Free Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator by Claudia Christian and Morgan Grant Buchanan

forest alight. The image of him, triumphant and howling with grief as he cradled her body, the untouchable winner of the tournament, was transmitted across the empire. Marcus’ fate led to a mass outcry. The houses opposed to Julius Heliogabalus, including my own, used the tragedy of Marcus and Amphiara as a rallying point and led the charge to overthrow the Julians.
    Refusing all honors and a generous commission to join up for another twenty years, Marcus completed the last few months of his military service under the Numerian emperor before being discharged with the rank of centurion, dozens of medals, and the standard retirement offering of an allotment of land on the galactic frontier. He traveled the many gladiatorial arenas of the galaxy, competing in some but mostly studying different fighting styles. On returning to Mother Earth, he sold his land and purchased a share in the Ludus Magnus. Why, after all of the grief he had experienced by way of the arena, he should choose it as a new career, no one could say.
    He had a will of iron and was an experienced killer. When it came down to it, could I defeat him? If I hesitated for even an instant, he could turn the tables and steal my life.
    My armilla slotted into the right bracer, becoming part of my armor. Finally, I snapped open my weapon case, revealing Orbis. My near-unbreakable discus, his razor-sharp edge rotated within a circular moat of black restraining gel—a mercurial silver eye, slowly turning, impatient for speed and action.
    Orbis was a rare thing. A slender ring one and a half inches high near the center, tapering out to a thin edge. Forged from the semisentient mineral lapis negra, he was sharper and harder than steel and light as a feather. About the body of the circular blade were four thin grooves, evenly spaced to improve aerodynamics and also produce a frightening hum as he took flight.
    After my father’s legion had crushed an uprising of the barbarian Mandubii of Quatrus Negra, their chieftain had given him the homing discus as tribute. Orbis had been fashioned by the first Roman settlers there during the seventh republic, more than two thousand years prior. Father could have sold it to a museum or collector for a small fortune, but he wanted to save the discus for my brother, Aulus, a rare weapon to enjoy when he became a man. Mother convinced him to let me have it, though. “You never objected to me continuing my research and no bad luck has come of it. Trust me, I know how to help Accala find her path,” she counseled, and he accepted her wisdom, as he always did, though not without complaint, and all through my childhood I had the memory of my father bemoaning his misfortune, how the boy in the family took after his mother while the girl was feisty, argumentative, always turning household objects into weapons. Mother was a pacifist and philosopher, but she knew that Aulus didn’t have a fighting bone in his body, he was a natural scholar. On the other hand, she knew intuitively that Orbis was meant for me.
    I picked up Orbis gently, and he blunted his edge to accommodate me as he always did, whether I was gripping him for close combat cutting and thrusting, or snatching him from the air as he returned to me after a cast. The homing discus was temperamental, difficult to wield, but after years of hard work my weapon and I had achieved a symbiosis of sorts, where Orbis could sense my position and work with my body, enhancing my combat strengths. He was eager to be free, created to cut through the air in deadly, sweeping arcs, not to be constrained in a box. “There, be still,” I said in a soothing voice. “Soon you’ll have your chance to fly.”
    *   *   *
    I STARTED LIMBERING UP but soon found I was too impatient to work through all my exercises. Where was Marcus? The longer he took, the more chance there was that Father would receive word that I’d fled the Wolf’s Den and