The Valiant

by Lesley Livingston

  The room was long and narrow. In the far corner, at the opposite end from where we stood, I could see a brazier glowing, but it did little to illuminate the figure that sat hunched and wrapped in a cloak on a low couch. I glanced at Sorcha, who put a firm hand on my shoulder and walked me forward.

  “My lord?” she called out softly as we approached.

  The figure didn’t move.

  “My lord?” she called out again, louder this time. “Arviragus?”

  Arviragus? I thought. No. No—that can’t be him!

  But it was.

  The man the Romans had called Vercingetorix—the godlike chieftain of the Arverni—who’d come within a handsbreadth of beating Julius Caesar himself, sat with his arms resting on his knees, long hands hanging limply in front of him. He stared into the fire, and there wasn’t even a flicker in his eyes to indicate he knew we were there.

  “They used to keep him in the Tullianum,” Sorcha said in a low murmur. “It’s a prison here in Rome, a dreadful subterranean place. But when it started to look as though he might actually die there, they moved him to this place. A cage with some comforts, but still a cage.”

  “Why keep him alive all these years?” I whispered.

  “Because there hasn’t been a proper Triumph since Alesia.”

  “But why didn’t Caesar just kill him there? On the battlefield?”

  “Because Caesar is a shrewd conquering hero,” she said. “And Alesia is very far away from Rome. Remember what your fight masters have told you, Fallon—it’s what you’ve been training for all these weeks. The mob loves spectacle above all else. And Caesar plans to give them exactly that. He’s kept his greatest adversary alive so that, when the time came for his Triumphs, he could parade Arviragus in front of the plebs to show the people how fearsome the Arverni chief was. To remind them why they need Caesar to lead and protect them.”

  I glanced back toward the corner. “He doesn’t look very fearsome.”

  “He will. They will dress Arviragus up and chain him to a stake. They’ll probably get him good and roaring drunk, and then they’ll trot him through the town on a cart decked with the spoils of war and the shields of the fallen.”

  “And then?”

  “Then they’ll take him to the prison and strangle him, out of sight, where no one needs to see him die like an animal.”

  Those words struck me like a physical blow. I had grown up worshipping the handsome, fiery Arviragus. He’d been my hero almost as much as Sorcha, and to see him as he was now, with the fire leeched from his soul . . .

  “Caesar asked me to come here to visit him,” Sorcha murmured to me. “As a comfort—someone who knew him as he was, someone to talk to—and so I’ve come every few months for the last four years,” she said. “Sometimes we talk. Mostly he sits there silently and drinks.”

  “Why would Caesar ask you to do that?” I asked.

  “To remind me that he could have done the same to me—or to Father—if he’d so desired. That he still could.”

  I glanced at her, but her eyes were fixed on the figure by the fire.

  “But I also think he grew to admire Arviragus,” she said. “Even as he sought to destroy him. My visits are a small mercy, though. Sometimes I wonder if my presence makes it better for him or worse.” She tightened her grip on my shoulder. “Come now. Greet the king.”

  The closer we got, the heavier the stink of stale wine. Sorcha crouched down in front of Arviragus and took his hands gently in her own.

  “I’ve brought someone to see you, lord,” she said softly. “You knew her when she was a little girl. You taught her swordplay, like you taught me.”

  He blinked, just a little, and his gaze searched the darkness in front of him until it found my sister’s face. “Did I?” he muttered, half to himself. “Did I?”

  I nodded. “In Durovernum, when I was small.”

  His eyes shifted, blinking and bleary, to focus on me.

  “Bright little thing,” he murmured.

  He beckoned me closer with a clumsy wave, and I knelt before him. His breath was foul, but I could still see—in the angles of his face beneath the tangle of overgrown beard—the hero I’d worshipped as a child.

  He squinted at me. “Fallon . . . ?”

  I tried to smile at him. “That’s right.”

  “She is a gladiatrix now,” Sorcha said.

  “Gladiatrix . . .” Arviragus murmured again. He lifted a shaking hand to my cheek. “I’m so sorry, bright little thing.”

  “For what, lord?” I asked, my voice small and lost in the dim air.

  His words caught in his throat as he answered. “For not making the world a place where you could choose to fight for yourself.”

  I glanced at Sorcha, who bit her lip and looked away.

  “But you did,” I said, turning back to the Arverni king and remembering when he was a prince—and my hero. “When I was little, you didn’t just teach me how to hold a sword. You taught me that the fight is in here.” I put a hand on my heart, my voice growing stronger. “And that it was up to me to decide how and when to use it. I saw what was left of Alesia. When you surrendered to Caesar, it was because there was nothing left to fight for. But the fight itself was more important than the loss. You will be remembered as a hero, my lord. And that is at least as important as being one.”

  Tears spilled from his eyes, and before I could say anything else, he pulled me to his chest, wrapping me in a fierce embrace. When he pushed me away, finally, it seemed as though the tears had washed away some of the fog from his gaze.

  “Talk to me, Fallon,” he said. “It has been so long. Tell me of yourself.”

  Sorcha retreated to the far end of the room with the guard, leaving us alone for a little while. Arviragus was lucid for most of our conversation—which surprised me, considering the amount of wine he imbibed even in that short time. He asked me how I had come to be in Rome. His eyes flicked over to Sorcha when I told him I was now owned by the Ludus Achillea, but he didn’t say anything. I didn’t belabor the point. Sorcha was the only friend he’d had in his captivity, and I wasn’t about to air my resentment in front of him.

  When he asked me about the upcoming circuit, I felt the heat of shame creep into my cheeks. The girls of the Ludus Achillea would be competing for a lead role in the Triumphs—the very same celebrations that would see Arviragus paraded through the streets of Rome to be put to death. But the Arverni king was a strategist first and foremost, and he brushed aside talk of his own impending fate to counsel me on mine.

  “A role like that’ll carry a hefty purse if you win,” he grunted thoughtfully, scratching at his beard.

  “I don’t care about the money!” I scoffed.

  “Eh?” Arviragus peered at me through bloodshot eyes. “Why not? Everybody else in the Republic does.”

  “I have my honor.” I lifted my chin. “I won’t dress up as some silly spirit of Victory and fight for Caesar like a trained ape.”

  “I would.”

  I gaped at him.

  “I’ve learned a few things over the years, Fallon,” he said. “I told you I was sorry about the world I left behind when I surrendered to Caesar, and I am. You say there was nothing more for me to fight for, and you were right. But you can’t change the ways of the world if you’re no longer a part of it.”

  I frowned.

  “In your case, money makes you a part of it,” he explained with a grin. “The favor of Caesar makes you a bigger part of it. The ability to one day rid yourself of that collar and all it stands for makes you a force to be reckoned with. Think about that, Fallon. Be an idealist, by all means, but be a pragmatic one.”

  “You think I should fight for Caesar?”

  “I think you should fight for yourself,” he said. “But those things needn’t be exclusive. Temper passion with control, convictio
n with cunning. Win, Fallon, the way I didn’t.”

  His fingers fumbled as he reached for the wine jug, almost spilling it. I took it from him and poured another measure into his cup. He nodded his thanks and drank deeply.

  “In the arena,” he continued, “it won’t be enough just to fight your best. It’s never enough to simply win the battle. What you have to win is their hearts. Caesar’s heart. Charm them, beguile them, seduce the mob. That will make him fall in love with you. Because unless Caesar loves you, you cannot truly claim Victory.”

  I heard the sound of someone discreetly clearing her throat, and I looked up to see that Sorcha had returned. She nodded toward the door. Arviragus grunted, tossing the rest of the wine down his throat in one gulp, and waved for me to go with her. My heart hurt at the thought of never seeing him alive again. As I turned to leave, he called out to me one last time.

  “Be brave, gladiatrix,” he said. “And be wary. Bright things beget treachery. Beautiful things breed envy. Once you win Caesar’s love, you’ll earn his enemies’ hate.”

  “The Morrigan keep you, Arviragus,” I said.

  He laughed at that. “She won’t have much choice, soon.”

  • • •

  As Kronos drove me and Sorcha back to the Ludus Achillea, I watched the six new chariot horses trotting behind us down the road, tethered on a line. They seemed to me to be creatures that embodied the perfect balance between spirited and obedient. Passion and control, like Arviragus had said.

  I turned to Sorcha. “Why did you take me to see him?”

  “To show you why I did what I did,” she said. “To help you understand why I came here to Rome and fought for Caesar and never went home again.”

  “You did it because of Arviragus?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I did it because of Father. And you.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I wasn’t captured, Fallon!” Sorcha exclaimed.

  Of course she was captured. My sister wouldn’t have surrendered. Ever.

  She sighed.

  “When I left Durovernum for the last time,” she continued, “I knew I wouldn’t ever go back. I had Olun cast the auguries for my fortune, and they told me so, unequivocally. I thought it was because I would die in battle, but that wasn’t it. There was a battle, to be sure. It began that evening and carried on into the night, and Caesar saw me fighting in the field. He discovered who I was and understood why I was there: to free Father.”

  “I always thought I would one day die on a battlefield because Olun told me that I would share the same fate as you!” I said. “I thought you lost the fight, Sorcha. We all did. We thought you were dead and that Caesar only decided to release Virico after the other Prydain kings sued for peace.”

  “That’s what he wanted you to believe.” A thin, crooked grin bent her mouth. “But the truth was that Caesar had already agreed to release Virico long before.”

  “Why would he ever do that?” I scoffed.

  “Caesar had sent a message to me secretly,” she said. “He is a brilliant commander in the field, but he’s also a shrewd opportunist in his civilian life. He already owned massive stables of gladiators and made rich sums of money off them. That night, when he saw me, a woman of the Cantii fighting on the battlefield as fiercely as any man, he saw the opportunity to birth a new phenomenon: female gladiators.”

  I didn’t know why my sister ever would have agreed to such a thing.

  “We made a deal, Fallon,” Sorcha said, sensing my unasked question. “My life for Virico’s. My servitude for his freedom. Virico would live—and live free—and you would grow up with our father there for you.” She nodded down the lane toward Arviragus’s prison. “You see what captivity does to the soul of a man like that. I couldn’t let that happen to Father, so I made a deal with a demon. I’d do it again.”

  She lapsed into silence. For the rest of the journey back to the ludus, I thought about Arviragus and Virico and the sacrifices my sister had made—and continued to make—for me. Was it possible I had been so wrong about my own sister? I needed to find a way to make amends.

  On my way to my barracks cell, I cut across the deserted practice yard of the place that had somehow become my home. As I reached the center of the sand circle, I felt a strange, dizzying sensation and heard the sound of wings beating overhead.

  I looked up, and the sky was clear. Empty.

  But in my mind, a throaty voice whispered, “Daughter” and “Victory.”

  I felt my cheeks flush.

  “Freedom.” I’d begun to worry that the Morrigan had turned her favor from me. But her voice in my head told me she was still with me, and it seemed she had a message—one that I finally understood.

  Arviragus had been right: The role of Victory carried with it the promise of a substantial purse, but it had never even occurred to me that I would find a pure use for filthy Roman sestersii.

  Sorcha had taken me to see the Arverni king so that she could show me one truth. But the Morrigan, I suspected, had sent me there so that Arviragus could teach me another. The hazy fog of an idea began to take solid shape in my mind. There was a chance, however slim, that I could redeem myself in the eyes of the goddess and my sister and make something worthwhile out of the whole great mess I had made for myself.

  I remembered how Sorcha had bargained with Julius Caesar, and I thought that maybe—just maybe—there was more than one way to deal with a demon.

  XXIII

  THE DAY BEFORE we were due to begin the journey that would take us to our first destination on the circuit tour, Kronos knocked on the door of my quarters and told me that I had a visitor waiting for me in the small garden courtyard. Before I could ask him who it was, he’d gone. But I could think of only one person it might be.

  Caius.

  As much as my heart skipped a beat at the mere thought, I wasn’t sure I was up to another argument with him, and so I almost didn’t go. But I did, and when I stepped into the cool tree-shaded yard, I was surprised to see that my visitor wasn’t Cai but Charon the slave trader.

  To say I was surprised would have been an understatement.

  My former captor, the man who’d stolen me from my home and then sold me into slavery, sat on a marble bench beneath the branches of a fig tree, carving one of the ripe purple fruits into slices. He popped a slice into his mouth and stood when I approached, a smile lighting his face. He cut another slice of fig and wordlessly offered it to me on the blade of the knife.

  I took it and sat on the bench facing him.

  “Gladiatrix,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  I regarded the slave master coolly. “Is it?”

  He laughed softly. “You are her very mirror, Fallon.”

  “Whose?”

  “Your sister. Sorcha.” He reached for another fig from a low-hanging bough. “She was extraordinary in her arena days, and I understand you’re following closely in her footsteps.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Caius Varro. Your sparring partner.” Charon grinned at me. “His father, the senator, entertained me at his domus in the capital two nights ago. I politely inquired as to why the lad was wincing with every breath.”

  “I see.” I bit into the sweet flesh of the fig and tried to keep my expression neutral.

  “He seems to believe that you’re not very happy with him at the moment,” he said. “Pity, seeing as how Caius just received orders that he’s to escort Caesar’s gladiatrix corps on the circuit tour. You’re going to be seeing a lot of each other.”

  There was that skip of my heartbeat again.

  “I have something for you, gladiatrix.” Charon reached under the bench and hauled out a large wooden box. “I know the Lady Achillea gifted you with dimachaeri swords—”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “One of which she got from y
ou, yes.”

  “But I also know that you haven’t the means to equip yourself with anything else.” He glanced at me as he lifted the box onto the bench between us, and his dark eyes glittered. “On the circuit, you’ll be fighting against other gladiatrices who’ve already won purses—enough in some cases to kit themselves out head to toe with the best weapons and armor money can buy.”

  I frowned. It was true. In my time training for the games at the ludus, it had been made abundantly clear to me that skill was one thing. Showmanship was another. I could fight like the goddess Minerva and perform with all the flourish of the bull-vaulting acrobats I’d heard tales of, but if I didn’t look the part, I wouldn’t win the crowd. And winning the crowd had become a fierce motivator for me, ever since my visit with Arviragus. I remembered the king’s words. It wasn’t enough to simply win the fight; I had to win their hearts.

  I glanced down at the crude leather wrist bracers I’d crafted for myself.

  “I don’t need charity,” I muttered.

  “Not charity, patronage.” Charon lifted the lid from the box. “My patronage.”

  He smiled and handed me a set of greaves—bronze shin guards—that were beautiful and made for someone just my size. But that wasn’t all. The greaves were matched with a pair of bronze wrist bracers, again sized for my wrists. But the real surprise came when Charon drew forth a magnificent breastplate, embossed with subtle patterns that echoed the knotted, swirling designs of my own tribe. It was studded with bronze fittings in the same style as the greaves and bracers.

  I couldn’t contain the gasp of delight that escaped my lips as I reached out and took the breastplate from his hands. My pride warred with my gratitude—and my relief—but only for a moment. Wearing such a thing, I would rival not just Minerva but the Morrigan herself! I held it up in front of me and was surprised to find that it looked as though it would fit me like a second skin.

  I looked up at Charon from under raised eyebrows.