Previously On Clarkus Maximus:
Sleep came uneasily to Clark that night. He was more afraid now then he had been on the entire strange journey thus far. Tomorrow, he knew, his gladiator training would begin. His stomach was twisted into knots with that knowledge. Clark glanced at Ren. The kid was sound asleep on one of the hard benches, stretched to his full length, snoring lightly.
Clark stood in the darkened cell and looked through the tiny, barred window. The window was high - Clark had to stand on his bench to peer out. The window was placed just above ground level.
His narrow, shared cell overlooked the wide courtyard where he was sure that the training took place. It reminded him a little of a prison yard, only this one swept around in a smooth circle, mimicking the conditions of the Coliseum. A few racks with weapons stood at intervals around the perimeter. In the moonlight, the yard took on a ghostly appearance.
Please hurry, Lois, he pleaded silently.
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Lois threw up violently over the side of the ship that was bearing her inexorably towards Rome. Her stomach empty, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Once again, she tried all of the tricks she knew to combat sea sickness. She tried staring at the horizon, hoping that she could force herself to forget about the incessant rocking of the ship. She even tried pressing the small pressure points in her wrists as Xena had instructed her to do. Nothing seemed to work, although the pressure point technique was working wonders for Gabrielle.
Her sea sickness was really starting to irritate her. She'd been on ships before. When she was in college, she'd taken a Caribbean cruise with some friends on spring break. And Lex had taken her on dinner cruises on his private yacht on a couple of different occasions. Never once had she felt ill from the motion of the ships. But, she had to admit, she'd never been on seas quiet so rough before. The Metropolis Harbor was pretty tame, and the cruise ship had been so large that it had compensated for the waves in the Caribbean. And, she remembered with a shudder, she'd never been on a ship when she'd been so heartsick before. Her worry over Clark was more than enough to twist her stomach into sick knots and leave her all but sleepless at night.
"Hey," Xena said, coming to Lois' side and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," Lois lied.
Xena arched one skeptical eyebrow. "Uh huh."
"Okay," Lois relented under Xena's unwavering gaze. "So I've been better. It's just...I'm just so worried about Clark. He's...not used to being so...powerless."
"We'll get him back. I swear it. If I have to pull down all of Rome brick by brick, I'll get Clark back."
"I know."
Having seen Xena in action, Lois believed that Xena could take on all of Rome if she wanted to.
Xena gazed into the distance, squinting against the slanting shafts of sunlight. She pointed, and Lois followed with her eyes. A mass of ugly black clouds hung in the air, marring the golden late afternoon sky.
"Looks like a storm is brewing. With any luck, it'll change direction. But be prepared for a rough night."
Lois paled. "Wonderful," she squeaked. "I think I'll go below decks for a while and lay down."
"Good idea," Xena nodded.
Lois turned and went back to the small cabin she shared with Xena and Gabrielle. Two hammocks swung lazily with the rocking of the ship, each one above a regular, stationary cot. Lois shut the door behind her and took to pacing, though the tiny cabin didn't offer much room to do so. Just five decent steps from the door to the back wall and back again. Lois knew the steps by heart. She'd paced every day since boarding the vessel. The third step squeaked at every pass, the floorboard loose and slightly warped.
Still, the ship was clean and the crew was respectful, although Lois suspected that the crew's cordial attitude had more to do with Xena's reputation than anything else. In the days that she had been traveling with Xena and Gabrielle, the strawberry blonde bard had told many stories about the tall, blue-eyed warrior woman. How many men Xena had killed. How many wars she had started in the old days. How many others she had stopped after starting over with a new life. How many times she had defied, fought, and won against the gods. How many other times she had helped the gods.
With a loud sigh, Lois thought back over all that had happened since Clark had been kidnapped. The desperate ride to Kratos. The strange sights and smells of the city. The two long days that they had been stuck in the city while she helped Gabrielle and Xena as they worked to procure the items that they would need once they arrived in Rome, as well as passage on one of the ships.
Lois hadn't seen much of Xena in those couple days in Kratos. The warrior woman had been busy, rising with the sun and not returning until they met for dinner. After dinner the first night in Kratos, Xena had disappeared. Lois hadn't seen her again until the following night. Lois had asked in passing about where she had been spending her time, but Xena hadn't been forthcoming with much information. Part of the time, Lois knew that Xena was speaking with various ship captains, haggling for the lowest passage fare that she could get. And Lois knew that the passage hadn't been cheap.
Lois' natural and professional curiosity had gotten the best of her, and on the last night in Kratos, she had hung around in the common room of the inn after dinner. Gabrielle had gone to bed after the meal , as they would be boarding the ship that Xena had chosen at dawn the following day. Xena, however, had stayed behind in the common room. Lois had faded into the background of the room while Xena's back was turned. After settling the tab with Licus, the innkeeper, Xena had sat down with a group of men. Someone had produced a deck of cards. Coins had glittered in the candlelight, clinking together as they were tossed into a heap in the center of the long table. Lois had watched in fascination as a game of poker had started, though it was slightly different from the poker that she knew. The cards, for example, didn't have the standard designations of spade, club, diamond and heart. She did catch the words "hero," "warlord," "peasant," and "slave," and assumed them to be the various suits. Full houses were called "full boats." But other than a few other tiny variations, it seemed to be the same game that she had played so many times with Clark, Perry, and Jimmy after-hours at The Daily Planet.
So that's how Xena is making money to pay for everything, Lois had realized.
She had shrugged at the realization. How Xena gathered the dinars that she needed in order to save Clark wasn't Lois' concern. She was just glad that the woman wasn't using more controversial methods -not that she believed Xena to be the type to sell her body, nor was the woman a sword for hire. Lois had stayed and watched for a long time. Xena was very good - knowing exactly how to bluff and keeping an unreadable, expressionless look on her face. It had reminded her a little of the mask that Clark adopted each time he slipped into the role of Superman.
Lois had watched Xena's eyes as they swept over her opponents, sizing them up, carefully calculating every minute detail that might be a player's "tell." By the time Lois had gone to the second floor to her room, Xena's pile of coins had more than tripled in size.
Lois and Gabrielle had been set to another task during those two days in Kratos. Gabrielle had had a list of items that Xena needed. Lois wasn't much of a haggler, at least, not in this unfamiliar world, so she had stood back while Gabrielle spoke with the shopkeepers and street merchants. For Lois, Gabrielle had purchased a rich looking wine-colored dress shot with gold thread that made little sunbursts around the edges of the fabric. For Gabrielle, they had decided on a pale blue dress with silver scrollwork around the waist. Both had matching veils at Lois' instance. She had a gut feeling that Tempus would be present in Rome to watch the fights, and she didn't want to give him the chance to recognize her.
For Xena, they had purchased new armor - a breastplate, gauntlets, greaves and helm. All were polished to a bright golden shine. Lois had felt a moment of pride when Gabrielle had trusted her to be the one to choose the armor. Lois had been struck by how beautiful the armor was, despite the grisly purpose it served. The helm, in particular, was a work of art - it had been forged to resemble the head of a snarling tigress. Only Xena's eyes and mouth would be seen once she wore that helm. There would be no way that Caesar could possibly recognize her in that helm.
Lois snapped back to the present as the ship rolled to one side in the waves, knocking her into the back wall of the cabin. Her right shoulder connected with the wall; she rubbed the shoulder absently as she gave up pacing and sat down on the bed. The seas were definitely getting rougher. A faint rumble of thunder boomed in the skies beyond the thick walls of the ship's hull. Lois lay down, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to breath deep, calming breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. She forced out all other thoughts from her head, concentrating only on her breathing. Exhaustion finally took her, and for the first time since she'd been thrust into the nightmare she was now living, she slept deeply and dreamlessly.
She awoke late the next morning. Stretching as she stood, she looked around. She was alone in the cabin, though the rumpled blankets on the other cot and hammock said that Xena and Gabrielle had been in the room at some point during the night. Lois stretched again, hearing and feeling the muscles in her neck and shoulders popping. Crossing to the small table by the door, she splashed water from a basin onto her face and neck. The water was cold and helped to bring her into full wakefulness. She hastily ran a comb through her tangled hair and then made her way back onto the deck. Mercifully, the ship was not rocking nearly as badly as it had been every day since they had stepped foot onto it.
How long have we been on this ship? Lois thought miserably. A week? Ten days? No, not quite that long. Close to a week maybe. Ugh, I can't wait to step foot onto solid ground again. I swear, I'll never leave the ground again...unless, of course, Clark takes me flying.
She mounted the steps up out from below deck and onto the main deck. Barefooted and bare-chested sailors rushed from place to place. Some were securing the lines that ran to the mast; Lois could see the white material puffed to capacity with the steady wind. Others were mopping down the wooden deck. Still others were climbing the rigging and shouting directions to the man at the wheel. Most of the men were singing a bawdy tale of a sea captain who was seduced by a mermaid.
Lois closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the salty sea air, grateful that for once, her stomach wasn't doing back flips. She took a moment to savor the feeling, wondering if eating something would spoil her stomach's good mood. After a long pause, she opened her eyes again and saw Xena and Gabrielle leaning against the port side railing, talking seriously in low voices. Xena was emphasizing her points with sharp hand gestures. Lois walked over to join them.
Xena smiled when she saw Lois approaching. "Lois. I take it you slept well?"
Lois nodded. "Like a rock."
"Good thing, too," Xena said dryly. "The gods were really mixing it up with last night's storm."
Silently, Lois was thankful for the sheer exhaustion that had allowed her to miss such a storm.
"Xena and I were just discussing our plans once we reach Rome," Gabrielle explained.
"When will that be?"
"In a couple of hours," Xena replied, pointing to the horizon. "See that out there?"
Lois drew a hand over her brow to shade her eyes from the bright sunlight. She could just make out the hazy silhouette of land in the distance. She nodded.
"I see it," she said.
"That's Rome."
"Okay. So...I guess the next question is, what do we do when we get there?" Lois said. "What's the plan?"
"First, we find an inn. I'll talk to some of the locals and see what I can find out. The gladiator market is pretty public. Someone has to know something about any recent auctions. With any luck, I might find someone that will remember Clark. I might even get lucky enough to find out who has him."
"Okay," Lois said again, nodding thoughtfully. "And once we have that information, then what? We go to whoever has him and offer to buy him back?"
Xena shook her head. "No gladiator trader worth his salt would willing part with a new acquisition. Not for money anyway. However, there are other methods of persuasion." The look on Xena's face made it clear to Lois that she would not hesitate to fight and kill whoever had Clark, if the need arose. "But, I don't think it will come to that. The word around Kratos was that Caesar's festival was starting soon. Probably within the next day or two. I can't guarantee that Clark won't be forced into the arena right away."
"Without training?" Lois nearly shrieked, once again edging towards panic.
A few sailors stopped what they were doing and looked in Lois' direction at her outburst. After a moment, they shrugged and took up their tasks once more. A new song started, this one about a saucy tavern wench and her drunken suitors.
Xena shrugged. "It's always a possibility. It depends on the owner and the offers made to him. It makes no difference to the spectators, so long as they get the bloodshed that they crave." She spat out the words disgustedly, then softened. "I'm sorry."
"Real tactful, Xena," Gabrielle said sarcastically.
Lois couldn't answer. She gripped the railing to steady herself.
"Lois, it's going to be all right," Xena said, locking eyes with her. "Gabrielle and I are prepared for that possibility."
"Easy for you to say," Lois argued. "It's not your husband out there!"
Xena fixed her with a level gaze, putting both of her hands on Lois' shoulders. "Lois, why do you think I had you and Gabrielle find us disguises?"
"You said it yourself. You can't risk being seen by Caesar."
Xena nodded. "The only time there is danger of that is at the games. I plan on fighting in the arena if Clark is forced into battle. You and Gabrielle are going to ensure that that happens."
To Be Continued...
