CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The sun beat down fierce as any Mongolian desert sky, and the sand underfoot was hot enough that Skeeter could feel it through the thin leather soles of his shoes-sandals that were mostly straps. Heat radiated off the arena sands, boiled off the embossed plaques of the great bronze turning posts, blinded the eye with tier after tier of stone and wooden seats and marble temples built right into the stadium itself. Sound roared down, assaulting his ears until his head ached, with the heart-freezing beat of a hundred thousand voices screaming in one solid mass nearly a mile long on each side.
Skeeter swallowed, briefly closed his eyes, and thought, If Ianira's right, then I could use a little help here, Artemis.- And Athene, Ianira says you even, beat the God of War in battle once. I sure could use some assistance. He even prayed to the Mongolian sky and thunder gods, as well as the singular Trinity of the Methodist church to which his mother had dragged him as a small boy. When it came to prayer, Skeeter wasn't too particular at just this moment Who answered, so long as They helped him get out of this fight alive. He wondered how many other prayers were winging their way heavenward with his.
He counted the pairs: twenty men, fighting in ten pairs, all at the same time. Two pairs of essedarii would be fighting from chariots drawn by a couple of horses each. A pair of laqueatores would fight one another with throwing slings-he'd seen what they could do during practice and was glad he wasn't fighting one of them. Two pairs of myrmillones in their weird, Gaulish helmets with the fish soldered on top would slash and stab it out with swords. Two retiarii were paired off against their traditional pursuers, the heavily shielded secutores with their massive, visored helmets, shields, and short swords. A duo of mounted andabates brought a dull, burning anger to Skeeter's gut. Mounted, he could've held his own for at least a little while, by running his horse in circles around the gladiator until Lupus fell down from exhaustion, if nothing else. But he didn't have a horse. The last two pairs were armed the same way he and Lupus were: the underdogs with nets and tridents, like the retaarii, with lassos as backup weapons, while they faced seasoned champions who fought nearly naked-but with a wicked sword in each hand.
As a group, they marched stolidly out across the burning arena sands to the Imperial Box, while the slam and whap of the starting-gate boxes being closed up reached his ears. A deep water moat at least ten feet across separated the fighters from the crowd, not to mention an iron fence tall and solid enough to keep an elephant from breaking through it. A few massive dents which even blacksmiths hadn't quite been able to unkink caused Skeeter to wonder if injured elephants had tried an escape through that fence.
The only hiding place anywhere out here was up on the spine, a collection of long, rectangular pedestals between the racing turns, on which stood statues of various deities, winged Victories that Skeeter hoped were smiling on him today, and an enormous Egyptian obelisk right in the center.
Skeeter's lanista prodded him. The gladiators were bowing to the Emperor. They shouted as one, "We who are about to die..."
Skeeter stumbled over the words, more because his Latin just wasn't very good than from a shaking voice. Besides, he didn't feel like saluting the Roman emperor.
Claudius was sitting up there like a deformed god, gazing coldly down on them like they were insects about to provide some trifling amusement. As a displaced Mongolian bogda, that made Skeeter mad. For five years, l was a god, too, dammit. I was lonely as hell, but I'm just as good as you are, Imperator Claudius.
Anger was far better than fear. He fed it, cunningly, as a fox fed his craftiness to catch unsuspecting the prey that thought itself safe. The champion of a hundred or more victories, Rome's wildly popular Death Wolf, bowed low and received the adulation of tens of thousands of voices: "Lupus! Lupus! Lupus!"
Skeeter glanced at his trainer who held a whip in one hand and a red-hot branding iron in the other, to encourage him if necessary. He laughed aloud, visibly disconcerting the man, then turned his back. He wouldn't need that sort of encouragement. A swift glance at Rome's Death Wolf showed him a grinning, overconfident champion already counting his victory. Skeeter knew he should've been scared to his bones. But the knowledge that Marcus was standing somewhere to his left, watching helplessly because both of them had been betrayed, burned away fear as effectively as the Mongolian desert sun.
The Emperor raised his hand, then dropped it. A monstrous roar beat at him-then he was dancing aside, away from Lupus' flashing double swords. He narrowed his eyes against the glare, wishing for a pair of sunglasses, a suit of chainmail made from titanium links, and an MP-5 submachinegun with about fifty spare magazines of ammo, and began the fight for his life.
The roar of the crowd faded from his awareness. Skeeter's whole concentration narrowed to Lupus Mortiferus and his flashing swords and grinning face. He danced this way and that, feinting and falling back, getting the champion's rhythms down, then made his first net cast. Lupus lunged aside barely in time. The crowd's roar penetrated his concentration even as he danced backward, away from those deadly blades and reeled in the net by the attached string. He held the heavy trident out to block thrusts or slashes and allowed his mind to race ahead with ideas.
The great spine of the Circus wasn't solid. It had gaps in it, wide enough for a man to duck into-or through. Skeeter ducked. Lupus swore hideously, his bulk too large to follow. He ran around the long distance of the spine to catch him on the other side. Skeeter simply ran back the other way. The crowd's roar turned to howls of laughter. Lupus' face, when Skeeter glimpsed it, was almost the color of pickled beets. The gladiator, veins in neck and throat standing out in clear relief, charged back down the long wall of the spine.
Gee, maybe hell have a stroke and I'll win by default.
No such luck, though. Lupus scrambled through sideways this time, grunting and cursing at him as he scraped belly and back on rough stone. Skeeter dodged out into the open, where he most profoundly did not want to be, but avoided a deadly sword thrust aimed at his side. Shouts and cries from the stands indicated that someone had gone down. Skeeter's peripheral vision showed him one of the netmen down, left arm upraised in supplication. The crowd was roaring, thumbs turned up . The Emperor copied their motion, jerking his thumb upward from gut to throat.
The secutore who'd hacked his opponent's leg out from under him plunged the sword through his fallen opponent's chest. The crowd roared its approval. Skeeter ran, Lupus chasing him, and dodged around behind one of the racing chariots, drawing curses from its driver as well as from Lupus. Skeeter caught the harness of one of the horses and hung on, letting the horse save his strength while Lupus fought to get past the encumbering chariot. Down where the dead gladiator lay, a man raced out from the starting stalls and smote the poor bastard a skull-cracking blow from an enormous hammer, then dragged the body away.
Okay. Thumbs -up means you're a gonner and if the guy you re fighting doesn't do it properly, they'll finish you off. Good things to know, Skeeter, my boy.
He let go of the chariot horse's harness and darted between a pair of circling horsemen, ducking under one horse's belly. The startled animal screamed and reared, blocking Lupus' way. The crowd roared its approval with cheers and laughter. Sweat dripped into his eyes, along with a pall of dust stirred up from the speeding, circling chariots and horsemen-forcing him to blink tears from his eyes. Not near as bad as a rip-snorting Gobi sandstorm, though, Skeeter decided. He was quite abruptly very glad Yesukai the Valiant had made him go on that hunt so many years previously.