Elka and I exchanged a glance, and I hid a grin behind my hand. The two of us had been fighting as gladiatrices for less than the span of a full year, but the younger girls on that boat were a whole new generation of firebrands, eager to prove themselves out on the sand. Nephele was nodding in vigorous agreement, and I was pretty certain she’d taken her oath only two months back. She hadn’t even seen real exhibition combat yet.
In the face of Quint’s argument, that didn’t seem to matter. And he remained undaunted in his debate. “That’s the thing, though,” he said, responding to Kore’s assertion. “Isn’t it?”
“What thing?” Devana asked.
“His pumping thing?” Anat said with a feigned innocence that turned Quint scarlet with blushing. “What about it?”
“The thing I’m talking about, you ridiculous creatures, is discipline. Teamwork. It’s all very well and good to get out there and face off in single combat. But what if you’ve got a whole army coming at you?”
Devana shrugged. “You fight? Same as one-on-one.”
“But it’s not!” Quint said, gesturing triumphantly, as if she’d just clearly and succinctly made his point for him. The girls just looked at each other, shrugging, and Quint huffed a sigh and tried again. “Look,” he said. “You’ve got attackers coming at you from all sides. There’re arrows and slingshot raining down from above. Men behind you, men in front of you, men to the right, to the left; if you fall, your own army’ll walk right over you. So you’d better not fall.”
“Sounds horrid,” Hestia said. “Dishonorable.”
“How does anyone survive?” Devana asked.
Quint hefted the shield. “Defense.”
“I prefer offense,” Gratia said, holding out her arm and curling her fingers into a fist with a loud succession of knuckle pops.
“Then I’ll see you again on the banks of the River Styx,” Quint said, and swept the shield suddenly to the side, knocking Gratia’s fist away as if it were a bothersome horsefly. “But you’ll get there a long while before me. Because I’ll be going home and straight to the taverna for a cool jug of wine after a successful campaign. And another. And another. And you’ll all be bleached bones in a meadow.”
The girls shifted uncomfortably, and Quint relented.
“You think it’s mindless, I know,” he said, with a sigh. “A soulless way to fight. It’s not. It’s training. Just like you train. Right, decurion?”
“My second would not lie to you ladies,” Cai said, gesturing magnanimously. “And he has trained some of the finest soldiers that were under my command. Why not give him a chance?”
There were glances back and forth, shoulder shrugs, and then Ajani stood and said, “Well, I’ve got nothing better to do until my feet hit dry land . . .”
“Good!” Quint slapped his palms together. “Everyone, fetch a shield.”
The girls moved to the ship side rails, where the sea salt–weathered round shields hung from hooks in all their faded glory. I hefted one along with all the others, wincing a bit at the heavy awkwardness of the thing.
It didn’t go unnoticed. Neferet was on me like a mother duck on a wayward hatchling. “Not you, Fallon,” she said. “You’ll pull your stitches out, and I refuse to put them back in.”
“Come on,” Cai said, grabbing my hand and leading me off to the side. “We can sit and watch the battle from afar, like the great generals do.”
Reluctantly, I went with him, placated somewhat by the arm he snaked around my waist as we sat side by side. I’d forgotten how good it felt to just lean into him sometimes, and I relaxed for the first time since I’d woken up that morning.
Over on the opposite guardrail, I saw Aeddan and Arviragus settle themselves, cross-armed, to watch the exercise. I wondered what Arviragus must be thinking, observing as a group of young warriors trained in the techniques that had decimated his tribe. I wasn’t sure about it myself. But the Cantii had never lost in the way the Arverni had. Not many tribes had, really.
Quint challenged the girls not to fight but rather to defend. His aim was to see if we could work as a unit the way the legion did, responding to commands as a single entity. And he was right in what he’d said. Legion shield work wasn’t anywhere near as easy as it looked. He started off instructing his gaggle of gladiatrices in the formation of the testudo—the essential legion “tortoise” defense—where soldiers in the front line of a fighting unit held their shields out as a solid defensive wall, while those in the ranks behind held theirs overhead, forming a defensive shell. The round shields offered less coverage than a heavy rectangular legionnaire scutum would have, but the lighter weight was to the girls’ advantage. Still, they had to learn to move as one, like dancers in a chorus, as Quint would blow a series of notes on a whistle he carried to indicate the formation changes.
“See?” Cai said, as he pointed out the finer points of the defensive maneuver with his sword. “The footwork is key, just like in a duel—Elka! Right foot!—otherwise you get all tangled up. Good, Hestia! Neatly done . . .”
“Vorya was right—they do look like an insect!” I marveled. “Like one of those segmented things with all the legs.”
“Exactly.” Cai grinned at me. “And you know how hard those things are to squash!”
I did. We’d been plagued with them for the better part of a hot month at the ludus, and whacking them repeatedly with a sandal did almost nothing to deter the little monsters. I could see how it would be much the same with the testudo formation, properly executed. I watched Quint running up and down the line of shields, probing for weakness, slamming them intermittently with the flat of his blade to indicate gaps that needed closing. It was a fascinating lesson in legion discipline, and I felt like I did when I was a girl, watching Sorcha learn some new technique that was exciting and mysterious to me—until I discovered the tricks behind it.
“That’s it,” I muttered when Quint called a brief break.
I jumped to my feet and took up a spare shield, no longer able to sit idle when there was a new way of fighting to be learned. Just like when I was a girl, I needed to know the tricks. Neferet looked about to squawk at me again, but I stopped her.
“If I can’t fight here,” I said, “I’m not going to be able to fight when we find Sorcha and Thalestris, now, am I?” I shrugged the shield straps up my arm and joined the line. “Better to know that sooner than later.”
She couldn’t really argue with my reasoning and contented herself with the sort of annoyed, professional grumbling that she must have picked up from her time spent with Heron. I grinned, ignoring her, and tested my strength, turning my concentration toward Quint’s instruction. As both a Cantii warrior and an Achillea gladiatrix, the legion way of fighting felt—at the beginning—utterly foreign.
Not just to me, but to all of us.
It took some getting used to. To put it mildly.