Warriors [Anthology]

by George R. R.

  “Besides, you haven’t yet heard my offer. Return here within three days with the rabbit trailing behind you—or the rabbit’s head on your spear, I don’t care which—and when we reach the coast, I’ll make you a free man, a citizen of Rome. You’re young, Hanso. You have spirit. Your accent will be held against you, but even so, freedom and a strong young body, and a bit of ruthlessness, will take you far in Rome. Consider the alternative, and make your choice.”

  I looked at the gleaming boots at my feet, the spear, the whip, the coil of rope, the dagger with Melkart—or Hercules, as Fabius would have it. I thought of Lino—Lino who had come to us as a stranger and an outsider, who had betrayed the women, who would only be captured again and forced to endure the temptatio a third time if I didn’t bring him back myself. What did I owe Lino, after all?

  “What if you’re lying?” I said. “Why should I trust you? You lied to Lino—you told him he would be your eagle, didn’t you? Instead you made him your rabbit.”

  Fabius drew his sword from its scabbard, the same blade he had used to decapitate Matho. He pressed the point to his forearm and drew a red line across the flesh. He held out his arm. “When a Roman shows his blood, he doesn’t lie. By Father Jupiter and great Mars, I swear that my promise to you is good.” I looked at the shallow wound and the blood that oozed from the flesh. I looked into Fabius’s eyes. There was no amusement there, no deceit, only a twisted sense of honor, and I knew he spoke the truth.

  * * * *

  V

  I remember the faces of the captives as I left the tent, their astonishment when they saw the outfit I wore. I remember their jeering as I rode out of the camp, followed by the snapping of whips as the Romans quieted them. I remember turning my back to them and gazing north, through the pass in the mountains, where the faraway sea glimmered like a shard of lapis beneath the sun.

  It didn’t take me three days to find Lino, or even two. The trail he had left was easy to follow. I could see from the spacing of his steps and the way the grass had been flattened by the ball of each foot that he had run very fast at first, seldom pausing to rest. Then his stride grew shorter and his tread heavier, and I saw how quickly he had wearied.

  I followed his trail at a slow pace, unsure of my skill at driving the horse at a gallop. The sun began to sink behind the western range. In the twilight, his trail became more difficult to follow. I pushed on, sensing that I was close.

  I crested the ridge of a low hill and surveyed the dim valley below. He must have seen me first; from the corner of my eye I caught his hobbling gait and I heard the rattling of his chains as he sought to hide behind a scrubby tree.

  I approached him warily, thinking that he might somehow have freed his hands, that he might still have strength to fight. But when I saw him shivering against the tree, naked, his hands still tied behind him, his face pressed against the bark as if he could somehow conceal himself, I knew there would be no contest.

  The only sound was the dry rustling of the grass beneath my horse’s hooves. As I drew closer, Lino’s shivering increased, and in that moment, it seemed to me that he was exactly what Fabius had named him—a rabbit, twitching and paralyzed by panic.

  He’s not like me, I thought. I owe him nothing. On a sudden impulse, I lifted the spear, cradling the shaft in the crook of my arm as I had seen the Romans do. I prodded his shoulder with the sharp point. As he quivered in response, a strange excitement ran through me, a thrilling sensation of power.

  “Look at me,” I said. The sound of my own voice, so harsh and demanding, surprised me. It was a voice I had learned from Fabius. That voice wielded its own kind of power, and Lino’s response—the way he cowered and wheeled about—showed that I had mastered it on my first attempt. Fabius must have seen the seeds of power inside me at first glance, I thought. It was no mistake that he had made me his eagle, that he had separated me from the rest, as a miner separates gold from sand.

  This was the moment, in any other hunt, when I would have killed the prey. A flood of memories poured through me. I remembered the first time I hunted and killed a deer. It was Uncle Gebal who taught me the secrets of pursuit—and I remembered how Gebal had died, sinking like a stone in the river. I thought of Matho, of the head that had held so much wisdom severed from his shoulders, sent tumbling like a cabbage onto the stony ground. I clenched my jaw and crushed these thoughts inside me. I prodded Lino again with the spear.

  Lino stopped trembling. He turned from the tree and stood beneath me with his face bowed. “Do it, then,” he whispered. His voice was dry and hoarse. “Let Fabius win his game this time.”

  I reached into the saddlebag and began to uncoil the rope.

  “No!” Lino shouted and started back. “You won’t take me to him alive. You’ll have to kill me, Hanso. It’s what you wanted anyway, isn’t it? On the night that I betrayed the women, you said you would kill me if you had the chance. Do it now! Didn’t Fabius say you could bring back my head?”

  His eyes flashed in the growing darkness. They were not the eyes of a hunted animal, but of a man. The rush of power inside me suddenly dwindled, and I knew I couldn’t kill him. I began to knot the rope, fashioning a noose. Then I paused.

  “How did you know what Fabius told me—that I could bring back your head for proof?”

  Lino’s scarred shoulders, squared and defiant before, slumped against the tree. “Because those are the rules of his game.”

  “But how would you know the instructions he gave me? You were his rabbit the last time—”

  “No.”

  “But you told me, that night when you first explained the temptatio—”

  “You assumed I had been his rabbit. You spoke those words, Hanso, not me.” Lino shook his head and sighed. “When Fabius captured me a year ago, I was his eagle. Do you understand now? I was granted all the privileges; I was mounted on a horse; I was given my meals in his tent and told stories of glorious Rome. And when the time came, Fabius promised me my freedom and sent me out to hunt the rabbit—just as he now sends you.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper. “It took me many days to make my way to your people, skulking southward through the mountain gorges, hiding from Romans, living on roots and weeds. The horse died, and for a while Carabal and I lived on its flesh—Carabal the rabbit, the man I was sent to recapture. And then Carabal died—he was too weak and broken to live— and what was the use of it all? I should have done what Fabius wanted. I should have done what you’re about to do. It all comes to this in the end.”

  My head was burning. I couldn’t think. “But this time you really did escape....”

  Lino laughed, then choked, his throat too dry for laughter. “I’ve never met a man as stupid as you, Hanso. Do you think I escaped on my own, with my arms tied behind my back and Romans all around me? Fabius drove me from his tent at spearpoint in the middle of the night. The rabbit doesn’t escape; the rabbit is forced to flee for his life! And why? So that you could hunt me. The rabbit flees, and the eagle is sent after him. And when you return to the camp, with my head mounted on your spear, he’ll reward you with your freedom. Or so he says. Why not? He will have had his way. He will have made you one of his own. You will have proven that everything Fabius believes is true.”

  The heady sense of power I had felt only moments before now seemed very far away. “I can’t kill you, Lino.”

  Lino stamped his foot and twisted his arms to one side, so that I could see the ropes that bound his wrists. “Then cut me free and I’ll do it myself. I’ll slice my wrists with your knife, and when I’m dead you can behead me. He’ll never know the difference.”

  I shook my head. “No. I could let you escape. I’ll tell him that I couldn’t find you—”

  “Then you’ll end up a slave like all the rest, or else he’ll devise some even more terrible punishment for you. Fabius has a boundless imagination for cruelty. Believe me, I know.”

  I twisted the rope in my hands, staring at the noose I had made, at the
emptiness it contained. “We could escape together—”

  “Don’t be a fool, Hanso. He’ll only find you again, just as he found me. Do you want to be his rabbit on your next temptatio? Imagine that, Hanso. No, take what Fabius has offered you. Kill me now! Or let me do it myself, if you don’t have the stomach for it—if the precious eagle finds his claws too delicate to do Fabius’s dirty work.”

  The twilight had given way to darkness. A half moon overhead illuminated the little valley with a soft silver sheen. The reddish glow of the Romans’ campfires loomed beyond the ridge. I stared at that smoky red glare, and for a moment it seemed that time stopped and the world all around receded, leaving me utterly alone in that dim valley. Even Lino seemed far away, and the horse beneath me might have been made of mist.

  I saw the future as a many-faceted crystal, each facet reflecting a choice. To kill Lino; to cut his bonds and watch while he killed himself; to turn my back and allow him to flee, and then to face Fabius with my failure; to take flight myself. But the crystal was cloudy and gave no glimpse of where these choices would lead.

  The temptatio turns free men into slaves: that was what Lino had told me on our first night of captivity. What had the temptatio done to me? I thought of the scorn I had felt for the other captives, riding high above them, proud and vain upon my mount, and my face grew hot. I thought of the sense of power that had surged through me when I came upon Lino cringing naked in the valley, and saw what Fabius had done to me. I was no more a free man than Lino in his bonds. I stood on the brink of becoming just as much a slave as all the others, seduced by Fabius’s promises, bent to his will, joining in the cruel game he forced us to play for his amusement.

  Lino had once played the same game. Lino had defied the cruelty of Fabius and taken flight, like a true eagle, not like the caged scavenger that Fabius would have made him, and now was determined to make me. But Lino had lost in the end, I told myself—and immediately saw the lie, for this was not the end of Lino, unless I chose it to be. Lino had faced the same choice himself, when Fabius had groomed him as his eagle and set him upon the rabbit Carabal. Lino had chosen freedom, whatever its cost. I saw that I faced only two choices: to take the course that Lino had taken, or to submit to Fabius and be remade in his image.

  I turned my eyes from the dull red glow of the campfires and looked down at Lino’s face by moonlight, close enough to touch and yet far away, framed by my clouded thoughts like a face in a picture. I remembered the tears he had wept on the night of our capture, and the lines of suffering that had creased his brow on all the nights since then. But now his cheeks and forehead shone smooth and silver in the moonlight. His eyes were bright and dry. There was no anger or pain or guilt there. I saw the face of a free man, unconquered and defiant, composed and ready for death.

  The crystal turned in my mind, and I strained to catch a glint of hope; that glint was the brightness in Lino’s eyes. Fabius had told me that escape was impossible, that freedom was only a fugitive’s dream, that no other game existed except the temptatio that ground men into the same coarse matter as himself, or else crushed them altogether. But how could Fabius know the future, any more than I—especially if there were those like Lino who could still summon the will to defy him?

  The power of Rome could not last forever. Once, Carthage had been invincible and men had thought her reign would never end—and now Carthage was nothing but ashes and a fading memory. So it would someday be with Rome. Who could say what realms might rise to take Rome’s place?

  I closed my eyes. It was such a thin hope! I would not delude myself. I would not let wishful fantasies soften the harshness of the choice I was making. Call me fool. Call me rabbit or eagle, there is finally no difference. But let no man say that I became Fabius’s creature.

  I slid from the saddle and pulled the dagger from its sheath. Lino turned and offered his wrists. I sliced through the heavy bindings. He turned back and reached for the knife.

  For an instant, we clutched the hilt together, his finger laced with mine over the image of Melkart. I looked into his eyes and saw that he was still ready to die, that he didn’t know the choice I had made. I pulled the hilt from his grasp, returned the dagger to its sheath, and mounted the horse.

  A sudden tremor of doubt ran through me; the reins slipped from my grasp. To steady myself, I took inventory of the supplies that Fabius had given me. How long could three days’ rations last if I split them between us? I looked down at the clothing I wore, the uniform of a Roman soldier, and wanted to tear it from my body in disgust; but I would need its protection for the journey.

  Lino hadn’t moved. A band of clouds obscured the moon, casting a shadow across his face. He stood so still that he might have been carved from stone. “What are you waiting for?” I said. I moved forward in the saddle and gestured to the space behind me. “There’s room enough for two. It will only slow us down if one walks while the other rides.”

  Lino shook his head. “You’re an even bigger fool than I thought, Hanso.” But his whisper held no malice, and he turned his face away as he spoke. He couldn’t resist a final jab—or was he offering me one last chance to betray him?

  “And perhaps I’m a better man than I thought,” I answered. Lino stood still for a long moment, then his shoulders began to shake and he drew a shuddering breath. I averted my face so I wouldn’t see him weeping. “Hurry,” I said. “We have a long, hard journey ahead of us.”

  I felt him climb into the saddle behind me and settle himself, felt the trembling of his body, then spurred the horse across the valley and up to the crest of the hill. There I paused for a moment, looking to the east. The Romans’ campfires flashed tiny but distinct in the darkness. The river glimmered beyond, like a thin ribbon of black marble beneath the moon. Far to the north, through the mountain pass, I could glimpse the black marble sea.

  I stared at that glistening sliver of the sea for a long time. Then I snapped the reins and kicked my heels against the horse’s flanks, turning the beast southward, and we began the uncertain journey.

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  * * * *

  James Rollins

  A blood-soaked arena and gladiators circling each other for the kill... a scene familiar from many books and movies, except that this isn’t Ancient Rome, and the battle-scarred warriors aren’t quite what you’d expect either. In fact, many things are different. The blood is the same, though. And the death. And the courage.

  An amateur spelunker, a veterinarian, and a PADI-certified scuba enthusiast, James Rollins is a New York Times bestselling author of contemporary thrillers (many with strong fantastic elements) such as Subterranean, Excavation, Ice Hunt, Deep Fathom, and Amazonia, as well as a series of novels detailing the often world-saving adventures of the SIGMA Force, including Sandstorm, Map of Bones, Black Order, and The Judas Strain. His most recent books are a novelization of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the novel The Last Oracle. He lives with his family in Sacramento, California, where he runs a veterinary practice.

  * * * *

  The Pit

  The large dog hung from the bottom of the tire swing by his teeth. His back paws swung three feet off the ground. Overhead, the sun remained a red blister in an achingly blue sky. After so long, the muscles of the dog’s jaw had cramped to a tight knot. His tongue had turned to a salt-dried piece of leather, lolling out one side. Still, at the back of his throat, he tasted black oil and blood.

  But he did not let go.

  He knew better.

  Two voices spoke behind him. The dog recognized the gravel of the yard trainer. But the second was someone new, squeaky and prone to sniffing between every other word.

  “How long he be hangin’ there?” the stranger asked.

  “Forty-two minutes.”

  “No shit! That’s one badass motherfucker. But he’s not pure pit, is he?”

  “Pit and boxer.”

  “True nuff? You know, I got a Staffordshire bitch be ready for him ne
xt month. And let me tell you, she puts the mean back in bitch. Cut you in on the pups.”

  “Stud fee’s a thousand.”

  “Dollars? You cracked or what?”

  “Fuck you. Last show, he brought down twelve motherfuckin’ Gs.”