Roman soldiers.
Around her, the barbarians that should have been hacking her to pieces were backing away and, at first in ones and twos and then in greater numbers, they began to run.
Illeana fell to her knees and began to sob and laugh at the same time.
Because Iulianus had come at last.
Sorina screamed in anguish as she saw Amagê fall at the hands of the beautiful warrior. Beyond, she saw the first shields of the Roman legions and knew that she had lost. They were few at first, but she knew that they would come in their thousands and slaughter or put to flight the brave warriors who had given so much for the freedom of her lands.
Her heart rent in two, she staggered through the fight that still raged, viewing the carnage as though it were a bloody Roman mosaic. The streets were scattered with thousands of dead and dying: Roman, Greek, Spartan and people of the Tribes. She heard someone screaming and realised that it was her own voice that rent the sky with its anguish. Tears clouded her vision as she stumbled on, lashing out with her spear at any enemy that came close.
Then she saw her through a veil of tears. Tall, red cloaked, the arrogance exuding from her as she exulted at the arrival of the Romans.
Lysandra.
Laughing for joy, she hugged a man close to her, a big man with a beard. Sorina snarled and called out loud to the Earth Mother for vengeance and cast her spear with all her strength. It flew as though the Mother had hurled it herself, fast as an arrow and with all her hatred and anger behind it.
Above the bloody streets, crows circled and as the warhead slammed into the big man’s side, Sorina was sure that she heard the laughter of Morrighan Dark Fate.
Lysandra fell to her knees at the man’s side, holding his hand, her glee turned to grief as he writhed in pain, his life pouring out on the ground. She held his hand as he died, leaning close to him, comforting him. He reached out to her and she bowed her head and kissed him.
And then his hand fell and Sorina knew she had killed someone Lysandra had loved.
Again, the voice of the Morrighan whispered to her. For did you not kill Eirianwen too?
Lysandra looked up and Sorina saw the shock and grief writ clear on her pale face, a face now scarred with the tip of her own blade. Lysandra rose slowly and unfastened the scarlet cloak at her neck. It fell to the ground, red cloth on scarlet stones. She drew her gladius and walked forwards, her strange eyes burning with fury. She stooped and picked another sword from the ground. Sorina looked around and grasped the blades of the fallen around her. They too were gladii. She gripped them tight.
Sorina was drenched in blood, her hair thick with it. ‘Your lover?’ she asked as Lysandra approached her. ‘I am glad I killed him. I will kill you now as I should have done before.’
Lysandra could not speak for fear she would weep. It was over – it should have been over. The fight still raged, but the Romans had come and it was over. The barbarians should have run. Kleandrias should have lived. Perhaps, she thought, she could have learned to love him. Or at least pretended long enough to make him think that she did. But, because of Sorina, he now lay dead, one amongst thousands of others.
Hardship and pain.
The goddess always spoke the truth.
Lysandra stretched her neck from side to side, breathed out sharply through her nose and spun her swords twice before dropping back into her fighting stance. ‘Come, Sorina,’ she said. ‘Let us be done with this.’
Sorina stepped back and put her weight on her rear leg, left sword facing towards Lysandra, the right held at an angle above her head. Lysandra too led with her left, her right carried lower, behind it. They stood thus for long moments, measuring each other. Images flashed in Lysandra’s mind’s eye, images of Sorina at the ludus, her battles in the arena, her killing of Eirianwen. It was all so long ago yet the memories burned bright and vivid. She imagined it was the same for Sorina and both of them had known – had always known – that it would come to this.
There would be no missio here. Not this time. This was war – and one of them would die.
Sorina cried out and attacked from the rear, her right blade scything down in a diagonal cut that Lysandra took high on her left sword, cutting for Sorina’s ribs with her left – only to find it parried with Sorina’s own weapon. Lysandra kicked out, her foot thudding into Sorina’s midriff and sending her staggering back. Lysandra came at her hard, a left cut to the head followed with a sweeping right cut that scored the armour on Sorina’s shoulder, splitting the mail.
The Dacian came back at her, left blade spearing straight at her face; Lysandra stepped off, but felt the impact of Sorina’s right sword on her ribs, the tip of the blade parting the links of her armour and sinking into her flesh. She gasped as the pain from the wound flared within her. It was not deep enough for a cripple or a slow kill, but still it seared her. She lashed out with her own right, but Sorina was way too canny and ducked the clumsy swing and struck again, this time to Lysandra’s sternum. Her armour held, but the blow staggered her and she was forced to back step as Sorina pressed her advantage; her attack, swift, brutal and unrelenting. Her blades moved fast and it was all Lysandra could do to parry and fend her off. But she saw the sweat beading on Sorina’s brow, glistening at the grey of her temples and she let her come on.
Lysandra circle-stepped backwards, opening the gap between them, taking the risk of evading rather than parrying, swaying this way and that, twisting and dodging. Sorina tried a downward cut; instead of blocking with a classical cross block, Lysandra stepped off to one side, and swung both blades at Sorina’s exposed ribs. The Dacian cried out in pain as the iron thudded into her and Lysandra heard the crunch as her ribs broke with the impact.
Sorina backed away and coughed. Blood dribbled down her chin as she did so, her teeth pink with it. She snarled and came at Lysandra again, ignoring the pain she must have felt; she seemed fired with strength because of it. Her left blade lanced through Lysandra’s guard and crunched into her shoulder, again piercing her armour and this time she knew the wound was deep as she felt hot blood coursing down her body. She raised her right sword just in time to block a cut that would have taken her neck; she twisted on the balls of her feet and smashed the pommel of the sword into Sorina’s face, smashing her front teeth.
The Dacian staggered, knees bent and Lysandra spun her left blade and, holding it like a dagger, rammed it through Sorina’s thigh with all her strength. It went all the way through, shearing muscle and flesh. The Dacian went down and Lysandra went in for the kill.
Sorina raised her sword – still so fast – hoping to kill Lysandra as she rushed in, but the goddess was with her and she cut downwards, severing Sorina’s hand at the wrist. Sorina screamed in agony as the wound gouted blood; she pressed it under her arm, pinkish, splintered bone protruding from it as, unable to stand, she knelt before Lysandra.
Lysandra looked at her. There was no feeling of exultation, no heady rush of victory. The truth of it was that Sorina was old. She was old and she had still nearly beaten her. Around them, the Romans were putting the tribespeople to flight, cutting them down as they fled. ‘Look, Sorina!’ she said. ‘It is the ending of your world.’ The Dacian stared at her in mute agony, tears falling down her weathered cheeks. ‘I told you. No barbarian army can stand against disciplined troops.’ She turned her back on her enemy and began to walk away.
‘Lysandra!’ Sorina croaked. ‘Finish it.’
Lysandra stopped and turned back. ‘Why should I?’ she asked, walking back towards her. ‘You were going to burn me alive, Sorina. Torture me. You killed Kleandrias. You killed Penelope. You killed Eirianwen. I would have my vengeance on you. No clean death for you, Sorina of Dacia. You will be paraded through the streets of Rome, mocked and derided by their mob. And they will say, “there is Sorina of Dacia, the barbarian fool who thought she could defy Rome”.’ She was about to say more, but the words would not come.
She looked at Sorina and saw not the mighty warri
or or the Gladiatrix Prima. She was what life had made her. And she had lost everything. Lysandra remembered once again that there could have been a healing between them and that it was she, Lysandra of Sparta, who, in her youth, had thrown it back in Sorina’s face.
And whatever else she may have become, Sorina had been a gladiatrix. And she had once loved Eirianwen.
Lysandra screamed and spun about full circle, her blade cutting into the flesh of Sorina’s neck, severing her head from her body. It rolled away, bouncing on the stones of Durostorum to lay amongst the detritus of battle.
Sorina’s body toppled backwards, blood oozing from the ragged stump of her neck to pool on the ground behind her like a crimson pillow.
In her mind she heard the voice of the goddess and in her heart she knew it was for the last time.
‘You have served me well. We are all but done, you and I.’
Iulianus’s men were both appalled and impressed by the carnage. They wandered the main square where the majority of the fighting had taken place taking note of where the fighting had been thickest, where the barbarians had been stopped and where they had broken through.
Lysandra sat on the ground, staring at them as they gathered the bodies for the funeral pyres, her hair hanging about her face. She was too numb even to feel the pain of her wounds, her mind shot, her emotions drained. She saw Halkyone and Melantha walking among the red-cloaked Spartan dead. Both had backs as straight as javelins, but she could see Melantha was in shock, her hands shaking, her face as white as a tomb. Halkyone was ashen and to Lysandra she seemed to have aged a decade in a single morning.
She, like Sorina, had now lost everything; the temple itself was gone, taken by the gods and the Sisterhood was smashed, hundreds dead on the stones of Durostorum. A Roman funeral party approached and began to lift the Spartan corpse from the ground and Lysandra saw the flowing blonde hair of Deianara hanging as a man hoisted her from the ground.
I am going to kill you one of these days.
The words she had spoken to her friend so long ago had come to pass.
Halkyone said something to the Roman who bore Deianara and he stopped, nodding and listening before gently lowering to the ground once again. The funeral party moved off and the message was obvious: the Spartans would tend to their own dead.
Lysandra’s eyes flicked to Kleandrias’s still form. Kleandrias who had loved her and died for her. She felt sick with guilt. She had brought them here; not just her friends but the thousands of others who had followed her – the women of the Deiopolis, Euaristos and his mercenaries – all of them who had trusted her word and now lay dead.
But they had won. They had paid the ultimate price and their sacrifice had bought lives beyond counting. People in Hellas and other lands who would never know the names of the people that laid down their lives for them – and even if they did, would have looked down upon them. Slaves, women – Greeks and arena fighters at that, old men, boys and mercenaries – the lowest of the low.
Illeana was walking towards her, her green eyes for once dull and listless, her hair clumped in bloody hanks, her hands black with filth and dried gore. She looked dead on her feet. Wordlessly, she sat at Lysandra’s side and rested her head on her shoulder, her hand seeking Lysandra’s own. ‘I wanted to see this,’ she whispered after a time. ‘It wasn’t what I thought it would be.’
She looked up to see some men of the IV Felix that were not injured acting as guides to their brother legionaries from Iulianus’s relief force, mocking them for ‘not being in a real fight’. They joked and laughed, demanding wine and, when mocked in turn for fighting with ‘a bunch of girls’, they lied about the favours the Heronai bestowed on them to ‘keep their morale up’.
‘How can they be so . . . nonchalant?’ Illeana said.
‘They are not women,’ Lysandra offered. ‘There is a reason that men fight and women nurture. You. Me. The Heronai, my Sisterhood – every woman that picks up the sword is an anomaly. Men love war, I suppose. I pray that I never see this again.’
‘I feel sick,’ Illeana said. ‘Sick and guilty, even though I have done nothing wrong. I killed them because they were trying to kill me – no different to the arena. But I feel like something has been taken from me and I don’t know what it is. I feel . . .’
Lysandra looked around at the bodies and turned her eyes to Illeana. ‘Like you have left a piece of your soul here. That it has sunk into this ground like the blood that has been spilled. Dacia has taken something from us that we can never recover.’
Illeana nodded, her peerless green eyes wet with tears. ‘I knew you would understand. We are similar creatures, you and I.’
Lysandra forced a smile to her lips and nodded. She turned away and saw Titus; he was hale and beckoning to her. ‘Come,’ she said to Illeana, forcing herself to her feet though all she wanted to do was sit there forever.
‘Titus,’ Lysandra greeted him. ‘You are alive, thank the gods.’
‘I’ve seen a few battles in my time, Lysandra. If you had ever let me finish a tale, you would have known how I managed it.’ He smiled briefly and then sobered. ‘Valerian is asking for you.’
‘I am weary, Titus,’ Lysandra said. ‘A report can wait.’
Titus shook his head. ‘He doesn’t have long.’
Valerian lay on a cot in his praetorium. His usually tanned skin was pale and sheened with sweat; bandages were wrapped around his torso, sodden with blood and there was a small mountain of them on the floor, mute testament to the severity of his injury.
He was asleep, tended by a surgeon and two of Lysandra’s Asklepian Priestesses. They looked up as she walked in with Illeana and Titus. One of them caught Lysandra’s eye and shook her head slightly.
There were others in the room – Settus, the tattooed centurion who was known to Illeana and Lysandra both, and a tall patrician Roman of middle years with a stern expression and aquiline nose.
Another, somewhat younger man – a tribune, Lysandra guessed.
‘Lysandra of Sparta.’ the taller man stated.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Sir.’
He accepted that with a grunt. ‘Tettius Iulianus,’ he introduced himself, ‘and my tribune, Quinctilius Spurius Nolus.’
‘This is Titus . . .’ Lysandra trailed off. After all these years, she had never known his trinomen. She realised that she had never even thought to ask.
Titus saluted. ‘Titus Atronius Cassianus, sir.’
‘And . . .’
‘The Aesalon Nocturna,’ Iulianus smiled. ‘I have seen you several times at the Flavian,’ he added. He glanced at Lysandra and left it unsaid that he had seen Illeana defeat her.
‘Lysandra . . .’ Valerian’s voice as he woke was a low whisper, cracked and parched.
She went to his bedside and crouched down. ‘Legate,’ she said, forcing a smile to her lips. ‘My priestesses tell me that you will recover.’
He returned the smile and ignored the lie. ‘I wanted Tettius Iulianus to know that it was you who carried the battle to the enemy. Without you and your Heronai, the enemy would have come fast upon us. Without you, our wall would not have held them at all, and they could have come upon the legate before he was prepared. And . . . I wanted to . . . thank you.’
Lysandra was confused. Varia had died at her hand; she loved the girl as her own daughter, but Valerian, she knew, wanted to marry her. ‘You have nothing to thank me for, Valerian,’ she said.
‘I would have not come to this place if Py . . . Varia . . . had not died. Because of you, I am here. Because of you, I found what once was lost to me and I thought it unrecoverable. Virtus.’ He stiffened in pain and Lysandra could see the life ebbing out of him, soaking through the already sodden bandages. ‘I lost it here. And found it again. I have no sons . . .’
‘But you have a father,’ Nolus spoke up, ignoring the glare from Iulianus. ‘I have lived in a house that was once yours,’ he said. ‘I make this oath, before my legate and these witnesses, that I,
Quinctilius Spurius Nolus, adopt you as my son. Your image will adorn the walls of our atrium. I will see to it that your name is revered.’
‘You do me great honour, Nolus.’
‘Honour you have earned.’
‘Virtus,’ Valerian murmured.
‘Fuck all this!’ Settus moved forward with an apologetic glace at Iulianus. ‘Why is everyone acting like he’s copped it?’ the little man crouched down by the bed as Lysandra moved away. ‘You soppy cunt,’ he said quietly. ‘Can you stop fuckarsing around. You’re going to be all right, mate. We’ll fuck this lark off and go back to Rome as rich men. Think of the whores . . . It’ll be fucking great! We’ll own that subura . . . Me and Mucius been cooking up a few business plans . . .’
Valerian stiffened in pain, arching his back. He coughed and blood oozed from his mouth. Settus grabbed his hand, squeezing tight. ‘Hang on, mate, hang on . . . it’ll be all right . . . just don’t give in. You can hack it . . .’
Valerian’s hand went limp, and he gave a low, bubbling sigh, his eyes closing for the last time.
‘Valerian!’ Settus’s hard dark eyes were moist, his voice cracked, but Lysandra could see that he held back his tears by force of will. ‘Valerian! Come on, mate . . . you can’t die . . . you can’t. You’re . . .’ He looked around helplessly at the surgeon and the Asklepian’s who wore the expression all in the room had seen many times before, be it in a surgeon’s tent or in the caverns under an arena. ‘You’re my friend . . .’ Settus looked up at Lysandra. ‘He was my friend.’
Lysandra nodded and met Iulianus’s eye. ‘He was a friend to Rome.’
Iulianus regarded her. ‘I will mention this in my despatches to Frontinus,’ he said.
She did not say it, but Lysandra knew this to be a lie. History would not remember Gaius Minervinus Valerian. Iulianus would ensure that this victory was his and his alone.
Lysandra placed the coins on Kleandrias’s eyes and kissed his forehead. She knew he was in Elysium now and prayed to an unanswering Athene that he was happy and had the honour a Spartan warrior deserved.
Imperatrix (Gladiatrix Book 3) Page 46