Arena (21 page)

With his heel Ptolemy quickly erased strange signs he’d been drawing in the dirt with an ocher-painted stick. I did not accuse him of tampering with the unicorns. I merely reported what I had discovered in the secret valley, then said, “Have you any idea of who might have visited there? Or why?”

“Bedouin slave dealers travel through these parts now and then. Perhaps they took one of the beasts to sell at an Egyptian mart, or even in Damascus.”

“If they stole one, why didn’t they take all four?”

The exact translation of his reply in Greek was, “I am not prepared to say, Cassius.”

Which either meant that he did not know, or that he did know but was literally unready to give me an answer then. For what reason, I could not decide. His gaze was blank, inscrutable. I believed that he did know something, but since the rest of the unicorns were unharmed, I decided not to press him on the point. I departed, thinking he would probably tell me in his own time if he wanted me to know.

Later that same night, I realized he was cleverer than I gave him credit for being. Yet this knowledge was imparted to me in a way that nearly cost me my life.

I was late to enter the dining hall. I had taken a long nap at sundown. All the legionnaires had eaten and gone. Only a few slaves remained, and Locusta and Quintus.

I saluted them in a perfunctory way and took my place upon the couch. A slave slipped a cup onto the ivory taboret alongside. It was strange cup, of porous gray stuff with a swirled, twisted texture.

Locusta stiffened visibly. She darted a glance at Quintus. Being rather drunk, he merely blinked.

Suspicion gnawed me.

“What is that strange drinking horn there beside you, Cassius?” Locusta demanded. She rose, to
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come nearer and examine it. By the light of smoky torches in cressets her gown showed its shabbiness. Her hair was practically white now. In the wake of my suspicion came hideous understanding. A black slave leaned down to pour wine as I answered, “Why, it looks like an ordinary cup, Locusta. Of unusual material but a cup for all that.”

Some premonition of danger narrowed her kohled eyelids. She hissed Quintus’ name. He sat up, his sword clanking against his thigh. Ruby wine streamed from the slave’s jar, fell through space in a glittering stream and dashed into the cup.

The contents of the cup began to foam.

I knew fear then. The evil stuff spilled up and over the cup’s rim, trickled down and ate into the ivory of the taboret with little smoking-acid tongues. I was watching some kind of hellish miracle, and my voice cracked.

“I know what it is, Locusta, though I don’t know where it came from. A unicorn cup. Fuming and bubbling and —”

I leaped up, overturning the couch. I pulled my dagger out from the fumes from the cup swirled around me, noxious, sickly-sweet. My voice rose to a shout.

“— and full of poison.”

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LOCUSTA CASTher eyes down and composed her face. When she glanced at me again a moment later, the jade pupils betrayed nothing. Not guilt. Not even shock. Only the restless crawl of the ringed fingers of her right hand against her thigh gave her away.

Titus Quintus was less sophisticated. He hauled out his sword. I moved back a step. The black slaves ran toward the shadowy corners of the hall.

Quintus whipped his sword down, spilling the cup end over end. The wine sank into the pores of the stone floor, smoking and burning.

Quintus glowered at me. “How long have you known?”

Locusta made a sharp gesture, bangles rattling. “Be silent! He knows nothing.”

Drink had loosened Quintus’ tongue. “He knows enough to stage this little trick to unmask us.

You stupid bitch! You went ahead without consulting me.”

“Idiot,idiot! ” Locusta spat back, still trying to dissemble. “I didn’t —”

“You poisoned his wine the way we planned but you didn’t so much as warn me! I told you I wanted to be ready when it happened.” A loose, uneasy laugh wrenched his mouth. “I can understand your difficulties with the lady, Cassius. She’s unpredictable, isn’t she?”

White-faced, Locusta struck his cheek. “Gods! You’re worse than those black lumps you drive with a whip. I put nothing in the wine. Do you understand what I’m saying? Nothing!Nothing! ”

A red fire of anger consumed me. I gestured to the spilled and smoking dregs. “It doesn’t matter, centurion. What matters is the intent. One way or another, you planned for me to die.”

“All right, we did. The suggestion, the plan, was hers.” He smiled. “I wasn’t unwilling, though.”

“What did she offer you in return? Besides the welcome of her dirty body?”

Locusta stalked me, age showing in the hundreds of tiny wrinkles on her face, and in the sagging little folds of flesh hanging along her chin. I wondered how I ever could have touched this mad slut.

She said, “Enjoy your clever jibes, Cassius. Taunt us. Call us names while you still hold the center of the stage. In another moment it’ll be taken from you.” She pointed to the glittering flat of Quintus’ sword. “By that.”

The centurion seemed to throw off his drunken lethargy. “I’ll tell you what she offered, Cassius, since it’s gone this far. The full profits of that collection of caterwauling animals outside, once you were dead. Some cosmetics, a few veils. Locusta thought she could return to Rome safely in the role of my wife. I planned to say I’d been ordered by you to deliver the animals to the Cassian School, the hour you died on a hunting expedition, of a fever. I would collect necessary shipping costs, fees and delivery expenses. We intended to live handsomely on the results of
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your labor.”

The sword lifted, flicking across my chin. I felt a warm trickle of blood run down my throat.

“Now you’ve spoiled everything, haven’t you? Well, I can’t permit you to remain alive. Carry tales to the decurion. Actually, I’ll enjoy this. You’ve treated me like filth since the day you arrived.”

He drew a breath. “Ready?”

I pulled off amulets and rings to free my dagger hand. “Ready to take you with me.”

“Do it slowly, Quintus,” Locusta whispered. “I beg you — slowly. I’ve waited so long. Endured the sickening sight of him, just awaiting this moment.”

“That’s why you came all this way with me? To kill me?”

Her green eyes laughed, mindless, mad. “Yes.”

Quintus unfastened the throat clasp of his short dress cloak. He let the garment fall. To my back I heard sibilant voices. The blacks, frightened. The centurion shouted to them in Greek.

“This is a personal quarrel. The first one of you to stir will die the way this man’s going to die.”

Pretending to glance down to brush aside the cloak which had fallen by the toe of his boot, he suddenly kicked out hard, sending the cloak flying. Its muffing folds struck me in the face.

I slashed out blindly with the dagger. He cursed, stumbled, and another dining couch crashed over. By that time I had ripped off the cloak.

I faced him, the two of us no further apart than a man is tall. Quintus lifted his sword and drove it at me again.

I didn’t dodge fast enough. The point sliced a long cut down my forearm. At once Quintus dashed in, chopping back and forth.

Lunging and ducking to avoid the blade’s crisscross sweep, I had a sideways glimpse of a legionnaire at the hall entrance. Gaping, the man was rushing forward to assist the centurion.

Locusta motioned him back. The man retreated. He took one look at the sweating faces of the Numidian slaves and fled, shouting an alarm.

Quintus’ sword slashed the air above me. Again I ducked. Again. He was puffing, but enjoying the sport.

“Can’t — you — reach me — with the — toy knife — Beast-man?”

One dagger throw might finish him, but the knife was not balanced for throwing. I leaped to a table top, then down the other side. Quintus over-extended himself. He rolled his right shoulder ahead of his body, driving the sword out straight to skewer me. I sidestepped, brought the dagger down and through his hand.

The blade cut clean through muscle above his wrist, glanced off bone and embedded in the table. Quintus gave a bellowing scream, jerking like a speared bear. By main force he tore the knife from the table by wrenching his arm. With his left hand he pulled the blade from his maimed flesh and flung it away. The knife sailed through smoky torchlight and clattered against the far wall.

Quintus’ right arm hung limp and dripping. He quickly shifted his sword to his left. With lumbering steps he rounded the table.

“No, Cassius. I have no sword arm. The other will do, against nothing.”

I raced for the wall and the dagger. He hacked down and across his torso, right to left, with terrible swiftness. The blade sliced my left calf. I tumbled and struck my face on the stones, my breath knocked out.

Pain from the hacked leg shot all through my body, almost throwing me into a faint. Feebly I tried to drag myself toward the dagger I saw gleaming in the shadows at the base of the wall.

Oaths, alarms sounded in the fort as the legionnaire summoned others to the struggle. I tried to rise. Quintus was coming up fast behind me.

I couldn’t crawl. I couldn’t reach the knife in time. A smashing weight drove me back against the stones, making my head whirl with dizziness.

Quintus knelt on me. He shoved his right knee into the small of my back once, then once more.

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He panted, “The hare’s caught. The hare’s fairly caught. Wriggle, hare. Wriggle a moment more —”

Locusta screamed, “Don’t prolong it, Quintus, Strike!”

Quintus twisted around. “I thought you preferred —”

“I prefer him dead! Kill him, Quintus.Kill him! ”

The keen of that maniacal voice concealed a rustling near the wall. Quintus pressed me down with his knee while he lifted the sword in his left hand. He touched the point gently to the base of my neck, preparing the last thrust. Then he saw the black man.

The slave had crept along the wall and scooped up my knife. He threw it quick and true. The metal rang on the stones in front of my face. I seized the shaft. The point of Quintus’ sword dug into my skin as I wrenched over and rammed the dagger up through the bottom of his chin, to the hilt.

The eyes of the centurion flew open. The sword dropped from his limp fingers. With a hysterical yell I rolled from under him, driven out of my senses by the bright blood gushing like a fountain from between his rigid lips.

I heard the blacks talking gutturally. Down a corridor, soldiers approached. The slaves swung shut the door of the great hall and dropped the bar in place, many of them smiling.

The legionnaires hammered spear butts on the thick door timbers. “Ho! Quintus? Let us in!

What’s happening in there?”

Dazed, I hunted for Locusta. She stood near the overturned unicorn’s cup. Tears made the kohl around her eyes run, streaking her cheeks with black. I said, “Now it’s your turn, sweet lady.”

She let out a scream of such unearthly fright that I froze. She screamed and kept on screaming, tearing her own hair, rending her garments.

It is an ugly thing to watch a mind die while the body lives. Her mind died then. The last light of sense flickered out in her jade eyes. She began to weep, harder and harder, and befoul herself.

The blacks grew hushed. I couldn’t bear to watch her caper there like some ghastly doll, now giggling, now shrieking the vilest obscenities. I averted my face and retched.

When I looked back, an arras behind the dining couches was fluttering. Locusta’s wailing died in the distance.

A pool of blood spread out around my right foot. I signaled to the Numidians, and said in Greek, “One of you help me stand. Help me or I can’t —”

The room revolved. The paving stones flew up against my face. Quick darkness covered me over.

A dreadful pain numbed my right leg from the hip downward. Human fingers increased the pain.

They pressed, exploring. Then they knotted something tight around my leg, bringing me fully awake with a shriek on my lips.

The hall was as before. Quintus lay open-mouthed, my dagger sticking from the underside of his jaw. All the torches had burned down. Yet the ceiling vaults were suffused with a wavering reddish glare.

The light leaped and danced. Horrified, I realized it came not from within the hall, but from outside. Outcries and sounds of struggle drifted through the slot windows, and curling smoke. A black shape bent over me, binding the calf muscle. Ptolemy.

“Be still,” he cautioned. “A moment more and we can go.”

“Go where?” I wheezed. “In Mars’ name, what’s happening outside?”

“When you killed the centurion, that was excuse enough. My people have brought forth spears long hidden in buried pits. By morning there won’t be a stone of this fort standing. There. Try to stand. If you cannot, lean on me.”

I did as he ordered. I bit down on my lip when my right leg nearly buckled. Ptolemy’s chest shone with the sweat of fear as he led me to the arras through which Locusta had vanished.

Out of one low window I glimpsed the courtyard in flames. Black shapes leaped around another
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fire built in the middle. Other slaves supported two ends of a long pole from which a legionnaire hung trussed, howling as his skin melted and fell in waxy gobs into the fire below.

“Wait, Ptolemy. Since I killed Quintus, why must we run like this? What do we have to fear?”

“Much, Cassius. Your skin is the same color as the centurion’s. What you did to him would make a great difference if my people were in the hands of the good devils. But tonight, after many years, the bad devils are loose. Tomorrow they would be sorry for torturing you to death.

But tonight, as I say, with blood lust so high, it’s not safe to stay. Now you might be safe. In an hour they may be so drunk with killing you wouldn’t have a chance.”

Unearthly shrieks ripped the air. One of the fortress towers toppled in flaming ruin. Ptolemy hurried me along a damp, dark passageway, saying, “As soon as I learned what happened in the hall, I came to help. The same way you helped me once.”