I probably walked back to the camp inside the mine, but I don’t remember my feet touching the ground. I drifted in darkness, my eyes half-closed to block the sight of the men around me. The only thing I cared about was the sword I clutched tight. It was mine; Clearchos had said so, regardless of what Victrix thought. My treasure, all I owned. All I was.
A voice I didn’t recognize mentioned that Gemina person again—for my shoulder? It was no longer bleeding as much; the fabric of my tunic felt dry and crusty. My arm was covered in blood, though. Some of it was probably Fishtail’s, but I was surprised by the amount nonetheless. I hadn’t noticed it until now.
Once inside the mine, the crowd dissipated until it was only Victrix escorting me toward a long tent. I picked up a strong scent of smoke and herbs as we approached it.
“Gemina takes care of the wounded,” he said coldly.
I considered the row of clay figurines guarding the entrance of the tent in a patch of crusamantes, their crude features sculpted by a pinkish glow. “Is she a witch?”
Victrix shrugged. “Maybe. That or just a whore mixing potions.”
He pushed aside a heavy curtain made of nacred shells and led me inside. The scent of herbs became overwhelming, the source of it was a heap of branches smoking in an iron brazier. My gaze swept over the myriad of bottles, bags, pelts, and strange instruments covering the floor, hanging from the walls and wood poles supporting the tent. In a corner, a blonde-haired woman about my mother’s age knelt by a bandaged figure. Nerie. He looked asleep, resting on a pallet with a wool cover. One of his eyelids was swollen shut, and his pale skin was a landscape of bruises and cuts.
I hurried to her side. “Will he live?”
She turned her attention from the poultice spread over the cut on his chest—I recognized the tart smell of ferula seeds, mixed with some kind of sap. She had a nice embroidered stola, held by golden clasps on her pale shoulders, and her long hair was braided in a complicated fashion, with a purple ribbon to hold the heap of braids in a big bun. The blue of her eyes seemed specked with nacre like the shells outside her tent, and she inspected me with a sort of disturbing intensity. I felt suddenly exposed under her scrutiny; my pulse quickened, each beat fueling the pain in my shoulder.
“Of course, he will,” she replied. Her voice was different from that of the women I knew; controlled, silky. “He took a good beating. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” She glanced at my bloody arm. “We need to clean this up. Take off your tunic.”
My scalp prickled. Victrix was watching us, and I was quite certain he didn’t expect to see a breast band on Fishtail’s killer. She raised an eyebrow at me, before looking at him over my shoulder. “Are you wounded too?”
He shook his head, suddenly almost shy.
“Then what are you still doing here?” she snapped. “Go get drunk with the others.”
Victrix narrowed hate-filled eyes at her and, to my amazement, retreated, the shell curtain chiming as it closed behind his departing form. For “a whore mixing potions,” Gemina clearly held some amount of power over Clearchos’s men.
Victrix’s departure didn’t entirely solve my problem, however. Undressing before Gemina remained out of the question. Maybe I could pretend to be so manly I didn’t need her care. I could pump my chest and say something like, “Keep your poultice to yourself, witch!”
“I don’t have all night,” Gemina noted.
Her soft voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I went for what seemed the safest compromise. With a wince of pain, I undid a thin leather lace that ran along my tunic’s left shoulder and held the garment together. With great care I slipped it off, making sure to keep the loose fabric tucked under my arm so as to conceal the incriminating wool band circling my rib cage. She watched me do so with a blank expression.
She gave no sign that she suspected anything as she gathered clean bandages and a bowl containing the remnants of the mysterious paste she’d applied to Nerie’s wound. I fought the urge to shrug her touch away when she wet a sponge in a bucket of water and started dabbing at the dried blood covering my arm in long dark strings. I sat very straight and tried to pretend she wasn’t here, but the first contact of the sponge with the gash on my shoulder made me jump. I bit back a hiss; her lips quirked in response.
“It’s a good riddance; the girls didn’t like him much,” she said in a conversational tone, while reaching for a flat leather pouch. I supposed she meant girls like the one Thurias had sent to give us water. Girls who had no choice but to lie under men like Fishtail.
I stared at my lap, my eyes darting inconspicuously to check the contents of the pouch. A row of small, shiny needles appeared. I stiffened, bunching my tunic tighter against my chest.
She noticed and chuckled. “A bandage won’t do. You need stitches on that, brave warrior.”
Any squeaking or flinching would be my undoing for sure. I locked my gaze onto a glass jar of divine water, seeking a way out of my own body in its luminescent emerald swirls. The first bite of the needle into my skin sizzled all the way down my arm. I clenched my teeth and stared straight ahead at the jar’s green glow, projected on the tent’s near-translucent hide and the dried snake skins hanging from a pole of worm-eaten wood. I squeezed my eyes shut when the needle pierced my raw flesh again and again.
“Scream if it helps,” Gemina said with a soft chuckle.
How many stitches did I need, anyway? It felt like she was sewing my entire backside. When she tugged at the thread one last time, I welcomed this new burst of pain with a sigh of relief.
She wiped the blood and patted my arm. “Keep it clean and it should heal well.”
I nodded while fastening my tunic back with hurried, clumsy hands.
“Do you want another tunic? I can lend you one while the girls cl
ean that one for you,” she said while putting her instruments back in the pouch, like an after-thought.
I shook my head. “I don’t need that.”
“Suit yourself. How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” I said, immediately regretting it when she moved closer to inspect my grimy face.
I shuddered as she trailed pale fingers down my cheeks. “Not a man yet,” she whispered.
My skin crawled. She scared me more than Clearchos, in a way. Maybe because she sounded like she could see right through me. I recoiled from her touch, the hint of floral perfume floating around her.
“Be careful,” she added. “Places like this can be dangerous for a pretty boy like you, Constanter.”
This time I scrambled away from her and picked up my sword, ready to bolt. “How do you know my name?” Was she a real witch after all?
Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “You’ve made quite an impression on Victrix. He doesn’t usually tell me about the poor idiots he recruits for Clearchos.”
So, they knew each other well enough that he’d told her my name? He didn’t seem to like her much, though. In any case, I didn’t want to stay here any longer. I backed away toward the shell curtain. “I have to go now. Thank you… for my shoulder.”
“My door is always open. I’ll let you know when your friend awakens,” she replied, glancing at Nerie’s sleeping form.
No. I did feel sorry for him, but I was never coming back here. I’d try to leave this place as soon as the soldiers fell asleep. “He’s not my friend; I barely know him,” I replied.
I marched out of the tent with a decided frown and froze barely three steps away from the shell curtain. Sitting on a barrel right outside was Victrix. I considered his brooding face warily, wondering if he’d been spying on me. I needed to figure out what he wanted and put as much distance as possible between us until he went to sleep. He must have a tent like the others, and hopefully he’d need rest just like them.