“Split up!” I called, seeing a knot of our myrmidons crowded behind pillars. “Groups of two or three! Fan out!” I didn’t stay to see if they heeded me. Someone screamed, and I thought, Now we are eighteen. I hoped I was right, hoped I’d not missed another death in my haste. Switch had gone nearly catatonic beside me, frozen, eyes wide with fear. I shook him. “Snap out of it!” I pushed him against the pillar with my shield. “I need you here!” The boy’s eyes focused slowly, and I punched the wall beside his head with my sword hand. “I need you if we’re going to get out of this!”
“Get out of this?” Switch echoed, looking round. “How?”
“I have a plan.” It was only half a lie. I had an idea. A feeling.
Banks’s voice cut through the din. “You two! With us!” The leather-faced veteran stood with a group of six behind the fattest pillar on the field.
I shook my head. “You need to break up, Banks! We have to outflank them!”
“What?” he shouted, brows furrowed beneath the lip of his helm. “Are you insane?”
“Are they fighting together?” I called back, leaning on the word for emphasis. “Do you want to line up for them, or do you want to fight back?” Just then I spotted one of the gladiators—a tall woman in the characteristic green and gold—passing between two pillars. She hadn’t spotted us in the chaos, had her lance leveled in pursuit of another target. Without waiting, I dragged Switch along to the next pillar, dogging her steps.
Banks saw this and snarled, following with two of his myrmidons. They fell in behind a pillar opposite ours, leaned around to take stock. The gladiatrix stopped a moment, the bayonet end of her lance lowered as she fussed with some setting on the shaft and ejected a heat sink with a tinny ring. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Banks spat.
“I’ll draw her fire. You hit her from behind.”
“Behind, eh?” Banks bared his teeth in a feral grin.
I felt my face flatten of expression. “Do grow up.” I turned to Switch. “Stay right behind me, got it?” The boy nodded, then looked down at the sword in his hand as if it were some deadly tumor. He didn’t answer, just kept looking at his sword. I cursed myself. Ghen had been right about him. For the second time I shoved Switch against the pillar. “You don’t have to fight. Just stay with me.” I didn’t wait for him but tore off across the bricks, the sound of my armor slapping against itself drowned out by the noise of the crowd. I could only hope she wouldn’t hear me.
The gladiatrix had her lance raised and pointed at some target to my left, the haft tucked into the crook of her arm, the weapon at eye level as she sighted along it. Blood pounding in my ears louder than the crowd. I slammed the flat of my blade down on the length of the lance even as she fired. Violet plasma coughed against the bricks at our feet, turning the loose silicates in the sand to molten glass and filling the air with a chemical smoke. The woman let out a surprised sound and whirled, trying to take me across the face with the butt of her lance. I smashed down with my round shield, the whole thing ringing unpleasantly as the handle jounced my hand. I grimaced but pressed forward, backing her toward Banks and his people. Switch had vanished somewhere in the madness. I ground my teeth hard, lashing out with my sword.
The weapon actually caught the gladiatrix in the leg, and I heard an artificial whine. She staggered on her next step backward, and she tried to bring her weapon to bear on me. It was too long, a bad option in close quarters. And now her suit had betrayed her, registering my strike on her leg as battle damage, protecting her own precious, well-paid flesh. She let out an angry growl through the speakers in the neck of her underlying skin-suit and dropped the lance, hands going for the long knife at her hip. Brave move, sensible. It might have worked against Switch or even Kiri. It might even have worked on me, strung out on nerves as I was.
But Banks crashed into her with one of his myrmidons, one blade crashing through her energy shield—unaffected for its human slowness—and ringing against her helm. She swore vilely as the jade suit of armor seized up, knocking her out of commission. I thought of the cephalopoidal monstrosity the slave Umandh had dragged from the field, imagined the stony, three-legged xenobites dragging this woman to a side lift to have her armor unlocked. She’d lose a bonus for this upset. The crowd let out a roar, above which the muddy, shield-flattened words of the compere narrated the whole thing.
Banks was grinning like a fool as he said, “All right, we’ll use your plan.”
“There’s still four left!” said his nearest companion, the woman with the peeling skin. “Can we use that?” She pointed at the lance the gladiatrix still held in her seized-up fingers.
The veteran shook his head. “They’re made to interface with the suit gloves. Won’t fire if we try.”
“We have the numbers!” I craned my neck. “Where’s Switch?”
“The slut?” The woman shrugged. “No fucking clue.”
I pushed past her, hurrying back the way I’d come, calling out for Switch. I silenced myself quickly, realizing our hunters were as like to hear us as anyone. I passed two of our bodies smoking on the bricks—was that the one I’d seen die earlier? Or were they both new? Were we sixteen then? Or seventeen?
“Oy, Your Radiance!” Ghen’s deep voice carried above the sounds of the crowd. “Over here!” He crouched as he cut between the pillars, hiding as much of his bulk behind his carbon shield as was possible.
Back braced against one of the pillars, I waited for him to approach, Siran in tow. The two convicts fell into place beside me just as—distantly—someone screamed. The part of me that thought in Gibson’s voice ticked another one off, dispassionate. Fifteen? Keeping my eyes out for another attack, I said, “We got one. Banks and me. I lost Switch.”
“Saw him with Keddwen and Erdro just a second ago,” Siran said. “He looks like he’s about to piss himself.”
“Heard someone already did.” Ghen grinned.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t Switch. He’s just scared. What’s the score?”
Siran shrugged. “They’ve got four of ours, I think?” She rubbed her ruined nose with the back of her sword hand, ducked her head to look past Ghen.
“I counted at least five,” I said darkly. “We can’t spend five people to one of theirs. Banks and I caught one alone. Hammer and anvil.”
Ghen nodded. “I’d be fucking surprised if Pallino’s not done one in already. Bastard’s been working over the Sphinxes for five years now.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
The big myrmidon turned out to be right. We passed the locked-out body of the second gladiator sitting against one of the columns not far off, and my heart went a little lighter, then sank when we found the bodies. One was decidedly Keddwen, the local boy with the ropey hair who called Pallino “boss.” The other was not Switch but a local girl who looked too much like Cat for my comfort. Only three left.
We found three more of our dead before we found the other gladiators—all men—standing back-to-back-to-back in a tight legionnaire’s triad. I had heard of such a thing, would see it countless times on many battlefields. The proud soldiers of the Emperor’s service: white ceramic gleaming, crimson surcoats snapping about their knees, their faceless white visors impassive in the face of incredible challenge. The Cielcin, whiter still, pressing in on them from all sides. It was we who pressed here, ducking behind pillars to avoid plasma fire. One of the three men had lost his lance and held one of our swords in each hand.
The crowd above, I realized, had gone oddly quiet, holding their collective breath. I’d fouled my count somewhere in the struggle. Thirteen of us remained at a glance. There was Switch, huddled, crouched in the shadow of a pillar with Kiri. I breathed a sigh of relief. “The fuck’s everyone standing around for?” Ghen barked. “They’ll drop the pillars if we don’t move.”
I didn’t have time to ask what this meant, for Pallino
shouted, “They’ll have to come to us.”
“That’s not going to happen!” Siran snapped. I agreed with her.
A series of ratcheting clicks sounded deep in the floor below us, and with a grinding roar the concrete pillars began to sink. They would descend until they were flush with the level of the floor, leaving us exposed. I glared at Pallino, at Ghen, looking round. “We have to go now, or they’ll be able to pick us off at their leisure.”
“At their leisure?” Pallino repeated, scorn evident in his tone. “That’s what this is, boy. That’s what this all is.”
“Fine,” I snarled, turning to Ghen. “I’ll do it. You with me?”
The big man looked down at me, brows furrowed beneath the lip of his helmet. He nodded. “We’re running out of time anyway.”
“Me too,” Siran said. “What’s the plan?”
I hefted my shield. “Leave the one with the swords for last.”
“That’s not much of a plan,” said a nameless myrmidon who’d moved to join us.
“No,” I agreed and sheathed my sword. Ordinarily one attacked the enemy himself. But for now I needed to strike his weapon. That gave me a notion, a mad one.
We didn’t shout. Shouting as one charged only drew the enemy’s attention. I wanted as little of that as possible. Ten paces of open space separated the knot of gladiators from our shrinking cover, plenty of time for the trained killers to fix their two lances on us. I saw the muzzles glow blue-hot, heard the whines as the weapons sucked in air to heat their plasma. One of the slow-action models, air-fed, without ammo reserves. Good. He’d have only one shot.
The weapon spat fire.
When you fight—no matter the cause—you make a choice. You choose to set aside everything else for that moment. Choose to funnel everything you are, everything you’ve been, and push it through the eye of a needle. You risk everything. The plasma charge broke on my shield, heating a patch of the carbon fiber until it glowed. The second gladiator panicked, his own shot going far wide. The gladiator with the two swords turned, stunned, just in time for Kiri and Erdro to come tearing around from the right flank, emerging even as the pillars shrank to naught. Someone behind us shrieked as a plasma shot from the second gladiator caught her. I didn’t turn to look.
I closed distance between the nearest gladiator and me, passing my shield from my left hand to my right, clutching the glowing disc by the rim. Then—disregarding the common sense of a thousand generations—I ground to a halt, counting the seconds until I thought the man could fire again. The lance whined as it sucked in air, and Ghen and Siran drove past. I saw the gladiator’s thoughts scanning behind that faceless visor, sensed him trying to pick a target. The Royse field barrier of his shield shimmered in the distorting heat of the day, crackled with static from the dirt and grit. I threw the shield, the light carbon slicing the air like a discus in the Summerfair pentathlon. The man ignored it, some well-trained part of his mind perhaps expecting his energy shield to deflect the blow without incident. It didn’t. Fast as it was, my round shield was too slow for the man’s energy curtain. It struck him in the chest, jerking his arm up even as he fired again, spraying the round up against the prudence shield. He staggered.
Then Ghen was on him. And Siran. I drew my sword and cut in and past them, positioning myself so that Ghen’s bulk shielded me from the second still-armed gladiator. I heard the whining of servos in the man’s chest as his armor seized under Ghen’s assault. Siran kicked his lance away. I lashed out with my blade, striking the second lance-wielding gladiator so hard in the arm that his suit forced him to drop the lance. His arm swayed at his side, joints frozen, the polymers of the skin-suit hardened to something like stone. Not yet giving up, he drew his belt knife, whirled to stab me. It was nothing a real opponent would have done. My blow might have severed the arm of a man dressed as we were, but the gladiator was himself not truly injured. His attack caught me off guard, and the weapon skirted off my breastplate, leaving a deep furrow.
“Not left-handed, then?” I asked, and I stabbed the man in the thigh. His suit whined and hobbled him, but he didn’t fall as a man ought, and I had to snap a neat seconde with my sword arm, elbow cracking the blade down to disarm the man before I finished him with a ringing blow to the head.
Then it was over—the final gladiator had fallen to Siran and one of the others. As with Crispin, I expected there to be some glorious instant, some swell to mark the end of battle. Nothing came. It never does. The fight ends, the needle is threaded, and all you were before comes crashing back. For a moment all I could hear was my blood still drumming in my ears; all I could feel was the weight of my armor cutting into me by its leather thongs. All I knew was the rise and fall of my chest in time with breaths labored in the thick and dripping air.
Then the prudence shield snapped out of existence, and the ecstatic triumph of the crowd swept us along, giving me my moment of crescendo. An upset. A titanic upset. I wondered how many people had expected us all to die. Only eight of us had died. Twelve stood. Amid the clamor I looked up at the count’s box. Beneath the striped gold-and-jade awning, Balian Mataro stood, a great bull of a man with another slender man at his side. I could just pick out the black witch-shadow of a Chantry prior not far from him. He raised a hand, his image projected on screens beside his box—screens I had not even noticed until that moment. The crowd’s tumult subsided until at last the nobile’s amplified voice carried over it, rich and superlative.
“Well fought, my myrmidons, well fought!” He was clapping, and even thirty feet below him I could see the gold glittering on his fingers, on his forehead, at his throat. The metal stood out sharply against his coal-black skin. He was as ostentatious as my father was spare, a true aesthete, and his voice was like strong wine. “I can truly say none of us gathered here thought to witness so great a surprise as this.” He leaned against the blond wood rail of his box.
I looked up, for the first time noting the swarm of camera drones orbiting the field. I stooped to collect my burned shield, stumped over to where Switch was standing. We exchanged words, enough for me to know the younger man was all right. Looking round I caught sight of a look on Ghen’s face. The big man was grinning, but there was something in his wide eyes other than joy. He caught me looking, nodded, and kept on smiling. Was it respect? I wasn’t quite sure, but I didn’t think I had anything more to fear from the big man. Kiri pushed forward to embrace me, murmured some soft congratulations. “That thing with the shield,” she said as she hugged me, “was damn clever.”
“I’m just glad we made it,” I returned, extricating myself from her embrace. One-eyed Pallino grinned at me, and I saw he’d chipped a tooth in the fight. The one-time legionnaire pressed his fist to his chest in salute, bobbed his head. I returned the gesture with a slight bow.
The count was still speaking, addressing the crowd more than we the victors. “Such a fight we have not seen in many seasons! Many seasons. We are well pleased, and hereby award each of you a sum of fifty hurasams for your gallantry!” The cheer that went up was engineered, a palliative to wash the taste of plague from every heart and mouth.
I touched the spot on my breastplate beneath which my house’s ring still hung on its cord.
Bread and circuses.
CHAPTER 37
MIGHT NEVER DIE
WE CELEBRATED IN THE city, taking our bonus purses to one bar after another until money and darkness ran out and the sun came up in fire. Many of my companions would remember nothing of that victorious evening, but to me it is forever bright. I bought nothing, saving every bit and every crumpled five-kaspum note of my share of the bonus. I had a ship to think of. Still I did not want for drink. None of us did. It was only that the others spent as if they had not thought to see tomorrow. I thought of little else.
You might think it was a sad occasion, glasses raised to Keddwen and the others we lost. But while there was some of that, and while
there would be offerings burned before the icons of Death and Fortitude in the Chantry the next day, we rejoiced, for we were young and strong, alive, and assured in that moment of our immortality. We raised a glass to our dead and several to ourselves, and though many of us said we wished we were dead the next day, not a one of us meant it. Headaches be damned, for they are fleeting, and we felt we might never die.
It was the first of many such victories, and in time our little band of myrmidons became known, celebrated by the fans who greeted us. And so I walked upright down streets where once I had run or cowered in fear of the prefects and my fellow criminals. I will say no more of that celebration—or of any other—but for a moment we had on the road back to the White District and the hulking mass of the coliseum. For by the wan, red light of morning we passed a small cafe with an iron rail. The sky was dark, bruised only slightly with day’s fire, and the night wind was still cool and damp as the breath of a cave. The sight of that cafe lit something in me, rekindled a conversation I’d had earlier with Pallino and Elara, another veteran of the pits. She had not fought with us that day, being on another team, but it was well known that she and Pallino were lovers, and he had brought her with us.
“But look,” I said, words slurring only slightly as we weaved, “we can’t be doing this forever.” I made a vague gesture with one thin hand. “Switch and I’ve been talking. When this contract’s up, we’re going to take our pay and get a loan on a starship.” As I said this, I staggered against the cafe’s rail, not three yards from the table where Crow had helped hide me a lifetime before.
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