The raptors stopped halfway down before hesitating in their descent. In that brief moment, the four remaining raptors stared at him. Another stone hummed by, missing the closest raptor by a hair’s breadth and making it hiss in surprise. Then, as if by some unspoken signal, they turned tail and descended in leaps and bounds, voicing their displeasure in a series of caws and hoots.
‘That’s right,’ Cade called after them, though his voice was little more than a croak now. ‘You better run.’
He dared not take his eyes off them, waving the sword threateningly until they disappeared into the undergrowth. Within moments, all that was left was the alpha’s body, blood pooling around it on the ancient steps.
Relief flooded through him and he sat down on the stair, his blade clattering beside him.
Only then did he allow himself to look for his saviour. It was dark now, but the red moon was full and cast a wan, red-orange light over the world, coupled with the silver glow of its white satellite.
Enough to see the bottom level … and a shrouded figure there, crouched upon the pyramid’s edge. He could see only that the figure was a person, their face turned up at him, pale in the moonlight. Even as he watched, his new ally scrambled down to the ground before haring away on a white, spindly legs.
‘Wait,’ Cade rasped. ‘Come back!’
But it was no use. And there was no way Cade would catch up, not with his injured legs. Instead, he scrambled back up the stairs and hurried to the far edge of the crumbling top. Beyond, he could finally see the city of Hueitapalan, revealed in all its glory in the moonlight.
Ziggurats and other structures were scattered like game pieces along a wide, paved plaza, with stone pillars and arches lining the cobbled streets. Already, nature had made inroads into the city, with saplings growing throughout, and vines and ivy coating the buildings like drizzled green icing.
Cade peered out over the scene, keeping his body pressed against the pyramid’s stone top, poking only his head over the parapet. He was just in time to see his saviour disappear into the nearest structure, a stone palace complex with a large, cave-like entrance at its base.
‘So that’s where you’re hiding,’ Cade whispered.
He crawled to the edge of the stairs again and saved his injured legs some pain by making his way down like a toddler, bumping his buttocks along each one until his backside was bruised and he had made it to the bottom. Every second he expected to see the raptors burst out of the jungle for him, but it seemed luck was on his side and the predators had gone in search of easier prey.
Still, Cade didn’t feel like hanging around. He could smell the alpha’s blood, a sharp, metallic tang that almost left a taste in the air. Raptors were by no means the worst predators that inhabited the jungle, and he was sure that, before long, new creatures would arrive to feast on the dead alpha’s remains.
No, he needed to get away from here.
For a moment he considered the bag of swords, but decided against trying to take them, instead sheathing his own blade and continuing on. He was feeling lightheaded now. The blood in his boots squelched as he struggled to his feet and limped for the next pyramid. Each step left him dizzied, and twice he fell.
He gripped at the grass poking between the cobbles, hauling himself forward. Strength leaving him, he was reduced to a half crawl, half stagger, until the murky entrance to the complex loomed above him.
‘Hey,’ Cade bellowed into the darkness.
The sound of footsteps echoed ahead, then stopped. He was being watched.
Cade dragged himself to the wall and dragged himself to his feet, digging his fingernails into the crumbling mortar. The world spun as he steadied himself, then headed deeper inside.
He managed no more than a half dozen steps before he fell again. Surrounded by gloom, he could only prop his back against the wall. The Codex hung above him, its lens watching him impassively.
03:23:11:08
03:23:11:07
03:23:11:06
‘You’re gonna save me, then leave me to die?’ Cade moaned, his head lolling to the side. He was fading fast, though whether from shock, dehydration or blood loss he couldn’t tell.
There was a tug on his boots. Then Cade was yanked forward, dragged deeper into the blackness. Time seemed to slip by as stone scraped against his back, his arms trailing behind him. He felt himself turn one corner, then another, too weak to fight back.
As they turned again, flickering light cast the walls in a wan glow. Ancient carvings flashed there, the scenes playing out like a tapestry. Warriors in feathered headdresses clashing, clubs and spears raised high. Monstrous animal-headed gods watching from above. And the telltale square hieroglyphs beneath, telling the story of it all.
In another lifetime, Cade would have given anything to see such historical wonders. Instead, he gagged as nausea overcame him, the edges of his vision darkening as he held on to consciousness by his fingertips.
Were these to be his last moments?
He felt himself lifted from the ground, heard the grunt of his rescuer struggling with his weight. He was laid down on something soft.
‘Beebay,’ a voice whispered.
Beebay? Something was pressed to his lips, and cool water dribbled into his mouth. Cade sucked thirstily, gulping it down until the drink was taken away. It seemed almost instantly that strength returned to him, or at least enough to sit up.
He was lying on a stone plinth, padded by a fur covering. At his feet, a hooded figure was picking at his boots, struggling with the knots.
Cade leaned forward and unlaced them, then winced as each boot was tugged off, one by one, followed by his socks. A shrouded face flashed up at him, nodding in thanks.
Only now did Cade look at his wounds. There were jagged bite marks, worse in the right leg he had proffered the raptor than the left one it had bitten before. They were caked in blood, but to Cade’s relief, the bleeding seemed to have mostly stopped. The wounds were more superficial than he had first thought, though his socks were soaked red.
‘Thanks,’ Cade said. The figure didn’t look up.
Water was poured over the injuries from a flask, running red as the crusted blood dissolved and set the wounds oozing once more. Next, his rescuer reached into a fur bag, hanging by a strap in the corner of the room, and returned clutching a fistful of what looked like honeycomb, complete with pearly white larvae inside. Holding it above the wounds, the figure carefully trickled the warm, golden liquid into Cade’s cuts. It burned like hell, but Cade knew that honey had been used as an antiseptic for centuries.
Indeed, Cade remembered it was so effective that honey was the only food in the world that didn’t have an expiration date. Even jars found in millennia-old Egyptian tombs had contained perfectly edible honey.
His mind was reeling, darting from one inane thought to another. It made him feel a little sick to smell the sweet, cloying liquid rubbed into his cuts by the figure’s hands.
Even as Cade opened his mouth to speak again, his saviour ducked away, this time returning with an amphora, its top corked. Cade’s interest was piqued. He was desperately thirsty, and he dreamed of cool ice water.
But when the figure opened it and gently shook its contents into their hands, it was not water that came out … but ants.
Or rather, one ant. The hooded figure quickly stoppered the jar and gripped the insect beneath its head. Then they moved to place it on Cade’s leg.
‘Hey!’ Cade yelled, jerking away. ‘What are you doing?’
Eyes glanced up, filled with annoyance, and Cade was startled to see a young man’s face. One eye was a pale blue, contrasting sharply with his olive skin, while the other was a dark brown. A calming hand was laid on his leg. The message was clear. Stay still.
Cade relaxed, and watched as the fingers squeezed and manipulated the ant until its mandibles opened. Then he pressed the sides of Cade’s largest wound together and lowered the ant. Cade winced as the mandibles dug in, suturing the skin togeth
er like a staple. Then the boy squeezed and twisted the thorax away, leaving the ant’s head in his leg.
It wasn’t pretty, comfortable … or sanitary, for that matter, but the wound’s oozing had stopped. The boy picked up the jar again, and Cade lay back, letting him get to work. After ten minutes of repeating the procedure, his rescuer finally stopped. His legs were clean of blood, with the half-circle of bite marks held closed with the black beads that were the ants’ heads.
Now, as the boy stood back and admired his handywork, Cade could finally get a good look at him.
He was perhaps a year or two older than Cade. Skinny as a rake and short too, he cut a diminutive figure. His hooded cloak was made from a patchwork quilt of furs and leathers, and beneath he wore a tunic that might once have been red, but was now faded brown and covered in mud and filth.
Perhaps most unusual was his hair. A white stripe ran across his matted fringe in a single streak. Cade might have thought it dyed were it not for their circumstances. That and the boy’s eyes. They were wide set, unusually so. There was a genetic condition of some kind at work here, but Cade couldn’t name it. Not that it mattered. He was immensely grateful to this person, who was now wrapping his legs in a damp, yellowed cloth.
Once that was done, the boy sat on the edge of Cade’s plinth. Only now did Cade guess that it was a sacrificial altar. There was some irony here, but he was too tired to work out what it was.
‘Thank you,’ Cade said, clasping the boy’s hands with his own. ‘I’m Cade. What’s your name?’
The boy stared at him blankly and shook his head. Cade realised he probably didn’t speak English. He tried again, pressing his hands to his chest.
‘Cade,’ he said.
The boy smiled, his eyes lighting up in recognition. He repeated the gesture.
‘Quintus.’
Cade’s heart began to beat faster. Because he recognised the name. Recognised it from his old Latin textbooks and the historical fiction he had grown up reading. Quintus. The name was Roman.
TWENTY-FIVE
Quintus was not a talkative sort. Now that Cade knew the boy was Roman, he realised ‘beebay’ was actually bibe, or ‘drink’ in Latin. But when Cade tried to engage him in conversation with his own rudimentary attempts at the language, the boy simply shook his head and wandered over to a pile of stone slabs, which he was using as a makeshift table.
Upon it, Cade could see dried strips of some form of jerky. His back facing Cade, Quintus set about eating them, the sound of chewing permeating the small space.
In his famished state, Cade could smell the gamey meat from across the chamber. His mouth flooded with saliva, and his stomach cramped with fresh hunger pangs.
‘Hey, can I get some of that?’ Cade asked.
Nothing.
Sighing, Cade looked around the chamber and was glad to see the Codex hovering above him. For some reason, Quintus had not seemed surprised by its presence. Cade was beginning to suspect the boy came from the Keep. Luckily, he knew how to confirm his theory. He turned to the Codex.
03:22:52:13
03:22:52:12
03:22:52:11
‘Who is this, Codex?’ Cade asked.
‘All records of this individual’s name have been lost or destroyed,’ the Codex said in its dull voice. ‘But this remnant was a member of Legio IX Hispana, which disappeared from record in 108 AD, or 120 AD, depending on scholarly interpretation.’
Now they were getting somewhere. Cade felt his heart quicken, remembering the vigorous debates he’d had with his father over the fate of the missing legion. Here, the answer sat right in front of him.
But what was Quintus doing in this place?
It was hard to say what the chamber’s purpose had once been, but there were holes in the ceiling where light might have filtered in had it been daytime.
The entrance was a low passageway, while the contents of the room itself showed signs of an attempt to make it homey. A few furs along the floor, bright feathers dangling like fairy lights from the ceiling. A small bowl made from an animal skull contained a burning wick and a pool of animal fat within, and cast a glow to the space.
The room was almost as small as a college dorm room, and clearly the sacrificial altar did not belong here. He suspected this was a storage space, nothing more. Quintus had likely chosen it due to its low and easily defended entrance, and its distance from the outside. Cade noticed a smaller stone slab that Quintus must have been using to block the passage when he slept.
There were also weapons here. A short-sword, one that Cade recognised as a Roman gladius, and a slingshot. Not the Y-shaped slingshot kind used by kids in comic books, but the slings that had been used in ancient warfare – a rope with a loop for the finger on one end, a leather pouch to hold the pebble in the centre and a loose end on the other side. The weapon would be held at both ends, whipped over the head and the rope released, sending the projectile flying. A simple enough weapon, but an effective one.
Clearly the young man was good with it. Good enough to hunt down meat, if the gutted, bipedal, lizard-like dinosaurs hanging from a nearby drying rack were any indication. Curious, Cade asked the Codex what the creatures were. The room flashed blue as it scanned them.
‘Compsognathus is a genus of small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod, which lived approximately 157 million years ago,’ the Codex said. ‘It was first discovered in 1849 by—’
‘That’s enough,’ Cade said. ‘Less information from now on, OK?’
He recognised the name from the dinosaur picture books he had read as a child. Compies, the book had called them.
Strange. The carnosaur beneath his tree earlier was a relative of a dinosaur that existed 75 million years ago. Yet here they both were. Not to mention a Roman and a modern-day teen. If there was some explanation for this, Cade didn’t know it.
His stomach twinged again.
‘Hey,’ Cade said, suddenly desperate. ‘I’ll trade you for it, OK? Got a bag of swords not too far from here.’
Still no reaction, only the sound of the boy chewing.
‘Hello?’ Cade said, louder this time. ‘Can you hear me?’
More chewing.
‘Hey!’ Cade yelled. He winced, rubbing his dry throat.
Quintus stopped and cocked his head. He turned around, his eyes curious.
‘It’s rude to ignore people, you know,’ Cade muttered.
Quintus shrugged apologetically and pointed to his ears, one after the other. Then he shook his head.
‘Oh,’ Cade said, feeling embarrassed. ‘You’re deaf.’
So. Communication would probably be challenging, if the language barrier wasn’t already a problem. He motioned to the food and mimed eating it.
Quintus smacked his head, embarrassed, and handed some of the strips over. Cade unceremoniously stuffed them into his mouth. It was a chewy, gamey mass, but in his starved state it tasted like ambrosia. He gulped it down and rubbed his belly, showing his appreciation.
Quintus grinned, then took a seat on the table and examined Cade’s clothes with an inquisitive eye. Cade did the same, and somehow it did not seem strange as the pair looked each other over, trying to determine where the other came from. Or was that when?
The Roman’s eyes lit up all of a sudden, and he turned and went to the corner of the room. There was an animal skin there, much like the others that decorated the room. But this one had been fashioned into a crude poncho, with a deep hood and enough of a cloak to reach his lower back, the front clasped by wooden toggles.
Quintus held it out, and Cade took it with a grateful nod and a smile. He only wished he had something to give the boy in return, but the young legionary seemed happy enough as Cade threw it around his shoulders and pulled the hood over his head. It was warm, with the fur turned inside to tickle his ears.
‘Thank you,’ Cade said.
Clearly, Quintus did not think his clothing suitable attire for the relative chill of the planet’s night.
&n
bsp; Again, the two stared at one another.
‘Why did you leave the Keep?’ Cade murmured, scratching his chin. ‘There was food there, and it was a hell of a lot safer than here. Unless the game was worse, of course.’
Quintus watched Cade’s lips as they moved, then shrugged. Could he lip read? Not in English, but perhaps … Latin.
Cade tried again, this time in his half-remembered pidgin Latin.
‘Where do you come from?’
Quintus replied, but Cade struggled to understand the words. There were flashes of understandable Latin, but whether it was an accent, slang, dialect, a speech impediment from his disability or some combination of all four, a lot of it was indecipherable to him. The Codex hovered above, and Cade had a flash of inspiration.
‘Codex, can you translate what he is saying into English?’
‘Yes.’
Jackpot. ‘Please do so.’
‘Sure.’
Cade grinned. It was getting better at speaking to him.
The Codex floated closer to him, until it hung by his ear. It was likely not the first time it had done this – who knew how long the Romans had used it before Cade had come along.
Elated, he motioned at Quintus to speak again. The boy rolled his eyes and repeated what he had said before. This time, the Codex spoke quietly as the boy was talking.
‘You wouldn’t be the first to not understand me.’
Cade nodded, but of course Quintus had not heard the Codex speak. Cade gave him a thumbs up and pointed at his ear and the Codex, as if to say he understood. Quintus perked up at that and spoke again.
‘You understand?’
Cade nodded.
‘My prayers have been answered. Perhaps Jupiter is not as deaf as I am.’
Cade tried his question again.
‘Where do you come from?’
The answer came quickly this time.
Contender: The Chosen: Book 1 Page 13
