Gladiators vs Zombies by Sean-Michael Argo Page A

careful to remain in shadow, using her knowledge of the household to avoid the scant few guards and slaves who walked the halls. Finally she reached the lanista’s office, and as she suspected there was light shining from the bottom of the door. She took a deep breath, and walked inside the room.
    Lanista Atticus Laeca was at his desk, pouring over ledgers, with the golem primus resting on a small wooden mount at the edge of the desk. The golem’s gag was no longer the strips of leather used by the centurion, but fine chains of iron and gold that wrapped around from its mouth to its head. Atticus did not notice her at first, as Hesta had made sure to rub small amounts of pig fat in the iron hinges of the door, using herbs and incense powder to mask the smell. The maenad was halfway across the room before Atticus looked up and started to rise from his seat. Before he could stand or speak Hesta slammed the cleaver down into the lanista’s forehead, burying the blade deep in his skull.
    Lanista Laeca fell back into his chair, his body twitching as he made the smallest of groans, then in moments he stopped moving at all. Hesta paused for the briefest of moments, looking directly into the eyes of the dead man, and then she began quietly searching his desk for the ludus gate key. While she had the key to the cells and the noxii cages, she needed to give Drust and the gladiators the gate key. Soon she found it, and strung it around her neck. She then took the lanista’s jeweled gladius from its wall hanging, and grasped the golem primus by the chains, pulling it from its mount.
    Her heart was pounding in her breast as she left the office and made her way deeper into the household. She went into the sleeping chambers of each of the guards and paid house staff. She stood over them as they slept, putting the golem primus next to their throats, then removing the gag. As the golem bit into their soft throats Hesta held her hand, wrapped in sturdy cloth, over their mouths. She’d seen what happened to men in the arena when killed by the golems, and knew that a man killed by the bite of the golem would rise again within moments. Hesta had finished using the golem on the last of nearly a dozen sleeping people when she heard the first moaning of a victim rising again as a golem. It had begun.
    Hesta rushed down the stone steps to the side-entrance to the ludus, where she knew there would only be one guard. It was a full moon, so she did not need a lantern or candle to light her way, and somewhere in the back of her mind she suspected that Dionysus would have helped her see in the black regardless. She was a divine instrument on this night, and could not be halted.
    The guard never had a moment to reach, as Hesta’s sword flashed in the moonlight a breath before it transfixed him. The man crumpled to the ground, and Hesta unlocked the doors. This was the moment upon which the survival of the gladiators hinged. There were six armed men in the guardhouse that served as the barrier between the gladiator pens and the ludus training area. Through a side door in the guardhouse there was an entrance to the arming room, where all of the weapons and armor for both training and arena combat were stored. If the gladiators were to have any hope of surviving the wave of carnage that was about to break upon the city, they must take that room. Even with her god’s aide, she knew better than to attack six hard men, the best of the Laeca guardsmen.
    She waited, keeping her breath shallow as she used her legs to hold herself steady at the top of the hallway leading to the entrance where she’d killed the guard. Her legs were splayed out, bracing against the walls, allowing her to hoist herself towards the ceiling, so when the guards came through they would move beneath her and she would remain unnoticed. Hesta had to hope that the chaos erupting in the villa would reach the ears of the men in the guardhouse, and draw off enough of them that she could