The Valiant

by Lesley Livingston

  For a moment, we were free and clear of Nyx’s wheel hub.

  “Elka!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Pick a number!”

  She grinned madly and shouted back, “Thirteen!”

  Then she drew her spear back, sighted, and threw . . .

  The gleaming slender missile shot toward us and passed through the spokes of Nyx’s chariot wheel just as if Elka were in the ludus yard with her rotating practice target. The spear spun up against the chariot undercarriage, jamming the wheel. The chariot shot upward, arcing through air like it had been unleashed from a legion catapult.

  I owe Elka a new spear, I thought.

  Nyx screamed, arms and legs flailing frantically as she sailed up and over her horses’ heads. Her chariot burst into kindling, needle-sharp splinters of wood flying everywhere, and the horses, suddenly free of their traces, bolted wildly in opposite directions. I ducked my head as Nyx landed with bone-crunching impact on her shoulder in the sand and collapsed like a child’s cloth doll.

  Aeddan eased the horses away from the swiftly nearing wall, back onto the straightaway portion of the track. We swept past the ranks of the Achillea gladiatrices, where Elka stood watching us with her mouth agape and Ajani stood behind a picket line of flaming arrows ready to be nocked. Aeddan pulled back on the reins, but I slapped his shoulder.

  I wasn’t finished yet.

  “No!” I shouted. “Make them run faster!”

  He shot me a look but let the reins slide out through his hands.

  “Ajani!” I shouted, waving my arm in the direction of where the grotesque, wicker effigies—the supposed dark, barbaric gods of Britannia—stood leering at the far end of the arena. “Pick me a target!” I shouted. “Light it up and show us the way!”

  With a wild grin, Ajani plucked one of the flaming missiles from the burning pitch trench in front of her. She drew, sighted, and loosed. And again. And again.

  In rapid succession, flaming arrows arced over the heads of our galloping chariot horses, illuminating a path like a trail of shooting stars toward the center effigy.

  “Faster!” I called.

  Aeddan gave the horses their head, and they were running full-out, necks stretched long and ears flat. Before Aeddan realized what I was doing and could reach out to stop me, I’d slipped past him and swung my legs over the low front barrier of the chariot car. Then I climbed out onto the draft pole that ran between the two horses and attached to their yolks. A fleeting image of Sorcha, balanced and flying, arms outstretched, danced across my mind. I banished it before I could imagine her falling. Before the wheels of the chariot ran right over her—

  “Fallon!” Aeddan screamed at me. “What are you doing?”

  “The Morrigan’s Flight!” I answered, reaching back to grab the two spears that rested in hooks hanging off the chariot’s sidewall.

  “You’re mad! It can’t be done—”

  “Shut up and drive!”

  I held the spears out in front of me for balance and, without letting myself overthink what I was about to do, stepped out along the pole, one foot in front of the other. I concentrated on Ajani’s path of arrows. The chariot flew over the flaming markers, and I saw them pass beneath my feet. Then Ajani fired her last shot, and it stuck not in the ground but in the leering wicker god. The effigy roiled with flame, and the arrow was followed close behind by my hard-flung spears—one through the heart, and one to a supporting leg. The whole construct buckled to one side and sank slowly to the ground, wreathed in fire, as if I’d just brought the god of the Britons to his knees. The crowd roared approval. I shifted my weight forward and flung my arms out to the sides as Aeddan eased into the turn . . .

  And like the Morrigan herself, I flew.

  The entire audience was on its feet cheering ecstatically as we did a victory lap and Aeddan guided the lathered horses to a halt near Caesar’s canopied box. I slid to the ground, wobbly legged and dizzy, and spun in a mad, careening circle, thrusting my clenched fists skyward and shouting hoarsely. Aeddan leaped from the deck of the chariot and, caught up in the mad thrill of our win, whooped with joy and threw his arms around me.

  And for a moment, it wasn’t Aeddan. It was Mael.

  The same gray eyes, the same build, his hair even smelled the same. I melted into the embrace, and his arms tightened around me. But he whispered my name, and it wasn’t Mael’s voice. I thrust Aeddan away from me with every drop of strength I still possessed. Then I cocked my armored fist back and plowed it into his face. He dropped to the arena sands, senseless, at my feet.

  And the crowd went absolutely rabid with delight.

  Victory was mine. Victory was me.

  I’d shown the mob just how Rome had conquered the wild warriors of Brittania—through fighting, allegiances, betrayals, romancing, and rebuke—and they loved me for it. The breath heaved in and out of my chest. I threw my arms wide again and turned in a slow circle, and the roar of the crowd thundered over me.

  And then, when a handsome young decurion in full ceremonial armor suddenly ran down the steps of the spectator stands, leaping the barrier into the arena to sweep me into a passionate embrace, I thought the cheers would bring the stones of the Circus Maximus tumbling down. When Cai set me back on my feet, I cocked my fist again—in jest this time—and when I didn’t punch him but kissed him, long and slow on his glorious mouth . . .

  Well.

  I’d thought that my tribe back home—that the Celts in general—were the most hopeless of all romantics. But the way to the heart of the Roman mob, it seemed, wasn’t just violence and mayhem. It was equal parts blood and roses.

  The spectators howled, “Victrix! Victrix!” at the top of their lungs. They hugged and kissed each other and rained flowers down upon us. Cai spun me around until I was so dizzy I almost toppled over. When I turned to salute Gaius Julius Caesar, he beckoned me with a languid wave of his hand. I stepped forward and bowed deeply, fist over the place where my heart would have been—if it hadn’t already been in my throat. His expression was inscrutable. The games certainly hadn’t gone the way he’d meant for them to. Not that it was my fault—not exactly—but I didn’t know how he would see it.

  Was my improvisation clever in his eyes?

  Or wildly impertinent?

  Off to one side, I saw Cleopatra grinning with sly amusement, and I could have sworn I saw her wink at me. Not far from the Aegyptian queen, I saw my sister sitting with the other lanistas and ludus owners, and her eyes shone fiercely. She didn’t even seem to mind that I’d very passionately—and very publicly—just kissed Caius Varro. After all, it had helped me win the crowd.

  I squeezed Cai’s hand, and he smiled down at me.

  Not just the plebs but all of the spectators beneath the awnings—the men dressed in purple-striped togas, the women in butterfly-brilliant stolas, glittering with jewels—were on their feet. The crowd was giddy with anticipation, waiting to see what judgment the mighty Caesar would render on the performance. Even Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, bore a tiny smile.

  None of that loosened the knot in my guts.

  Caesar’s opinion was the only one that mattered now.

  “Gladiatrix Victrix!” Caesar called out, and the arena went silent as a tomb. “Come forth.”

  I held my breath and paced slowly forward until I was standing almost right below him. Caesar raised the hand that had been hidden in the folds of his toga . . . and I saw that he held the rudis—a ceremonial wooden sword—in his fist. The symbol of freedom for every gladiator and gladiatrix. In his other hand, he held a scroll, a declaration of the monies I’d just won.

  Elka whooped for joy and pounded me on the back so hard I staggered forward a pace. And Cai was grinning ear to ear, even though—I saw it in his eyes—he thought he might be about to lose me to my home.

  But he didn’t have to worry about that. I was home.

/>   “Most mighty Caesar”—I bowed deeply, still playing to the crowd—“I humbly beseech you to gift my winnings to my noble Lanista of the Ludus Achillea. My honor is her honor—hers and my sister warriors.”

  Caesar’s eyes glittered with delight. I knew my part in our bargain, and I had my script well-learned. In the stands, I saw that my sister was on her feet, her mouth open in a silent cry of surprise. There were tears of joy streaming down her face, and it made my heart swell.

  The look on Pontius Aquila’s face, though, made my stomach clench.

  His black eyes were fixed over my shoulder, on the wreckage of Nyx’s chariot, and there was murder in his gaze. I glanced over to see Nyx climbing unsteadily to her feet, bruised, bleeding, her left arm hanging awkwardly from her shoulder socket. Aquila would rain down wrath on my former ludus-mate for her failure, I knew.

  I thought of Sorcha’s tampered-with chariot. Of the roster-fixing that had paired me with the Fury. There were a thousand ways that a man like Aquila could arrange for a spectacular arena death for his disgraced gladiatrix—or worse. An image flashed in my mind of Nyx on a marble altar in an underground vault. As much as she hated me, I wasn’t about to let that happen.

  I turned back to Caesar.

  “For myself,” I continued, before he could make any further pronouncement, “I beseech you to let me stay a gladiatrix. Your gladiatrix. To fight another day on your behalf and to continue to earn the love that the good people of Rome have shown me. I would ask instead that you grant the rudis and the freedom that goes with it to my noble rival, the gladiatrix Nyx.”

  Again, the crowd went wild with cheering.

  Aquila’s face flushed purple with rage.

  The glittering in Caesar’s gaze warmed to a gleam, and an approving smile lit his face from within. Not only had I bested my nemesis, but with that gesture, I’d bested his. He made a show of considering my request. Then he called forth Nyx, and she limped stiffly forward. Caesar presented her with the rudis, and she took it, her dark hair sweeping forward to obscure her face.

  Granted release from her contract by Caesar’s own hand, it would be unthinkable for her ever to enter into gladiatorial combat again—it would be an affront to his generosity. I fervently hoped his favor would protect her from the munera too. But when Nyx turned around, I saw just what I had done to her. She looked gutted. Hollowed out and horrified at the prospect of life beyond the walls of a ludus.

  My very first opponent, Uathach—the Fury—had thirsted for that life so desperately that she’d been willing to die for it. But I’d come to realize that freedom—real freedom—was something that could be found in the most unexpected places, even on the sands of the arena. Nyx would have to find hers elsewhere. At least she might survive long enough to look, even if she wasn’t about to thank me for that chance. Our eyes locked, and I knew in that moment that I had made an enemy out of an adversary, and I would most likely live to regret it.

  But not today.

  I looked at Elka and Ajani and all the rest of the Achillea girls.

  Today, I am Victory.

  Together, we threw back our heads and uttered the Cantii war cry.

  Today, we are Valiant.

  And I finally understood what it meant to be truly free.

  A Note from the Author

  I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN fascinated with past civilizations and with ancient Rome in particular. It’s a world of wonder—cultured, sumptuous, and brutal all at once—a place of mythic stature on par with Camelot or Atlantis.

  Historians and archaeologists have revealed many tantalizing glimpses of what life was like in ancient Rome—but there is still so much more we don’t know. The Valiant takes place in the Rome of my imagination, in the realm of “what if,” where fantasy meets history, a place where a young barbarian princess fighting for her life could conceivably come face-to-face with Julius Caesar. Or Cleopatra. If she could survive long enough.

  Over the past few decades, the existence of female gladiators in ancient Rome has been the subject of much debate among historians. While there is ample evidence of male gladiators, ancient texts and artifacts portraying female fighters in the arenas were sparse. Lost to history, the lives of these exceptional girls and women were shrouded in mystery.

  Were female gladiators a gimmick? A fad? Had they really even existed at all? In 2001, archaeologists unearthed an ancient Roman grave site of a 1,900-year-old woman that proved, virtually beyond a doubt, that female gladiators were real. And they’d most likely led lives just as dangerous and dynamic as their male counterparts—and perhaps even more controversial. The lavish contents of the burial mound hinted at the wealth of the occupant, but the grave itself was placed beyond the boundaries of the main cemetery, marking the woman as a likely outcast from society.

  Was this the lot of the gladiatrix? To live her life as both revered and reviled by the very people she fought so hard to entertain? These are the questions that inspired me to write about Fallon and her gladiator sisters—and their rivals—and the thrilling, perilous, extraordinary world in which they lived.

  Uri, vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari!

  Lesley Livingston

  “Cowards die many times before their deaths;

  The valiant never taste of death but once.”

  —William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

  Acknowledgments

  WRITING THE VALIANT has been a unique experience for me. For the first time in my career as an author, I consigned myself to writing a story where I could get my characters neither into nor out of trouble with the use of magic! Nope. This time, it was all up to them—their brains, brawn, heart, wits, and swords. Fortunately, they were up to the task. And me? I cheated. I had all the magic.

  First of all, I had Jessica Regel, my agent, who—I swear—really is some kind of wizard. She is a constant source of encouragement, inspiration, and enlightenment. To her, and the wonderful crew at Foundry Literary + Media, I owe a deep debt of gratitude.

  Next up, I had editrix extraordinaire Tiffany Liao, who wields a red pen like a wand. The book you hold in your hands would not have been conjured into being without her editorial sorcery. She is insightful, passionate, scary-smart, hilarious, and a complete joy to work with. I owe her, along with the marvelous Ben Schrank and the rest of the incredible Razorbill crew, many, many thanks—on behalf of me and my fiesty gladiatrix.

  North of the border, that debt of gratitude extends to Hadley Dyer, who was one of the very first people to believe in the idea of this story and who laid the groundwork to make sure that it would happen. Thanks also to Suzanne Sutherland and the wondrous folks at HarperCollins Canada for taking such good care of me and always having my back.

  Much appreciation goes out to Elyse Marshall and Melissa Zilberberg, my fantastic publicists, for going out into the world and championing this book in so many wonderful ways.

  Love and gratitude to my family, especially my mom and brother—thank you for your enduring patience and unflagging support. Every. Single. Time.

  And most of all, to John. You’re my sword and shield. I couldn’t do this without you.

  Finally, I want to send up a battle cry to my War Band of book bloggers, a fantastic group of ladies who read an early draft of the manuscript and responded with such fiery enthusiasm for this story and these characters—I would stand together with you all in the arena any day!

  Uri, vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari!

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