The Champion

by Taran Matharu

  Marius groaned as he sat opposite Cade, and the others sat too, waiting for Marius to speak. Cade had no idea what he could have done wrong. Had he not caused Marius’s rise to power?

  “You lied to me,” Marius said.

  Cade opened his mouth, but Marius held up a hand, shaking his head.

  “Do not deny it,” he said.

  Then he pointed his finger over Cade’s shoulder.

  Cade turned his head, and his heart fell. Even in the dim light of the longhouse, he could see what Marius had.

  The explosion had sent debris flying everywhere, ash and sand included. And though it was hard to spot if you were not looking for it, a strange, half-moon shadow hung in the air, where the dust had settled on the invisible sphere that was the Codex.

  “Speak,” Marius said. “Now.”

  Cade wrung his hands, his mind racing. “We did not trust Atticus,” he said, stumbling over his words.

  It was hard to focus with the world spinning the way it was. His throat felt like it was closing up, and it hurt to swallow. Cade could not remember when he had last had a drink of water, and the half-snatched sleep of the bumpy sled ride had done little to alleviate his exhaustion.

  “What you mean is, you did not trust me,” Marius chided him, though there was an edge to his voice. “And now … I cannot trust you.”

  Cade rubbed his temples, trying to think. “If we had told Atticus about the Codex, he might have taken it from us. Even killed us for it.”

  Marius shrugged. “It matters not. If you tell both lies and truths, I cannot tell which you speak on other matters. Who is to say the cannons can destroy the doors of the fortress? Even Louis Le Prince said the cannons were a weapon they no longer used in his time.”

  Cade hung his head. “If you want the truth, I’ll give it to you now. It’s up to you whether you trust me.”

  Marius leaned back and crossed his arms, then motioned with his chin for Cade to go on.

  “The cannons are old and rusted,” Cade confessed, the doubts and fears of his mind manifesting on his tongue. “I think they’ll fire, but I do not know if they will work and fire accurately, or if they do, whether they will crack or explode before a second shot.”

  Marius rubbed his chin. “The powder will not work alone?” he asked.

  Cade shook his head slowly. “It might, but we would need a lot of it, and we would need to pile it against the door itself rather than shoot from far away.”

  His words hung in the air, but Marius only stared at him in response. “Where did this powder come from?”

  “The place that smelled of death,” Scott interjected. “It was full of—”

  Marius stabbed a finger in the boy’s direction. “I did not ask you to speak. I am asking Cade,” he said in a low voice.

  Scott held up his hands and fell silent.

  “Cade?” Marius asked.

  Cade bit his lip. “Scott’s right. The yellow powder there is an ingredient. The other is charcoal, and the third … well, I scraped it from the walls of your cesspit.”

  “Nitrum,” Marius murmured. “It is used for…” He searched for the right word, then shook his head. “It helps our plants grow.”

  Cade was surprised that the Romans had known of the substance, but he plowed on regardless. “When crushed and combined in the right amounts, together they make a powder that explodes. When you place it inside a cannon behind a cannonball, the explosion shoots the cannonball out like a sling stone.”

  Marius nodded slowly, though Cade could tell some of the words he had used were not ones that the new legatus was used to.

  “You have enough of this gunpowder?” Marius asked.

  “We can make more by morning. But your men have to scrape more of this … nitrum … from the sewers here, if there is any. We’ve already gathered all we could from Fort Caroline.”

  Marius furrowed his brows. “Caroline?”

  Cade forced a smile. “That’s what the Codex told us your old encampment was called.”

  If he had expected a smile from Marius, he was disappointed.

  “You hide such power from us,” Marius said, his voice low and angry. “You are here three days, and you already know more than we have discovered in years.”

  He lifted his chin. “Tomorrow, we will march to war. We will camp outside their walls. You contenders shall be tasked with opening their gates. You alone. Should you fail, you will transfer the power of the Codex to me. The attack will be called off. And you will begin a new life here, with us.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  The men slept through the morning and into afternoon, and now Cade could feel the urgency as the timer ticked away. But Marius had insisted that tired men could not fight, and would not be swayed on the matter, especially after they wasted several hours digging, only to find that Jomsborg’s sewers contained no saltpeter at all.

  Still, Cade had time to sharpen his blade and grease his armor with sauropod fat, rendered over a campfire. More time still to sleep, and hold Amber close in his arms.

  They hardly spoke when they did so, only kissing and talking as they lazed in the warmth of day. Somehow, the impending battle was pushed aside in the face of their desire to touch and be touched.

  So the sun was high in the sky and well on its way toward the horizon when they marched from Jomsborg toward the enemy base.

  Cade watched as they marched through the gates, newly repaired by the men. And to Marius’s credit, he left no men behind to guard it. This was real. If Cade could open the doors—they were going in, full force.

  But what was full force? The men wore rusted armor, hanging from threadbare straps. Their footwear had been repaired so often they were more patch than sandals. And their spears, though sharp and bright, hung from rusted nails in their hafts, while the hafts of their gladiuses dangled unraveling strips of leather.

  As for the legionaries, they were in no better condition. Every man showed signs of starvation—hollow cheeked and skinny as rakes, no better than Quintus had been when Cade had first met him.

  Two hundred men who looked like they belonged in a hospital ward. Men who limped from long hours of marching, from wounds sustained in their recent battle.

  But still they marched. Their eyes were sunken, but shone bright with life. Their scrawny chests still puffed with pride as their new leader surveyed them.

  There was fight in them yet. Cade could only hope it was enough to defeat ten times their number, and away from home turf.

  Soon enough, Cade joined the head of the column, walking alongside Marius and the carriage that carried the cannons, twenty men hauling on traces at its head. It had taken the same number to lift the largest, and the cannon’s hollow faces pointed ominously at their backs, preloaded with their charges and ready to fire at the touch of a flame.

  “We will reach the enemy fort at nightfall,” Marius said, guessing Cade’s unspoken question as the sun neared the horizon.

  Cade nodded slowly. He was bone tired, mentally and physically. His preparations and planning for their attempted breach had taken much of the afternoon, and the brief hours he had snatched had not made a dent in the bank of sleep he owed his body when all of this was over.

  The march had been a silent one, and any attempts at conversation were silenced by Marius. Sound traveled far on the flat steppe of the Grays’ world.

  It was only when the sun had nearly set that Marius ordered the men to halt and make camp, though no campfires were allowed. And beyond, in the darkening sky, Cade saw a smudge that was the enemy fort.

  “Come,” Marius said, motioning at Cade. “We go alone. Less chance of being seen.”

  Then he turned to his centurions—two in all. Atticus was nowhere to be seen, but Cade had seen him walking with the legionaries at the back, seemingly under guard, and his fine armor now adorned Marius’s body.

  “In one hour, follow me,” Marius instructed his subordinates.

  Amber flashed Cade a worried look
, but he motioned that it was okay. He had to do the same to Quintus, waving him back down as the young legionary stood. The others seemed grateful for the rest, and Cade did not begrudge them for it.

  Marius seemed to squat in the long grass, then motioned Cade to follow, shuffling slowly in a bowlegged stance. It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  The fort stretched into the dark sky, ominous in its scale. It was a veritable mountain, as if a giant spar of red rock had buried itself vertically in the earth, all cracks, gullies, and ridges. It reminded him of the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, a naturally formed “butte” he had once visited on a metal-detecting trip with his father.

  The Grays must have carved their fort from the bones of a natural rock formation, but Cade could only see apertures at the very front, above where the door was set in the stone.

  And what a door it was. Even from a distance, Cade could see its stature, tall as ten men by his estimate, and just as wide. A dark line down the middle told him it was an entrance that could be opened, for the rust that had formed on its exterior blended closely with the red of the stone surrounding it.

  “They must not care for the light, then,” Cade whispered as he stared at the forbidding sight.

  “Oh?” Marius breathed back.

  “No windows from what I can see. One entrance, and only slits at the front, probably to throw spears or fire arrows. They don’t need natural light like we do.”

  Marius shrugged. “It makes attack harder.”

  Cade wasn’t so sure. “Let’s say we charge the door from here,” he said. “They will send projectiles at us as we attack, right?”

  Marius nodded, his brows furrowed.

  “But what if we go in from the sides?” Cade said, motioning in a pincer movement with his hands. “They can’t hurt us until we’re directly underneath. Or at least, if there are some holes for them to attack us from, there aren’t as many as the front.”

  Marius stared, then groaned and shook his head.

  “That is a good plan,” he said, scratching his beard. “We haven’t considered a direct attack for quite some time, but I had not thought of that.”

  Cade grinned. “Fresh pair of eyes,” he whispered. “Now, here’s the other problem. We get those doors open, they’re going to rush to close them again. Remember, it’s only the bar that we can break. We don’t follow up, they’ll close them and shove their spears where the bar was.”

  Marius rubbed his eyes and sighed. “So even if the cannons work, it might all be for nothing?”

  “If we’re lucky, the doors will come off their hinges, but there’s no guarantee that will happen. All I need from you is for your men to be ready to charge as soon as I give the signal.”

  Marius closed his eyes. “The only way my men reach those doors before the Tritons do is if we stand close—even if we do come in from the sides.”

  “That’s what the testudo formation is for,” Cade said, not unkindly.

  “You know about the testudo?” Marius asked.

  Cade nodded. “We studied the Romans in school.”

  This time, it was Marius’s turn to grin. “When this is over, I must hear more about your world.”

  Cade smiled back. “You can count on it.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  Cade stood in silence, waiting for the legionaries to catch their breath as they came to a stop ahead of him. There was no hiding their approach—the carriage carrying the cannons saw to that. By now, the men had disguised the cannon muzzles with bundles of grass, so the Grays would be none the wiser.

  At least, not until Cade enacted his plan.

  Marius had already given instructions to his centurions, and now, two groups of ninety men were crawling through the grass, circling the fortress to wait on either side. At the firing of the cannon, they would charge in from the sides, before running along the fortress’s curved edges to meet at the front doors.

  Meanwhile, the remaining twenty men would walk between the campfires they were setting up, making it appear that the rest of the army was sitting down, below the tops of the grass.

  This had been Marius’s idea, and Cade was all for it. And those twenty men would be needed soon enough.

  Cade had originally intended to follow a similar route to the pincers with his carriage, but as he and Marius had crawled closer, they had seen that the ground on either side of the doors and beyond was strewn with rubble and uneven patches—too dangerous for the carriage’s rickety wheels. He and his group would need to attack head-on, down the clear, well-trodden path that the Grays took when they moved in and out of the fort.

  “Cade.”

  Scott’s voice jarred Cade from going over his plan, and he found the other contenders waiting for him, worry upon their faces.

  “Hey…,” Cade said, a flash of guilt pushing through his belly.

  He had hardly spoken to them since Marius’s interrogation. There had just been so much to do, so much to plan with Marius. Between sleep, work, and planning, they had hardly exchanged glances, let alone words.

  “What’s the plan?” Grace asked. “Even those guys know more than us, ’cause the centurions told them in Latin.”

  Quintus crossed his arms, giving Cade a worried glance.

  “I’m sorry,” Cade said, wiping a hand across his forehead. “I just … I knew what we had to do. I should have asked you for help.”

  “Our help?” Yoshi said. “What about our opinions? We trust you, man, but you didn’t even let us decide if this attack is a good idea.”

  Amber stepped forward to stand next to Cade, if a little apart.

  “We understand that we’re running out of time,” Amber said. “But we’re about to charge an enemy fort with some rusted old cannons, right? Couldn’t you have let us in on it a little?”

  Cade felt a wave of exhaustion come over him. He sat down and clutched his knees.

  “I really am sorry,” he whispered. “I’m trying. I really am. I don’t want us to die here. That’s all I want. If we had more time—”

  “Hey,” Scott said, stepping forward with his hands in the air. “We’re not attacking you, dude. We know the pressure you’re under. We know time’s running out. Just keep us in the loop, okay? How about you tell us what the plan is and we take it from there.”

  Cade felt the edges of his lips curl a little. “We’re gonna form a testudo, behind the cannon cart, and shove it down that path,” he said, motioning in the fortress’s direction. “Then when we get close, we light the fuse.”

  “But what if that … laser thing shoots again?” Bea asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “We can’t worry about that,” Cade said. “As far as we know, they had one shot with that thing.”

  “Why would you think that?” Scott asked. “Just because they didn’t shoot the Romans when they lay siege here last time doesn’t mean they didn’t have it up their sleeve.”

  Cade shook his head. “We’ve only got one shot with that big cannon,” he said. “These guys are just like us—fighting using remnants of their past. I mean, the Grays in that fortress might be from a time before technology even developed on their planet, just like our Romans. Maybe they found some super weapon, with a single round in it. We just don’t know.”

  “Wish we found a super weapon,” Scott said, kicking at the ground. “Not some rusted old relics.”

  Cade inclined his head. “We’ll see just how super this stuff is in a few minutes,” he said.

  * * *

  There was no movement from the fortress. Not even when the carriage was surreptitiously moved onto the trodden path at the front, or when the score of men who would push it gathered behind.

  Cade and his contenders pressed together, crouched behind the canvas-top carriage, where bales of purple hay had been piled within. The canvas top had been removed—it was Cade’s hope that the Grays would confuse their attack as an attempt to burn down the doors, which of course would not work on metal
and leave the Grays complacent.

  The back of the carriage had been affixed with two long pieces of wood, ones that the contenders and accompanying legionaries would use to propel the cart down the track and right up against the doors themselves. There was also a flaming torch slotted in a holder at the very back, ready for Cade to ignite the cannons.

  These torches would be held by each contender in one hand, while the other would hold a shield above in a makeshift testudo formation, to protect his friends’ heads from javelins and arrows.

  Now, they stood waiting, and Cade wished that Marius was with him. But the commander had chosen to lead one of the pincers, preferring to stay with the majority of his men.

  Which meant it fell to him to give the order. He could almost feel the hot breath of the waiting men on his neck, and with it the weight of the lives of a further two hundred soldiers. But far greater was the weight of billions on a planet far, far away.

  It was hard to imagine, how the fate of so many could rely on the actions of so few. On a plan so haphazard, in a time so short.

  Yet his voice did not tremble when he yelled the order.

  “Impetus!”

  Attack.

  They heaved forward, the rickety wheels and rusted axles of the cart complaining as they trundled over the uneven ground. They edged ahead, picking up speed, Cade’s world in shadow as shields clattered above their heads.

  There were no war cries, no whistle of arrows. Only the heavy breathing of his compatriots, amplified beneath their fragile shell of wood and iron.

  Still they went, feet pounding the path, the cart juddering beneath the weight of the cannons. Cade stared through the ever-shifting crack of the shields above, their thin protection shifting as they shoved the cart forward. The fortress loomed large, its rust-tinged peaks dark against the black sky.

  Then it came. A whine, buzzing over his head like an angry bee before a woody thunk sounded behind him. More projectiles hissed by, rattling and banging as they ripped into their formation.