Household Gods

His brows climbed up, then dropped down in a scowl. “Life’s cruel,” he said with callousness that had to be deliberate. “The faster people figure that out, the better they understand it, the easier they can bear it when the world flies up and hits them in the face.”

That was as cold-blooded a way of looking at things as she’d ever heard. She opened her mouth to protest, but even if she’d managed a word, the lion’s roar would have drowned it out. It echoed in that deep hollow space, set deep in her bones and shook them into stillness.

The bear too seemed caught off guard by the power of that sound. The lion sprang. Its body was a tawny blur. She’d never imagined anything so big could move so fast.

The bear reared up to meet the challenge, and it roared, too, a deep, grunting sound. As the lion fell upon the bear, the crowd went wild. Nicole, reeling, deafened by the noise, had a dizzy memory of a college football game, when the home team sacked the visiting quarterback. He’d even looked a bit like the bear.

For an instant, she was there, in that crisp autumn afternoon, with the cheerleaders flaunting their assets and the band sending a razzberry across the field. Then the heat and the human stink of Carnuntum fell around her again. Someone was pounding on the bench close by her, shrieking, “Eat him! Eat him for lunch!” Whether the woman meant the bear or the lion, Nicole couldn’t tell. But that she meant it literally, Nicole hadn’t the slightest doubt.

That was the point, wasn’t it? Starve the poor things till they were mad with hunger, then offer them fresh meat – if they fought for it. It was an endgame. Winner take all, and devil take the hindmost.

The lion and the bear tumbled together to the ground, rolling and kicking. Sand flew from their flailing feet. The bear’s jaws clamped on the lion’s shoulder, just below the neck. The bear’s paws raked the lion’s tawny flanks; its claws ripped blood-red gashes.

But the lion’s hind claws ripped at the bear’s belly, as if the great cat were a kitten playfully disemboweling a ball of yarn. Yet this was no game, no kitten-silliness. It was as real as death. The lion’s teeth were sunk in the bear’s throat.

If the lion growled, even if the sound had not been muffled in thick fur, Nicole couldn’t possibly have heard it. The crowd was roaring louder than the lion ever had. Titus Calidius Severus, beside her, was yelling his head off. That calm, contained man with his easy affability and his air of quiet competence was as lost to the world as the most rabid twentieth-century football fan. And not just because he had money on the line, either. This was sports. You could sit him down on a couch in front of a TV in Los Angeles, shove a Miller Lite into his hand, and leave him there, rooting for the Lions against the Bears. Some things never changed.

She wanted to clap hands over her ears, and over her eyes, too, and why not her mouth while she was at it? It was all or nothing; so nothing it was.

Calidius Severus bounced right up off the bench. Her eye leaped to the arena, to see what had got him going.

The bear’s paws had stopped flailing at the lion. Its jaws had slackened and fallen away from the tawny throat. And yet it wasn’t, quite, still. It wasn’t dead.

The lion drew away a little and began to lick its wounds. The bear lay stirring feebly, but made no move to attack the lion. When its wounds were as clean as they could be, the lion lifted itself, stretched stiffly, yawned. Then it bent its ragged-maned head and began to feed.

The amphitheater was a perfect bedlam of noise. Nicole’s head was pounding. There was a sour taste in her mouth, a burn of acid in her throat. She was going to be sick, she knew it. Right there. Right in front of everybody. And especially Calidius Severus.

He beamed at her, as oblivious to her state of mind as any man whose team ever won a game. “That was a good fight, wasn’t it, Umma? That lion could serve in my legion any day.” He turned to the man behind him and held out his hand. “All right. Pay up.”

The man shrugged and reached into his purse. Brass clinked as sesterces changed hands. “My turn next time,” he said. Calidius Severus grinned as he stowed his winnings away. He wasn’t gloating – much.

Down on the floor of the amphitheater, a group of men advanced warily on the lion. They carried spears and wore armor that looked amazingly like movie-Roman armor. Except that movie armor was always clean and shiny and impressive. This was battered and dented and dull. It wasn’t a prop. It was real; everyday gear that had seen hard use.

The lion’s rail twitched. In the silence that had fallen, as if the crowd had sated itself for a moment, Nicole heard it growl as it ate, a rumble of warning. Even in armor, even with a spear in her hand, Nicole wouldn’t have wanted to go near it.

The men moved quickly enough. A bomb squad might move like that: fast, efficient, aware of the danger but not stopping to dwell on it. Stopping would get them killed.