The Twice and Future Caesar (12 page)

Steele ducked and sprinted to the side.

The monster body turned full round. One gigantic lion forepaw reached for him, its enormous black dagger claws spread wide. Steele jumped inside its reach, throwing his back flat against the monster's hot furry side. It felt alive.

The goat horns came stabbing over the lion's back again. Steele thrust his shield up. Caught the blow square, but one goat horn punched straight through the metal.

And stuck.

The shield's metal frame was caught on the horn's ridges. The goat head lifted, pulling the shield up with it, dragging Steele's arm up. He needed to let go of the shield. Now. Now. The forearm strap held fast. He writhed, drawn up on his toes.

His feet left the ground.

His body stretched long, dragged by his shield, up and backward across the body of the lion and over the top.

The goat head bowed abruptly, furiously
down
. Steele drew his knees in. Just got his feet under him as the goat slammed him into the sand on the other side of the beast. Hard. The impact jammed his shins.

Splintered light glinted before his eyes.

The ridged goat horn was still stuck in his shield. The poisoned tip was right
there
, scraping his breastplate, smoldering.

The goat head wagged.

With all his weight and force Steele wrenched his shield around tight. A great cracking hammered his eardrums. That was the horn snapping. The poisoned end slid off his breastplate and dropped to the sand. The goat head lifted away without him.

Steele immediately twisted round to catch the lion's open jaws on his shield. He countered with his sword, amazed to find it still in his grip, amazed he hadn't killed himself with it while the beast threw him around.

His sword stroke opened up one side of the lion's enormous face and took out one eye. It gave a screeching roar. Steele reverse slashed across the lion's gaping mouth.

Giant teeth flew in a wide scatter. Steele stabbed the lion's other eye and scrambled away. Tried to scramble. His boot soles slid in the sand.

The lion reared. Came down—

On Steele's upthrust sword. The blade plunged deep inside the lion's chest. Brought Steele to his knees. The blood was warm as if the creature were living. The blood was slick.

The sword slipped out of his hand as the lion bucked backward, taking the sword with it.

Steele scrambled to his feet. The thing had to be mortally wounded.

But of course it wasn't alive in the first place, so it wasn't dying.

The monster's whipping tail was still shooting blood in a ridiculous spray. Red drops painted some of the lower seats. The spectators skittered back, laughing and jeering.

Steele circled around the chimaera, keeping away from its reaching forepaws. The blind monster turned with him. It knew where he was.

It followed Steele's every motion as if it could see him. And Steele was getting the horrible idea that the chimaera really could see him.

He noticed it now. The lion head was blind but the damned goat head
sticking out of its side was watching him with baleful eyes. Horizontal pupils narrowed at him.

The lanista had warned him that he needed to cut off the goat head before he could kill the beast.

The beast had his bloody sword.

Steele charged around to the lion's hindquarters, seized the lashing, spurting tail and aimed it at the telltale goat's eyes.

The goat head tossed upward, bugling. Steele dove under the lion body, hammered a paw away with his shield, and pulled his sword out of the chimaera's chest. He scrambled clear of angry paws and stood up swinging. He brought his sword down on the goat's neck, hacking it halfway through.

The head flopped down, hanging on its broad tendons. The lion head screamed. Another sword stroke and the goat head fell loose into the sand.

Steele rammed his shield into the lion's face as it turned on him.

The lion reared. Steele danced in under its lifted paws and jabbed his sword into its ribcage. He skipped out to the side. That had to be a kill stroke.

The lion roared and turned with him, still alive and following his every move.

Despair sapped Steele's strength. His limbs felt suddenly thick and sluggish. His shield weighed heavily.

He tried to think. What all did he need to do before he could kill this thing?

Tail. Horn. Goat head. Teeth. Mane. Eye.

Mane. He was missing the mane.

What kind an idiotic requirement was that? Cut off a piece of mane.

He stalked softly to within range. The lion seemed to see him. It lowered its head and hunkered down, lips drawn back.

The lion sprang at him.

Steele dove out of the way. The lion skidded around with a great spray of sand, its head still tracking him.

What the hell? Steele had removed its eyes.

Steele circled wide, looking for an opening.

It was useless.

The lion bellowed, its jaws spread wide, showing lots of jagged broken teeth. Its mammoth paws with their dagger claws sent up clouds of dusty sand as it launched itself into a gallop.

Steele turned and ran. Heard the boos. The chimaera stayed on his trail, unerring, turn for turn.

Steele glanced around the arena for an exit. Became aware of a block of teenaged boys in the ringside stands not booing. They were shouting and gesturing madly as if eager to help him. Fans. They pointed urgently.

To where the severed goat head was still moving, dragging itself across the sand by its remaining horn. The goat's malevolent eyes blinked clear of blood. Watched him.

Even detached, the goat could still see him. Apparently that meant it could show the lion body where to go.

Steele dashed to the severed goat head and hacked its eyes out. Then he found the severed snakehead. Its red eyes watched him. The lion screamed in a sound like terror, and raced him to get to the snake eyes.

Steele got there first. Stomped down on the snake head. Felt it crush it under his boot.

Now the monster was blundering around, blind, lost. Without its goat head and snake tail it was mostly lion now—a lion with a mechanical refusal to die.

It lifted its wide nostrils in the air and snuffled. It cocked its head to listen, then charged in the general direction of Steele.

Steele let the beast come toward him. At the last moment he lunged aside, letting his sword sweep across the beast's neck. He'd dodged too wide. His blade made only a shallow cut in the lion's neck. But a great clump of mane dropped away with the stroke.

That was the last requirement. Cut off a hank of mane. Now he should be able to finish the beast.

He had to stab it in the heart.

He came at the chimaera from the flank and thrust his sword one more time deep into the barrel chest where the heart should be.

He barely kept a grip on his sword as the lion reared roaring, clawing the air.

Steele ran out from under its slashing claws.

The thing wasn't dying. It came after him, head low, nostrils flaring.

You might be able to stab it in the heart
, the lanista had said. The lanista had looked sly when he said the word
might
.

Might. What was the trick? Where did a chimaera keep its heart?

Damn it
.

This was a game. Steele didn't know how to play games.

He looked to his fans. The boys were making stabbing motions and pointing at something on the ground.

Yeah. He was supposed to stab the thing in the heart. The lanista had told him that.

Realized the lanista hadn't told him what he might stab
with
.

Steele ran to the severed goat head and chopped off the goat's remaining horn as the chimaera shuffled angrily toward him.

Steele should have noticed the burn mark on his breastplate where the first goat horn had scratched it. But he didn't.

He dropped his sword and seized up the goat horn from the sand.

Instantly felt like he'd closed his hand on a molten poker. Pain lanced all the way up to his jaw. Pain like a solid thing. It felt to be pushing behind his eyes.

The horn dropped from his hand.

His palm was wet, red. He thought he glimpsed bone amid the dripping blood.

The chimaera sped up its advance. It came heavily galloping, nodding. It seemed in agony. But it wasn't an animal. It was a Roman manufactured thing.

Steele quickly tried to work his shield off his left forearm. The leather band stuck.

He needed to free up his left hand to hold a sword. Pain had transformed his right hand and arm into one solid burning useless weight.

He scrambled away from the chimaera's charge. It reared, twisted round and pounced at the sand where he had been. The crowd sounds were mocking.

He cursed, losing strength.

Finally he got the damned shield off his left arm.

You
might
be able to stab the chimaera in the heart.

If he could hold a weapon. What weapon? The sword was useless for a kill stroke.

He couldn't think.

He trotted to keep ahead of the shambling chimaera. The boos were growing loud.

Steele looked to the boys. They knew this game. They were trying to tell him something.

His vision blurred. What did they mean?

They were pantomiming. First they pantomimed the goat's curving horns. Then they made stabbing motions.

The boys seemed to think he needed to use the goat horn to stab the lion's heart.

That's what he'd thought. But he couldn't touch the goat horn. Weren't these guys watching this farce?

Steele thrust his bloody palm at them for them to see.

The boys pulled at their hair. Oh great that they were frustrated. They weren't helping. They were trying maybe to help, but he didn't know what they meant.

This was a game. How did you think like a gamer?

Hair. What of hair?

It came back to him—that useless instruction to cut off a hank of mane. It was so useless that it had to have a purpose.

Hair. Mane.

He got it. Maybe.

The lion was hauling itself toward him. Steele flipped his sword around in his left hand and threw it like an overly large knife.

The blade jabbed and stuck in the beast's broad brow.

The crowd loved him again. Steele loathed them.

As the beast pawed to get the sword out of its face, Steele charged past it and grabbed up the thick hank of mane he'd sheared off. He wrapped swaths of mane around each of his palms. Then he ran to one of the severed goat horns. He took a deep breath, shuddered, and closed one mane-padded hand around the goat horn.

No burning penetrated through the thick layer of lion's mane. Steele closed his other wrapped hand around the horn and turned, ready.

The chimaera lumbered toward him. No need to chase it.

As it neared, Steele dodged heavily to one side and plunged the poisoned goat horn between the thing's ribs where its heart ought to be.

The lion body reared straight up, bugling and thrashing. It staggered on its hind legs. Tottered toward Steele, who broke into a run. The monster tripped toward him on two legs, foot over foot, until finally it fell over theatrically in a billow of dusty sand.

Done.

The crowd cheered.

Steele looked to his boy gang. They weren't celebrating. They were gesturing frantically.

Of course no horror show ever ends the first time the monster dies. Something always comes back for a final bite. It was some kind of law.

The crowd sounds changed to cries and gasps.

The chimaera's shattered teeth were melting into black oozing puddles in the sand. Then they were rising, taking shape, moving, growing. Flapping. Steele thought they might be turning into bats. Steele rocked his sword free from the lion's brow, then stabbed at the things forming. Didn't want to see what they were becoming.

There were too many of them.

One bubbled up and took to ragged flight.

The nightmare thing came at him, keening. Steele swung with his sword and batted it away broadside, hard. The ragged creature whistled skyward. And hit the energy barrier.

Steele hadn't known there was an energy barrier between him and the audience, but of course there had to be.

On impact the black creature dissolved in a bright rainbow spray. More of the tarry black things rose from the sand, chittering, flying at him. Steele slashed and swung at them. Didn't want to know what would happen if he let one touch him.

Got them all.

He bent over, his breath rattling.

Slowly he straightened up. He dragged himself to the goat's other poison-tip horn. It was shorter than the one he'd plunged into the monster.

He still had hanks of lion's mane wrapped around his hands. His right hand was a solid mass of pain, lion hair caked to it with his blood.

He picked up the shorter goat horn in his mane-wrapped left hand and threw it at Romulus.

Energy barriers only stopped fast moving objects. The thrown horn passed through the force field. It fell short of the imperial box and dropped into the crowd.

Won an
ooooh
from the crowd, and a sullen smirk from Caesar.

There was a scramble below Caesar's box for the souvenir. Someone came up with the horn. Held it up like a home run ball.

Steele was disappointed that the horn didn't burn the Roman.

Maybe the passing through the barrier neutralized the caustic, or maybe the caustic was effective on Steele alone. Steele couldn't touch it. The Romans could.

The lupes had anticipated everything here. Nothing staged here. Nope. Not a thing.

The crowd didn't care.

Women in front rows were throwing their tops at him. There came down water bottles, flowers, keys.

Dragging his sword, Steele trudged across the ring.

He picked up the severed snake head in his bloody hand and tossed it up before him. He twisted round, gripping his sword hilt in both hands like a baseball bat, and swung for the fences.

The broadside crack sent the snake head sailing up toward the Imperator's box.