Meritorium (Meritropolis Book 2)

by Joel Ohman

  “Okay,” Sandy said, “but, umm, I know I’ve never been in a chariot race before, but where are the horses?” She looked at the empty yoke resting in the dirt.

  Marta’s teeth gleamed in the sunlight. “Why, this is the Venatio, not just an ordinary chariot race. When they release the animals, we have to catch our steeds, harness them, and then make it through the obstacle course.” She pointed across the arena, to where a number of different obstructions had been assembled.

  “Oh, okay. Not so bad, I guess,” Sandy said.

  Janice snickered. “Yeah, we’ll see about that. The crowd’s calming down; it looks like we’re about to start. I think they’re about to release the animals.” She poked Sandy. “And in case you’ve forgotten already, do you really think they would send out normal horses for us? This is the Venatio—who knows what kind of mutant freak animals we’ll have to capture?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Sandy’s grip on her bow tightened.

  “Look sharp now,” Marta cautioned, gesturing down the line of chariots. “The other contestants are lining up.” She nudged Sandy. “And look—I hope you’re ready to beat your high-Score friends, because there they are.”

  Sandy craned her neck, peering down the starting line. Her eyes were quickly drawn to Grigor’s immense size, and, looking closer, she saw Charley by his side, apparently unharmed after his reckless antics with the javelin yesterday. Orson and Hank stood close by, each heavily armed. Together, the four looked like formidable opponents.

  Seeming to feel her eyes on him, Charley turned, his eyes hard and brooding, until he saw her upraised hand. A relieved smile burst onto his face, soon replaced by his typical cocky grin. Lifting his hand, he mouthed the words: good luck.

  Fluttering her fingers in return, she felt her heart skip a beat, as she wondered, was it so wrong for her to take comfort in his confidence? That abrasive, devil-may-care attitude could be grating at times, sure, but his confidence in the face of danger was contagious. She needed that; she needed him, no matter what Marta might think. Watching him turn back to say something to Grigor, the naked relief at seeing her safe plainly evident on his face, she was struck with the thought: maybe he needed her just as much as she needed him.

  “Are you done daydreaming? We have a race to win,” Marta said. “Our goal is to win, and to do that we have to beat everyone.” She looked closely into Sandy’s eyes. “And by everyone, I mean everyone. Do you understand?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good, here’s what’s going to happen.” Marta motioned the three women closer. “Helga, you and I will be guarding the chariot; we have to make sure that we keep this chariot.” She patted the knife in her belt. “Some of the other chariots won’t be up for the mileage needed to finish the race, I’m afraid.”

  “And what about us?” Janice asked.

  “I’m getting to that.” Marta held up her palm. “Your and Sandy’s task will be to watch the tunnels for animal combos: anything that looks suitable to pull us, catch them and harness them up.”

  “And those that don’t look suitable?” Sandy asked, picking at her bowstring.

  Her teeth of gleaming white continued to dazzle in the sunshine, but Marta’s eyes were cold. “Kill them.”

  “Got it,” Janice said, hefting her blade.

  Marta turned her steely gaze to Sandy. “How bout you, Pretty?”

  Sandy looked down. “Got it.”

  Marta carried on with her instructions, all the while watching the arena. “Anything, or anyone, that poses a threat to us winning the race must be dealt with. We can’t be thought of as weak, or soft.” Her eyes locked on Sandy’s. “Do you understand?”

  “I said I got it.”

  The sound of a gong pealed out, sending reverberations rippling across the amphitheater and up Sandy’s neck.

  “Here we go.” Janice tugged Sandy’s sleeve and pointed to the nearest open tunnel.

  The tunnel mouth was disgorging a Pandora’s box of freakishly assembled animal combinations. A long-necked, giraffe-like creature with a trunk stumbled its way forward. A number of animals in the equine family galloped out, nostrils flaring, but each with some crucial horse-like element missing or obscured by other animal traits.

  Seeing the herd of charging, trotting, capering beasts, the crowd stood as one to their feet, shouting and whistling their enthusiasm. Whether cheering for the death of the animals or the contestants, Sandy didn’t know, and she doubted that many of the spectators really cared one way or another. The crowd was only interested in grisly spectacle.

  Sandy gritted her teeth and took off in a sprint, side by side with Janice. Drawing up short, her mouth gaped open. “Are you kidding me?”

  Janice slowed. “What?”

  “Look! Is that—” Sandy felt funny even saying it out loud—“a unicorn?”

  Janice’s gaze followed Sandy’s outstretched finger to a pair of silvery white horses trotting nervously in circles. A solitary horn protruded from the forehead of each beast. “Oh, yeah, those are narses, narwhals bred with horses, technically, but for all intents and purposes, they’re unicorns. Let’s grab them—it looks like the crowd loves them.”

  Sandy approached, holding her hand out tentatively. “Are they—dangerous?”

  “Not really, I think they were bred—well, engineered—in some lab, strictly as a vanity animal. They’re fast, though, and should be easy enough to control in the chariot.” In a nimble display of athleticism, Janice took a running leap and bounded onto the back of the first narse, grasping a fistful of its flowing ivory mane, causing it to paw its front legs in the air. “Look at me!” Janice grinned, her cheeks dimpling in at the absurdity of it all. “Hurry up before the other one spooks!”

  Sandy rubbed the side of the animal’s sleek ivory coat and leaped onto its back, not with the easy grace of Janice, but more fluidly than even she had hoped for. It helped that their trusty “unicorn” steeds were more like miniature wild ponies, and much shorter to the ground than some of the other horse-like animals occupying the attention of the other contestants.

  “Let’s go! We’ve got company!” Janice pointed to a tunnel entrance on the opposite side of the arena from where a steady stream of animal combos, all of an aggressive predatory variety, bounded out. They looked like felines, all big cats of differing freakish varieties.

  And they looked hungry. Very hungry.

  Sandy pressed her knees into the sides of her narse, and it darted off, needing little encouragement to bolt with the scent of so many predators on the wind. Holding the coarse mane tightly in her balled-up fists, Sandy leaned her head down, smelling the dusty-sweet hay smell of horse. She didn’t know exactly how she was supposed to be steering, but thankfully Janice was a much better equestrian, and Sandy’s narse followed its partner.

  Arriving at the chariot, Marta and Helga expertly harnessed the two animals and jumped in, motioning for them to follow.

  “Good choice,” Helga said, a wry smile on her face.

  “What, they won’t work? Janice said they would be easy to control in the chariot, and they’re fast.”

  Helga rolled her eyes. “Oh, they’re all those things,” Helga agreed. “Look at the crowd—they certainly like the choice.”

  Sandy heard a number of indistinct catcalls shouted at them—at her in particular. Helga was right, the crowd did seem to be singling them out for attention. “What, I don’t get what’s so—”

  Janice interrupted. “Don’t worry about it, but the crowd knows the mythology behind unicorns. Remember, they’re a crowd favorite.”

  “And what mythology might that be?”

  Janice’s dimples returned. “Why, a unicorn can only be captured by a virgin. Even Leonardo da Vinci knew that.”

  Marta snapped the reigns, and the chariot jolted forward with a jerk. “Quit your yapping, at least it gets us some positi
ve attention from the crowd. Now, just be on the lookout for animal, and human, attackers while I try to steer us around these obstacles.”

  Welcoming Marta’s conversational intrusion, Sandy’s face burned. She concentrated on looking steadfastly out her side of the chariot, ready to ward off any attacker, while ignoring Janice and Helga, both quietly snickering in the chariot behind her.

  Marta expertly led them in and out of a variety of barriers designed to force them to zigzag their way through the course, avoiding a water hazard here, a pit of boiling tar there. The narses, while stout, were strong. They clip-clopped forward, tossing their shimmering manes in the wind, their slender, spiraled horns leading the way down the arena racecourse.

  “Coming up on your right!” Helga called out to Marta.

  Sandy couldn’t resist jerking her head back to see what Helga was cautioning against. A chariot captained by a man with a wild, frizzy beard swung crazily from side to side, threatening to capsize its four inhabitants. The men had managed to fit a llamabill side by side with a muffalo, an unequal yoking in the extreme, and the two animals, though rushing forward hurriedly, spent the majority of their energy twisting in their harnesses in repeated attempts to bite and kick one another.

  Yet despite the discord, they were gaining quickly.

  “We’re going as fast as we can,” Marta said, her face glued to the track ahead. “Get rid of them.”

  Janice smiled wickedly, unsheathing a shining blade with a flourish. “My pleasure.” Leaning out over the edge of the chariot, she lay prone almost parallel to the ground, blade outstretched, daring the other chariot to come closer. Seeing Janice, the chariot rider jerked on the reins, over-correcting his chariot directly into the path of another pulled by two muffalo. The chariots collided in a smash, one axle caving in from the impact, no doubt helped by Marta’s earlier sabotage.

  Sandy breathed a sigh of relief; there didn’t seem to be too much that Janice didn’t have an answer for. Sandy turned her head back to watch her side, but before she could fully see what was happening, their chariot was struck with so much force, the impact caused them to rise in the air, balancing on one wheel.

  Falling back into Marta, Sandy and Helga desperately grabbed Janice’s ankles, keeping her from tipping face first out of the bouncing chariot. Landing back on two wheels, their chariot upright again, Marta shoved Sandy off her with an imprecation.

  “I told you to watch that side!” Marta yelled, gripping the reins as if she wished they were around Sandy’s neck. “What’s going on over there?”

  Sandy scrabbled to her feet, peering over the edge of the chariot.

  Her eyes widened, and she stayed in her crouch, frozen in place, before ducking back down and scuttling backward quickly. “What the—” she screamed out, cannonballing backward into Marta once again. She narrowly avoided being impaled by a thick black horn, dark as onyx, attached to the forehead of a bellowing monster. Rising slowly, she shrieked. “What is that thing?”

  Marta butted Sandy away with her hip. “You little—”

  “Marta.” Helga tapped Marta’s shoulder insistently.

  Marta pushed Sandy back to her side of the chariot again with her elbow. “I’m trying to steer us here. I thought you were a warrior; what is wrong with you? Why—”

  Janice butted in. “Marta, look.”

  “If you—”

  “Marta, look!” Janice and Helga cried out in unison.

  Marta turned her head to look at the enormous midnight-black beast trotting beside them and gearing up to charge at their flank again. “Oh, great! Just what we need—a black unicorn.”

  “Right, and I’m a mermaid,” Sandy said. “That thing is definitely not a black unicorn.” The hulking beast lumbered along, a sly smile anthropomorphically twisting up the side of its wide, blunted face.

  Marta shrugged, whipping the reins harder. “Well, of course! And we aren’t being pulled by white unicorns right now, either!” She looked over and edged the chariot away from the black beast. “It’s a horoceros, a horse-black rhino animal combo. Some people call them black unicorns kind of as a joke.”

  Sandy eyed the wicked black stump of a horn protruding from the animal. “Some joke.” Now that she had her wits about her, she contemplated firing off some arrows, but the thick, wrinkly hide looked near impenetrable. She could aim for its eye, or maybe an ear, but the last thing she wanted to do was enrage it even further. “Let’s see if we can distract it, maybe by running it up next to some other animals?”

  Marta sighed. “If only it were that easy. The truly funny part of the joke is that the horoceros is named the black unicorn, in part, because it seems to go nuts around narses.”

  “A battle between the evil black unicorns and the good white unicorns?!” Sandy looked from Marta to Janice to Helga, a look of unbelief on her face. “Oh, you’re serious.”

  “There’s no good and evil. They’re just animals,” Helga said, reminding Sandy of Grigor. “It’s us who have to give account for the morality of it all. But it’s true—horoceroses do go crazy whenever they’re around narses.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Well, thankfully it seems like narses are faster.” She nodded her head at the belabored breathing of the giant ebony beast tracking beside them, falling behind as their narse-pulled chariot outpaced it.

  “That’s not going to matter in a second here; we have to slow down.” Marta pointed to a row of solid wooden timbers stretched across their path to form a steeplechase hurdle.

  Two chariots had reached the obstacle ahead of them: Charley’s team was feverishly trying to chop their way through with an ax, and the other were attempting to lift their chariot up and over the top bar. The wood appeared quite sturdy, and the height of the hurdle rose to roughly the height of a full-grown man, so neither approach seemed to have much chance of success.

  “Do they actually expect us to be able to jump over it?” Sandy asked.

  “No.” Helga gripped the handle of her staff. “It’s all for the crowd. It’s just a way to cluster us all together while the animal combos attack.” She pointed her stick at a muffalo-drawn chariot behind them that veered off course suddenly as a pair of lanthers pounced and sunk their claws into the necks of the muffalo with twin shrieks.

  “Look!” Sandy pointed to a lanther that broke from the pack and headed directly toward them. The lanther gained on them so fast, it almost seemed as if they were moving underwater.

  Helga motioned to Sandy’s bow. “Get ready!”

  Seeing the glittering yellow eyes and bared teeth, Sandy decided that now was not a time to worry about saving arrows. She drew an arrow back on her bow, desperately trying to calm her heart and adjust for the vibrating chariot.

  But before she could release, the horoceros let out a ferocious bellow, lowered its battering ram of a head, and thundered directly into the path of the lanther. With an agile leap, the lanther attempted to maneuver beyond the reach of the tree-trunk horn, but with an enraged burst of speed, the horoceros twisted its great bulk, dipped its horn underneath the exposed underside of the lanther, and flung the big cat with a vicious snap. Stamping up and down, the stubby hooves of the horoceros ensured the lanther remained immobile and out of the chase.

  Turning her head away, Sandy lowered her bow. Helga looked at her, eyes wide, neither of them saying a word.

  “Okay, we have to slow down. Any ideas?” Marta shouted. “We need to get over or around this fence somehow.”

  “Or through it,” Sandy said, still eyeing the lumbering horoceros, now turning from the fallen lanther, and intent once again on their narses.

  “Or through it—what do you propose?” Marta said, pulling back slightly on the reins.

  Looking over at Grigor’s broad back as it heaved in a steady rhythm of bunching and rippling muscles, an enormous ax chipping into the wooden planks with little progress, Sandy
pointed. “If it’s taking Grigor this long to chop his way through, then it will take us all day.”

  “Let’s just wait for him, and follow behind them,” Janice said, a twinkle in her eye.

  “We don’t have that luxury.” Marta nodded in the direction of the approaching horoceros, now gaining on them again. “Besides—” she watched Grigor’s powerful ax swings, her eyes hardening—“we don’t want to follow them, we want to lead.”

  Sandy paused before slowly speaking. “Well, there will be no waiting and no following—so you’ll like that part. But I’m not so sure you’ll like the rest of my plan.”

  “Spit it out already.” Helga tapped her staff on the floor of the chariot in a nervous tic.

  “Okay, I’m pretty sure the narses could jump the wall if we unharnessed them,” Sandy said.

  “Sure, but we need to get the chariot to the finish line in order to win,” Marta replied. “Those are the rules. We need a way to get the chariot on the other side, too.”

  “Right, so my idea is to unharness the narses, Janice and I will jump them over the wall, while you and Helga, umm.” Sandy cleared her throat, and looked down. “Umm—”

  “Out with it, while we what?” Marta questioned.

  “While you and Helga harness the horoceros and then charge your way through the fence to follow us.” She looked back at the lumbering beast that was almost upon them, before adding hurriedly, “You know it can do it, and it will do anything to get at those narses. It’s just a matter of—”

  “Getting it harnessed,” Marta said dryly.

  “Right.”

  “Well, if that’s all we got, that’s all we got.” Marta shrugged. “Let’s do it.”