‘Perhaps so. But Sorina has taken that from you to hurt you.
She is shrewd, and she knew of your need to face him, to prove yourself. She knew that if… when… you beat him, your mind would be sound to face her. So she took your certainty from you. But what does that tell you?’
‘It tells me that she has outthought me. This is what I feared.’
Lysandra sat heavily on a stone bench, resting her forehead in her hands. ‘I am younger and stronger than she; I am the superior fighter. Yet she knows many tricks, many strategies. More than my years have given me.’
‘It tells you that?’ Catuvolcos sat beside her and rested his hand on her shoulder. ‘It does not tell me so, Lysandra. It tells me that she is the one who is afraid of you.’ She saw him smile sadly as she looked up. ‘She is driven to this because she knows that when you face each other you will not stop until she is dead. In the arena, there is always a chance, a chance for the missio, a chance that you will come out alive. In this bout, there is no hope of that. One of you will die and she believes it will be her.’
‘I am not convinced,’ Lysandra said, but inside there was a stirring of hope.
‘I am. Look, Lysa, she was once my friend. But this war between the two of you has driven her mad. She spat on the ground between us, you know. We are ended as kin. I told her she is dead to me and has been so for a long time.’
‘She is as unsettled as I?’
‘More so. For though you cannot take away her experience and her skill, she has lost her focus on what is real and what is not. She has driven herself mad. Too many years in the arena, too many years as a slave, and,’ he paused looking straight into Lysandra’s eyes, ‘Eirianwen’s death weighs heavy upon her soul.’
‘And mine,’ she broke in bitterly. ‘She took her from me, Catuvolcos.’
‘Aye, that is true. But in the killing she died too. Put your hatred aside for a moment and you will see it as plainly as I do.
Clear as daylight. You two are from different worlds, Lysandra.
What you of the middle sea seek to build is an aberration to Sorina. Order and straight roads, walls of stone — these are not things of the Tribes. To Sorina these things are evil. You, with your Hellenic ways, represent everything that she hates. When Eirianwen gave her heart to you, she turned her face from the Tribe. Sorina loved her fiercely, but to see her with you…’ He stopped suddenly, and Lysandra realised that the memories must be as bitter to him as they were to her. ‘Can you not see that, to her way of thinking, she thrust a blade into the guts of her own daughter, Lysa? Can you not imagine what it did to her?
To the Tribes, to be a kinslayer is the worst thing. Yet, this she did, for she feared that your love would corrupt Eirianwen, and then spread amongst the rest of us… we barbarians,’ he said, no rancour in his voice. ‘It pushed her over the edge,’ he went on.
‘I was too blinded by other things at that time to see it happening, and when I did it was too late. I tell you these things, not because I betray her, but because death will be a release for her. She was Clan Chief, an owner of horses, a great woman. And what is she now? A murderess. A slave, with her hopes broken, her sister-daughter dead by her own hand…’ He trailed off, lapsing into silence for long moments. When he spoke again his voice was quiet and sombre. ‘She is afraid of you, Lysandra. She is afraid to die, but her life is over. Face her in the arena. Give her release.’
Lysandra let the words wash over her in a gentle tide. She closed her eyes, reflecting upon them. She could not, as Catuvolcos had urged, put aside her hatred for Sorina. Too many things had happened, too many to simply forgive. ‘I must think,’ she said, her voice raw. Abruptly, she got to her feet and strode from the bathhouse, walking towards the arena. It was quiet and still, the only sound the soft hiss of the wind stirring the sand.
In her mind’s eye, she could see the ravening mob screaming as their favourites fought and died on the self- same sand beneath her feet. She recalled her first bout, against the Gaulish woman with the straw-coloured hair. Her journey to Balbus’s ludus with Hildreth and the Germans and the warrior woman’s kindness to her in those first days. But Hildreth was dead now — she glanced to the centre of the arena — killed in this very place with her own blade. Here too, Penelope had fallen, her vitals pierced; was it not she and Danae who were with the ribald fisher girl at the last? And Danae herself, gentle, kind Danae, killed by Sorina, killed to spite Lysandra.
Lysandra squatted down, her black hair hanging about her face.
And Eirianwen. Beautiful Eirianwen, her love. She felt tears spring hot to her eyes, her throat aching. She looked up, seeing through a blurred veil, Eirianwen, her hand reaching out to her, covered in blood. Lysandra looked down at her own hands, so recently drenched scarlet. The vision caused a lurch in her heart, a heart she tried to turn to stone.
It could have all been so different. If not for Sorina’s hatred.
If not for her own selfishness. She could have prevented Eirianwen’s death, by denying herself the warm comfort of her embrace. She, in her need, was as responsible for Eirianwen’s fall as was Sorina who struck the blow. She could have, should have turned away but had been ruled by her heart. All the years in the agoge, all the discipline, all the training. All for naught, for she could not save the one thing she had come to love.
‘Weeping for your black man?’ A shadow fell across her, the cracked, hated voice at once recognisable as Sorina’s. ‘I killed him, you know. Killed him as I will kill you.’
Lysandra wiped the tears from her eyes, and rose slowly. She found it strange that she felt no shame in showing the older woman that she suffered.
‘What’s the matter, girl?’ Sorina sneered at her. ‘Has it all gotten too much for you? Your little game has failed, Spartan. And you are more the fool for thinking that you could play it with me.
I have seen your like before, and will see many more after your passing. You are nothing. I look forward to butchering you as I butchered him.’
Lysandra shook her head. ‘You think it matters, Sorina? You think it matters to me that you killed him? It did, but no longer.
He was but a stepping-stone between us. I thought to prove to you that I was the better woman by slaying him in the arena.
You sought to stop that from happening and have succeeded.
What now remains between us? Eirianwen is gone. Nastasen is gone. It is just you and I. Here,’ she gestured to the arena all about them, ‘here is where you were made, and I was cast. There is little of the priestess that came to this place two years ago.
There is nothing of the Clan Chief left in you, old woman. What are we then but two gladiatrices, two who must fight to the death?’
‘You are afraid and seek to distract me with soft words,’ Sorina hissed. ‘Nothing will stop me from bathing in your blood, Spartan whore, nothing — for what you have brought me to, I will kill you.’
‘I did not bring you to anything, Sorina. We, both of us, brought ourselves. And because of it, Eirianwen is dead. I can never forgive you, though I share some of the guilt. But you struck her down. And for that killing, that alone, you will die by my hand.’
There was nothing else to say. They stood for a few moments, staring at each other. Lysandra felt empty. For despite all the guilt, all the mistakes, all the losses, she found that there was no understanding in her, no forgiveness. She saw before her a broken woman, twisted and hateful. And in that moment, the desire to strike her down burned hot in her breast.
She broke the stare and turned away, feeling the wrathful gaze of Sorina searing her spine. It would, she knew, be over soon.
One way or the other.
LIII
‘An unforeseeable accident?’ Frontinus bristled, his watery eyes boring into Balbus, who shifted from foot to foot under the gaze.
‘As I said, sir, I could not have foreseen it.’ The lanista had thought it prudent to bring the news of Nastasen’s demise to Frontinus straight away. There was, he reasoned, little point in delaying matters.
‘A most convenient turn of events.’ This from the Spaniard, Trajanus. Balbus thought of those from the
