Viper's Nest Read online

  There was a hint of disapprobation in the tone, though the southerner’s features were carefully curated to betray no emotion. Trygve was not uninterested, exactly. But his every muscle still ached, and his head was heavy for want of sleep. He shifted to the topic of more immediate interest. “What will I be facing today?”

  Rufus shifted his weight from one foot to another. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “You’re going to send me out there blind, then?”

  “I’m sorry Northman.” He seemed to mean it. He shrank under Trygve’s scowl. “Truly. But if I told you, I would be dishonoring my gods.”

  “Your gods don’t object to tricking a man into death, but they can’t abide letting him know the manner of his death? What a feckless lot they are.”

  “It’s not good luck to curse the gods before battle.”

  Trygve snorted. “I do not curse my own gods. I curse the weak, inefficacious gods of the south.” To emphasize the point, he spat in the dirt. The gesture lacked some of the effect he’d intended because his mouth was dry – hideously dry – and only a few flecks of spittle came out.

  Still, he seemed to have made his point. Rufus fidgeted, then said, “You need water. Eat, and I will get it.”

  He was as good as his word. He left and, in a minute, returned with a pail of water and a scoop. “Now,” he said, “I told you I cannot say what you will face. But I will tell you of something else today. I have been making my rounds, feeding the contestants for the Day of Consecration. I have fed so far ten men, and there are five left. It’s the beasts, though, that are the real challenge. Do you know, when I opened the hatch to the sand viper pit, the blasted thing lunged for me?”

  “Sand viper?” Trygve was all ears now.

  “The biggest I’ve ever seen. Could break a man in two, if he coils tight enough around him. And then the desert scorpions – I had to lead a cow into their pit. Poor thing was crying piteously, like it knew what was in store. And who can blame her, eh? I’d be crying too, if they were going to throw me to three of those devils.”

  The Northman frowned. What he would give, he thought, for another look at the bestiary in his father’s hall. As a child, that compendium of creatures from the known world had fascinated him. But it had been many years since such things had caught his attention, and he could remember nothing of the creatures mentioned. “I am unfamiliar with the beasts of your continent, Southman. Tell me, what is a desert scorpion?”

  The questions seemed to perplex Rufus. He colored, and stammered, “We should probably not speak of such things.”

  “Not even to assuage a condemned man’s curiosity?”

  “I…that is…have you never seen a common scorpion?”

  “Of course. They live on some of the southern coasts.” They were small creatures, pests that could be crushed under a heel. While their sting was uncomfortable, it was not lethal.

  “Imagine such a beast, but a meter long.”

  Trygve shivered. He didn’t want to imagine anything of the sort – much less, three of them at once. “All-Father,” he breathed.

  “Their sting will knock a beast or man quite insensible. And then they will tear you to pieces with their mandibles and claws.” Rufus spread his hands apologetically. “At least, though, you will not feel it. The sting is fast acting and lasts for hours.”

  “Well,” the Northman declared dryly, “what a comfort.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the other. “It’s not my decision.”

  “I know. And what of a sand viper? What manner of creature is that?”

  “It is a snake, as you think of a snake, but larger – much larger. It lives in the far dunes of the southern desert. It coils itself into a heap and lets the drifting sand cover it, so it looks like a fixture of the landscape; and it waits for man or beast to venture near. Then –” He made a sudden striking motion with his hands, and Trygve fought the urge to start. “– it strikes.”

  “How much larger?”

  “Large enough to swallow a man whole. Large enough to swallow a camel whole. Some are even large enough to swallow a yak.”

  None of this was cheering, but at least it gave Trygve an idea of what his fate would be. “I’m obliged to you,” he said.

  “For what? I’ve told you nothing.”

  “Of course.”

  Still, when breakfast was eaten and the gate opened, when the roar of the crowd summoned him to his doom, Trygve turned to his jailer and handed him a tiny figurine. “What’s this?”

  “It’s the king of my gods, the All-Father. Keep it for me. I will claim him if I live. And if I don’t – well, I’ll hold a place in Valhalla for you, Southman.”

  Chapter Four

  “There they are, ladies and gentlemen, sons and daughters of Stella: the Northman and his snow leopard!”

  Cheering sounded at Otho’s words, and at the sight of the northerner. His clothes were new, Cassia saw. The torn and bloodied tunic and leggings of the day before had been replaced with a crimson shirt and dark trousers.

  It would not do to send someone onto the field on Consecration Day looking like he’d looked yesterday. And the arena leadership, ever eager to embrace the pageantry of symbolism, had forgone armor and opted instead for colors representing death.

  Still, new clothes couldn’t hide the brutality that had been done the Northman this last week. His face might have been cleaned, his hair tended, but he was still a mess. One cheek was swollen and purple. A red gash bit deep into the forehead above his eye on the other side of his face. His knuckles, even from her vantage in the box, looked red and raw. She wondered at what could compel a man to put himself through such trials. Surely, the gold could not be that good.

  It wasn’t bloodlust, either. There were gladiators driven by some kind of need to spill blood. Faustus believed his fights kept the streets freer of murderers, by providing a legal venue for them to ply their arts. She wasn’t sure of that – but certainly the arena attracted those who enjoyed killing.

  The Northman was not such a man. He had killed over the course of the last days, but only in combat, only as needed. He had spared lives when it would have been easier to end them. He had gone as far as to defy Faustus to protect the fallen.

  She had asked after him, and her inquiries had turned up little. He was one of Governor Caius’ gladiators, but he’d been signed on Blackstone Island. No one local seemed to know anything about him, except that he’d been marooned at the island.

  She wondered about that. Caius has been one of the senate’s most disappointing appointments, and she had never seen the reason. Oh, his patrician pedigree was solid enough, and he knew how to ingratiate himself to those in power. Those were recommendations enough for some people, she supposed. But he was not an honest man, or a good one. His was an island always overworked, a people always overtaxed; his were coffers that managed – somehow – to run fuller than a governor’s salary ought to manage.

  Now she found herself wondering how such a man might have convinced a destitute foreigner to sign on for the coliseum – much less during this particular festival. What persuasions had he employed to compel that? The games were, ostensibly, freely entered. But Caius wouldn’t be the first to manipulate a fighter or to use a contract to control an otherwise free man.

  She was drawn from her reverie by a roar of voices. The crowd was on its feet now, and a chant had broken out. It was one word, repeated again and again, as simple as it was brutal: death.

  The multitude, so saying, didn’t seem particularly to mind whose death they might be calling for – either the Northman who entered first, or the hulking warrior who was released opposite him.

  Unlike Trygve Ingensen, this new fighter was well known to the arenas. Before signing with one of the arena masters, he had been known simply as Tullius the Tall, a soldier of meager means looking to earn a living during peace time.

  That was a year ago. Now, he was known as Tullius the Bull. In the span of that year, he’d finishe
d his contract in a series of stunning victories. Now, when he played, it was as an independent contestant. He had gone on a tour of Stellan games, picking and choosing where he’d play. More than a few provincial governors had doled out fortunes to lure him to their coliseums. How much Faustus had promised to get him to return to the City’s games, she did not want to know. The Bull was a feature of Stellan coliseum, a kind of hero to the people. There was probably little he could ask for that her husband would deny.

  But it wasn’t only that he was a familiar face where he differed from the Northman. He was clad in full armor – the set of armor he’d been awarded as Victor Supreme of the Games. And this was to be his first match in The Remembrance fights. Perhaps his only. She wasn’t sure whether Faustus had contracted him only to fight the games’ new apparent champion, or if he was slated to finish the day.

  Either way, it boded ill for the Northman. The Bull’s reputation was well earned. It would be a difficult match in the best of circumstances. But unarmored and after eight days of combat? It would be a slaughter.

  Not for the first time, she pitied the foreigner. He had been brought here to be a sacrifice in some perversity of patriotic feeling. He had fought for eight long days, and managed, miraculously, to cling to life. But now the games had found a way to kill him after all.

  Otho had quieted the crowd, and his voice droned high and loud over the seating. There was a satisfaction in his tones that made her skin crawl. “You see the Bull is returned.” He let their cheering go for only a moment. “Today, the arena will run red. Only one will leave. We know already what the Bull is capable of; we have seen what this Northman can do. Now we will see who among them shall be victor: the Bull, Stella’s proud son; or the barbarian from the North, with his brutal snow leopard at his side? Let the gods decide!”

  The multitude thundered its delight at that solution, but the gods seemed to be in a capricious mood. The fight began much as Cassia suspected it would, with the Bull moving swift and hard against his opponent. The Northman staggered backwards and might have fallen but for the snow leopard.

  They were a good team, the man and beast. They worked almost of one mind, synchronizing their steps to aid the other, to draw their opponent’s attacks when it was most needed. The man, she thought, was almost as protective of the feline as it was of him.

  They circled the coliseum in this grim dance for a time, and the ferocity of Tullius’ attacks lessened, the quickness of his step lagged. Beads of perspiration were visible on the Northman, tracing long threads down his face. She could only imagine what the heat of the morning – clear and brutal as it was – was doing to the Bull, encased in full armor.

  He must be baking in there, she thought, as readily as if he was in an oven.

  The minutes churned on, and the gods seemed in no more a hurry to pick a victor than they had been at the start. Cassia felt herself equally unable to settle on a favorite. Every time one seemed poised to claim the day, her sympathy would go to the other; and just as quickly, it would reverse as their luck changed.

  The fact was, one was a son of Stella, a former soldier and a favorite of her people. She could not hope for his death whatever and however unfair his advantages might be. The other was a foreigner who conducted himself with uncommon valor and compassion, and who had fought for days in unprecedented circumstance. She could no more wish for his death.

  Faustus seemed annoyed with the length of the battle, for he began after a space to shift beside her and to sigh with impatience. He had taken a peculiar interest in Trygve since his defiance – an interest that was one part solicitous and another vengeful. He would speak one moment with admiration of the other man’s prowess, and in another mention with warmth his expectation of seeing the Northman’s guts paint the coliseum floor red. He had boasted of sending trays of food to “the lucky barbarian.” Yet it was by her husband’s orders that he was thrown into fight after fight these last days.

  His character was not complex enough to deserve the moniker enigmatic. In their early acquaintance, she might have been confused by his seemingly contradictory behavior. But now she knew him well enough to understand. And it wasn’t complexity, but rather the reverse, that dictated his actions. Faustus was ardent in his passions, and he was most passionate about himself. He loved a good fight – and, consequently, the men who could provide him with one – almost as much as he desired new women or fine wines. But he loved most his own sense of self, his own importance. The Northman had put up an unparalleled fight, but he’d also defied Faustus in a very public way. The one could not entirely make up for the other, and so over the course of these past eight days, her husband had exacted his revenge.

  The Bull was, she imagined, meant to be the final act of that scheme. But the Northman was proving harder to kill than anyone had anticipated.

  All at once, Faustus caught Otho’s eye with a signal, and the other man nodded. Cassia frowned and watched.

  The announcer walked wordlessly to the edge of the box, and in turn nodded to someone below. She could not see to whom he was gesturing, but in a moment the sound of a heavy iron gate reached her ears. It was the high, heavy wailing of metal on metal.

  Cassia felt a prick of fear at that. She couldn’t say why, or what exactly she feared. But the grin that crept onto her husband’s features unsettled her deeply.

  Trygve heard the squeal of metal with everyone else, but it took a moment before either he or his opponent – the one they called, not without reason, the Bull – took their eyes off each other. Gunnar followed his master’s bodily cues and stood to the side ready but not striking.

  At the far end of the arena, a set of doors were emerging from the floor. Sand streamed away, like water running off something that had floated to the surface of a lake, and two great opposing trap doors opened straight upward. Beneath them, a gate of iron bars was drawing away.

  “What the…” the Bull said, his words sounding low and muffled under his helmet.

  A hush had settled on the crowd, and they waited with the same bated breath as the men in the arena. They were not long left to wonder.

  A serpent’s head emerged, great gleaming yellow eyes taking in the arena. It was a monster. Flat to the ground, its head reached almost half a meter high, and was about as wide; and when it rose, coiling back as if it might strike? No wonder iron bars protected the lowest levels of arena seating.

  “Mother of Odin,” Trygve breathed.

  “Fuck,” the southerner said, more to the point.

  “Hey – Southman: a truce? While we kill this thing, anyway?”

  By way of response, he got only a nod of the other man’s helmeted head. It was hardly the kind of promise he’d like to bet his life on, in more promising circumstances. But right now, their options were few, and he would rather die at the end of a blade then fall to a monster from the Halls of Hel.

  The serpent advanced, slithering its way across the arena floor. The crowd seemed of two minds on its appearance. There was a palpable eagerness, a rush of voices greedy for mayhem. But it was joined by jeers and hisses.

  Trygve hardly noticed. His eyes were on the serpent. It had slithered, now, fully out of its cage. It was unusual in the way of snakes not only for its massive size, but also because it seemed stunted and disproportionate. Its body reached perhaps ten or twelve meters long – which was a hideous size, to be sure. But based on the head, he would have anticipated something many times longer, had it followed the usual pattern of snakes.

  He wasn’t sure it made much difference, though. It was still a monster. It still coiled back well above the height of a man, and opened a mouth to reveal long, glistening fangs that could easily skewer its victims.

  “Have you ever killed one of these things?” he asked the Bull.

  “Never. I’ve seen it done, in a village. They severed the cords at the base of its skull.” With his hand, he made a gesture to the back of his head, where it sat on the neck.

  Just where it will be
hardest to reach, Trygve thought with a scowl. They’d have to get past the fangs, and the serpent would need to be obliging enough to keep its face within hacking range. Fantastic.

  Chapter Five

  The snake moved with a speed that no mortal man could manage to run. Its body, coiling back and forth, slithering from side to side, seemed to race across the sand of the arena floor as fast as speed skaters on a frozen lake.

  The Bull had shed his shield and helmet and was fumbling with the straps of leather around his breastplate.

  “Move!” Trygve said. “Damned fool, move!”

  The other man was too focused on losing the extra weight of his armor, though, to heed him. And – though they’d been intent on spilling each other’s blood a moment before – his skin crawled with so much intensity at the thought of facing this monster alone that Trygve was willing to risk his life to save the Bull. “Odin’s beard,” he cursed. “Gunnar, go.” He gestured with one hand for the far end of the coliseum. The snow leopard didn’t hesitate; it ran in the direction indicated.

  He, meanwhile, began to move the opposite way and shout. It was nothing coherent, just variants of calls and taunts. “Snake! Over here, you Hel spawn. Bring your ugly face this way.” And so on.

  The viper, though, drew up, its attention torn between the man and feline. Its head moved first in his direction, then Gunnar’s, then back again. Finally, quick as a flash, it took off after the snow leopard. Trygve followed.

  The snake’s body almost skipped across the sand with the force of its undulatory locomotion. A heavy tail whipped back around, so close it nearly struck the man. He was glad to sidestep the blow – the impact would have bowled him over and might have broken bones – but its nearness suited him just fine.