Chapter XXX
XXX
“Courage, Berit,” Adel murmured, tightening the straps of her cousin’s breastplate. She gripped her shoulders and turned Berit to face her. The girl’s blue eyes were wide in fear. “You are quick and strong.”
“Not like I was before.” Berit’s breath was as weak as the color in her face.
“I’m going to lose.” In a week under Felix’s care, the worst of her symptoms had worn off, leaving Berit pale, weak, and far slower than ever.
The outcome of today’s matches would determine which pairs would fight at the prime hours in the arena.
The better the hour, the likelier the crowds would show mercy to the fallen, even if the match was determined for a mortal end.
She thought of Felix again, of his rescue of the Gaul and Ilona.
Perhaps it was best if Berit did lose her match today.
Perhaps Jovan would call for her extermination and Felix could slip her out of the ludi. Perhaps they all should fail.
“Just . . .” There were no promises she could make. “Do not walk onto the sand already defeated. You can do this, Berit. We are all behind you.”
The girl offered a faint smile before Adel lowered the helmet onto her head. God, give her strength. Protect her. The prayers had started coming easier of late, the facade of her self-sufficiency beginning to fracture.
Adel turned Berit toward the gate to the arena where she’d meet her match from another ludus. An odd mix of anxiety and hope churned in her gut. Because her atta was alive. He was looking for her. He . . . wanted her back.
The truth of it set Adel’s heart pounding and her mind spinning with questions. What could come of this? She was a gladiatrix in the Ludus Gallicus, and her father’s most prized and valuable possession rested beneath her mattress. But to what end?
Her nerves jangled in time with the doorkeeper’s keys as he unlocked the iron gate and pushed it open with a screech.
Berit was shoved onto the cool sand of the Ludus Magnus and Adel followed her as far as the gate, watching through the bars.
Three thousand spectators filled the stands in a blaze of gaudy colors, everyone wearing their brightest clothes in celebration on the last day of Saturnalia.
The wine was strong and the air rumbled and swirled with overloud voices eager for one last day of oblivious excitement before their lives returned to normal.
The cool wind flickered on Berit’s green-skirted loincloth as she made for a specified place just off-center.
On the other half of the ring, a dimachaerus wielded double curved blades against a full-armored scissor whose arm was encased in an iron tube with a half-circle blade the size of a dinner platter attached to the end.
Berit’s gait wobbled as another gladiatrix entered from the opposite side of the ring, her yellow breastband and skirted loincloth signifying that she belonged to the Ludus Matutinus.
Cheers deafened Adel’s ears and left them ringing.
The old medicus’s words resurfaced. Can’t get rid of the barbarians soon enough . . . The sooner they are dead, the better . . .
The uneasy feeling of facing an opponent larger and more experienced sent a cool sweat prickling over her skin.
“Adel.”
The voice from her left sent a strange thrill through her.
Felix shifted the strap of a leather bag slung across his chest. “I need to speak with you.”
She shifted her weight, waiting.
He glanced over his shoulder and slipped a jar of salve out of his bag. His voice dropped just shy of a whisper. “Blandus Albus bet against you today.” He uncorked the lid and swiped a finger through the salve.
Adel’s stomach dropped, Wulfula’s taunt rushing back into her ears. “Against me? Why? I am his best—”
“It is precisely because you are his best,” Felix broke in quickly. He smeared the salve over the greening bruise on her cheek. A poor excuse for him to stand so close and speak to her. “He stands to win a sizable sum. And I’ve heard he needs it desperately.”
“They wouldn’t do that to me.” Her words came as weak as Berit’s first swing in the arena.
Felix shrugged. “I hate to believe it of them too.”
“How do they know I’ll lose? How are they so sure? I’ve lost so few times before.” A swooping dread sank her stomach. “Will they make me fight a man?” She was good, skilled, but against a man’s added muscle and larger build? She would not last.
Felix shook his head. “They will give you a new sword. This one will withstand a few blows but will collapse, shatter. Leave you with nothing.”
“How do you know?”
Remorse flickered in his eyes. “I . . . I just know.” Felix’s thumb rubbed salve in gentle circles over her cheekbone.
If he were not a medicus, she might have believed it a caress.
It was not, but there was more in his expression that he was not telling her.
She could sense the retreat, and yet the betrayal had already struck her chest like a battering ram.
Blandus Albus betting against her. Jovan helping him by plotting her fall.
Outside the holding cell, the crowd cheered.
Adel looked just in time to see the yellow-clad gladiatrix step on Berit’s prone form and angle her blade to her neck.
One down. Her heart fell. Would this mean Berit would fight in the harsher matches? Or would Jovan demand her death as he’d demanded Ilona’s?
Let it not be so.
“. You’re next.” Ignacio’s shout cut through the noise.
Felix’s fingers tightened on her face, cradling it, pulling her forehead close to his as his voice dropped to a fierce whisper. “Beat them at their own game, Adel.” His eyes drilled into her own, the granite hard and stormy. Angry, determined . . . afraid. “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
“.”
Felix released her at Ignacio’s beckon, but she held his gaze a moment longer.
“Help Berit,” she whispered, then turned toward the magister impatiently gesturing her toward the gate, her helmet tucked under his arm.
“Be careful.” Felix’s last words echoed behind her as she stepped toward Ignacio and extended her hand for the green-plumed helmet.
He settled it over her head and buckled the strap. “What did he want?”
Adel lifted a shoulder, glad that the helmet covered most of her face. “For me to promise to take care, so he has less work later.” She forced a tight laugh. “As if battles are won with caution and care.”
He huffed a wry laugh. “You face the Strix.”
Adel nodded. In past fights, theirs had been the closest matches.
If there was a gladiatrix she might lose against, it would be the Strix.
Adel had caught a glimpse of her in the opening ceremony, dressed in blue-black and silver.
The manica covering her sword arm had been fashioned in a silver likeness of an owl’s wing.
It would be heavy. But the whimsical nature of it would win the crowd’s favor. They were fickle like that.
Ignacio held her scutum as she slipped her arm through the straps and hefted it for good measure.
“For glory and the Ludus Gallicus,” he said, pressing a gladius into her hand.
The response stuck in her throat as her fingers closed around the handle, its weight unfamiliar and too light.
“This isn’t my sword.”
He pushed her toward the gate. “Of course it is,” he clipped. “It was in your spot on the rack. Double-checked it myself.”
Felix’s words ran through her head, making her heart trip into a steady racing thrum that sounded like dread. “It might have been in my spot, but this isn’t my sword.”
The screech of the gate, a blast of a trumpet, a shove from behind.
“No time. You’ll figure it out. You’re the .”
Her bare feet stumbled onto cold sand as the arena roared into full volume.
The noise clamored against her helmet, echoing and distant, overcome by the huff of her own breath bouncing back into her ears.
She lifted the gladius, the blade covered in etchings of a repeated pattern that disguised lines in the blade that the spectators would not be able to make out.
Was that where it would break? She turned her head, scanning the arena, feeling suddenly turned around.
Where was the Dacian gate? The eyeholes of her helmet offered a limited view.
The gate for the Ludus Matutinus was shut, its yellow pennant flapping in the same breeze that nipped at her green skirt.
Knees bent, she turned in a circle. The ornate red gate of the Ludus Magnus came into view: shut.
Faces bobbed between the bars—other fighters elbowing each other for a view. That meant—
Footsteps thundered behind her in the sand, nearly drowned out by the sudden roar of the crowd.
Adel spun, kicking up a cloud of sand as she did so, but it had little effect.
She threw up her scutum as a blur of blue crashed into her.
Her feet left the sand, body flying backward and meeting the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
She rolled and pushed her feet beneath her, kicking sand once again toward the Strix.
Grit crunched between her teeth as she blocked the next two swings with her shield.
The sword in her grip felt flimsy and light.
As if it truly would shatter at first impact.
At least she could defend first, block blow after blow with the scutum instead of her blade.
Because if the blade shattered, it was over.
The Dacian gladiatrix was large framed and muscular, taller than Adel by several inches and Adel was no small woman.
Two thin golden braids snaking out the bottom of her helmet whipped through the air as she spun and crashed her scutum against Adel’s, forcing her to deflect the arc of the gladius with her own.
The clash of metal reverberated up her arm.
Adel shoved the woman back and retreated several steps, knees bent as she circled, ready for the next onslaught and catching her breath in the meantime.