Oh, no…
A line of Viking women were arranged in a row. As Jake feared, Kady stood in the front. She was up on one leg, her arms out in a cheerleader position known as a High V. The women behind her matched her pose.
Kady waved her arms and pointed them at the crowd. “Let’s go, Romans! Let’s go!” She signaled for the row of Viking cheerleaders to continue the chant as she moved closer to the stands and sang out. “Let’s hear your spirit!” She lifted her arms up and down, synchronized with the chant, urging the crowd to follow. “Let’s go, Romans! Let’s go!”
Kady’s eyes found Jake and focused hard on him. He understood. Someone had to get this started. Jake cleared his throat, and on the next chorus, he joined in. “Let’s go, Romans! Let’s go!”
He elbowed Pindor, who awkwardly took up the chant. Marika joined in a moment later. It slowly spread through their group and beyond.
“Stamp your feet!” Kady yelled. “To the beat! Let’s go, Romans! Let’s go!” She and her team demonstrated by stamping their feet at the end of each refrain.
Jake didn’t have to be first this time. In seconds, the stands rattled with the stamp of boots. People were on their feet, yelling along with her.
Kady encouraged them by clapping her hands over her head.
Her efforts were not wasted on the stands. Out in the field, the Roman team caught the excitement and fought more fiercely for the ball. Heronidus leaped headlong out of his saddle and caught a stray pass. He landed back in his saddle with the ball under his arm. His team closed in a tight formation around him, and together they slammed through a weak spot in the Sumerian line. Heronidus sent his ball flying. It arced high, skipped over the fingertips of a defender, and sailed cleanly through the rings of the goal.
The stands erupted in chaos around Jake. Already worked up by the cheering, the crowd surged closer to the fence line.
Down below, Kady pointed an arm to Jake, then to the sky. Get ready to move, she silently communicated.
She waved her other arm to her team. The team scattered wider and set up a line that stretched halfway down their side of the field.
“Right through the hoop!” Kady yelled. “Nothing but air! C’mon, Romans! Let’s show them we care!”
At her signal, the women sank to a knee in succession along the line, then rose again. This went back and forth. Jake recognized they were performing the Wave. Off to the right, the Viking section took up the Wave, rising out of their seats with a shout, then back down again.
Kady egged Jake’s section to follow suit. “C’mon, Romans! Show your spirit!” She pantomimed below, crouching and standing in time with her cheerleaders. “On your feet…or face defeat!”
With the next wave, the excited Romans caught the fiery spirit and extended the Wave. The chant continued, and the Wave flowed back and forth with bellows of support.
Jake glanced over his shoulder. Gaius was packed in by his fellow Romans, forced to rise and fall with the Wave. Jake turned to Marika. “Be ready! On the next wave!”
“What?”
Jake grabbed Marika’s elbow and dragged her low along their aisle as the Wave crested high around them. She snagged a fistful of Pindor’s toga and forced him to follow.
He squeaked a protest.
“Be quiet! And run!” Marika urged.
Together, they flew up toward the exit tunnel, squeezing between people who continued to push toward the front of the stands.
They hit the tunnel at a run. Pindor kept up, but he continued to glance back. “Where are we going?” he yelled at Jake and Marika.
“Back to Kalakryss!” Marika answered.
“What? Why?”
They shot out of the stadium onto the cobblestone road that led back to town. Pindor slowed, hearing a mighty cheer for the Romans.
“Marika Balam! Jacob Ransom! Pindor Tiberius! Show yourselves now!” Gaius called, his commands booming out of the stadium tunnel.
Jake ran faster alongside Marika, but Pindor passed them with his long legs. They rounded a corner into an area where wagons and chariots had been parked.
“Over here!” Pindor called ahead. He reached a two-wheeled chariot tethered to a pygmy dinosaur. Leaping into the chariot, he waved Jake in and Marika toward the hitching post. “Um…can you free the lead rope?”
Marika quickly obeyed, then joined Jake and Pindor in the chariot.
Pindor tapped the dinosaur’s hindquarters to get it moving. “Hie! Move it, thick thighs!”
He snapped the switch in the air, and the beast lumbered faster, its neck stretched low to the ground. As their speed picked up and the rattling of the chariot grew worse, Jake found an easy balance with his knees slightly bent and planted wide.
“Hie!”
The chariot sped even faster, flying now through the city gates. Pindor might be nervous in close quarters with the saurians, but he plainly knew how to drive a chariot.
Pindor continued at a reckless pace down the main thoroughfare. With the place mostly deserted, he didn’t need to slow. Buildings flashed past.
“So why are we running from Centurion Gaius?” Pindor glanced over to Marika.
“To help Huntress Livia.”
“What?”
Marika explained briefly what they wanted to do. She ended: “Borrowing this chariot was quick thinking, Pin. We might even be able to catch up with my father and Magister Oswin.”
Even with the compliment at the end, Pindor had gone pale. His steady hand on the reins faltered. They sideswiped an open-market fruit stand and sent a fountain of spiny-skinned melons into the air. Pindor waved an arm back toward the coliseum. “I thought we were in trouble back there! Running for our lives! But no! All this was on some soft-headed idea to use sy-enz to cure Huntress Livia. By Jupiter’s knees, that’s pure madness!”
Marika huffed. “We’ll leave it to my father to decide, Pin! Just drive!” She pointed toward the castle.
An awkward tension settled over the chariot. Jake knew most of it was because they were all scared—both for what lay ahead and what lay behind them. They would get into a huge amount of trouble if Pindor was right and all of this was nonsense.
If they failed, Jake would lose any chance of getting to the pyramid. But he couldn’t let Huntress Livia die for lack of trying. He knew his father and mother would’ve done the same. Kady, on the other hand, had gone to a lot of trouble to help him escape. She was going to be angry when she found out he’d never made it to the pyramid.