Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (10 page)

“Do you want to leave?” she asked her friend. “I want to see Clusius fight, but then after that I’ll take you home. We don’t need to stay all day if you don’t want to.”

Caera pursed her lips, then nodded. “When does Clusius fight?”

“Tertius, who is Clusius fighting today, and when will it come?”

Her brother consulted the libellus. “The dimachaerus Silicus Clusius of the Blues is scheduled for the fourth bout. He’s facing Caladas the Thraex, of the Reds. It should be a decent match. They’re both unbeaten. Clusius has seven wins and two draws, and Caladas has nine wins and three draws. Two blades are flashy, and Clusius certainly knows how to use them, but I like Caladas here.” The look he gave Severa’s friend was not without compassion. “Caera, there’s only one more match involving a damnatius today, and it’s after the Clusius match, so it’s quite possible you needn’t fear seeing anyone else killed before you go.”

Caera smiled. “What odds will you give me on Clusius, Tertius?”

“What is your fascination with him, little sister? I thought it was Caladas who all the young widows are panting for.”

“I’m not a widow, am I? Anyhow, it’s none of your business. What odds will you give?”

Tertius frowned and looked up at the makeshift shade that protected them from the cloudless blue sky. “Two to one, so long as you keep it under a thousand sesterces.”

As if she had a thousand sesterces, Severa thought, annoyed. Of the four of them old enough to count, Tertius was the only one who ever had any money of his own. “Fifty, but you have to give me three to one.” She didn’t actually have the money, but she knew her mother would give it to her in the unlikely event that she lost.

“Fifty at three to one it is.” Tertius took up the bronze stylus attached to the libellus and made a note in the wax covering it. “Falconilla, Caera, you are both witnesses.”

None of them was particularly interested in the next bout, which was a venatio featuring five wolves being set against a bear. The venator in charge of the bout had the devil’s own time getting the wolves to pay more attention to the bear than to his own assistants, and not until the bear had raked its claws across the face of one curious wolf did they show any interest in it. The crowd was openly hissing its contempt by the time the small pack managed to bring the half-starved bear down. The venator himself finally had to put the wounded beast out of its misery, as well as one of the wolves with a broken shoulder.

The next event went over rather better, as it was a comedic hunt in which a dwarf and a goblin, both dressed in orc-style armor, were mounted on large pigs, given lances, and set to hunting hundreds of rabbits that were carried into the arena in ten large cages then released on the sands.

“Ser Borgulus the Bunnyslayer versus Ser Snotshafter Rabbitsbane,” read Tertius, smiling and shaking his head. “‘The winning knight shall be he who spears the most rabbits in the time of one glass. He and his stablemates shall dine on rabbit stew tonight. The loser shall face a savage warboar in a subsequent match.’ I suppose that should suffice to give the buggers incentive.”

Laughter echoed off the stone seats of the arena. The crowd, so recently displeased, appeared to have forgiven the master of games for the previous debacle. Especially since the pigs, lashed by the venator’s assistants, squealed and dashed madly into the mass of rabbits. The rodents scattered in what looked, from Severa’s perspective, like a furry explosion, dashing in literally every direction.

The goblin, which she presumed was the one designated Rabbitsbane, appeared to have a more instinctive grasp of riding, as it was leaning to its right and attempting to spear the rabbits as it rode through the scurrying mass of them. It actually managed to impale one on its first pass, although the pig it rode was even more successful, as the mottled brute left three trampled behind it in its porcine wake.

“Ten on the goblin, ten on the goblin!” cried Falconilla, leaping out of her chair.

“Done!” called Regulus over his shoulder.

On the other side of their father, Tertius was shaking his head and laughing, though he didn’t seem taken by the absurd spectacle before them so much as by the excitement of the others.

Ser Borgulus the Bunnyslayer, meanwhile, was having trouble merely staying upright on the back of his black mount, despite the ropes that bound him to the rude saddle. The dwarf fought to keep his balance, nearly dropping his lance, and failed to make even one attempt to spear a rabbit on his pig’s first wild charge, although one was crushed to red ruin underneath the cloven hooves of the beast. However, as the pig calmed down from its whip-inspired frenzy, the dwarf managed to get it under control and begin attempting to live up to his false name.

While the goblin was riding its pig as if it were a real war boar and attacking the rabbits one at a time in succession like a lancer, the dwarf simply aimed his mount directly at the largest gatherings of the little creatures and tried to trample them. He even reversed his grip on the spear and held it just above the spearhead, using the long shaft as a club that sent rabbits flying as he rode past. Soon he had equaled, then surpassed, the goblin’s total. The crowd shouted out the current count each time another rabbit fell to one of the hunters or its mount.

“No! No! No!” shouted Falconilla, stricken at the sight of the dwarf’s unexpected rabbit-killing prowess. The anguish in her voice made even Caera laugh out loud, as everyone in the Severan box, as well as the rest of the arena, had risen to their feet and were chanting the body count with every rabbit speared, swatted, or trampled. “It doesn’t count! It doesn’t count! Look, that one got up and ran away after he whacked it!”

The goblin, seeing the dwarf’s tactic was more effective, tried to imitate it, but soon discovered that its long, slender arms were not as strong as the dwarf’s much thicker limbs, and were therefore too weak to deliver a sufficiently deadly blow with the butt end of the lance. Even when it managed to strike a rabbit cleanly, the force only sent the animal tumbling across the sand before it regained its feet and hopped away unharmed. After a few such failed attempts, the Rabbitsbane switched back to using its lance properly, but now it had no hope of regaining its earlier lead.

The dwarf had now truly mastered his weapon, and in addition to swinging at the rabbits, he was also crushing them with savage, downward thrusts, as if angrily sounding the depth of a river. By the time the master of games held up his hand and caused the trumpeters to blow the call for the hunt’s end, the count was thirty-five to eighteen in favor of Ser Borgulus, who in the eyes of the crowd had truly merited the name of Bunnyslayer.

The dwarf cast his lance aside and slumped in his ersatz saddle as the crowd rejoiced in his triumph. The goblin looked for a moment as if it was going to charge the venator’s assistants as they approached it, whips in hand. But when one of them aimed a large crossbow at its chest, the greenskin relented and followed the dwarf’s example. But as the dwarf exited through the gate that led to the Green stables staging area, he raised one meaty fist in triumphant salute to the crowd, which went wild in response.

“Borgulus, Borgulus, ave Borgulus,” thundered the chant, punctuated with rollicking laughter. The master of games took a theatrical bow as a small army of slaves ran out, some of them with leashed dogs, to collect the dead rabbits and chase the living ones back into cages that were being wheeled back out upon the arena floor.

Falconilla, her face a portrait in bitterness, folded her arms and complained that she’d seen at least three rabbits that shouldn’t have counted for the dwarf’s total, until Tertius pointed out that even without the three, she would still owe him the ten sesterces. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that Falconilla didn’t have so much as a single coin of any type on her person, so it was agreed that the debt would be collected later. Severa had absolutely no doubt that her friend would manage to forget about it unless Tertius elected to press her on it.

Finally, when the slaves finished their work and the sands were once more free of debris, the moment for which she’d been waiting arrived. The summa rudis entered, flanked by his two assistants, after which the master of the games announced the two combatants. The crowd replied with thunderous cheers.

Severa held her breath as Silicus Clusius stalked out into the center of the arena like a young lion, bearing his daggers as if he were a demigod and they were lightning bolts. His smooth, muscular arms were unscarred, testifying to his courage as well as his skill. And when he turned to salute the crowd in the direction she was sitting, her heart skipped a beat. For there, wrapped around his upraised right wrist, was the strip of red she had been hoping to see, the strip of red silk that she’d torn from one of her gowns three nights ago and sent him as a token of her love.

Severa stared at the beautiful gladiator in silence as the crowd roared its affection for him. They loved him even though they knew nothing of him. How little they knew his heart! She, and she alone, knew of the sweet lover inside the fearless killer. She alone had read the gentle poetry in which he spilled out the unspoken longings of his secret heart to her. She sighed, her eyes drinking in the perfection of his warrior’s body, her hands itching to caress the powerful expanse of his chest.

She could have stared at him forever, but the strange sensation that someone was watching her gradually worked its way into her consciousness. Then she started. Someone
was
staring at her, it was her father. His dark, penetrating eyes seemed to bore their way inside her, making her feel as if he could read the treacherous intentions that the sight of that silk token had now burned into her soul. She felt like the mouse ensorcelled by the cobra, and she waited for the fatal strike, for the deadly words that would expose her in front of everyone.

But they never came. Her father’s hooded gaze unexpectedly released her, and he turned back to the arena, where Caladas the Thraex, Clusius’s opponent, was standing with his arms spread wide, basking in the adulation of the crowd.

Severa she sank into her seat, her legs weak with relief, and began to pray. Surely God would not be so cruel as to let Clusius perish today, in front of her very eyes! Surely He would be kind! She prayed as she had not since she was a child: fervently, sincerely, and emotionally.

As she pleaded for the favor of Heaven on behalf of her beloved, she heard the first ringing clash of metal upon metal.

LODI

The wind howled down from the north, cruel and cold. The sun was nowhere to be found, hidden behind a thick mass of grey clouds piled one upon the other like stones. Lodi was tired, frozen nearly stiff, and desperately wishing he was just about anywhere else than sitting with his legs dangling over the lip of a shallow cave sitting halfway up the barren, nameless mountainside.

It was the seventh day since he and his young companion had last seen the black dragon emerge from its rocky lair. It had been inside there so long that Lodi was beginning to wonder if Thorald might have somehow imagined its return. Bored, he rolled the rope attached to the iron pike affixed to the cave floor behind him back and forth over his thigh.

Actually, the mountain probably did have a name, but it wasn’t likely to be one that Lodi or any other dwarf could pronounce easily. They were so far into the northern mountains that, for all he knew, they were in troll country now. He shuddered. Dodging orcs was one thing, as when push came to shove, one could always kill them. But as a survivor of the seven-year siege of Iron Mountain by the great troll king, Guldur Goblinsbane, he knew better than most how much killing a troll required.

Not for the first time, Lodi regretted taking this job. But when he’d been sitting in front of the massive hearth in the king of the Underdeep’s private chamber with a well-brewed ale in one hand and fried cavesnake in the other, recovering a stolen item from a dragon’s hoard had seemed like an almost trivial task. Especially when compared with the risks he’d previously survived tracking down fellow dwarves taken by Man slavers.

That was then. This was now.

“How much longer are we going to wait here?” Thorald asked. The lad wasn’t complaining, not exactly, but at only fifty-six, he was still subject to the habitual impatience of youth. “I’ve read dragons can sleep for years without needing to feed, and we’ve only got enough grub for another five days if we don’t get to hunting.”

Lodi raised an eyebrow. “How does dragon stew grab you?”

“You can’t be serious!”

“No, lad, I’m not,” Lodi admitted. “I wonder if they’re even edible? Seems to me it wouldn’t be no safer to roast a beast as makes poison in its gut than to eat a spindelskivling mushroom. But there’s no fear that brute won’t come out soon. It’s only the big monsters, the old magic ones, that don’t have to eat for decades. A young drake like our Aslaughyrna, he’s still growing, so he’ll be feeling the pinch in his lizard belly soon. Today or tomorrow is what I think.”

“I hope you’re right.” Thorald leaned back against his pack and took a bite out of a stone-dusted biscuit that was virtually indistinguishable from the rocks that were scattered all about these high-peaked mountains. He offered one to Lodi. Lodi refused it.