Jean Lorrah - Flight to Savage Empire

Shield smashed against shield. Metrius stumbled backwards, nearly falling.

Clavius pressed his advantage, sword battering away at Metrius’ defense. Finally he found an opening, his sword slithering along the edge of Metrius’ shield to gash his thigh.

As pain penetrated, Metrius sucked in a shocked breath and tried to strike back.

The crowd leaped to its feet, roaring encouragement.

The two evenly matched champions had been battling for close to an hour. Now, the long-awaited climax was at hand.

The ending could not come soon enough for Magister Astra. She was not in the stands, but huddled in the small medical treatment room beneath them, waiting for one gladiator or the other to be carried in with a grave or fatal wound. Here, for the eighth time today, she would either work frantically to save a life… or administer opiates to ease the last moments of a dying man.

In either case , she thought bitterly, the punishment and pain are mine .

For the hundredth time that day, the young woman wished she were anywhere else in the Aventine Empire-someplace without pain, suffering, or violence. But she could not escape her duty, any more than she could escape her Reader’s talents.

No matter how hard she tried, she could not fully shut out the emotions of the people in the arena. They reeked with bloodlust, enjoying the match- she struggled not to be swept up in their fervor.

But worse than that, her inner vision put her in the very center of the life-and-death battle.

She tried to focus her powers away from the carnage, searching for something to concentrate on as the last match of the season ground to a close. This match-the main bout for which everyone had waited eagerly-was likely to end in death, not just injury. If she could find something to hold her full attention for a minute or two, perhaps she wouldn’t feel the deathblow so sharply.

There. On the near sidelines, one man’s thoughts stood out from the others’. Calm, rational, he shouted instructions to one of the gladiators. “Careful, Clavius-don’t get careless! Keep your guard up!”

Of course-he was coaching Clavius, the soon-to-be victor.

Astra Read the man’s exterior, and found herself “looking” at a tall, well-muscled man built like a gladiator himself. His rough-hewn face was crowned by tousled red hair. A slave from the northern isles.

No, she corrected herself as she looked further, he’s too well dressed for a slave. He must be a freedman… probably Clavius’ owner as well as his coach .

Suddenly her attention was torn from the red-haired man by a strange mental outcry-puzzlement mixed with fear. Involuntarily her focus changed to the center of the arena. Metrius lay sprawled on his left side, still losing blood, barely able to raise his sword. But the cry hadn’t come from him.

It was Claviusl

He was trying to raise his sword to deliver the deathblow, but his muscles wouldn’t respond!

He started to shake, not in fear, but in convulsions. His mind again cried out for help-then screamed as Metrius, with his last strength, drove his sword up from the ground, piercing beneath the rib cage and into Clavius’ heart.

The Reader screamed in empathic pain as she withdrew her mind from the scene, clutching her chest.

She had felt her own heart stop for a moment, but now it beat all too rapidly.

Concentrating, she told herself the pain was not hers, and forced the sensation to subside as she brought her heart rate and breathing back to normal.

What happened out there ? she asked herself. It’s as if the wrong man won !

The roar of the crowd confirmed her thought. They were cheering Metrius, but their praise echoed Astra’s astonishment. A few minds gleefully celebrated victory-but many people had lost heavily on the favorite.

Metrius managed to drag himself to his feet, and even those who had bet against him cheered wildly at his spirit. He limped a few paces, and then was lifted by his fellow gladiators. Their own medic pressed a clean cloth over his wound, and Astra Read that the worst of the bleeding had stopped. He could have his triumph before being brought to her for treatment.

Meanwhile, she Read two burly men carrying Clavius’ body out of the arena, through the portal known as Loser’s Gate. They would come down the tunnel to the medical station. Astra composed herself, the image of a competent Reader, ready to perform her last official tasks of the day.

But the stretcher-bearers didn’t place the body on the examining table. In fact, they kept right on moving toward the exit, as though Astra did not exist.

“Stop!” she said sharply, and Read annoyance from both men as they complied.

“Nothin’ you can do for this one, Healer,” one of them said.

“Nothing except my job,” Astra said firmly. “I must officially declare him dead, and you know it.”

All day long she had been having trouble with these two men-muttered remarks about her competency while she worked on the wounded fighters, and looks of contempt when two of the gladiators died of their wounds. It may be common knowledge that this duty is given as punishment to Readers who have displeased the Masters of their Academies , she told herself, but I’ve had enough of this riffraff treating me like a kickdog .

But she said nothing, for she had been half sick all day from the athletes’ pain. The stretcher-bearers couldn’t have missed her paleness, and the sweat that broke out on her face when she forced herself to Read a man’s agony to discover how to treat his wound.

But the very sensitivity which caused her misery at this task let her know no guilt-no one could have saved the two who died, not the most skilled healer at Gaeta.

This dead man did not disturb her-he no longer felt pain. The clean wound to the heart was indeed the cause of Clavius’ death, but that was not what provoked her curiosity. She closed her eyes and concentrated, focusing her powers for a thorough scan of the dead man’s organs.

She didn’t find what she expected-a clot or broken vessel in his brain-but rather she discerned a strange substance in the gladiator’s bloodstream. Barely a trace, so little another Reader might have missed it, but with Astra’s sensitivity-

“Vortius, get out of my sight!”

The outburst cut across Astra’s wide-open Reading like a thrown knife-but instead of shielding her mind, she widened her range to “hear” and “see” more.

At the sports arena, “Vortius” could only be Vortius the Gambler, a man who lived-richly-on the edges of both respectability and the law, profiting from the losses of others.

A man Astra loathed.

Yes, there he was-near one of the gladiators’ entrances to the arena. He wore the clothes of an aristocrat, but had the demeanor of a street criminal. The man shouting at him was the one Astra had Read coaching Clavius. With the bearing of a fighter, he seemed about to pounce on Vortius… if the gambler weren’t flanked by two large and ugly bodyguards.

“I can understand why you’re upset, ‘ Vortius was saying with the obviously false sympathy guaranteed to infuriate the person it was turned on. “Clavius was your best fighter. A tragic loss for you, Zanos.”

Zanos? Of course! Zanos the Gladiator, she realized. Even the Readers cloistered in their Academies knew of this magnificent champion. Two years ago he had retired undefeated, hailed as the greatest gladiator of the century. Now he had his own stable of gladiators and, judging by the wagering on the games, had been prospering.

Until today.

“… losing so much gold must be doubly tragic,” Vortius was saying as he hefted a heavy sack of coins.