I hear the high-pitched cry of what could be a bat, but louder. More ragged. Distant, but close. Then another. The sound multiplies, and I look through the opening of mist above us.
Pterodactyls.
Large enough to carry humans, several dozen pterodactyls are spread over the sky like a blanket. One breaks away from the formation and drops lower. A mounted tiro wears a domed helmet with hinged cheek pieces. His helmet bears a crest, marking him as a centurion. Several other tirones on their pterodactyl steeds drop and follow him. I glance to my other side and see another group of tirones doing the same.
Each one carries a long shield with darts strapped to the front. Better darts than crossbows, I tell myself.
I send the phoenix down into the maze of homes, but the airborne tirones follow like they’ve trained in sky battle. Did Crixus train them? Luc? Is this some sort of secret guard that’s been preparing for a battle like this?
My phoenix glides easily through the corridors, and it’s up to me to ease into her rhythm instead of trying to direct her. A dart lands in the dirt in front of her. She takes a sharp right turn. Another dart. We shoot upward, but these tirones create formations seemingly on every side, leaving only one direction for us to go.
I try to steer the phoenix to the left, but a dozen darts cut off her path, one striking her shoulder hinge. She lets out a mournful cry. I pluck it from her and throw it toward the mass of tirones on my right. Their pterodactyls swerve, and the dart falls through their ranks, useless.
Ahead is the coliseum and more pterodactyl tirones. Among them, riding another new stingray is Luc. How did he get there so fast?
He’s replaced his short spears with a javelin set in a ballista—a giant crossbow catapult meant for one thing: total obliteration.
He takes aim. I send the phoenix down, but she careens back up of her own free will so as not to crunch into the wall of the coliseum.
“Look out!” I shout to her.
Luc fires.
I leap upward, creating a space between me and the phoenix for the bolt to pass through, but it hits her straight on. She explodes in a spray of fire and ash.
The bulk of her lifeless body crashes into the sandy Arena below.
I plummet through the air, surrounded by floating phoenix feathers. Things go eerily silent as I fall—silent enough for me to hear Luc’s taunting voice.
“Fly, Icarus. Fly.”
The Arena sand is just soft enough to keep me conscious, just hard enough to knock the wind out of me. Others land around me. At first I think it’s pieces of my poor phoenix, but the only sign of her are floating feathers of fire, falling to the ground and turning to ash in defeat.
The bodies dropping around me are Luc’s tirones, but they do it intentionally. An aerial dismount from their pterodactyls. The world spins in my vision, but I try to rise. I’m too sluggish. The tirones each grab a limb and stretch it out, so I’m spread-eagle in the center of the Arena.
“Hammer!” one calls.
A chill runs through my body. Are they going to crucify me or something? I picture metal going through my wrists. My feet. This is a Roman world.
I think of Jesus. No. I’m not that brave.
Another body arrives, and by now my vision is clear enough, despite the pain of fighting for breath, that I recognize him.
Crixus.
He holds a crude hammer and a handful of enormous metal spikes.
“Crixus,” I croak. “Please. No.”
He doesn’t look at me. He passes two nails and the hammer to a tiro. Someone wraps something around my left ankle. I fight it, but too many hands hold me down, and my body is too broken to put up much resistance.
Clang. The hammer hits metal. A shock goes up my arm. I cringe, but there’s no pain.
Clang. I try lifting my head, but it’s too much strain on my abdomen and ribs. The same movements with hammer and nail repeat at my ankle and then my right hand. Once they reach my wrists, I’m able to see. A tiro wraps a thick piece of leather around my wrist and hammers it into the ground with the long spikes until I’m a bug on a display mat.
Disconcerting, but a bit more comforting than crucifixion.
Crixus does my left hand. While he hammers the nail deep, he doesn’t double wrap the leather. There’s enough wiggle room that, with time and stealth, I could possibly get my wrist out. An oversight?
I look at him, but he’s already walking away.
He did this on purpose. He’s too efficient of a centurion to blunder like that. Especially when I’m the Emperor’s number-one enemy. But why would he do that when I left him to be killed by a Minotaur?
“Check his hands,” Luc orders from somewhere around my head. “And pockets.”
The tirones do so, emptying everything. One hisses and swiftly withdraws his hand. I barely make out the tiny kernel of wheat that rolls out. My last one.
Luc knocks it away with his foot, and it disappears into the mess of sand and phoenix ash.
“Prepare the Arena for this traitor. No food, no water. This won’t take me long.” He mounts his stingray and glides into the air, the airborne tirones following him.
I track their trajectory into the sky as much as I can, trying to gather my sense of direction. He flies away from the coliseum, opposite the Emperor’s box.
Toward the wheat field. Toward Castle Ithebego.
No!
