They could choke on the blood we would spill for all I cared.
As the sun began, finally, to sink over the far distant hills, painting the arena purple with dusk, hundreds of torches flared to life. The roars of the crowd were like the gales of a summer storm, thundering in waves across the fields to slam into the walls of the ludus and roll back again over the makeshift stands. The sloping hills that cradled the lake on either side gathered the noise and echoed with the roars of “Victrix! Victrix!” making it seem as though the crowds of spectators were even larger than when I’d fought during the Triumphs in the Circus Maximus.
Their cries shook my bones.
Even as my sister walked out onto that field of combat in my place.
Dressed in my Victrix armor.
XVII
I LAY IN the bottom of a boat, drifting across the silent water of Lake Sabatinus, half a mile away from the Ludus Achillea, listening to the faint dull roar of the crowds. I reached over, searching for Cai’s hand. His fingers, long and strong and calloused, tightened on mine, and he flicked a glance toward me, his clear hazel eyes glinting in the starlit darkness. The sun had long set, but there were so many torches burning in the makeshift arena in front of the ludus that the sky in the southwest seemed lit on fire.
Still, I was grateful that it was the night before the new moon. The overarching darkness would make it easier for Sorcha, wearing my Victory helmet, to pass as me. And with any luck, it would also serve to help us infiltrate the Ludus Achillea from the lakeward side.
It has been Arviragus’s strategy—one that he’d suggested to me when I’d told him back on Corsica about my idea to retake the ludus. Something learned from his time battling Julius Caesar in the forests of Gaul: Never commit all your forces to only one front of attack. As strategies went, it certainly wasn’t groundbreaking in its innovation. But then again, Pontius Aquila was no soldier, and I could only hope that he didn’t have the necessary strategic instincts to become one. With the massive spectacle we’d orchestrated in front of the ludus, I was counting—hoping, praying—on him having committed all, or at least most, of his defensive elements to dealing with the roaring tigers clawing at his front gate.
Leaving the back door open to the silent, sneaky rats.
It had gone according to plan, so far.
Once our contingent of gladiatrices had arrived at the field arena, we’d made our way through the excited throng, straight to the pavilion tent Charon had commissioned to have built for us at the south end of the makeshift arena—a waiting place where the combatants could prepare for the coming spectacle, away from the raucous crowds. Sorcha had been waiting inside the tent since before dawn, and she and I had gone about our business swiftly and with minimal chatter. I shrugged out of my armored breastplate and battle kilt, my greaves and bracers and helmet, and handed over my signature weaponry—my dimachaerus swords.
Sorcha was only a little taller than me, and with the crested Victrix helmet on her head obscuring most of her face beneath the decorated visor, no one would be able to tell the difference. Even I almost felt as if I was looking into a mirror once she settled the helmet on her head.
As for me, I pulled my hair back into a quick, clumsy braid, hiding it under a tatty felt cap, and wrapped a shapeless servant’s cloak around me. Seated on folding campstools all around us, the other Achillea gladiatrices looked magnificent in the armor and weapons Charon’s abundant wealth had provided for them. They would accompany my sister onto the field as if she were me. All of them, Ajani and Elka included, though the latter had protested bitterly. But even she had to admit that it would look strange, indeed, if the Victrix’s “frost maiden”—as, apparently, Elka had become known among the plebs—wasn’t at her side for the battle.
And so, while my sister gladiatrices fought honorably at “my” side, in reality, Cai and Quint and I would be carrying on the dirtier business of double-dealing.
“This feels so awkward,” Sorcha muttered, shifting my two swords on her hips so that they sat comfortably. As comfortably as possible for one who wasn’t used to wearing them.
“Just let her disarm you on one side as soon as you can without making it look intentional,” I said. “And then you’ll have all the advantage you need in the fight.”
“I might not have to let her disarm me,” she said, drawing a blade with her left hand and spinning it in her palm—just a tiny bit clumsily. “I might just drop the damned thing trying to hold it!”
I hid an indulgent grin, only because I could tell that Sorcha was actually—and this was something I hadn’t expected—nervous. What I was counting on was that once she was in the ring, my legendary warrior sister would remember who—and what—she was, and all would be right. Our entire strategy hinged on the deception. Nyx knew me. She knew how to fight me. She knew how to beat me.
She was expecting it to be me out there in that arena.
And that was why she would lose.
Once Sorcha began to fight her way—the way she’d retrained herself to fight after the injury in the arena that had ended her career—she would destroy Nyx. In a way that I could never hope to do. And while she did, I would be busy retaking the ludus. Just like I’d promised. To that end, it was time to put the second phase of the plan into motion. I nodded to Cai, who put a hand on Quint’s shoulder. They stood and hefted legion packs onto their backs that made heavy, dull clanking sounds as they settled the straps on their shoulders.
“Time to go,” he said.
Quint saluted Sorcha and the girls, but before he had a chance to leave the tent, Elka stood up and stepped in front of him.
“Behave yourself around that pack of she-wolf Amazon cubs,” she said.
“I will.” Quint nodded without thinking. And then froze, blinking dumbly, when he realized Elka had actually spoken to him. “I . . . what?”
“I like my men with their virtue unsullied,” she said, grinning wolfishly herself as she reached out to grab him by the chin.
“Un . . . sullied . . .”
“By anyone but me,” she continued.
Then she leaned in and kissed him, full on his open, astonished mouth.