Elka nudged me with her elbow. “Come on,” she said. “I was joking. Here. Help me practice.”
She led me over to the far side of the yard, where there was an assortment of targets set up. One of them was made from an old round shield pinned to a post through its center. It had been painted like the spokes of a wheel, divided into numbered sections, one to twelve. Kronos the trainer had explained to me what the number markings meant and how to read them, but I still got confused sometimes and mixed them up. So we made a joke out of it every time Elka asked me to spin the shield wheel and pick a number.
“Thirteen!” I would call out and spin the wheel so that the markings blurred.
Elka’s spear invariably pierced the twelve: XII.
“Only off by one!” she would say. For some reason the joke had yet to grow stale. And her aim had yet to falter. As a prospective gladiatrix, she was good. And she actually seemed content—happy, even—that her fate had led her to the Ludus Achillea and the chance to live and die as one.
Which makes her either stronger than me . . . or weaker.
I didn’t know which.
? ? ?
The evening before the ritual, I was beyond restless. I felt as though I would jump out of my skin if I stayed another moment in my cell, pacing a groove in the dirt floor and wondering if I would still be sleeping on that same narrow cot after the oath swearing.
Even after a full day of hard practice, I wasn’t the least bit tired. The blood hummed through my veins like trails of busy insects, and my fingers opened and closed on the air as if searching for lost weapons. But my mind and heart were torn in opposite directions. If I was chosen to take the oath, then my fate would be inextricably tied to the Ludus Achillea. If not . . . I didn’t know. The very idea of being set adrift in the middle of a foreign land—maybe sold, maybe just turned out into the streets of Rome—set my heart pounding with the possibilities of escape . . . even as it turned my mind to the probability of death or dishonor in those same streets.
When I finally couldn’t take the closeness of my four walls any longer, I plucked my cloak off the hook on my door and slipped out into the barracks corridor. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the sky was darkening swiftly. I could smell the lake, cool and fragrant on the air, and longed to run along the shore, outside the gates of the compound. I would have to content myself with a run on the paths meandering through the gardens.
I heard the muffled sounds of blades clashing, distorted by the evening mist, but I knew that all the other students had retired for the night. My mind suddenly tumbled back to the night Mael and Aeddan had fought in the fog. It had sounded just like that, like the sound of the Morrigan laughing.
Without thinking, I followed the ringing echoes toward a small torchlit courtyard. There I saw Thalestris, dressed in her usual breeches and sleeveless tunic, fighting with another woman. Both of them were helmed and lightly armored, fighting with short swords and shields. And both of them were staggeringly good.
I guessed at the other fighter’s identity: the Lady Achillea herself.
Your new goddess, Thalestris had said on that first day at the ludus.
I spat in the dirt at the very thought.
I already had a goddess, and no matter what trials she saw fit to put me through, I would not forsake her for someone who thought fighting for the sport of the masses was the least bit honorable. Achillea was no true warrior.
And yet, even as I watched, I had to admit that she certainly fought like one. There was something thrilling about the way the Lanista fought, something unique and undeniably compelling to watch in the way she angled her body in defense, the way her head craned sharply to one side when she attacked. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. I wondered where she’d learned her technique, but it could have been anywhere, from anyone. Since the day we’d arrived in Massilia, I’d heard more indecipherable tongues and seen more shades of flesh and hair and eyes than I’d ever imagined possible. As far as I could tell, the slave traders catering to their Roman patrons were more than happy to sell all the tribes of mankind.