by Camilla Monk
Not long afterwards, they came for us. I picked up the wretched scent of spoiled shrimp before I even noticed Fishtail’s bald skull. Nerie was right; his prick couldn’t be healthy. I tried to picture it falling off as a mean to ward off the fear licking up my spine. It didn’t work. Victrix led the march, followed by a few men I didn’t recognize save for Fishtail. Behind them Thurias dragged his feet, looking as reluctant as ever. Victrix produced a key from a ring hanging to his belt and unlocked the cage. None of us moved.
“Get up,” he ordered.
His sharp tone roused Leis—and a swift kick from Felus achieved to wake him up fully. He scrambled up like the rest of us, darting frightened eyes at our captors.
Victrix pointed his finger at me, and it took everything I had not to recoil when he pressed it hard to my forehead. “Tonight, you’re gonna show me how you keep your head up while you shit your pants.”
His companions snorted a few laughs, but I had no idea what he meant by that. I just stood still, even as sweat dampened my back and my legs throbbed with the urge to bolt. I tried to stare past him, to be a dead thing.
When it became clear that I wouldn’t rise to his bait, Victrix grabbed the front of my tunic and haul me out of the cage instead. Nerie and the others were dragged out in the same fashion, and we were led through the camp and out of the mine. Clearchos’s soldiers watched us from the corners of their eyes as we walked past them, sometimes laughing, or spitting our way. Under their mocking gazes, I found again the same sort of anxious shame Servilius and his sons had seeded inside me over the years, that feeling of being under constant scrutiny, the certainty that the slightest sign of weakness would be my downfall. I clenched my teeth and kept my head up, regardless of Victrix’s threats. I wished I’d been brave enough to tell Nerie to do the same, that he’d become prey if he kept on cowering like that.
We took a rocky trail that trailed away from the mine and to a circle of torches burning bright under the moons. As we neared the flames, I saw that they hemmed in the gaping wound of an abandoned quarry. Was that the pit Victrix had told me about? Back at the mine, the men started to rise to their feet, abandoning the remains of their dinner and the relative comfort of their tents to follow us. Like insects irresistibly drawn to the flames, one by one, they gathered.
Steep stairs carved directly into the rock led down the pit. By the time we reached the first step, the crowd of men had closed in on us, and something hung in the air, a tension that made me feel cold and slightly nauseated. It was the silence, I realized. For hours we had been surrounded by a never-ending sea of noises, the clamor of voices, horses, ibexes bleating and metal clanking everywhere. Now the animals were asleep, and an ominous peace had fallen on the mine; even the few laughs had subsided.
Victrix led the way down while the rest of Clearchos’s Legion amassed around the pit in a tight and quiet throng. The hole itself was maybe twenty feet deep and twice as large. I’d never seen a real arena before, only in poorly made drawings merchants sometimes tried to sell to villagers. They were usually scenes that either depicted the prowess of gladiators who fought for money. Or public executions. I fought a crippling shudder; they couldn’t possibly mean to kill us. But then the alternative was…
Three shadows awaited at the center of the pit. One of them prowled our way, a man wearing a shiny muscle cuirass like those of the small bronze effigies of Loris in my village’s temple. But this man’s breastplate bore a finely engraved wolf head in its center. I tried to guess his age in the coppery light of the torches: he must be in his forties, but the right side of his face looked odd. It was only once he stood before us that I saw the devastation, the scarred skin, and the missing ear, reduced to a tiny hole around which a large patch of black hair was missing. Half of him was a hawkish man with pale, deep-set eyes. The other half had been devoured by fire, I guessed.
No one said anything, but I was quite sure I stood before Clearchos, the man who had raised a legion of two thousand men and took his orders from emperor Manicus himself. Fishtail wrestled us into a row of trembling idiots for his leader to examine. The man’s expression was completely blank, but then again, I wondered if he could even smile with his melted flesh that looked oddly smooth in the golden light.
Felus and I stood side by side. He extended his palms to pat our heads like a benevolent deity. “You found tall ones,” he said in a deep voice that held a deceptive softness to it—I had an instinct that this man wasn’t kind. “They’ll grow big.”
Felus might. I had stopped growing up for the past year or so, but I stood taller than many men still.
The man with the scarred face all but ignored Nerie and Leis, and clasped his hands, looking down at them as if he were in deep thought. When he spoke again, the silky undercurrent in his voice became a bone-chilling bark that echoed in the night for all to hear. “All the men around you, I pay, I feed, I train.” He raised his arms, his palms splayed like he was praying to the gods, and immediately a delirious roar surged from the soldiers gathered around us, a deafening wave that hurt my eardrums and seemed to make the air vibrate. “They are my legion! And if you prove your worth, you too can march with Clearchos!”
The wave became his name, crashing and booming over and over from their wine-soaked throats. Clearchos! Clearchos! I was petrified, my heart ramming as if to escape from my rib cage. Yet in the storm raging inside me, there was little, if any, surprise. I had already known, even before they’d taken us to the pit, that unseen horrors awaited. I’d had hours to think about Nerie’s explanations while my stomach growled. Enough time to understand that while clinging to my disguise had saved me from being raped, I’d walked into a much deeper marsh still, one I could never escape alive.
They were all shouting so loud, and there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run from this hole. Next to me, Nerie was panting fast through his nose. I couldn’t pat his shoulder and lie to him that we’d be fine: I had just enough strength to ball my fists and stare ahead at the fangs of the wolf’s head, gleaming on Clearchos’s armor. He tilted his head to murmur something to one of his men, a long-haired ogre who wore a braided beard and a scaled lorica that looked the same as the dead soldier whose gear I had scavenged.
The man grabbed Leis by the hair without warning and picked up a dull, rusty sword I hadn’t noticed on the ground. He handed it to him, but Leis just stared at the blade in a state of stupor. His jaw worked, but no sound came out of his mouth. He blinked around, seeking help in vain. He wouldn’t get any from Victrix, whose lips were curled in cold amusement, or from us, who weren’t brave enough to defend him. Felus and Nerie looked straight ahead, through him. So, it was me Leis turned to, with his big eyes and big ears that made him seem even younger. I swallowed, willing myself not to cry, but I didn’t help him. I let Fishtail drag me away with the others and let him to face the bearded man alone at the center of the pit.
The crowd went quiet, save for a few calls. Someone called Leis a mollis; another yelled for him to pick up the sword. He didn’t. He staggered back, shaking his head frantically. Steel scratched against leather as the bearded man drew his own blade under the cheers of his comrades. Leaning against the pit’s wall like the rest of us, Clearchos watched, his arms crossed. Next to him, Victrix adopted the exact same posture and I wondered if he was trying to imitate him.
Leis still wouldn’t pick up the sword. The flames of the torches lining the pit flickered in the cool night breeze, drawing tormented shadows on the walls. Shouts of hate and excitement ripped from all directions and rang in my skull. I thought maybe they just wanted to scare Leis, to scare the lot of us so we’d become men or something.
The bearded man raised his sword slowly and took a menacing step forward. Like a spark in the darkness, Leis’s panic finally ignited his survival instinct. He ran away with a broken wail, racing toward us for safety. Before he could reach the wall, Fishtail sent him flying back into the mud with a vicious kick. Above us, the men started t
hrowing rocks and bones at him. They kept shouting for him to pick up the sword, that he was a weak cunt and all sorts of other names.
But he didn’t take the sword, even though it lay in the mud within hand’s reach. He knelt, cried, and raised his palms to shield himself. He begged. I don’t remember what he said, I only remember his raspy sobs, and how calm the bearded man was, the way the flames reflected in his sword’s blade, so that it seemed white-hot. I was so sure they only wanted to scare him; I chanted the words in my head over and over like a spell, even as the blade spun in the bearded man’s hands and plunged down, straight into Leis’s neck. My heart stopped, perhaps at the same time his did. He went still at once; his arms fell limp at his sides. The bearded man pulled out the blade, and as if it were the only thing keeping Leis’s spine straight, he collapsed. The clamor died down as blood spilled from the wound and tinted the mud. From where I stood, it looked like black syrup; I couldn’t yet believe it was real. That Leis was dead.
The bearded man remained stoic. If he cared that he’d just murdered a child, it didn’t reflect in his dark eyes. One trembling breath after another, I tried to take it all in. This was normal to them. This was what soldiers did.
Nerie’s face was a pasty white—the same color as mine, no doubt—and his head lolled, as if he might faint.
Victrix shrugged. “I didn’t think he’d make it.”
That drew a few nods and grunts from the other men guarding us while Thurias shuffled to Leis’s prone body. He picked him up in his arms and carried him to the side. Leis stayed there, discarded, while Fishtail clasped a hand around Felus’s shoulder and pushed him forward. “Now you know what happens to cowards, big boy,” he mumbled. “You stand your ground until Clearchos says you’re done.”
There had been no such advice for Leis. He hadn’t been tested; he had been executed. Felus’s chest rose and fell fast and hard with the effort to summon air into his lungs. A large spot of sweat darkened the ragged wool of his tunic and made it stick to his back. Nerie’s eyes darted to me as Felus lumbered toward the sword that still rested on the ground, seeking some sort of reassurance, maybe. I had none to give him.
Felus picked up the sword under a thunder of acclamations. That’s what they wanted, the parody of a fight, between a farm boy wielding a chipped blade and a trained mercenary. My stomach twisted and I recognized the first licks of anger, tingling, stretching along my limbs as the bearded soldier raised his sword again. Felus did the same, holding the blade in front of him with an unsteady grip—either to strike or protect himself. I doubt he himself knew which.
His adversary circled him, a furtive spark of interest lighting his vacant gaze. Felus swung his sword in the air at random, much like I had when wounding Arun. He was trying to keep the other man at bay. My heels dug into the mud as I focused on them. The bearded man held his sword with only one hand, and it had a short blade, tapered in the middle like an elongated leaf. He couldn’t reach very far, but unlike him, Felus had no armor to protect himself. All he could do was dodge or try to parry—if that didn’t break his rusty blade.
The soldier struck a first blow that clanged against Felus’s sword and sent him falling on his ass. I held my breath when he scrambled away from a second blow, his hands slipping in the mud. I got the impression that the bearded man was moving slowly, almost leisurely. I gritted my teeth. Felus needed to get to his feet fast; there was no doubt his foe could do better—or worse—than that.
“Why the hell doesn’t he get up?” Nerie’s anxious hiss pierced through the noise of the crowd. He, too, watched, his hands balled in white-knuckled fists.
We both held our breath when the soldier lunged forward for the third time. Felus had barely managed to get up on one knee; he tried to raise his sword to parry, but his adversary sent it flying to the other end of the pit with a powerful swipe of his own blade. He followed with a vicious kick to Felus’s stomach before the boy could even recover. Felus curled to his side, his mouth wide, gasping for air. Blood froze in my veins when I saw the soldier flip his blade and aim it down at Felus. A scream of horror built in my throat that never made it past my lips.
“Enough!”
The cheering stopped, as if each howl now hung suspended in the air. All eyes turned to Clearchos, who walked toward Felus. “I say this one fought well,” he shouted, before asking the crowd, “What do you say?”
The voices rose like a hundred drumrolls beating in my chest, resonating in my skull. “One of us, one of us!” they chanted.
The bearded man sheathed his sword and held out his hand to Felus, who didn’t take it at first, sitting there stunned and covered in mud. But they kept chanting and he eventually let the man pull him to his feet. He looked up at the crowd, smiling. But all I could see was Leis’s lifeless body behind him. The bearded man led Felus back to the stone stairs leading out of the pit, and several men helped him up, patted his back. The mass of limbs and metal swallowed him, and I lost sight of him in the darkness. He was, after all, one of them.
Fishtail slammed his fist to his leather cuirass and shouted to the assembly of men, “My turn!”
Everybody cheered, save for a few men who shouted that he stank and that his smell would kill his adversary before his sword. I barely noticed it this time. All I knew was the metallic scent of blood, laced with that of death. Leis’s body was too far for me to actually smell him. Maybe it was just something in my nose that would stay there forever. My head hurt, and I was ready to face Fishtail just to get out of here, to escape the noise and the blood.
But it was Nerie Victrix shoved forward next.
8
Nerie turned to look at me, his green eyes wide, pleading for a salvation I was powerless to grant.
Ignoring Victrix’s glare, I mustered the courage to speak. “Just do like Felus and it’ll be all right,” I told him. But my voice was an unsteady breath and I knew it sounded like a lie.
He gave a stiff nod, as if the muscles in his neck were so taut he could barely move it, and he followed Fishtail to the center of the pit. There, under the collective roar of the men calling him a rich boy and a mollis, he picked up the sword Felus had abandoned. Clearchos was back against the wall, his arms crossed. He watched, impassive.
My fingers curled into painfully tight fists; I willed them to unfurl and focused on Fishtail instead. If I was next, I might as well figure out what I was up against. He was leaner than the bearded man, but I found there was less ease in his movements. Had I known, back then, that it was possible for a warrior to be graceful, I’d have had a word to put to the quality Fishtail seemed to be lacking. He was cocksure—for obvious reasons—and paid a lot more attention to the crowd’s jeers than to Nerie’s shaking figure. He didn’t like that they said he stank; he yelled back that he was going to show them, that he would fuck every last one of them.
He drew a sword that was longer than the bearded warrior’s and was probably heavier too, but he raised it above his head with ease. In the changing glow of the torches, he looked like the clay demons my father used to sculpt to ward off thieves from his field. Fishtail took a swing at Nerie that slashed his tunic. I felt it in my own flesh, as if the blade were branding me as well. Nerie cried out in pain as a trail of blood stained the silk, but he remained on his feet, holding the rusty sword in a shaky grip.
Fishtail extended his arms to salute the hysterical crowd. Nerie seized the opportunity. I quivered with wicked excitement when he launched himself at that bald asshole with a bestial scream. His pain and fury were mine, and I shattered from the inside when he missed. Fishtail tripped him and sent him falling face-first in the mud. Nerie’s wide, terrified eyes blinked through the dirt covering his face. He tried to roll away from Fishtail, but it was too late; a booted foot kicked him in the stomach, right where he’d been cut. His hand didn’t let go of the sword; he clung to it like to a rope.
“Get up!” My own voice surprised me, a thunderous outburst that came from m
y gut, drenched in hate. “Get up!” I shouted again, even as Fishtail inflicted a second kick on Nerie, this time in the back. He writhed in agony, crawling away in vain. Fishtail lifted his sword over his head, ready to strike the final blow. I lunged forward and my mouth opened to tell Nerie to move, to get up, to do something. Pain exploded in the right side of my face before I could. Victrix had punched me.
“Shut the fuck up!”
I staggered back in a daze, clutching my bruised cheek. All around me, the torches became blinding, swirling orbs. I mouthed, get up, get up, but the sound of my voice wouldn’t make it past my lips. I turned an imploring gaze to Clearchos. Fishtail kept kicking Nerie; he was spitting blood now, but Clearchos just watched. He wouldn’t say anything, he who was the only god here with the power to stop this.
When I had given up all hope, he unfolded his arms at last. I hung onto the movement of his scarred lips as he finally barked, “Enough!”
There it was again, the mysterious power he held over the horde. The men went quiet, and Fishtail stepped away from Nerie. Clearchos walked to the trembling heap of limbs and dirty clothes. He gazed down at the boy he had stolen from his family and knelt in the mud. He said something to Nerie then, but it was so low I couldn’t hear. After Clearchos was done, he rose again and commanded, “Get him to Gemina.”
Thurias hurried across the arena to pick him up. The sword slipped from Nerie’s bloody hands as he lay limp in Thurias’s arms, his eyes rolled back. I fought the nausea lapping at the back of my throat, certain he might be dead already. No one cheered when Thurias climbed up the steps carved in the stone wall. It didn’t escape me that, this time, Clearchos hadn’t said Nerie was one of them.
