by John Barnes
That took a while, because the crowd had to cheer loudly each time an announcement was finished, and also because since there were four main banks of seats in the arena, each eagle was also collecting a cheer as it was presented to each bank. So that added up to five cheers per eagle, and that took some time.
“Are there any more curtain-raisers before us?” I asked.
“Couldn’t say; they didn’t give me a program,” Hasmonea said. “If you win, make it quick, remember.”
“It’s a deal. I’d like you to know I won’t enjoy killing you,” I said.
“And I’d like you to know I’d rather kill somebody else than you,” Hasmonea said.
Hell, by Closer standards that probably made us compañeros, blood brothers, and best buddies forever.
There was another delay or two while they got everything blessed, but now there were plenty of criers standing out there making all sorts of announcements about the two of us, building us up into a couple of exciting supermen versed in every art of death-dealing there was.
At least we were getting star billing.
I didn’t speak to Hasmonea again, nor he to me; there was nothing really left to say, and we shared nothing except the arena, when you came down to it. Still, there have been times since—late at night, say, when I wake from dark dreams that I can’t recall—when I see his face in my memory, and hear his voice, and strangely enough the thing I really regret is not having asked him what his wife’s name was or if they had any kids.
It doesn’t happen often.
Anyway, by now it was close to noon, and the sand outside was bright enough to stab at my eyes a little. The various criers were spewing steam with each announcement, and it sparkled in the sun.
The moment came. The grates rumbled up. The guard behind me said, “Leave the blanket.” I felt a lot more like killing him than Hasmonea.
We entered the arena, and the guard who was waiting inside said, “Turn left and walk all the way around the arena. When you get back to me I’ll tell you what to do.”
So I did, and the crowd applauded wildly. Hasmonea had turned the other way and gone around the other side; I could hear him getting whistled at and people yelling various terms that the gadget in my ear kept translating as “Carthaginian. Carthaginian. Punic. Poenian. Carthaginian. Worshiper of Moloch.”
I suspected the terms were a lot more pejorative than that.
We passed each other just in front of Caesar’s reviewing stand. I saw that Caesar was lounging comfortably, obviously enjoying a warm bowl of wine. Paula, Chrys, and Porter were dressed in better clothes than they had brought, and they all looked unbearably tense. I wondered—if I lost, what might Caesar do to them? Put them into the arena? I’d pit Chrys and Paula against anybody … give them to Hasmonea as a reward? I hoped his gentle impulses might win out … so that Chrysamen would get a chance to kill him.
It was fruidess to worry about it. The thing to do was to not lose.
Walking around the arena had at least given me some idea of how the boots fit—pretty well, actually, so I wasn’t expecting any trouble from that quarter. The fresh sand didn’t seem to be too slick, and, with the sun reflecting off the sand, it was quite a bit warmer than I would have expected it to be out there.
I had also been flexing my hands like mad, trying to get them loose and relaxed enough to be effective. And I had noted that the leather jock wasn’t too terribly uncomfortable, though in a long fight it would probably chafe my thighs. Probably they had a lot of experience with fitting these things.
That gave me another thought, so I tripped and fell; people laughed, and while they were laughing I got a nice big wad of damp sand in my left hand. Years ago, when I was stuck in an airport waiting and had nothing to read but a cheap adventure book, I ran across the phrase, “The first rule of unarmed combat is to not stay unarmed.” It works for me, anyway.
I passed the last part of the crowd and was almost back to my guard—second? trainer? handler? I didn’t really know what his function was in all this.
He led me out to the middle; Hasmonea’s guard led him out to face me. We stood facing each other, about ten feet apart. A little guy with a megaphone came out and announced that we would be fighting to the death, unless it was voted to spare one of us, and that this was to be no-holds-barred, any-which-way-you-can fighting. Then he told us to face Caesar, and to extend our right arms and repeat after him, loudly.
It was the phrase you’ve heard in a thousand movies—“Salute, imperator, we who are about to die, salute you.” The Latin “Salute” means something a bit like “Hail” and a bit like “Viva.” “Imperator” later meant “emperor,” in our timeline, but at this time it meant “guy with real good mojo.” The Romans had the idea that an army whose leader had imperium—which you might as well translate as “the Force was with him”—was invincible, so it was a heavy-duty compliment. Calling him by name would have been a bit more normal and a lot more modest. But as I was to learn, old Gaius could never really get enough of praise of himself. Even from people who he’d decided ought to fight to the death with each other for his amusement.
Then we turned to face each other, the crowd started whooping, and they signaled for us to start.
For a guy with a tenth of my training at fighting—and maybe one one-hundredth of my experience—Hasmonea put up a hell of a fight; he didn’t really hurt me, but he forced me to worry about it.
We closed with each other right away—after all we had said we’d be quick—and I shot what looked like a left jab at his face. He blocked, but of course the fistful of sand I had picked up went into his eyes, blinding him. I sidestepped and snap-kicked as hard as I could; my boot flung his elbow upward and connected hard with his rib cage. He made an “oof” noise, but it hadn’t felt like I’d cracked any ribs. I closed in.
I don’t know if he was lucky or had already gotten one eye cleared of sand, but he managed to swing an arm around my head, forcing it down, and got in a respectable knee to my nose, not hard enough to break it because he didn’t really know what he was doing, but certainly hard enough to hurt. He followed through, too slowly, with a solid punch to the side of my jaw. (If he had known what he was doing he should have hit me, two or three times, in the temple or the throat, or driven a thumb into my eye.)
It hurt like hell for a short instant, but as my jaw went numb, I scooped his supporting leg with my free hand and shoulder-rolled out, planting my shoulder in his ribs as I went.
I spun before I hit and lunged forward for a grip at his throat, but he was too fast and had already gotten turned—my hands clawed at sand, and then his were on my face, groping for my eyes. He was beginning to learn, and that was bad news.
I pulled my head back and trapped one of his hands, turning it against the little finger, taking up the slack skin around the wrist, and finally levering it against my opposite arm. He screamed then, as his elbow joint went, and I flung sand into his open mouth, making him choke and gasp. I rolled to my feet and circled toward his left arm, which now hung at a funny angle, the palm facing uselessly out from his body.
He was half-blind and choking, but when I tried a driving kick into his ribs on that side, his leg rose to block and turn mine, and in as neat a little motion as you’ve ever seen in dojo, his leg extended hard. He was shorter than I was, and a fraction too far away—otherwise, he’d have nailed my scrotum to my backbone with his boot toe. But since he missed, and didn’t hit my thigh with enough force to make a difference, I continued the motion, planted the kicking foot, and whipped a roundhouse at his head. It connected, badly, but enough to throw him off-balance—which is serious when your arm is out of joint at the elbow.
He staggered in a little spiral and barely righted himself. I took two giant steps and felt my blood go cold as ice; now I would kill him.
I had finally slipped behind him. Most of the good places for killing a human being quickly, if you’ve only got your hands to work with, are behind him.
&n
bsp; I kicked hard again, and caught one of his kidneys. From the way he grunted I had hurt Hasmonea badly at least, and if I was lucky, I might actually have ruptured the kidney and started the hemorrhage that would finish him in a minute or so.
He tried to turn to face me. His face was now a mask of hideous pain, with one eye swollen shut from the sand, and his mouth hanging open to breathe. I skipped sideways and used the leather on my left palm to smash his septum, sending a spray of blood from his nose. The odds of driving the bone into the brain that way are practically nil (though it does happen), but the pain is blinding and incapacitating, and that was all I needed.
He fell forward to his knees, and then sat back as if trying to rise. I turned and kicked his other kidney, harder than I had the first. With a moan of pure agony and despair, he went forward onto his hands and knees, his left side buckling at once as his broken arm would not bear the weight.
From here on it was by the book. I slapped a half nelson around his neck, using his good right arm as a brace (and thereby taking his working arm out of the contest). From the way his hand was beginning to twitch, I think he may have been passing out by that point.
I surely hope so. I had promised him that I would be quick, and I was being as quick as I could. But still, he was bound to suffer horribly before it was all over. If both people know it’s a fight, and both are fighting, it is not within the power of bare human hands to be painless.
With his head locked, I wrapped my other arm around so that it would brace against my own arm and against his carotid. I twisted my two arms like a rope knotting, shutting off the blood flow to his brain, and then used my own arms as a fulcrum to somersault over his body, stretching him out and further crushing his neck. My legs whipped around to brace his thighs apart, my hips lifted his buttocks, and the move was complete; nothing shielded the arteries of his neck from the crushing force of my arms. I counted thirty seconds, slowly, to myself, while keeping his limp body torqued as hard as it would go; when I released my grip, I wanted to be sure he was dead.
At twenty seconds into my count, on the front of my leather jock, I felt something warm and wet; a moment later the stench told me that he had voided his bowels. I kept the lock on and kept counting. Hasmonea was a clever man and it could be a last-instant fake.
Could have been, might have been, but whether it was or not, I kept the lock on long enough. When I finally released his limp body, he was thoroughly dead. I flung him off me like an old towel and stood up; Hasmonea’s body lay crumpled and still, and a legion doctor ran out to check him. It didn’t take much of a look, apparently, because he announced at once that the man was dead.
The place went up in wild cheering, then into rhythmic clapping like you hear at the Olympics. Caesar stood up, nodded at me, and then turned to the crowd, raising his arms. The crowd went so crazy you’d have thought Caesar had been doing the work.
It was a strange moment. The sun beat down through the icy air, reflecting off the sand onto me, and I realized I was getting a little bit of a sunburn. The glare was blinding, the roar of the crowd deafening.
Behind Caesar, I could see Porter looking pale and sick with what she had seen. Paula was impassive, Chrys clearly just relieved, but all of them had managed to sit as far away on the bench from Caesar as was practical.
I looked down at my arms and saw that the sweat was not only drying but freezing on me, and that it was mixed with blood, though whether mine or Hasmonea’s I had no idea. I began to shiver all over, and I wanted desperately to heave up breakfast.
It was then that I found myself wishing I had asked that poor sad crumpled heap of broken bones leaking blood into the sand what his wife’s name was, what he loved about her, how many children they had, and so forth. It would have been far better than what I had heard him talk about, and it would have comforted him to talk about it.
I looked back up into Caesar’s eyes. That slash of a mouth was drawn in a tight smile, the kind that some people put on when they think they must appear pleased and don’t feel it, but Caesar’s pleasure seemed real enough; his eyes had that strange, farseeing look to them again, like a thousand-yard stare but with every intention of coming back in just one more moment. He thought a little farther ahead than most people, lived in a slightly wider mental space and time, and it showed through now and then.
He turned to the guard next to him, and an order was given. I couldn’t hear it over the noise at the distance, but the crowd began to quiet at once.
Behind me there was a squeaking sound. I turned to see a twin-drive pedicab—I don’t know how else you could describe it—pulling up behind me.
It was built like the bicycles we had seen the other day, or rather like two of them stuck on the front of a chariot. The men peddling it seemed to be slaves, probably Gauls or Britons to judge by their blazing red hair. A legate rode on the back.
He stepped off, and they stuck out their feet to stop. Then he walked up to me, threw a heavy robe around my shoulders, and put a wreath of some kind onto my head. “Get into the chariot,” he said. “We will circle the arena once. You will wave to the crowd. You will lead them in cheers of ‘Caesar! Caesar!’”
The horse pistol he held under his cloak seemed very persuasive.
I always had a hard time understanding how anyone could be a cheerleader—my brother, my sister, and I were always participants and bouncing around and looking pert didn’t enter into our idea of how to spend our time—but let me tell you, there’s no skill easier to acquire when, first of all, you’ve got a man with a gun making you learn, and, secondly, you’ve got a crowd that has been terrorized into cheering as if their lives depended upon it. Which, in a certain very real sense, they did.
We ended up circling the arena three times, and when we were done, my throat was good and hoarse from shouting “Caesar! Caesar!” to them. They cheered back wildly, and then finally, after it was all done, I got to go back to the room where we had slept the night before, and they had a hot bath waiting for me. They also had a slave girl that I would have guessed was about thirteen, who I gently sent on her way, pleading that I had vowed to my gods to have sex only with Chrysamen. In a little while they brought all three of my companions back to join me, but I sure wasn’t in the mood. Mostly I just wanted to sit in the hot water and let the feelings of the day soak away.
I hated killing Closers who had names, and it occurred to me that probably all of them did—I just usually didn’t know them. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about this mission, but if it really meant an end to this war, I was all for it.
“One thing you can say for the Romans,” Chrysamen said, “they don’t do things quickly unless they have to. The games were the big event of the day. Caesar has gone back to his quarters to think about things and isn’t expected to come out till tomorrow morning. We have sort of a lunch date with him, I guess, in which he’ll finally explain what he is going to do with all of us. Meanwhile, we’re here, we’re warm and well fed, and you don’t have to kill anybody tomorrow morning, at least not that we know about.”
“What’s been going on out in the city?”
“Well, Caesar’s supporters posted a long list of proscriptions, but Caesar ordered that taken down and commuted the sentence of anyone who will formally surrender and swear an oath of allegiance. So there haven’t been many executions so far—everyone who could had already fled, and everyone who couldn’t swore the oath. So I’d say the city is thoroughly in his hands.”
“What’s he going to do now?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We were thrown in with slave women for a while, and all of them had picked up gossip. Everyone agrees he’s going to take Rome. The only real question is whether he’ll cut over to one of the coasts and then head south, or take the direct route south. But the last word from bicycle post is that the direct road, down the Via Flaminia, is open. And with bicycles, if he goes that way, he’s only a two-day forced march from Rome. All that’s between him and the capital is
whatever Pompey has scared up—assuming Pompey hasn’t just cut and run like he did in our timeline.”
“Where’s Crassus? I thought everyone figured he was Caesar’s main opponent. And from what Hasmonea told me, if our boy Caldwell is still alive anywhere, it’s with Crassus.”
Paula made a face. “Well, then don’t bet on the cavalry turning up soon. Word is that Crassus made his winter encampment in Egypt. I’m afraid we’re stuck with Caesar for quite a while.”
10
At least he was slow about getting around to things the next morning as well, so there was a lot of time to just hang out. It might have been tough on the nerves, but on the other hand we didn’t have too much to fear just then, so we played some silly word games, talked about nothing, and generally enjoyed being bored in comfort. Or at least Paula, Chrys, and I did. People in violent occupations learn to enjoy boredom.
Porter was sulking. Teenagers, even when they know there’s violence around, don’t appreciate boredom enough.
We had played “Categories” about one time too many, and we were actually starting to wonder if we should ask the guards for a midday meal when the summons came, and when we got there we discovered we were all supposed to stretch out at the table for Roman-style dining.
There was the expectable vast load of pickled fish and the heavy flat bread; the soup was good, the wine was plentiful, and Caesar seemed mainly interested in talking about the political structure of ATN, and about the people who headed it, and why exactly they might object to one person or support another.
This was making me slightly more uncomfortable than before, but I think I did a decent job of hiding it. It would have been one thing if he had given me the creeps, but although I had certainly seen that he could be cruel and arbitrary, nothing about him was really bothering or repelling me. Which was what the problem was—thus far Caesar had done nothing that would even remotely make me think of shooting him.