Pawn, page 20
“It was Di wasn’t it? When she healed me, she did something to me. She made me stronger.” Of course it was. That was the only thing that made sense, though nothing really made a lot of sense these days.
“When she healed you? Or when she first found you and pulled you out of your shell? Did she change you or did she simply find what was buried there already, hidden deep within you?” Polemos stared at him, and Rufus knew he was serious. Maybe he was right too. Maybe it had been her very presence that had changed him. Why not? With just a smile she could leave him feeling weak at the knees. That was not normal. Was it?
But what was she? Who was she? How could she have done these things to him? And most important, where was she? Was she coming back? Naturally there were no answers. And Polemos wasn’t going to explain. He had said as much as he was going to. Still Rufus had to try.
“But -.”
“Enough talk.” The big man clapped his hands, a sound that even in such a large hall sounded like a thunderclap and ended the conversation. “We train.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. Polemos didn’t make suggestions. And Rufus made his way back to the arena. But halfway there he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
“Not wrestling, punching.” And even as he said it Rufus could see his assistant Alala pushing the huge punching bag over to the side of the room. How she could do that he wasn’t quite sure. She was so tiny, and the bag was huge, and the oak frame that held it firm, larger still. It had to be at least three times her size. But she did it each day, and never once had he seen her break into a sweat or heard her complain that it was too hard. And what sort of a name was Alala anyway? Still she didn’t speak a lot, at least not to him, so he’d never had the opportunity to ask.
They walked over to the massive punching bag and Alala made herself scarce as usual. She never stayed to watch the fighting, and he’d occasionally wondered if it was because he was simply so poor at it that it annoyed her. He probably was. But still he strapped on the funny leather gloves and faced the bag preparing to hit it.
“Hold.” Polemos stopped him before he could start, and then clapped his hands again. Perfectly on cue Alala came out of the side room where the training equipment was stored, carrying a roll of linen under her arm, and then handed it to Polemos. He in turn unrolled it and attached it to the top of the punching bag. He was the only one of the three of them tall enough to. Rufus would have needed something to stand on and Alala a step ladder to reach.
But none of that mattered when he saw what was printed on the linen. It was a picture of his father.
For a second, two seconds or more Rufus simply stared at it, shocked. If there was one man he never wanted to see again it was him. But then as he realised that the image was placed directly over the front of the bag, he understood the purpose. Polemos wanted him to punch him. He said nothing though, just stood beside him waiting patiently for him to begin, and Rufus did just that.
His first punch was poor. All his punches were poor. He simply didn’t seem to have the knack for hitting people. He didn’t want to hit people. At least though he’d finally learned not to have his thumbs balled up inside his fists when he punched. That was a painful mistake to learn from.
“Again.” As always Polemos ordered him to carry on and Rufus did just that. Smashing the bag with ever more enthusiasm. At first it was hard, seeing his father’s face and hitting it. He’d hated him for so long. And more than that as Polemos had said, he’d feared him. But it got easier. Each punch somehow made the next a little less frightening, and soon he was beating the crap out of his father’s face. It was a simple, primitive technique Polemos was using, and a part of Rufus recognised it as a crude device. But it didn’t matter as a larger part simply fell under its spell.
“Harder. This is the man who beat you. Are you going to let him get away with that?” Naturally Polemos was there, urging him on. That was what he did, and at least this time he wasn’t using that damned training stick. And Rufus did all he could to obey. Hitting the bag harder and faster, harder and faster, falling into a rhythm, dancing and punching on the forward lunge as he’d been taught, blocking on the return.
“Is that all? This man hit you when you were a child.” He was right of course, and the rage at the memories of what his father had done to him came flooding back. Behind the control, beneath even the fear there was anger, the same anger he’d always repressed, and the more he hit the bag, the more it seemed to flow.
“He is a monster, a child beater. He must be punished.” Rufus kept smashing his leather clad fists into the bag, over and over again, and somehow instead of becoming tired as he normally did, he seemed to be getting stronger.
“More! Hurt him as he hurt you!” Polemos was shouting by then, his voice echoing around the Palaestra, and strangely he could hear Alala as well. Her strident call echoing through him, sending fire through his blood. He was hitting the bag as hard and as fast as he could, sweat was pouring off him and his breath was coming in ragged gasps, and still he pushed harder, finding new depths of anger in him that he’d never known, and used them like fuel.
He punched and he punched and he punched, and he could hear the sound of his fists smashing into his father’s face almost like applause, cheering him on. And no matter how hard he hit him, he had to hit him harder.
“He ruined your life.” Polemos was still standing there, telling him everything he already knew, and yet bringing it all back. The pain, the fear, and the constant put downs. The beatings, and the scorn for everything he was. So many memories, so much pain, and all of it coming back to him.
“Hit him! He tried to kill you and he will try again!” It was like it was only yesterday when his father had put him in the hospital. Each time. The pain and the hurt as he lay on the floor, bleeding. The shame and humiliation as he heard his father telling him over and over again that he was worthless. That he was ashamed of him. And his mother, there beside him as he beat him, telling him he was a mistake. It was so fresh, so raw, and he wanted them dead. He wanted them more than dead. He wanted them to suffer for what they had done to him.
“Harder!” And then there was his brother. Eight years older than him, twice his size, and encouraged to beat at him while his family looked on. The hatred was like a living thing within him. A fire-breathing dragon that was burning him up from the inside. And he liked it. He welcomed its power, he wanted more and more. And he used it, powering his arms as never before.
“More!” There was no pain any more. There was no tiredness. There was only his father, his family, needing to be beaten. Needing to be destroyed. Rufus smashed at the bag, beating it harder and harder, using his anger as a fuel, letting his rage sing. He could hear screaming, and a tiny part of him realised that it was him, losing the last shreds of his self-control. The larger part though, welcomed that loss. He didn’t want to remain in control.
“Now everything!” It was a command, and somehow Rufus knew exactly what Polemos wanted. He brought it all together in one terrible punch. All his anger and rage, his hurt and fear, his pain at the wrongness of what they had done, and then he let it loose.
There was a sound, a feeling running through the souls of his feet as the floor shook, and a terrible light, and then there was thunder. One mighty clap of it as his fist connected with the bag. And after that there was no more bag. There was nothing at all. Instead he was just standing there, gasping for breath, looking for the bag, for his father’s face to hit, and finding nothing but empty space in front of him.
For a long time he couldn’t understand that. He still wanted to hit the bag. But it just wasn’t there. He looked and looked through eyes stinging with sweat, wanting to find it, to smash it again, but the bag simply wasn’t there any more. Desperately, he rubbed the sweat out of his eyes, determined to find it so he could smash it some more and then some more. Smash it until there was nothing left. But when he finally did spot it, he suddenly realised that there was no point.
The bag was over the far side of the palaestra, at least fifty feet away from him, and it along with its solid oak frame was six feet off the ground, and embedded in the wall. Rufus stared at it in shock. Four hundred pounds of sand bag and wooden frame, punched fifty feet across a room and smashed so hard into a wooden wall that it had actually embedded itself in it. That wasn’t possible was it? Not by him.
“What happened?” He knew what had happened, but also didn’t, because it didn’t make sense. And Polemos and Alala didn’t look like they were going to be of much use answering his questions. Not when they were busy dancing around like children, hugging tightly, laughing with one another, and slapping each other heartily on the back as if they’d won the lottery. He gathered that they were pleased at least.
So he spent a while staring at the distant punching bag, and the two overgrown children embracing, and waited for the laughter to die down. It took some time.
“What happened?”
“You happened. Finally. And just when I was beginning to worry. Moirae said it would happen, and she’s always right, but still.” As explanations went it didn’t really help Rufus very much. But then Polemos was never big on them. Conversation wasn’t his thing. Dancing was, and once more he and Alala were shouting and screaming like excited children as they danced their strange jig.
“A little more detail?” Rufus held up his hands in question when they’d finally calmed down enough to listen.
“You’ve found your heart. You’ve found the core of your being, what makes you who you are. And with it you’ve finally released your power. You have found your inner warrior.”
“I don’t have an inner warrior.”
“Really?” And both of them pointed at the punching bag embedded in the far wall, while still hugging merrily like a pair of school girls. “I’d say that looks like the work of a warrior.”
“It’s about time too.” Alala took over as Polemos looked to burst into another round of crazed laughter.
“You are the consort of Aphrodite, and that at a time when she is in peril. She will need you beside her. She will need a warrior at her side. And you are that warrior.”
“Aphrodite?” It was almost the only word he heard in Alala’s entire explanation. And strangely it was the one word that he could believe. The goddess of love. That he found he could believe. Di was Aphrodite. She was love and beauty. It might be madness, actually it was madness, but it was true. Anything and everything else he could doubt, but not that.
“For the longest time it was thought a poor choice. You were weak and slow. Fear ruled your life. And whatever spirit you had was buried so very deep that it could scarcely be seen. When the time came, it was not known if you would stand or run away. It was not even known if you could stand. Today, you have shown that you can stand.”
Her words made sense in a crazy sort of way. If he let go of all reality. But then reality had seemed to be letting go of him of late. And then there was the other part as well, finally shouting at him in his muddled brain.
“She’s in danger?” That mattered far more than the fact that she might be a goddess. She could never be allowed to come to harm.
“A battle is coming. A big one. And the gods must ready themselves. Those who are warriors like us, we must prepare. Those who aren’t, must find protectors. Aphrodite has found hers.”
“Gods? You’re gods? Ancient Greek gods?” It made as little sense as everything else including a punching bag embedded in a wall. They didn’t seem like gods. But suddenly they did.
“Of course.”
There was no flash of light, no thunderclap, no indication of anything at all unusual, and yet in the blink of an eye both of them had changed. Polemos had given away his singlet and gym shorts to suddenly be wearing a belted toga and Roman sandals, and a strange leather contraption on one shoulder. Alala had lost her tracksuit and replaced it with a more modest long white sashed robe that reached to the floor. But she had a sword belted at her hip that looked anything but feminine. And when she spoke it was the sound of a lioness that left her mouth, though he could understand her perfectly.
“Polemos, god of civil war. Of conflict between brothers. And I, Alala, goddess of the war cry. When the battle is joined I will call our side to stand.” She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, and yet when she spoke, she seemed somehow to grow in front of him. Whatever she was, Alala wasn’t normal. But then he was beginning to realise that there was no normal any more. Even he wasn’t normal any longer. Not when he could smash a four hundred pound punching bag across a room with a single punch.
“Oh crap!” Rufus tried not to bury his face in his hands. “What has she done to me?”
“Done?” The big man seemed surprised. “What has she done? She has chosen you, that is what she has done.” When he put it like that it almost seemed like a good thing. Actually it was a good thing. It was a wonderful thing. But no one had ever said anything about a war. Or about crazy old Greek gods. Or any of the rest of this drug induced nightmare.
“So now what?” Rufus decided to change the topic as he was beginning to realise that there was no future in the current one. He’d either gone mad, which was looking quite possible, or he hadn’t, which was possibly worse.
“Now we begin training proper. No more gentle workouts.” Polemos let off a guffaw of laughter that echoed around the training hall, and perfectly on cue, the far door opened and a dozen men in togas and Roman sandals entered the room. All of them Rufus noticed, were armed. Swords and shields, spears and cudgels, even whips. And with a sigh he realised that they were all there for him. It seemed that the next stage of his training was about to begin.
“To the arena.” Polemos joyously clapped him on the back, a blow that would probably have left him sprawling on the ground a short while before, and then half dragged him over to the sand, laughing madly. There was no doubt that he was enjoying this. Rufus had other thoughts though. But he didn’t have a choice. He realised that as his bare feet hit the sand and he faced his first opponent, a young man with a spear in one hand and a huge round shield in the other. If Di was in danger then he had to be there for her.
“Ah do I get a weapon?” His question was answered before the last syllable had left his mouth, in the form of a wooden staff. It didn’t look particularly effective against spears and shields, but as he bent to pick it up and his opponent charged him, he realised it was all he was getting.
He spun with the staff in his good hand to take the force of the shield charge on his shoulder, and then smashed away at the spear with his free hand. It almost worked, as he managed to grab the spear and stop himself from being impaled on it. But then his opponent did something with his feet, and Rufus found himself flying backwards through the air, to land in a tangled heap of bruised limbs outside of the arena, all to the applause of the others.
“Good! Again!” As Polemos shouted out merrily in his native Greek, clearly enjoying himself, Rufus guessed it was going to be a long day. Still he got to his feet, picked up his stick, and walked warily back on to the sand. There was only one thing that mattered.
Di was in danger.
*******************
Chapter Twenty One.
It was a bleak gathering in the hospital. Police of all stripes were standing around looking forlorn as the bodies were taken away on stretchers by men in white coats and white gloves for the autopsies. And one of the dead was a copper. That did not sit well with any of them.
Tempers were short, frustration was mounting, and the questions were once more growing. And no one was more frustrated than Detective Chief Inspector Barns. Just when things were coming together they took another turn into the unexplained. He should have expected it. He shouldn’t have been piling in to everyone, but he just couldn’t help himself.
“He was dying you said! Not expected to live until the morning!” The inspector was angry and with good reason as the impossible once more rose up from out of nowhere to destroy his case and claim more lives. “I mean bloody hell, do we have to chain the dying down to their death beds?”
But it wasn’t Hopkins’ fault, even though he was including him in his tirade. It wasn’t even the doctors’ fault, though surely more theirs than his sergeant’s. They should have known. But they hadn’t. And maybe it actually was the guard’s fault, he had been lax as he sat in his chair outside the room, reading his paper instead of watching the prisoner. But he had paid for that mistake with his life and try as he might Barns couldn’t find it within himself to blame a dead man. Aidan Hennassy had simply snapped his neck along with that of the nurse attending him, before walking out of the hospital, unseen. A dead man walking.
