Chapter 21

Rheia missed Rome.

She missed the luxurious baths, the food, the people but most of all she missed Rome itself.

With Argus she had been given her own tent; as liaison to the Empress, Rheia held some standing but she was rather confident that she got the tent because she was the only female.

Rheia had her pride and she hated to be singled out because of her sex.

She should point out that her sex were the stronger of the two but Rheia knew it would get her nowhere.

Men were fickle, egotistical creatures ruled by desire.

Women did not have that lust to cloud their judgement; maybe that is why Krista and Pompeia have succeeded so well.

The time and energy men wasted on sinking themselves into a bit of flesh, Krista and Pompeia used to check and double-check their well-made plans.

Rheia wasn’t sure; she wasn’t a leader after all but she was a gladiator just like Argus.

So when he ordered her to his tent, Rheia went obligingly.

He showed her his plan and shared his thoughts. Rheia pondered for a second what this meant.

Did Argus, ‘the Destroyer’, trust her?

“You were in Krista’s confidence,” Argus explained once Rheia asked, “She is a gladiator like you and I. We know her better than any of those men out there,” Argus nodded his head to the tents outside.

“They are trained by gladiators,” Rheia reminded him with sarcasm. Pompeia thought being trained by gladiators was enough to fight gladiators.

“Horse bollocks,” Argus spat at the ground, “Those men have been free their entire lives. They have not known the feel of shackles around their wrists or the crushing weight of captivity. We are the best chance at finding Krista,”

“I am not sure about everything,” Rheia looked up at the beast, “But what I do know is that I have had my share of dirt and blood for an entire lifetime. The sooner we end this rebellion the sooner I get to go home.”

“Home?” Argus chuckled roughly, “You’re like an infant,”

Rheia tilted her head in confusion.

“Infants want to go home after all they do not know any better. But Adults realise that they don’t have a home and they move forward.”

Rheia did not take his words kindly, “And which are you?”

“I’m just a man,” Argus poured himself some wine, “following orders.”

* * *

Gaius rubbed his neck where Krista’s sword had rested against his skin, ready to strike him from this world.

His body was nearly shaking with anger as he gazed down at his map, trying to interpret where she would go next, but he barely saw anything.

He could only think about her swollen stomach.

Krista was pregnant.

Gaius could not believe that the Gladiatrix had allowed such a fate to befall her.

And yet it may prove good news for the Empress; child birth was dangerous outside of the city.

Krista had no access to medical supplies, surely she would bleed to death in child birth and then Rome would be free of her.

It was not the outcome Pompeia would have liked but it had the same result and impact.

People did not need to know that Krista died in child birth. The senate could spin a story. They were good at that.

But something told Gaius that Krista was not going to be killed so easily.

Even heavily pregnant, she still attacked him.

Krista had confidence in herself but Gaius saw it waver when he hit her stomach.

She cared for the being she was creating.

The question at hand now was did Gaius inform the Empress about Krista’s condition.

Pompeia would seize the opportunity but it would also seal the poor infant’s fate.

The child did not choose its parents but Pompeia would order it killed before it took its very first breath.

Pompeia would not risk their child growing up to become like its parents.

“Sir,” A guard rushed into his tent.

“Did you find them!?” Gaius asked eagerly.

The guard shook his head, “They escaped, Commander,”

Gaius threw his chalice against the wall in a fit of rage, wine falling onto the floor.

“But we did find the guard Krista stole the uniform from. He’s dead,” The guard bowed his head.

Gaius knew it before they even found the body, “Build him a funeral pyre. We shall discuss Krista at a later date.”

The guard took his orders and left, leaving Gaius alone.

Letting out a sigh, Gaius raised his head and gazed at the hole in his ceiling.

Memories of Diomed falling through the gap caused Gaius to smile as he remembered the way Krista had held a sword up to him.

Krista had discovered Diomed’s secret.

Maybe they wouldn’t need to wait for childbirth to kill Krista.

One of her own men may slit her throat before any Roman soldier does.

* * *

“This is far enough,” Krista pulled her horse to a stop, still dressed in the roman uniform.

“We need to keep moving,” Diomed turned around, trying to urge her on.

“No one is following us,” Krista reassured him, “And I am not going a step further until you tell me what you are doing here,” Krista kept sat atop her horse, ready to bolt at any second.

Diomed looked around them as the sun rose over the horizon, making sure that they were truly alone.

“Can we at least sit down together properly,” Diomed said as he slid from his horse and wrapped her reins around a branch.

Krista was reluctant but she wasn’t afraid of this man so she followed his actions.

Taking a seat on a log across from him, Krista waited for the explanation.

“Oh Jupiter,” Diomed took a deep breath, “I have been rehearsing what to say to you but now that we are here, I do not know where to begin,”

“Maybe you should start with the Roman Legion brand on your arm,” Krista stared straight at him, focusing her gaze on his facial expressions.

She would be able tell if he was lying by how he reacted.

“I was a roman soldier,” Diomed nodded his head, knowing that it would immediately set Krista on edge, “I was eight and ten when I first joined up. By the time I was twenty I was marching on villages with a thousand other men just like me.”

“Did you kill innocents?” Krista asked.

Diomed looked away, “Yes,”

Krista didn’t know what to say so she waited for him to continue.

“Before I say what I originally came to tell you, you must know,” Diomed looked deep into her eyes, “That I mean you no harm and I am my own man. I came to you purely by myself.”

Krista frowned because he was telling the truth. He came to her on his own accord. He wasn’t ordered to befriend her.

“And after I tell you,” Diomed swallowed around the lump in is throat, “I will agree with whatever punishment you see fit. I will not fight you and I will not resist your judgement.”

Krista was beginning to grow worried as Diomed laid his weapons at her feet, far from his reach.

He was surrendering himself to her.

And still Krista said nothing, simply waiting for him to speak.

“When I was a young soldier, I was moved around a handful of times before this one commander, who was marching on villages, called for reinforcements. My leader heeded the call and we joined the fight.”

Krista watched Diomed as he pulled at his fingers in anxiety.

“It went on like this for a few weeks before I joined Commander Niclaus’s legion,”

Krista’s spine straightened and her heart beat a little bit faster as she heard the name of the man who used to own her.

The man who killed her family and the man who she killed in return.

“I was only a young man at the time, following orders,  and that,” Diomed felt her anger at his words, “is not an excuse for what I did, I know that, but what I did not know is that the village we marched on was yours.”

Diomed raised his head and looked up at from under his lashes with regret.

Krista took a deep breath as some Commander Niclaus’s last words entered her mind.

Are you going to hunt down all of my men and kill them for what they may or may not have done?

That is what the commander asked her as she threatened him in Pompeia’s room.

Krista had said that she would but could Krista kill Diomed, the man who saved her life?

“How many did you kill?” Krista asked, trying to remain calm.

“Krista . . .”

“How many people did you kill from my village?” Krista snapped.

“Eleven.” Diomed had the decency to look ashamed for what he had done, “I remember all of their faces.”

“Eleven innocent men, women and children,” Krista brows drew together in rage.

“No, not children,” Diomed shook his head in a rush, “I never hurt children.”

“You just left them for someone to slaughter,” Krista turned her head away for a second whilst Diomed remained silent.

An eternity seemed to pass before Krista turned back to Diomed.

“What happened after? How did you get the new brand on your arm?” Krista wanted to know the entire story even as her mind raged.

This man had been in her village when her family were killed.

Had he been the one to kill Lazarus’s family?

“I stayed with the army for a few more years when the Commander ordered us to take this fishing village,” Diomed’s eyes narrowed as he gazed into the distance, remembering the scene, “The men were away working on the boats. There were only women and children there.”

Krista heard the strain in his voice.

“But the Commander told us to carry on. Easy pickings, is what he said to us. Kill the women and children and the men will fall in line.”

Diomed went back to pulling at his fingers in nerves.

“So we headed down to the village that afternoon and we attacked it. They were slaughtered,” Diomed closed his eyes in agony, “That’s when I realised that we weren’t soldiers. We were mercenaries.”

“Soldiers don’t kill women and children for easy pickings,” Diomed cried, “Soldiers of Rome don’t rape the women and children, they’re meant to protect them. That fishing village had done nothing against Rome.”

“None of the villages had done anything against Rome,” Krista told him.

Diomed looked at her, “When the men returned from work to find their wives and children butchered . . . that morning they went to work and everything was right in the world,” Diomed shook his head at the absurdity of it all.

“But when they returned their world had been turned upside down. And I was a part of that. I had wrecked these people’s lives for the sake of what? One man’s greed?” Diomed shook his head in outrage, “I couldn’t do it any longer but I knew I could not leave these people to their fate.”

“The men had been captured to be sold as slaves and the women as whores. The children that did survive were going to be sent to the mines.”

“Have you been to the mines?” Diomed asked Krista.

“No,” Krista replied but she had heard stories.

“It was a fate worse than death. Hundreds of people pushed down into the earth to mine for the prize of a scrap of bread. Cave-ins, explosions and suffocations were just a few ways to die down there. But most people died from exhaustion where they had been worked to their bones.”

Krista looked away, her life sounded like the Elysium Fields to that fate.

“I could not let them endure that, so, whilst everyone slept, I crept in and freed them all. I managed to get them into the forest but I was caught.”

“The commander made an example of me,” Diomed ran the palm of his hand over the scars and bulges that ran across his scalp, “He said I liked slaves so much that I could become one.”

Krista gazed at his appearance in new light.

“They cut the hair and skin from my head, they branded my arm and beat me to within an inch of my life. And then they threw me to a slave master,” Diomed recalled the events with discomfort as he shuffled on the log, now tearing at the skin on his wrists.

“The master didn’t want me; I was too badly beaten to work so he threw me out after the commander left.”

“How did you survive?” Krista would have been willing to die.

“I was close to letting Death take me but I knew that I didn’t deserve the peace death provided. I had torn lives apart and I needed to make that right again before I met my family in the afterlife.”

“So,” Diomed sighed, “I survived on what I could hunt and steal, and I lived like for a few years, helping people where I could. Until last year, when I heard your name in one of the provinces,”

Krista raised her head as he spoke of her.

“The great Gladiatrix of Rome,” Diomed chuckled as he embellished her name, “People were talking about you for miles; the woman who threw a trident at the Empress. I pushed it aside the first few times, what did I care about what was happening in Rome?”

“Until an old lady told me where you came from and how your village had been the one I attacked. I knew then that I had to find you. To apologise,” Diomed leaned forward, “I set you on this path. I am the reason so many people are dead.”

“Diomed,” Krista shook her head, “If there is one thing I have accepted about all of this, it is that I put myself on this path. I attacked the soldiers when they came to the village, I attacked the commander. Me. I caused my family’s death, not you.”

Diomed didn’t seem to believe her, “You do not need to apologise to me for anything.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to kill me?” Diomed took an unsteady breath of fear.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Krista shook her head, “You saved my life; twice now,” She laughed but it wasn’t completely there, “And besides,” Krista stood and handed him back his weapons, “We need all the fighters we can get.”

“Krista,” Diomed grasped his weapons that she held out to him, “I truly am sorry.”

“I know,” Krista nodded her head, “But there comes a time where you have to stop saying it and actually do something about it.”

“Now, come on, let’s go and show Rome who they’re dealing with.”  Krista and Diomed grasped hands in unison before they leapt back up into their saddles and headed back for their camp.

The disease should be cleared up enough by now to allow Krista back in and the prospect of seeing Artorius after so long was eclipsing the fact that she had failed to kill Commander Gaius.