Imperatrix (Gladiatrix Book 3)

by Russell Whitfield

  Illeana saw Halkyone shake her head slightly as the two Romans walked off, her eyes cold and hard.

  Fires burned and the tang of cooking meat hung heavy in the air. Both Heronai and mercenary ate in their positions, fearing an attack. The cries of the wounded were close, and from time to time the agonised shrieking of the captured women floated to them from the distant barbarian camp. Illeana felt both grateful and guilty: grateful to have lived and not be in the hands of the barbarians; guilty for feeling relieved about it. It was shameful.

  It had not been as she had expected. It had been thrilling enough at first but, as the fight wore on and intensified, she realised the truth of it: there was no honour or glory here. No slaughter of men and beasts in the arena could compare to this. This was utterly different. It was truly horrific, and it was all she could do to stop her hands from shaking as the memories of the battle buffeted her mind.

  She was grateful to be included in the meeting of Titus, Euaristos and the Spartan commander – she hoped it would take her mind off what had gone before. Not that the council was anything grand. They sat around a fire – Halkyone and her two seconds, the redhaired Melantha and the blonde Deianara, an inconsolable Kleandrias, eyes red-rimmed from tears and Euaristos – blood spattered, wounded and nearly out on his feet. Titus looked as if he had aged twenty years in one day. She had told him of Thebe’s death and she could see in his face that this news – coupled with the loss of Lysandra, had cut him to the quick.

  ‘That you cry for the fallen cheapens you, brother,’ Halkyone said to Kleandrias. ‘It is not the Spartan way.’

  ‘Easy words for the latecomer, who has not shed her blood,’ he shot back.

  ‘Latecomers who saved your life, friend.’ This from the pretty Deianara.

  Euaristos coughed. ‘Now that the pleasantries are all done with, can someone tell me what in the name of the gods is going on?’

  ‘You are defeated here,’ Halkyone stated. ‘You must evacuate. But our ships will not be able to hold all of you.’

  ‘We’re excepting to be evacuated by our own ships,’ Titus said. ‘Due the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘You will all be dead by them,’ Halkyone said. ‘Even with our help.’

  ‘Our ships are at Durostorum,’ Euaristos seemed to Illeana to be bone weary, barely able to continue the conversation. ‘One of your vessels could row upriver – bring them to us early. Then we can hold at the town.’

  Halkyone seemed to weigh that up for a moment. ‘Agreed. We will march. Tonight.

  ‘We can’t,’ Titus spoke finally. ‘If the barbarians attack, we’ll be strung out on the march and easy meat for them.’

  ‘The barbarians will not attack,’ Halkyone told him. The former centurion simply shrugged in response. To Illeana he looked to have aged twenty years in one day.

  ‘Are you an oracle as well as a priestess?’ Kleandrias snapped.

  ‘No, just a competent commander. Speaking of which, we are agreed that I will command these Heronai now that Lysandra is dead.’ Her gaze challenged Titus and Euaristos – and neither man seemed to have the energy to fight back.

  ‘The Heronai should have a voice in that,’ Illeana put in. ‘You can’t just turn up and take over. That wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘What is not right is to think war has a place for democracy. You, pretty one, can break the news to your sisters as you please.’

  ‘I haven’t agreed yet,’ Euaristos said tiredly. ‘And, even if I do, you’ve not yet told us how you can predict the barbarians will not attack. There’s nothing to stop them.’

  ‘That is where you are quite mistaken,’ Halkyone said. ‘We are done here. Muster your people. Get them ready to march. You, pretty one,’ she said to Illeana.

  ‘Illeana. I’m called Illeana.’

  Halkyone didn’t seem to care much for the information. ‘And you . . . Centurion Titus . . . inform your Heronai of the change in the command. My Spartans will help you muster them. Get ready. And tell your healers to kill anyone that can’t be moved.’

  ‘What! We cannot do that!’ Kleandrias rose to his feet, eyes blazing. ‘Those people fought hard. We will not abandon them.’

  ‘E tan, e epi tan,’ Halkyone said.

  ‘This is not Sparta, woman!’ Kleandrias blazed. ‘These are not Spartans – they cannot be treated as – ’

  ‘Now I know why you weep so easily. You have spent far too much time with these xenoi.’

  ‘What about your ships?’ Titus asked. ‘You can carry the wounded, can’t you?’

  Halkyone regarded him. ‘Those ships are for my priestesses. We came here to help you, not throw our lives away.’

  ‘If you came here at Lysandra’s behest . . . she would not countenance this thing you suggest.’

  Halkyone folded her arms, index finger tapping her chin – a habit, Illeana noted, that Lysandra had as well. The priestess rose to her feet. ‘Lysandra has also clearly spent too much time with xenoi and lesser Hellenes. For her sake, however, we will slog through the mud with you. Get those that you can onto our ships. The rest . . . use mercy. We will have to march at speed and those left behind . . .’ she jerked her chin in the direction of the barbarian encampment, ‘what fate do you think will befall them?’

  ‘And you?’ Kleandrias said. ‘What will you do?’

  Halkyone smiled and it was as cold and bleak as the night that was falling. ‘Start a fire.’

  Sorina was drunk, lurching between feelings of anger, hurt, satisfaction and melancholy. The fires that had consumed the gladiatrices were dying out. Sorina could still hear their screams and though she had hardened her heart against them, she could not escape the thought that she had probably known some of those women. She reminded herself of what the Romans had done to the people of Dacia. She knew these women had no part of that – but they were with Lysandra, and they had come to kill her people.

  And they had done just that, she thought bitterly. Thousands of them had fallen to their swords, to their spears to their discipline.

  Discipline. It made her think of Lysandra again.

  She had the hated Spartan in her grasp; Sorina’s heart burned with the desire to torture her further, to hurt her, to strip the flesh from her body. But she could not.

  She knew it would destroy Lysandra’s followers to see her brought low before them. And for Lysandra herself, far beyond the pain of the physical agonies she would endure, she would go to the underworld humiliated by the knowledge that Sorina had bested her. Had ruined her. That was a wine too exquisite to swallow in one draught; she must eke it out, make it last and savour it.

  The hour was late, most of the tribespeople slept off the drink they had consumed to dull the bitter sting of defeat – for a defeat it was, whichever way one turned it. They should have overwhelmed Lysandra’s forces earlier. They would tomorrow, she knew. There would be no way the little force could stand against them. Not again. They would be exhausted, cold and utterly demoralised; they had lost their leader and a good many of their number.

  She weaved her way through the sleeping encampment, towards the pickets her eyes on the not-so-distant fires of the enemy, swigging from her sack of beer to ward off the cold. The ground was beginning to harden, a frost descending across the field, and she pulled her cloak tighter around her, wondering if it would be firm enough for horses come the dawn. If that were so, the battle would be over before mid-morning. She would make her way onto the killing field proper and make an assessment.

  She bridled when she came to the sleeping picket. He was sat on his arse, his head resting on his chest. He was probably drunker than herself, but even though there was little danger from the enemy, sleeping on picket duty put them all at risk. She reached out and shook him.

  He toppled over and lay unmoving, so she kicked him hard in the ribs.

  He did not move.

  Sorina crouched down and put her fingers to his throat; they came away wet and her heart lurched with shock and fear. She turned
back to the encampment and saw flames beginning to lick at the tents and the shouts and curses of the warriors. ‘We are under attack!’ she shouted, casting her beer sack aside, racing back towards the camp. ‘We are under attack!’

  But no guards answered her call.

  She ran hard, now cursing the drink she had consumed as it slowed her and made her stumble more than once. With every heartbeat that passed, the more pandemonium seemed to descend on the encampment, the shouts and screams of men and women now mingling with the shrill whinny of horses: the attackers had opened the corrals and the horses were stampeding, terrified by the chaos and the fires that were spreading everywhere.

  Warriors stumbled from their tents, looking for someone to fight. But in the bouncing, hellish glare of the fires and shadow it was impossible to tell who was attacking and from where.

  Lysandra.

  The realisation hit Sorina like a hammer blow. They had come to rescue Lysandra. Screaming in fury, she tried to run towards her tent, but the milling throng slowed her at every step, cursing her as she tried to shove her way through. Every so often, she caught sight of an enemy: dark, lithe figures skipping through the chaos, striking out with short swords before disappearing again into the turmoil.

  She had to get to Lysandra and finish her before she could be saved. Weeping with frustration, she pushed on, praying to the Earth Mother that she would get there in time.

  The screams of the dying still haunted Lysandra. It had gone on for hours as the barbarians roasted her priestesses alive, torturing them for no reason other than to make them suffer. Sorina would be savouring her vengeance; the Dacian knew well what she was doing, every savage act designed to distress her. To fill her full of fear and regret.

  And it was working. Lysandra had never before felt such terror. She was bound and helpless and, on the morrow, it would be her turn to shriek in agony as the flames consumed her. She would not beg for her life, she told herself. No matter what, she would not give them the satisfaction. But she would scream, of that she was certain. The pain would be unendurable.

  When they were done torturing their prisoners, the barbarians had set about drinking and carousing, before a partial silence eventually descended on the encampment as most put their heads down to rest. The quiet was more terrifying, as it meant that for Lysandra, the sands of time were slipping away and each passing moment brought the dawn closer.

  She prayed to Athene constantly for deliverance, hoping against hope that the goddess would answer her prayers. She begged forgiveness for doubting her Mission, but even as she brought the words to mind, she knew that they were borne from her own desperation and fear.

  Lysandra realised in that moment that she had never countenanced the thought that she might die obeying the word of the goddess. She had been so confident, so sure of herself, safe in the knowledge that her victory was ordained.

  Hubris.

  She could see it now, in her last hours: Spartan pride, the superiority of the blood that ran in her veins, her conceit, her arrogance. She had always told herself that she was the best, that the gods had favoured the Spartans above all others and in her heart she fancied herself favoured above all Spartans. But the truth of it was that her vanity had brought both herself and others more pain than joy, and her supposed superiority had been illusory.

  If not for her harsh words to Sorina those years ago, they might have made peace and put the ghost of Eirianwen to rest. There could have been a healing between them; for was not Eirianwen, like Sorina herself, of barbarian stock? Eirianwen who had represented all that was pure and good in her life was dead because Lysandra could not swallow her pride and accept the apology offered to her by another woman who simply had as much pride as she did.

  Yet, she had spat it back in Sorina’s face and so the Morai – the Fates – had spun a new tale for her life: Lysandra of Sparta would die at the hands of the woman she hated more than any other and to whom she had given the cause to hate her.

  And what of her vaunted superiority? She had had the chance to kill Sorina and failed. She had faced Illeana and had been defeated. She had marshalled an army and seen it beaten.

  Of it all, this is what sickened her the most. She had sheltered those women, given them a life they could not have dreamed of in the modern world; they had trusted her. Believed in her. And she had led them here to where they would all end up as those others: raped, tortured and burned alive. As would she be, all too soon.

  The bindings at her wrists parted and Lysandra fell forward.

  Moments later the ones at her feet were sliced away, and then the ropes at her waist. She fell to the ground, her legs unable to hold her. She wondered if she was asleep in a dream when a dirty hand clamped over her mouth.

  ‘Don’t make a sound!’ The voice was thickly accented Latin. A voice she knew well.

  Lysandra turned, not daring to believe. ‘Teuta?’ she whispered.

  ‘Put these on!’ Teuta dropped a pile of clothing at her feet. ‘And be swift!’

  Lysandra nodded and dressed in the barbarian clothes as fast as she could: trews, boots, a tunic and a hooded woollen cloak.

  ‘Hood up!’ Teuta ordered. ‘And follow me! Anyone speaks to us, act drunk and stupid. I’ve seen you like that once before,’ she added with a quick smile. ‘I will talk, you say nothing.’ She turned and went to the back of the tent and dropped to her knees, crawling through a slit she must have carved with a dagger.

  Lysandra followed Teuta on unsteady legs and the cold night air was almost as much of a blessing as the overwhelming relief that flooded through her, so that tears once again welled in her eyes. Teuta beckoned in the darkness and she went to her, head bowed low. The camp was quiet, most were asleep and the others too drunk to care who else was abroad. Teuta led her unerringly through the blackness, picking her way through the encampment. As they went on, Lysandra felt the numbness leaving her legs as the blood began to flow freely once again.

  The sudden shouting stopped them both cold as though Hades himself had clamped his hand around their hearts. Then, fires began to burn and warriors fell from their tents, roused by the chaos. There was a phrase being shouted over and over by many different voices, and Lysandra needed no translator as the chaos spread.

  ‘The camp is under attack,’ she said to Teuta.

  ‘We must go!’ Teuta replied and pulled Lysandra along. ‘Keep your head down and your mouth shut!’

  They pressed on, but the attackers were spreading pandemonium in the encampment and it was soon thick with warriors and then horses as the beasts were freed from their paddocks and they too ran amok, adding to the chaos. It was, Lysandra thought, a raid of which Leonidas would have been proud.

  Teuta gripped her arm tightly and led her through the thickening crowds, each heartbeat more terrifying than the last. But no one harassed them; all were more concerned with identifying attackers than unarmed friends.

  It seemed to take hours, but they were finally free of the press of people – the horses, had clearly bolted for the freedom of the battlefield, leaving the burning encampment behind them. The picket posts were deserted or manned by corpses – evidence of the raiders’ passage. In the distance, Lysandra could see the fires of her own camp, beckoning to her, warm with the promise of safety and the embrace of friends.

  A horse cantered past and Teuta sprinted forward and grabbed its mane, vaulting onto its back. The beast was clearly distressed but it took her scant moments to get it under control. She slid from it and led it to Lysandra.

  ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘Your life depends on it, Spartan.’

  Lysandra did not need to be told twice; with Teuta’s help, she struggled onto the horse’s back and gripped its mane tight. ‘Why?’ she asked Teuta. ‘Why help me?’

  ‘You’re religious, aren’t you?’ Teuta asked. ‘Maybe your gods helped you. Or maybe I hate Sorina more than you do. Saving you hurts her. As she hurt me.’

  ‘Co
me with me, Teuta.’ Lysandra held out her hand. ‘She will take her revenge if she discovers you.’

  Teuta smiled. ‘She won’t. You don’t think I’m staying here, do you? I’m going to find another horse and get out of here. I’m going home. As should you.’ She nodded. ‘Vale, Gladiatrix.’

  Lysandra smiled tightly, refusing to wince as the cut on her face pulled. There was nothing else to say, so she dragged the horse’s head around and kicked its flanks aiming its head in the direction of her camp.

  Sorina reached her tent, relieved that the chaos had not yet reached the centre of the camp. She ripped the dagger from the scabbard at her hip and threw open the flap, ready to carve Lysandra’s heart out.

  The cut ropes that lay on the floor mocked her. Sorina fell to her knees and opened her throat in a scream of anguish that rended the black night sky.

  Somewhere the Morrighan was laughing.

  The Spartans set a blistering pace and, Illeana fancied, it was only pride that kept the Heronai and the mercenaries going. They all counted themselves fit, but the women of Athene’s Temple were conditioned like athletes, pounding along and putting as much distance between them and the barbarians as they could before the dawn.

  It was, Halkyone had told them, a precaution. Her plan was a simple one: to leave their campfires burning and march out at speed whilst a detachment of her priestesses raided the barbarian encampment and wreaked as much havoc as they could before they were discovered. If things went as they should, the disruption would hold up the enemy – and allow them more time to flee.

  They left everything that could not easily be carried, including the mortally wounded. It was little comfort to those healers tasked with administering their lethal draught of medicine that the fighters in their care would have crossed the Styx anyway; Illeana had seen many of them weeping as they mustered for the march. The rest of the wounded that could not walk had been loaded onto the Spartan ships and borne away to the tenuous safety of Durostorum.

  They rushed through the night and the sky began to turn grey with light as the sun tried – and failed – to break through the clouds. It seemed that Halkyone’s plan had worked, for there was no sign nor sound of pursuit.