Now, with the sun high in the sky, and the races at the Circus, which took place in the mornings, just about to end, it was time for the next part of the show. Skeeter's barge halted and the cages were hauled one by one onto shore near the back of the great Circus itself, where the starting gates of the races were. Inside, the crowd was cheering so loudly it startled the raging cats-leopards, lions, sleek cheetahs--into even greater frenzy. Caged antelopes bleated their terror and hurled themselves against narrowly spaced iron bars, unable to escape.
Some of the other prisoners near Skeeter's cage, also doomed to the arena, were crying for mercy to such men as passed, none of whom listened. Skeeter wanted to do a little crying of his own, but he didn't see the good it would do. Yesukai the Valiant had taught him endurance, tenacity. He called on those lessons now with everything in him and managed-just barely-to remain silent. But he could not stop the shakes quite so easily.
Far down the line, some slave with a stack of wax tablets was busy making his way past each cage, jotting down contents or checking off his list, something like that. Inventory clerk, Skeeter thought with a sudden, near-uncontrollable desire to laugh insanely. Those infuriatingly thorough, meticulous Romans. Keeping their records right down to the last doomed prisoner and bleating antelope.
But when the slave got close enough to hear his voice asking questions of each caged gladiator, such as his name and fighting style, Skeeter gave a sudden start and grabbed the bars, straining to see. He knew that voice! He knew ... but didn't quite believe it until he came face to face with Marcus through the bars of his filthy cage.
Marcus went deathly white in a single instant.
"Marcus, I"
"Skeeter, what.."
They began, and halted again, simultaneously.
Marcus went to one knee, to be on the same level as Skeeter. His eyes were dark with emotion. "Skeeter!" He swallowed hard, consulted his tablets as though confirming the nightmare, then slowly met Skeeter's eyes. "They have paired you with the Death Wolf." His voice broke a little as he said it.
"Yeah. I know." Skeeter managed a sickly version of his old smile. "Nothing like justice, huh? I'm just -I never meant for this"-he gestured to Marcus' collar-"to happen. Never, ever. You ..." He couldn't finish it. Couldn't say, "You were the only friend I ever had." The enormity of his loss was just now opening inside his mind.
"I am sorry," Marcus whispered. "My master... I will be on the balustrade above the stalls, watching the fighting. I ..." He swallowed hard, tapped the wax tablets he carried. "I have to record who wins."
Skeeter tried, and failed, a bright smile. "Yeah. Well. Maybe I'll surprise everyone, huh? At least you can run away, get to the gate next time it opens."
Marcus was shaking his head, 'eighty-sixer fashion rather than Roman. "No. I have an enormous debt to repay. I know, here," he touched his breast, "that no man has the right to hold me slave. But I must repay the money, Skeeter. The honor of the Taurusates is all I have left, now."
There were tears in his eyes as he said it.
"Taurusates? That your real name?"
Marcus started to laugh, ended up crying. "No," he choked out. "My tribe's name. We ... we were both betrayed, you know. The moneychanger, Goldie? With the hair of purple? The one against you in the great wager." His voice came out bitter, brittle as the hot sun beating down on them both. The stink of terrified men and the reeking musk of enraged lions engulfed their awareness.
Skeeter narrowed his eyes, trying to drive present reality out of existence at least for the moment. Sweet memories of Time Terminal Eighty-Six were almost too much. "Yeah, Goldie Morran,- he managed. " What about her?"
"She told ... she told Lupus about you. How to find you. This I heard her do, right before I returned to the Neo Edo to give Farley what I owed him. As much as I could of it, anyway."
Skeeter winced, writhing inside as he recalled the tears and bitter accusation in Ianira's voice. "So she told him, did she? Too bad I won't get a chance to throttle that old witch by the throat."
Marcus shrugged, very Gallic. "She will not be doing so very well, either. Farley stole a great deal of gold from her, just before we left. He laughed as he told me of it, after my sale. I ... I asked him how he had brought so much gold through Primary. He said he took it from Goldie."
Despite the genuine calamity to Goldie Morran, Skeeter found himself laughing a little too shrilly, even as tears formed in his eyes, tears of helplessness, rage, terror. "So he got her, too, eh?" Marcus' dark eyes widened. "Christ. Both of us. What a couple of suckers we were. So goddamned sure-"
He glance through the bars at Marcus. "I don't suppose you'd believe me, anyway, if I told you I was trying to stop you from going through the Porta Romae?" Marcus' eyes widened even further. "That's when Lupus crashed the Gate behind me and cracked me across the head."
Marcus' tightly pressed lips came adrift. "But...why?"
"I'd ... I'd arranged to borrow some money, see, do some sessions with Dr. Mundy, to pay Farley the rest of what you owed him."
The look in Marcus' eyes told Skeeter he should've taken pity and kept his mouth shut. Skeeter cleared his throat roughly. "You'd better get on with your job," he said, "before your master gets pissed off and thinks you're loafing."
Marcus swallowed. "I had thought, until the moment I saw you in that cage, that I hated you, Skeeter. But now ..." He trailed off helplessly. "May the gods fight on your side."
He made a hasty mark on his wax tablet and hurried on to the next cage, and the one beyond it, until he was out of sight and hearing. Skeeter slumped against the bars, feeling the throb of hurt inside him turn slowly to bitter rage. Goldie Morran, curse her, had sent him to this. Skeeter deserved to be punished, that much he could at least admit, but to just sell him out, knowing he'd be murdered, in order to win that accursed wager ...
Skeeter owed Marcus, owed him his freedom, his family, a debt he needed to absolve himself of before he met the gods of the high Mongolian mountains, where the bite of ice in the sharp winds could kill a man in minutes. "If I get out of this alive," he vowed, "I'll get you back to Ianira and your kids. Somehow. And when I do..." He thought blackly of Goldie Morran. "When I do, I'll wring that scrawny old buzzard's jeweled neck!"
Rage sustained him through the exhibition before the start of the real games. Paired off with Lupus, whose laughing eyes and grinning mouth told of supreme confidence, Skeeter went through the motions he'd been beaten into learning, doing the whole, maddening drill in slow motion to the cheering encouragement of the crowd. Lupus' shield, Skeeter noted as he studied his adversary's every move, every potential weakness, was decorated with an odd, painted motif a coiled serpent inside a circle of feathers painted a lurid shade of green, like First Officer Spock had bled all over them. Realizing that he was thinking about a television show some fifty years old, Skeeter gave a short bark of laughter that caused shock to detonate in Lupus' eyes for just a second.
Good! Skeeter thought savagely. Keep the bastard off balance, maybe you'll live through this yet.
Some of the men near him were literally gibbering with terror. Skeeter should have been shaking, too, with fear of what Lupus was about to do to him. But all Skeeter felt was a cold, dark rage at what Goldie had done. A Yakka Mongol knew only too well that death would come sooner or later, pleasantly or in agony, which was why he lived life to the fullest every day he still breathed; but what Goldie had done, had deliberately set in motion. That could not be forgiven. He prayed to gods he thought he'd forgotten the names of, sky gods and mountain spirits and the demons which drove the great, black storms of sand across the valleys and open plains, and waited to match weapons for real with Lupus Mortiferus.