A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow - By Levkoff, Andrew Page 0,50

a choice—either to flee or face his enemy, but choice requires thought, and in the moment when you know for certain that death is stalking you with strides you cannot outrun, there is no time for thought. You do not choose. Like Betto, or Malchus, or Valens, you act, doing either one thing or the other. Now I understood the lesson Minucius had taught us. I glanced at Livia, her knuckles wrapped white around a small club I had not seen her conceal, her features constricted with determined antagonism. I was furious and wretched to think of all the things we were all about to lose.

Then we stopped. Everyone stopped. There came a noise so startling, so magnificent, that all who heard it were compelled to seek it out, their eyes drained of will, filled with terror. If there was a herald to announce the eruption of a volcano, if the gods trumpeted a warning before the earth split apart and solid ground became as jelly, this was that noise. It was the sound that birthed all despair. It was doom proclaimed in a register so low with so many discordant voices the rain itself lost hope and abated. Malchus was first to regain himself and shout for us all to resume our flight.

The best gladiators are inured to distraction. This sound was curious, but no immediate threat to the retiarius. He turned to look behind him, saw nothing and returned to the task at hand, the task assigned to him and paid for by Velus Herclides. He hefted his trident, shifting it ever so slightly in his upturned palm to settle in that well-worn place of perfect balance. In that moment, flesh and black ash and iron were all as one. Malchus, protecting our rear and retreating backwards up the hill, made a large and unavoidable target. Thirty feet separated the gladiator from Drusus. Another sixty lay between my friend and me. I pushed Livia up the hill and ran the other way.

The retiarius was about to release his spear. He was too far away for me to risk a throw on the run, but by the time I could get close enough it would be too late. I shouted, “DOWN!” and hoped that Malchus could hear me above the din. Though he must have heard my feet slamming on the path above him, though his back was to me, Malchus did not waste time turning round to question his orders. He kicked his feet back and threw his hands out in front of him. The trident was moving through the air, but I had called my warning too soon: the gladiator had adjusted the angle of his throw. Its three barbed points would pierce Drusus through his left side. My knife was out; for this to work, the spear’s living target would be but a blink away from my own. I aimed my blade, leading my mark at a point just to the left of where Malchus’ knees were when he was standing a heartbeat before. The knife spun at an oblique angle into the tines of the spear, disrupting its flight just before I crashed into Malchus myself. His main weapon spent, the tactical situation on the ground changing in an instant, the gladiator bolted. Malchus and I scrambled to our feet; I found myself warding off our assailants with the gladiator’s trident alongside an extremely put out Camilla.

•••

The noise was unbearable. To our left, from the direction of the forum, the Nova Via emptied into the plaza about one hundred yards from our vantage point. Now, bursting from the wide avenue came a running throng. They did not stop to admire the temples or basilicas that lined its borders, but ran as if safety lay without the city walls. Many of them were shouting; some were screaming. They were pushed, almost physically, by stentorian blasts echoing and rebounding off every surface. Herclides tried to rally his men, but except for Palaemon, they had voted with the majority and were heading in a diagonal stream across the plaza to blend into the mob and escape whatever horror approached.

I saw what at first I took to be a Roman general sitting tall and imperious on a black, high-stepping stallion, both horse and rider adorned in polished silver furnishings. But no, this was no Roman, but a daemon in human guise. It was bald, yet from the top of its head sprouted two curved horns, each almost a foot