The sacred wine granted strength, and speed, and visions. That is what the ancient faith had taught, and Hesta felt as if the world of spirit and the world of flesh were about to tear each other apart. She could not tell where one began and the other ended, and that was how she knew it was time for the final act. Her blade was keen, a larger flat knife of the butcher’s trade, designed to hack through joints and bone. The incense smoke curled upwards, spiraling in the candlelight as Hesta whispered her prayer and stood. Using lard she had rolled her hair into locks, anointing them with incense. Her skin was covered in the names of her honored dead, and her veins burned with the fire of sacred wine, while her loins thrummed with lust.
She slid from her chamber, keeping silent and watchful, not wanting any guards or slaves to see her until the moment was right. She crept through the sleeping villa, careful to remain in shadow, using her knowledge of the household to avoid the scant few guards and slaves who walked the halls. Finally she reached the lanista’s office, and as she suspected there was light shining from the bottom of the door. She took a deep breath, and walked inside the room.
Lanista Atticus Laeca was at his desk, pouring over ledgers, with the golem primus resting on a small wooden mount at the edge of the desk. The golem’s gag was no longer the strips of leather used by the centurion, but fine chains of iron and gold that wrapped around from its mouth to its head. Atticus did not notice her at first, as Hesta had made sure to rub small amounts of pig fat in the iron hinges of the door, using herbs and incense powder to mask the smell. The maenad was halfway across the room before Atticus looked up and started to rise from his seat. Before he could stand or speak Hesta slammed the cleaver down into the lanista’s forehead, burying the blade deep in his skull.
Lanista Laeca fell back into his chair, his body twitching as he made the smallest of groans, then in moments he stopped moving at all. Hesta paused for the briefest of moments, looking directly into the eyes of the dead man, and then she began quietly searching his desk for the ludus gate key. While she had the key to the cells and the noxii cages, she needed to give Drust and the gladiators the gate key. Soon she found it, and strung it around her neck. She then took the lanista’s jeweled gladius from its wall hanging, and grasped the golem primus by the chains, pulling it from its mount.
Her heart was pounding in her breast as she left the office and made her way deeper into the household. She went into the sleeping chambers of each of the guards and paid house staff. She stood over them as they slept, putting the golem primus next to their throats, then removing the gag. As the golem bit into their soft throats Hesta held her hand, wrapped in sturdy cloth, over their mouths. She’d seen what happened to men in the arena when killed by the golems, and knew that a man killed by the bite of the golem would rise again within moments. Hesta had finished using the golem on the last of nearly a dozen sleeping people when she heard the first moaning of a victim rising again as a golem. It had begun.
Hesta rushed down the stone steps to the side-entrance to the ludus, where she knew there would only be one guard. It was a full moon, so she did not need a lantern or candle to light her way, and somewhere in the back of her mind she suspected that Dionysus would have helped her see in the black regardless. She was a divine instrument on this night, and could not be halted.
The guard never had a moment to reach, as Hesta’s sword flashed in the moonlight a breath before it transfixed him. The man crumpled to the ground, and Hesta unlocked the doors. This was the moment upon which the survival of the gladiators hinged. There were six armed men in the guardhouse that served as the barrier between the gladiator pens and the ludus training area. Through a side door in the guardhouse there was an entrance to the arming room, where all of the weapons and armor for both training and arena combat were stored. If the gladiators were to have any hope of surviving the wave of carnage that was about to break upon the city, they must take that room. Even with her god’s aide, she knew better than to attack six hard men, the best of the Laeca guardsmen.
She waited, keeping her breath shallow as she used her legs to hold herself steady at the top of the hallway leading to the entrance where she’d killed the guard. Her legs were splayed out, bracing against the walls, allowing her to hoist herself towards the ceiling, so when the guards came through they would move beneath her and she would remain unnoticed. Hesta had to hope that the chaos erupting in the villa would reach the ears of the men in the guardhouse, and draw off enough of them that she could best the few who remained.
After what seemed like an eternity her legs were beginning to quake from effort, though she heard a bell toll in the distance. It was a warning bell to be sure, but was not of the pitch and keen of the bell in House Laeca. It had to be one of the villa estates nearby, the golems having already spread out from the Laeca villa. She had left the door open to help the sound carry, and the guards finally took notice. Four of the six men took up their weapons and rushed out the door and into the villa, shouting to their comrades the fate of the door guard.
As she worked her way back down to the floor she could hear the sounds of fighting outside, and knew that the golems would penetrate the ludus soon. She crouched near the entrance to the guardhouse, and then began to sprint. She ran through the guardhouse and right past the two remaining men, one dropping his shield in surprise. They both shouted and gave chase as she careened down the tight passageway into the gladiator pens. Despite the shouts and pleas of the gladiators she rushed past them and into another hallway, towards the noxii cage, only glancing back long enough to see that the two guards had recklessly followed.
Hesta reached the noxii cages and immediately began unlocking them. Thankfully the golems were possessed only of the most basic intelligence, so for a few brief moments they did not open the cages. Moving as fast as she could the maenad hefted herself upwards next to the door, with one foot upon a torch holder and one hand holding the hilt of the gladius as she plunged it into a cross beam. She used the opposing tension to hold herself steady, though immediately her limbs began to quake from the effort.
Heedless of danger and focused on their quarry the guards burst into the room, leaving just enough space for Hesta to leap down and close the door behind them. She shoved her ludus key into the crude lock and wrenched it, snapping the key in two and leaving the door jammed. She knew it wouldn’t hold for long, but it would buy her the time she needed. As she rushed back up the hallway towards the gladiator pens she could hear the hinges of the noxii cages creak as the golems within surged forward. The screams of the dying guards filled the passageway.
Hesta returned to the gladiator pens, unlocking them as she went. The maenad paused only briefly to lock eyes with Drust and smile before sprinting out the side entrance and leaving the gladiators to their fate.
THE BOAR
He had been a laborer in his village, a long time ago, in the deep forests of a land the Romans called Germania. He had been a naturally strong boy, and when he grew old enough to be named, the elders called him Heraus, after the great boars of the forest. He quickly proved his worth to the tribe, as he could do the work of several men. Heraus plowed fields for crops, cut timber for longhouses, stacked stones for cairns, and dug ditches for defense. His hands and back were never idle, and as he became a young man his bed was never cold for lack of a woman.
His world was destroyed on a cold morning in early spring. With the dawn came a runner and tales of war, his breath misting in the morning frost. The runner told the elders of a great red army marching across the world, burning the sacred trees and poaching the tribes of gold and women. A great war chief had called the tribes, and the runner had come to find brave men to join the fight.
The elders were divided in their council, though in the end it was decided that ten men must go. The men of his tribe were not unaccustomed to battle, though were as yet untested against the shield and spear of the Roman. Heraus had never seen a Roman, though he knew of them from tale and song. Small men from the
lands near the sea, who fought like devils and worshipped an iron eagle. He had never killed a man, and was just barely one himself, yet with the vigor and courage of a youth he pledged his axe.
They had set out on foot that very day, and marched for nearly two days before reaching a larger group of warriors. For the next week they marched, their numbers growing as more runners brought groups of warriors to join them. On the eve of battle their army numbered nearly two thousand men and Heraus could not imagine what foe could stand against them. Then the horns rang out, and the sound of the enemy approaching grew louder.
Three legions of Roman soldiers marched into the field before them, and Heraus began to doubt his estimation of the foe. Battle-cries were given voice, horns were blown, and the two armies collided. Heraus was near the middle of the horde of warriors, though could hear the din and chaos of the fighting ahead of him. In that moment he had felt like a child among beasts, and cursed himself for a fool at having marched this far only to die a coward. He prayed to the boar god to give him strength, even if so as to die a man, and his grip on the axe tightened.
Soon the fighting reached him, as the disciplined legionaries cut through the loose ranks of warriors, using their numbers to divide the horde into smaller groups. Heraus lashed out with his axe and grunted with surprise as it cleaved his opponent’s shield and sank into the man’s neck. Heraus pulled his axe from the dead man and used his momentum to turn and bury the weapon in the skull of a Roman directly behind him. The boar god had been listening.
Heraus marveled at his own strength, pulling his axe free and turning on the balls his feet to swipe at the feet of another foe. As the Roman toppled over, blood spurting from his severed thigh, Heraus lashed out with the blunt end of his weapon to knock over another soldier. Without pause Heraus stepped towards the fallen soldier and hacked into the man’s chest. A legionnaire lunged at the warrior with his spear, though Heraus was able to twist his torso at the last moment, and the tip only grazed his chest. The wound was minimal, but invigorating, and Heraus felt as if the world slowed to the pace of a dream. He stepped forward, past the shaft of the spear, and drove the flat top of his axe into the soldier’s face as if it were a spade into rich earth.
He felt like the heroes of the bard’s song, and screamed in exultation as he fought. Two more soldiers fell beneath his axe, then a third, then a fourth. So intent was he upon his killing that Heraus was unaware that the greater battle was lost. The Romans had successfully divided the host of warriors into smaller groups, forcing them to fight back to back, gradually boxing them in. Outnumbered and barred from escape, the warriors were faced with the choice of death or surrender.
Most of the warriors fought wildly to a bitter and bloody end, dying in their hundreds and taking as many Romans into death alongside them as they could. Some few did throw down their weapons to plea for mercy, and so were clapped in irons and led away to be slaves. Heraus noticed little, his mind only focused on the stroke and recovery of his axe. It was not until the first spear pierced his side that his momentum slowed. His hand quaked involuntarily and his axe fell to the ground. He collapsed to the ground unconscious when he tried to bend to pick it up, the multiple cuts and bruises he’d suffered finally wearing him down.
Heraus thought of that day so many years ago as he rolled his head around in order to pop his neck while he flexed his shoulders, a small ritual he’d been doing before fights since his early days in the arena. It amused him that while standing here in the catacombs, bleeding from several vicious bite wounds facing down untold numbers of golems, he was thinking of that day. The first true fight in what turned out to be a lifetime of fighting. Fitting, the thought to himself, that his aging mind wandered to his first battle even as he raised his axe to fight his last.
Hesta, the beautiful Greek slave who had once been so kind to them all, had saved them and condemned them in a single stroke. They were out of their pens and arming themselves, and yet the golems had been unleashed into the city, which meant no clean escape. In his youth Heraus had seen the wild shamans when the gods were inside them, leaping madly through fire and slaying beasts with their bare hands. He knew what that sort of divine madness looked like, and it was upon her. He knew little of the gods that were not his own, though understood that Hesta intended to make a grand sacrifice out of the city of Rome. She had given the gladiators a slim chance at escaping before they too became part of her offering.
Drust had told the men of his night with Hesta one by one, whispering to them during the day’s training. While many were jealous of her loins, all had listened to what she intended. Most of the men had come to trust her, and those few who did not trusted those who did well enough to follow. When Hesta sprinted past their cells the gladiators had yelled at the guards, spurring them onwards to their doom. Then, as Hesta unlocked their cells, the gladiators rushed for the arming room.
Heraus had chosen his axe without hesitation, and with good reason. Years ago he had awakened from the battlefield to the sight of a medicae. He was bewildered, and tried to move, only to discover that he had been strapped to the table. A Roman officer entered the room, and explained to the wounded man that his prowess and ferocity in battle was unlike anything that had been seen. Heraus found his life spared, provided that he earn that mercy in the arena.
It had been hard, at first, to find that spark that had ignited on the battlefield, and the first few fights did not go well for Heraus. Soon he had been defeated several times, spared only because typically the Roman arena crowd did not approve of executing unconscious gladiators. His ability to sustain wounds and recover from them soon became his claim to fame, and he was purchased at a discount by Lanista Felix Laeca.
“Heraus the Boar,” he had said, “that shall be your new name. If all that you are good for is bleeding and surviving, then that is what you shall do.” To his shame Heraus had said, “Yes, Dominus.”
“The Coliseum is a place of glory and honor, and you Heraus seem incapable of winning either. In the underbelly of our society there is another sort of arena, the pits of the noxii, the condemned. They say you earned mercy on the battlefield once, and have ill-used it since that time. Perhaps in the slaughter of lesser men you shall find your calling, and I shall have return.” Felix had said, before consigning Heraus to the bloodbath that resulted.
With axe in hand Heraus had joined with Drust, Agathias, and the others in the guardhouse. “The girl has left us with golems at our back and Rome at our front. It’ll be butcher’s work to get clear of the city,” Heraus stated as he fastened the chinstrap of his helmet.
“She has left us with little hope to be sure, yet we have our arms and our wits, that seems chance enough,” Agathias laughed as he hefted his spear, “even with the speed that the golem curse takes a man after death, there cannot be more than a few dozen of them out there.”
“Aye, though Hesta shall have made more by now, and those yet more, she means to wipe out Rome itself,” said Drust, “and there are the local garrisons, night patrols, and the guards of every house will be drawing sword this night.”
Agathias moved up the stairs and looked out the entrance through the small eye slot, the gladiators having already barred the door from the inside. The hinges were already straining as several of the golems hurled themselves against it over and over, most of them reanimated house guards. “A hard fight at the start if we go this way lads, I say we go with Hesta’s plan and leave through the ludus main gate,” he said as he re-joined his comrades, “We’ll likely have to kill a few of Laeca’s guards, though I imagine none of us would fail to enjoy that.”
Heraus grunted in assent, and started making his way back through the guardhouse, and out to the courtyard of the main gate. Drust crouched at his side, the other two dozen gladiators waiting behind them. There were two archers on the rooftop and two men guarding the gate itself. “We’ve strength and surprise enough to take the two at the gate, though we’ll have hell raining down on us from those archers
,” spat Heraus as he surveyed the yard. Drust nodded, and gestured back at Agathias.
The hoplomachus joined them, and followed their silent gestures to the archers on the roof. Agathias nodded and whispered, “Drust, stay with me, and hand me another spear after my first throw.”
The hoplomachus grasped his spear and boldly strode into the courtyard, followed by Drust, carrying a borrowed spear along with his own weapons. Without war cry or pretense Agathias hurled his spear upwards, the deadly missile arcing over the low roof and slamming into the belly of an archer. As the first archer crumpled, the second turned to see the hoplomachus readying himself for another throw. Agathias gracefully stepped forward and this time let out a shout as he made his second throw. The spear flew wide, missing the archer by an arm’s length, though the archer had lost his footing in an ungainly attempt to dodge, and fell backwards down the other side of the roof out of sight. Agathias looked back at Drust, who was frowning, and said “Close enough.”
Heraus and the other two dozen gladiators filed out into the courtyard, quickly creating a wall of fighters, bristling with weapons and malice. The two gate guards, both standing with swords drawn, looked at the assembled gladiators with fear. Heraus stepped forward “We are leaving through those gates boys, and little love is borne you by these good men assembled. Stand aside.”
At the sight of Heraus the Boar with more than twenty gladiators at his back, the two guards threw down their weapons and backed away from the gate. Drust strode forward and drove the point of his sword into the throat of the guard nearest him, and as the other man turned to flee the pict closed the distance in a few bounds and skewered the guard through the back. Drust turned to his comrades, face grim and blood-spattered, his voice barely above a whisper, “The picts have no word for mercy.” Drust turned and used Hesta’s gate key to turn the lock, and with the help of two other gladiators they pushed the gates of the ludus open to freedom, and golems.
Gladiators vs Zombies Page 7
