Empire Of The Undead by Ahimsa Kerp Read Free Book Online Page A

games they had brought back damnatio ad bestias.
    Death by beasts. The rumored entertainments sounded wonderfully inventive. A terribly large eagle would eat the innards of a doomed patricide, cast in the role of Prometheus. A prisoner from the Celtiberians would be cast as Orpheus, playing his lute until the starving animals could no longer stand it and would rend him to pieces. A female slave convicted of stealing from her master would be Pasiphae, raped by either a bull, a man in a bull costume, or as one rumor promised, both at the same time.
    Later in the day, after the executions, came the real entertainment. The gladiators, the races, and the battle recreations would be watched by tens of thousands of people. It would take place here before spreading out to other venues. A sea battle was to be fought, and that was no rumor. On the following days, the chariot races would begin at the hippodrome. If the events of this morning played out correctly, Felix hoped to have a part in later games.
    Now, however, was the opening day featured fight, and it was enthralling. A Thracian black bull and a Gaulish brown one, both bigger and meaner than their domesticated cousins, were on the attack against a massive elephant. The brown bull stabbed at the elephant’s side, while it was distracted by the menace of the black bull. Those sharp horns could find no purchase in the tough hide of the beast, however, and the elephant turned and charged. It was ponderously big, and it was devastatingly quick.
    The brown bull was caught in its path before it had a chance even to consider moving. Tusks drove deep into flesh, and moments later, the elephant trampled the bull with heavy footfalls. The elephant’s massive feet slammed into its back, splintering bone. The brown bull collapsed into a mewling heap, dying, and in hideous pain.
    Felix felt some sympathy for the shattered bull, but it was removed—he desperately needed the elephant to win. One bull was down, but the boy grew alarmed. The elephant, deadly fast in a straight line, was slow in turning around. Too slow. The black bull’s charge caught it in the rear leg, just above the knee. The bull had enough mass and enough momentum to impact even its mammoth opponent, and the elephant tottered.
    Felix was assailed by panic and regret. “You shouldn’t have bet all your coin on this one, boy,” Hyacinthus said, not unkindly.
    “He was so big,” Felix said. “I’ve never seen an elephant so big.”
    “Bigger than African or Asian elephants,” his friend said. “That one was born far away, much further south than you yourself. In Taprobane. The greatest fighting elephants in the world come from there.”
    “How could he then lose?” Felix asked.
    “He was favored. Never bet on the favorite. Better to spend coin on long odds, else you risk losing all and stand to gain little. But watch—not yet is all hope lost.”
    The bull’s horns were locked into the elephant’s hide. The elephant turned its head and smacked at the bull with his trunk. It connected solidly, but the bull was too massive to be dislodged. The bull kept pushing, and the elephant’s leg buckled.
    It collapsed. Luckily, for the bull, the pachyderm fell away from it. The gargantuan beast slammed into the ground with crushing force, dust flying. The elephant trumpeted in fear and pain, and even from where Felix sat, the sound was deafening.
    The black bull wrenched its horns free from its opponent’s leg and shook its head. Hot steam blew from its nostrils as it backed up. Its hooves slipped a little in the dust. Felix ground his teeth in frustration. Through some bestial instinct, it knew where to strike next. The elephant’s stomach was covered in the same tough hide as the rest of its body, but it could be pierced by those long, sharp horns. Behind both animals, the brown bull, still dying, cried pitifully as blood oozed from its shattered back.
    The bull charged with organ-rupturing force. Then it skidded