They were marched into a larger holding pen, sealed with a great iron portcullis. Beyond, Mia could see the blistering sunslight, and the waiting arena. The sands daubed in crimson. The crowd swaying and rolling like water.
The room was filled with perhaps forty others, lined up in orderly rows. Each was handed a heavy iron helm with a tall crest of scarlet horsehair, a short steel gladius and a broad rectangular shield daubed with a red crown. No armor. Nothing to protect the rest of her skin but the strips of fabric around her hips and chest. Mia looked among the mob, saw folk of every color and size, mostly men, a handful of women. In their eyes, she saw fervor, she saw fury, she saw fatalism.
But most of all, she saw fear.
“When the doors open,” bellowed a guard in a centurion’s plume, “take your place upon the sands and upon the stage of history! Sanguii e Gloria!”
“Four Daughters, I’m not ready for this…,” Matteo whispered.
“Stay staunch,” Mia said, squeezing his hand. “Stay beside me.”
“You have a plan, little Crow?” Sidonius murmured.
Trumpets sounded again, the crowd roaring in answer.
“Aye.” She swallowed thickly. “Don’t get killed.”
A voice rang out across the arena, loud as the bellowing crowd.
“Citizens of Itreya! Honored administratii! Senators and marrowborn! Welcome to the forty-second venatus of Blackbridge!”
The roof above Mia’s head shook, dust falling as the folk on the bleachers overhead thundered in reply.
“In honor of Governor Salvatore Valente, we present epic contest between heroic gladiatii of the finest collegia in the Republic! But first, those who seek glory upon the sands must be proved worthy before the eyes of the Everseeing! The time is nigh! The hour has come! The Winnowing is here!”
Mia pushed her helm down onto her head, checked her gladius, missing Mister Kindly like a hole in her chest.
Conquer your fear, and you can conquer the world …
“Behold!” came the cry. “As we present to you, the Siege of Blackbridge!”
Applause came then, almost deafening. But beneath the crowd’s fervor, Mia heard the great grinding under the floor rising in pitch. A commotion broke out in the front ranks, men and women pushing forward against the portcullis to see. Before Mia’s wondering eyes, the arena floor split apart, and a small keep made of stone began rising from the mechanism in the stadium’s underbelly.
“Four Daughters,” Matteo breathed. “Is that a … castle?”
Other parts of the floor split asunder, hidden platforms rising as the great mekwerk gears in the depths churned and rolled. Mia saw siege towers made of wood, a battering ram covered with a pavilion of thick hide, a heavy ballista, and two catapults stocked with barrels of burning pitch. Scarlet banners unfurled on the stone keep’s walls, set with the sigil of the old Kingdom of Vaan. Mia looked at the red crown daubed on her shield, the scarlet plumes on the helms around her.
“O, shit,” she breathed.
“… What?” Matteo asked.
“They’re reenacting the Siege of Blackbridge,” she realized. “The battle between Itreya and Vaan that marked the beginning of King Francisco’s empire.” Mia tapped the red crown on Matteo’s shield, the scarlet plume on his helm. “We’re the Vaanians.”
The boy tilted his head. Mia inwardly sighed.
“The Vaanians lost, Matteo.”
“… O, shit.”
The mekwerk gears slowly ground to a halt, all the pieces of the battle to come laid out on the field. The editorii’s voice rang across the sands.
“Behold! The troops of King Brandr VI, the besieged defenders of Vaan!”
The portcullis shifted, rolled up. Guards shoved Mia and her fellows, prodding them with spears until they emerged blinking into the sunslight. They were met with jeers, the mostly Itreyan crowd roaring with disapproval at the sight of their ancient foes.* The guards marched the competitors across the arena floor, toward the open gates of the small keep. And ushering them inside, they sealed its doors behind them.
The keep stood perhaps twenty feet high, fifty feet square. Taller towers loomed on every corner, crenelated battlements crested the walls. From the inside, Mia saw the structure wasn’t stone at all, but a thick plaster facade reinforced with a heavy timber frame. The group milled about in confusion, most unsure what came next.
“Man the walls, for fucksakes!” someone hollered.
“Get up there, you bastards!”
Trumpets rang across the arena as Mia, Matteo and Sidonius scrambled up a wooden ladder and claimed their place on one of the towers. She saw two shortbows made of ashwood, two quivers full of arrows.
“Can either of you shoot?” she asked her fellows.
“I can,” Matteo replied.
Mia took up one bow and slung a quiver over her shoulders, handed the other to Matteo. She squeezed his hand as he took it, looked him in the eye.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “This is not where we die.”
The boy nodded. All around them, an ocean of people were on their feet in the stands. The arena walls stood fifteen feet high, boxes containing the marrowborn and politicians studded around the edges. In one, Mia saw Dona Leona, seated with other sanguila. She was dressed in a golden gown, her long auburn hair coiled around her brow like a victor’s laurel. But for all her beauty, the legacy of her name, her property had still wound up playing the roles of the conquered.
Not the politician your father is by half, Mi Domina.
In a great booth on the western edge, Mia saw a man she presumed was the city governor, surrounded by officials, administratii, pretty women in beautiful gowns. The games’ editorii stood at the edge of this booth, clad in a blood-red robe, the waist and sleeves trimmed with dozens of small golden daggers. A white capuchin monkey sat on his shoulder. He spoke into a long curling horn, his voice amplified by other horns around the arena’s edge.
“Citizens!” he cried. “Behold the noble legions of Itreya!”
A portcullis at the other end of the arena yawned wide, and the guards escorted in another cadre of competitors. They were armed and armored the same as Mia and her fellows, but the plumes on their helms were golden, the three eyes of Aa painted on their shields. The crowd roared in approval at the sight of them, stamping their feet and shaking the floor. Most of the group took up position by the wooden siege towers, others manned the ballista and catapults on the arena’s edge.
“The contest ends when only one color remains!” cried the editorii. “To the victors, the right to stand as full-fledged gladiatii upon the sands of the venatus! To the defeated, the eternal sleep of death! Let the Winnowing … begin!”
Roars from the crowd. Movement from the golden troops, dozens of them bracing against the base of the siege towers and pushing them forward. Mia looked about the red troops manning the walls, searching for a leader and finding none. Turning her eyes back to the approaching towers, she called above the mob.
“Any of you fine gentles serve in the legion?”
“Aye,” said a burly man on the tower opposite.
“You wouldn’t be experienced in siege warfare by any chance?”
“I was a fucking cook, lass.”