by Will Panzo
“Junius,” the fat man yelled, and pointed to the fighter in blue, his other hand still held aloft. A smattering of applause rose from the crowd.
“Appius,” the fat man yelled, and pointed to the fighter in purple. Mumbles, then silence.
The fat man held his hands high for a count of five, then let fall his hands, and both men leapt forward. The fighters circled. Junius, the spellcaster in blue, thrust his gauntleted hand before him, and a cloud of smoke blossomed in the center of the ring. The courtyard filled with the smell of hot sand, and as the smoke cleared, the shape of a massive lion limned in the haze.
The crowd sighed.
The lion tossed its thick black mane. It scanned the lot, then, as if seized by an outside force, its muscles grew taut. It roared at Appius and leapt forward.
Appius waved his hand, as though shooing a fly. A streak of silver dust floated into the center of the lot and hung, sparkling with reflected sunlight. The lion crossed through the cloud and slowed.
Cassius closed his eyes.
He did not see the blinding flash, but he felt the series of staccato explosions that followed. The smell of burned hair singed his nostrils. When he opened his eyes, he saw the lion collapsed on its side, convulsing, its mane streaked with blood and flecks of gore.
“Son of a bitch.” Sulla was bent at the waist, hands cupped over her eyes.
“A rare spell.” Cassius leaned forward, tensed, as though prepared to leap into the fray himself.
“You could have warned me.” She wiped tears from her face.
“Your man in blue saw it coming. Must be well-read in spellcraft.” Cassius pointed. “Look. He’s regrouping already.”
Junius raised his hands, palms up like a penitent invoking some wrathful god. The air grew heavy, and a smell like manure drifted over the courtyard. A jet of liquid fire streaked down from the sky and enveloped Appius.
The crowd gasped.
“He’s going to kill him,” Sulla said.
The flame vanished to reveal Appius kneeling in the ring, unburned.
“Fire ward,” Cassius said.
A smattering of applause carried through the crowd, a few boos. Appius staggered to his feet.
Cassius felt a stirring in his chest, stronger this time. Junius pointed his fist, and a flash of lightning lit the sky. Cassius averted his gaze as screams erupted from the crowd. The report of thunder struck with physical force, like a punch to the chest. When Cassius opened his eyes, he saw Appius still kneeling.
“Yield,” Appius shouted.
Junius continued to advance.
“I yield! I yield!”
Junius raised his hands.
Cassius started to scream for the man to defend himself, but another flash of lightning tore overhead, and his words were lost beneath a thunderclap. When his vision cleared, he saw the corpse lying facedown, wisps of smoke rising from its charred short cloak.
“Match.” The bald man waved his hands above his head. “Your winner, Junius!”
• • •
Sulla led Cassius through the crowd and collected her winnings from a crook-backed oddsmaker. The gambling men eyed Cassius as he passed. He knew they thought him an easy mark. He was young, still a boy to them. Thin, almost frail. His face smooth and soft. No scars or burns to speak his struggles for him, at least none they could see. The world’s meanness not yet writ in deep lines on his skin. But when he let his cloak hang open to reveal his gauntlets, every man gave him a wide berth.
Sulla approached the fat man who had served as fight master.
“Salvē, Master Dio,” she said.
“Salvē,” Dio said. It was clear he recognized Sulla but did not know her name.
“This is my associate Cassius. He’s a spellcaster.”
“Is that so?” The fat man wiped the sweat from his neck with the back of his hand. He marked his writing slate.
“He’s interested in prizefights.”
“A dangerous pursuit,” Dio said, without lifting his gaze.
Cassius started to speak, but Sulla silenced him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Any chance you could add his name to the fight rosters this evening?” Sulla asked.
“Absolutely not.” Dio shook his head. “Every fool who can steal five jewels and a pair of gauntlets fancies himself a killer. But that doesn’t make it so. I’ll need to see him in a test of skill first. How else can we calculate odds?”
“I can fight now if you’d like,” Cassius said.
“Fight who? Junius?” Dio snorted. “I’ve no time to dispose of two corpses today, boy. Come back at the end of the week. I’ve got a kid from Trajean you can spar with.”
“Thank you, Dio.” Sulla headed for the hall.
Cassius did not follow, intent on pressing the point with Dio, but Sulla shot him a grim look, and he fell in behind her.
“Is that the best you can do?” he asked.
“Don’t be so impatient,” she said. “You don’t want to anger these people.”
“What about selling water to a well?”
“I’m not here to sell you. I’m here to make an introduction.”
Cassius glanced over his shoulder and saw Junius standing with his second, a thick young man with a head covered in black stubble. In the center of the lot lay the lion, twitching in the sun.
Cassius turned and headed toward the beast.
“Where are you going?” Sulla called.
“To make my own introduction.”
• • •
He stared down at the lion, its face hidden under a mane soaked with blood black as pitch. It was breathing wet and loud, and its tail writhed in the dust, jerking like the body of a snake with a pinned head.
“Step away from that,” Junius’s second called to Cassius from across the ring.
“Aren’t you going to put it down?” Cassius said. “It’s cruel to leave it this way.”
“Only fighters are allowed here,” Junius said, his voice low but full of menace. He stepped in front of his second. “Leave before you get hurt.”
“By it or by you?” Cassius asked.
No one spoke.
Cassius lifted the edge of his cloak, and at the sight of his gauntlets, a tense murmur spread through the crowd. Behind him, he heard Sulla curse.
He unhooked the gauntlets attached to his belt and slipped them on slowly, deliberately. A rush of hot pinpricks warmed his arms. He kneeled by the lion’s side and placed a hand on its chest. Through his gauntlets, he could feel the beat of a massive heart.
His eyes were open but unfocused, and he pictured a colorless canvas on which were drawn eight shining lines, intersecting at precise angles. Rune magic was unique among the arcane arts. Whereas other cultures had rich magical traditions that involved complex sorceries and rituals, sacrifices and incantations, Antiochi magic eschewed such ceremony. Antiochi magic was stolen magic. Its highest practitioners learned to disassemble other magics, distill them to their simplest forms, then encode these secrets into runes. A select few, gifted at birth with the ability to channel mystical energies, could then be taught to power these runes and reproduce these spells.
The resulting imitations were generally weaker than the original spells. But what Antiochi mages lacked in raw power and arcane knowledge, they made up for in speed and adaptability. What had once been a complicated sorcery known to Kell Shaman of the Stormcaller Clan, a spell produced by lengthy incantation in the ancient tongue of the Primal Ones, was now reduced to eight imaginary lines in Cassius’s head.
As he completed the rune, his palms grew hot.
He did not see the spark jump from his hand. There was no flash, only a sound like a twig snapping. The lion’s body jerked, stiffened, then fell still. The beat of the heart under his hand grew faint; and then he could no longer feel a bea
t.
He stood and dusted his hands.
“Standing there with gauntlets on,” Junius said. “Are you threatening me?”
“Fighting amateurs is beneath me.” Cassius waved his hand dismissively.
Junius stared silently, stunned by the boldness of this boy. The courtyard was quiet.
And then an oddsmaker called out for bets on Junius.
Cassius glanced over his shoulder and saw that Sulla stood by herself, between the crowd and the clearing. Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head, a warning, quick and discreet, like her palming of the coins at the bar.
“Whose man are you?” Junius called. “What business do you have in my master’s house?”
“I came to see a fight, nothing—”
Cassius felt a faint tug in his chest. The air rippled and a wave of heat sped outward from the center of the lot. A whip of liquid fire, wire thin, arced toward him.
Cassius’s palms tingled. He drew with his mind’s eye a simple shape, a figure comprised of three lines, all of equal length. The glowing whip lashed downward, and when it reached his body, it broke on his shoulder. He felt no heat, and his wrap did not ignite. There was only a faint hiss, then the wire snapped as it touched Cassius’s invisible fire ward. Where it fell, the scrub grass ignited in a strip of white flame.
Cassius circled to Junius’s flank. He pointed to a spot between himself and Junius, the pointing to help direct his spell. Out of the ground rose a mound of clay that quickly took the shape of two slavering hyenas.
With his mind linked to the summoned beasts, Cassius felt a sudden gnawing hunger in his belly. He smelled the rich lion blood, and his heartbeat quickened. He breathed deep and cleared his thoughts. He focused on his anger, on a wordless urge for violence, then he focused on Junius. The hyenas sat stunned, ears folded down. Then, as one, they tensed. They dipped their noses and slunk across the ring, fanning as they moved.
Junius raised his hands, fingers splayed. A coil of green light spiraled up from the ground, and when it faded, a giant snake lay in the ring. It was fifteen feet long, with a wide, stiff hood and a blunt muzzle. It curled its body into two loose coils and then reared, hissing. It darted for the lead hyena but missed, its jaws snapping air.
In a flash, the snake twisted back on itself, seized the second hyena by its neck, and shook. Something inside the hyena broke with a wet crunch.
Just then, a large rock appeared overhead, trailing smoke and fire as it sailed toward Cassius.
He watched its approach, measuring speed and trajectory. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, a cube of translucent green gel hung before him. Staring through it, he saw the fireball grow larger as it neared.
When the fireball struck the cube, a hiss of steam wafted through the air. The fireball slowed as it sank into the gel, then it stopped completely, hanging motionless in midair, wrapped in a skin of sputtering green ooze.
Junius advanced through the center of the ring, where his snake had subdued both hyenas. Leaning down, he touched a fingertip to one, then the other of the prone beasts. Their bodies swelled and burst, and a swarm of spiders, each the size of a fist, spilled forth on a tide of blood.
The spiders spotted Cassius and scampered toward him, their fangs dripping with yellow venom that smoked as it hit the ground. He retreated, raising a wall of ice that grew six feet tall and four feet wide. The air cooled. Fog rose from the earth, settled ankle-high.
The spiders moved to circle the wall. Behind them, Junius approached the floating green blob that had been his fireball, and as he passed the fireball exploded, liquid flames washing over the ring. The blast bowed his body, and he hit the ground facedown.
No one heard him collapse. The sound of rushing flames drowned out the impact. Some of the crowd had recoiled from the blast of heat or the sudden burst of light. They opened their eyes to see Junius struck down, but the act of it had happened too fast for them to process.
“A reversal,” someone called.
“Killed him with his own damn fireball.”
The crowd fell silent, awestruck. Who among them had ever seen such a finish? Who would believe them when told that they had seen one today? This wasn’t a duel of champions fought in the grand coliseum of Antioch City. This was a prizefight outside a gaming house.
Yet they had just witnessed a reversal worthy of a master spellcaster, there was no denying that. The proof of it lay smoldering in the ring.
Small fires blazed along the ground. Flames licked at the ice wall and at the side of the gambling hall. The spiders hissed and steamed as they burned.
• • •
Cassius stepped carefully through the clearing, bits of flaming rock crunching underfoot. The body lay on its stomach, its hair afire. He rolled it with his foot and reached for the gauntlets.
“I’ll not let you take those.” Junius’s second stood just outside the ring, his hands balled into fists. He had seemed a man before, but at this distance, Cassius could see he was maybe seventeen. He was sobbing and trying to contain the sobs.
“Will you stop me?” Cassius asked.
“I’ll kill you,” the boy said.
“You’ll have to.”
The boy looked to the body, then to Cassius.
“He was my brother.” The boy’s voice broke. He tore at his tunic in rage. “Murderer.” His hands dipped toward his belt, where his gauntlets hung.
“Go on,” Cassius shouted. He turned to face the boy, stared him down, his large eyes manic and wrathful.
The boy checked himself.
“Go on.” Cassius pointed at the boy. “Reach. I’ll bury you together. You’ll be reunited beyond the veil.”
The boy’s hand trembled and dipped lower. And then, in one swift move, he unbuckled his belt and let the belt and the gauntlets fall. He sighed, as though relieved of a heavy burden.
Cassius looked down at the discarded gauntlets and then up into the pained face of the boy.
“You did nothing wrong here.” Cassius spoke softly. The boy was close enough to hear, but the crowd, driven back from the clearing by the explosion, was too far away to discern his words.
“What?” The boy looked like he might retch.
“Remember that. None of this was your fault. It was out of your hands today. Out of your hands from the start.”
A tremor passed over the boy. His eyes rolled up into his head; and then he fainted.
Cassius crossed the courtyard and kneeled over him. He heard frantic whispers in the crowd. Probably they thought he was going to murder the defenseless boy, but if they were outraged, none raised a hand to stop him. They had come for a fight but had lucked into a bloodbath. And now they waited, almost panting, for this inevitable conclusion.
Cassius checked the boy’s airway to see that he was breathing, then fixed him so that he lay comfortably, arms at his sides, head straight.
Just a boy, he thought, and as the guilt rose in him, he shook his head and pushed those thoughts aside. He was not done here.
“Any man who touches this boy’s purse will answer to me,” he shouted to the crowd.
Probably they would pick the boy clean anyway.
Standing, he collected the boy’s gauntlets. He was doing the boy a favor in some small way, he thought. No one who wore the gauntlets met a good end.
He returned to the corpse and bent to take hold of its gauntlets and stepped on the corpse’s chest and pulled, and the corpse made to sit up and he stomped it down and the gauntlets slipped free. Skin and burned flesh sloughed off.
He tucked away the gauntlets inside his cloak and turned to scan the crowd. He saw no sign of Sulla, and the faces that stared back at him were mostly gape-mouthed, but some were smiling, some even laughing.
He closed his eyes, and his shadow reached up from the ground to embrace him. When it sank back to t
he floor, he was gone.
• • •
It was dark when Cassius returned to the bar. The sun had set hours before, and it was too late even for drinking. He tested the door and found it unlocked. The front room was dark but for a table where the barkeep lay with his head on his arm, next to a small candle.
As Cassius made his way to the steps, the barkeep snapped awake.
“Who’s that?” he called.
“It’s me,” Cassius said.
“Who?” The barkeep reached into the dark for something Cassius could not see, a table knife, probably.
“Cassius.”
“Yes, Cassius.” The barkeep snorted and coughed. His hand returned from the dark. “I remember.”
“Do you?”
“What?” The barkeep’s eyes began to clear. He squinted into the gloom.
“Nothing.”
“You should announce yourself at this hour, boy. I keep a crossbow under the bar. Next time I hear a noise in the dark, I’m shooting at it.”
“Is your aim any good?”
“I can shoot the balls off a bedbug.” The barkeep reached for a nearby cup. He drank and grimaced. “How did the fights go?”
Cassius shrugged. “I’m still here.”
“A good finish, then.”
Cassius considered the fight and its finish. He thought about the boy. “I suppose,” he said.
“You’ll have to forgive my slovenly appearance.” The barkeep’s face in the candlelight shone with a film of sweat. “Been a while since I had a boarder. I’ll keep my drinking to my room in the future.”
“No need to inconvenience yourself over me.”
“Leaving then?”
“No, I think I’ll be staying, actually.”
The barkeep nodded, resigned. “There’s money to be made here, for those who can survive.”
“What makes you think I’m only here for money?”
“Why else come to Scipio?” the barkeep said.
“Tellium had a saying.”
“Who’s Tellium?”
“You scolded me for not knowing my history,” Cassius said, “and yet you don’t know the great champions of Antioch. Tellium is second only to Attus in the heroic cycle.”