Rebel of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Then it is opportune I have come back—”

  “More fool you!”

  “Mayhap, Cleitar, mayhap. But there is a task set to my hands.”

  We walked toward the local drinking den. Cleitar Adria, because of his position, could ease me back, saying in explanation that my absence had been caused by illness. There was, in these latter days of the Jikhorkdun, a certain laxness which worked to my advantage. The needleman was rubbish, as we all knew, and a word or two in the right direction settled that. There was no difficulty in getting myself into the Arena. The problems started when I began to lay out the plan of action.

  “But you work for the queen, Chaadur!”

  I knew this was going to be tricky. Cleitar believed I labored for Queen Fahia, and to this I owed immunity from a deal of unpleasantness. Now I had to persuade him I did not, that I wished him to join with me — more, to lead — a rebellion against the queen. Fahia was generally detested. The coils and twists and turns of intrigue are not particularly difficult to grasp for anyone involved in them; for a bluff cheldur like Cleitar Adria they presented a certain baffling front he failed to penetrate. But he would not admit to ignorance or lack of brainpower. He nodded wisely. He drank and nodded again, and drank more, and listened and I laid it all out.

  “So you see, Cleitar, Princess Lildra will be a boon to us all. For a start, you will receive a handsome pension, and a title too, I don’t doubt. There will be no need — unless you so desire — to act in the Jikhorkdun ever again.” I was on dangerous ground here, for the Jikhorkdun had been Cleitar’s life. But his face and absent eye told their own story.

  He drank again. He held onto the jug. “I am grown more weary of the Jikhorkdun than I could ever have believed. You see that in me, Chaadur?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never make friends in the Arena. We were never true comrades when you were Drak the Sword. And we were wise. But—” He drank again. “But there was a Khibil lad, Kranlo, brought him up from a coy, very quick with a sword, a good eye — I made a friend of Kranlo, more fool me. He was chosen last sennight by Tipp the Thrax to fight the Queen’s Kaidurs.”

  “I am sorry, Cleitar.”

  “Aye. Aye. They dragged him out.”

  His head hit the table and his arms flopped and the wine jug spewed purple Hamish over the floor. I hoisted him up and carted him off to his rooms and dumped him on his bed, and let his slaves care for him. Then I took myself off to the barracks.

  Many new faces were apparent, and many faces that might have been new and might not have been, seeing a kaidur takes little notice of the regular passage of arena fodder. Frandu the Franch and Norhan the Flame were pleased to see me, and I more than pleased to see them. I had work for them.

  Lights out varied, in these latter days, with the whims of the barracks cheldurs. A one-armed ex-kaidur bucking for cheldur and with a little authority — a nikcheldur — at last suggested we’d better turn the lights out and turn in. The talk of the day’s fights went on for a space and then the barracks dropped away into darkness and silence. Not sleeping, I lay and planned what it would be possible to do, and as that was clearly not sufficient, what I would have to do to please the Star Lords and set Lildra on the throne of Hyrklana.

  Once I had resurfaced within the structure of the Jikhorkdun there was no possibility of my avoiding notice, and so I had to fight in the days that followed. Hundal the Oivon, our cheldur, as bluff and gruff as ever, got me some interesting combats, which I managed to survive. The name of Chaadur began to be mentioned. And, all the time, we sounded out the feelings of all those we deemed accessible. The mood of the Arena changed. Fahia was no longer the popular young queen; people were more and more seeing her in the light of the aging butcher. For all that, no rebellion could hope to succeed without inside and outside combination of forces. When Lildra’s people attacked, we in the Jikhorkdun must rise. And our numbers grew — even though, by reason of our employment, our numbers were cruelly reduced from time to time when Fahia staged a bloodbath.

  Any man who is lucky enough to escape from the Arena must be all kinds of idiot voluntarily to return. I kept telling myself that, yes, I was a right onker, a real idiot, but all the same, returning to the Jikhorkdun and rousing all the kaidurs whose personal grudges against those who had put them there would spur them to rebellion had to be clever. Surely? Clever or idiotic, this was the plan, and I was stuck with it. We had a tasty series of tussles with the other colors during a period of high junketings, and the ruby drang inched again up the victory poles. Again, I found myself becoming involved with the fate of the reds and the fortunes of the ruby drang. Then, of course, disaster struck. It could never be unexpected. It was just simply diabolically inconvenient.

  I rounded the corner of the barracks, carrying my gear with blood everywhere from some poor devil who hadn’t jumped quickly enough, anxious to get into the water and clean all the muck and blood and sweat off, and Kyr Tipp the Thrax limped up. The shriveled, shaven-headed Gon thumped his crooked staff down. It was banded in ivory and silver and glittered. He banged it down, his nutcracker nose and jaw snapping, and lifting it high, beckoned me over. It was a summons that was death to refuse.

  I went over and stood looking down on him.

  “Chaadur, is it? Yes, Chaadur. You have been mightily honored, mightily honored, by the glass eye and brass sword of Beng Thrax himself.”

  So, feeling my insides falling away, I said, “Get on with it, man, get on with it. When?”

  If we could rise before this one-sided fight...

  He snapped his nose and chin, his gimlet eye very nasty.

  “You would do well not to talk to me like that—”

  “Do you want to tell me, or must I report that you are lax in your duty, Tipp? Well?”

  He blinked. In a very menacing tone — very menacing — he said, “I will remember you, Chaadur. Tomorrow. You fight tomorrow.”

  I cursed. So soon! But that was the way of it. Tipp the Thrax limped off, with a final threatening curse, and I went on to wash up and to receive the commiserations of the kaidurs.

  “It’s the Ice Floes of Sicce for you, dom!” was the consensus of opinion. This was an estimation of the situation I found myself agreeing with and I detested that argument. Hundal the Oivon wanted to fuss, and Frandu and Norhan wanted to go out and get blind; but I said, “No, fanshos,[4] no. I am not important in the rebellion. But all the kaidurs, acting together, are.”

  Had the sounds of fights and arguments not been a common experience floating over the barracks of the kaidurs, someone might have come to investigate. They were all yelling away, belting fists into palms, swearing by all manner of gods and spirits. In the end we decided — I decided — that I must take my chances with the Queen’s Kaidurs and the moment of the uprising would be brought forward. The quicker we struck, everyone felt, the more chance we stood. The longer we delayed, the more chances there were that we would be betrayed. As arranged, the message was sent out to our people on the outside.

  On the morrow I would go up against an opponent — or opponents — selected from the Queen’s Kaidurs. From such encounters few ever walked away, and they were never heard of again. Ever.

  When Cleitar Adria found me he looked worried. He kept fiddling with his sword, shoving the thraxter up and down in the scabbard.

  “This is a right mess, Chaadur. Couldn’t you have ducked out of sight until tomorrow?”

  “No chance. I just walked into the damned little Gon. Anyway, if we rise tomorrow as planned, and the message gets through, it will all turn out all right.”

  “You hope.”

  “There’s no chance of my hiding—”

  “No. You are now a marked man. You’ve seen the guards?”

  “Aye. They dog my footsteps. Still, I could dispose of them—”

  “That would ruin all. We’ve all laid our lives out on this plan of yours. This plan of ours.” For I had insisted that Cleitar and the others join the plan
ning discussions, and, in guiding them, made them feel a part of the conspiracy.

  “I’ll take my chances with the Queen’s Kaidurs.” Then, incongruously, I laughed. “I may be able to lift the ruby drang up the victory pole.”

  A kaidur destined to fight the queen’s men did not spend that night in the barracks. The guards marched me off before lights out and quartered me in splendid isolation in a sumptuous room wherein much wine stood around in flagons and amphorae and the food was exotically lavish. I sent the dancing girls packing and, after a good meal and a modicum of wine, got my head down. I was in for a fight on the morrow, and I needed to concentrate on that. If, by any unfortunate chance, I met a champion as good as Prince Mefto the Kazzur, then my days on Kregen were numbered.

  No good brooding. I slept.

  The day dawned misty, which was a good omen, since I trusted that our rebel army was creeping up on Huringa. I ate a massive breakfast and began the preparation of my gear, for I would be fighting as a churgur, a sword and shield man, against an opponent similarly armed. Tipp the Thrax, very ugly, looked in to tell me I was fighting fourth and last. Three kaidurs from the other colors would be fighting first. Their names were known to me, and we were all halfway or so up the rankings, prime meat for the Queen’s Kaidurs to chop. I snarled at Tipp and he scuttled off. As he went he spat out, “You’ll sing a lot smaller when I’ve talked to you again.”

  I threw a boot at him and went on polishing my sword.

  When he turned up next, about an hour before the fight was scheduled to begin, he smirked. He looked different, more pompous, more sure of himself, his shaven head a buttered glisten in the lamplight, for the room was shuttered, although the mist had cleared. With him were ten guards with nets and whips. Just in case...

  What he told me gave me a clear understanding of why the Queen’s Kaidurs always — or almost always — won out on the silver sand. He joyed in the telling.

  “The men in black,” he said, “with their tongs and their red-hot pincers and their bone-crushers, their gut-pullers and the rest of their clever inventions in the torture dungeons of the Hakal. If you do not lose, you will die such a death of agony as will make you regret most bitterly you did not lose. And you will make a fight of it before you lose. The queen demands spectacle. She wishes a good fight. You are a fighter, otherwise you would not have been chosen. So fight well. Fight hard. And make sure you lose convincingly.” He snickered. “After all, the queen may be in a good mood and choose to spare you.”

  The men in black sniggered.

  I eyed their whips and nets. It was the damned nets that would cause the trouble... Tipp saw my glance and read my intentions in my lowering face.

  “Do not try to escape, Chaadur. The men in black are clever with their nets. And there are more outside. You would simply go straight down to the dungeons.” He bit a fingernail. “I am told what is done there defies the imagination. Certainly, they do not bury whole bodies, only parts.”

  I turned my back on him, went on polishing the sword. If that sword went between his ribs now, then down under the Hakal I would go. The rebellion had to succeed, for the sake of Vallia. I’d fight the Queen’s Kaidur. But I did not think I would choose to chance fat Queen Fahia’s generosity of mood.

  Tipp went on to describe in more detail some of the work that went on down in Fahia’s torture dungeons, and some of it was stomach-churning, I can tell you. The men in black rattled their nets and flicked their whips. They were men happy in their work — if they were men, that is. I ignored the lot and saw to my gear and, by Vox, I believe if Tipp hadn’t had the sense to stop talking and threatening and leave, I’d have lost control and gone headlong into the lot of them. But there was a better way than foolhardiness of that nature...

  I could have postured and put on a different face, one which inflicted only a few painful bee stings, and disappeared. But that would have aroused the guards and officials of the Jikhorkdun, and we of the rebellion wanted everything to go on as normal. So I sat and readied my weapons and waited to step out onto the silver sand to face an opponent who had a torture dungeon on his side.

  Many a fine arena fighter had chosen to lose and die gracefully rather than face agony beyond belief. Yet I could not allow myself to be blinded by this nauseating trickery to the stark fact that the queen’s champions were hyr-kaidurs of very high standing, men who had battled their way to the top. They would expect to win in any case. This intrigue of Tipp’s was by way of insurance. And it occurred to me, also, that it was eminently possible that the champions had no knowledge of Tipp and the queen’s underhanded dealings to insure the victory. The men chosen were, like myself, from the middle rankings, men the hyr-kaidurs would expect to defeat. Tipp’s insurance extended to the one or two among them who had the makings of great champions and who might defeat the queen’s man. Selah! What happened would happen, so I went on polishing up the sword and thinking of Delia, and of Jaezila and Jaidur, who ought to be nearing Huringa with our raggedy little army.

  Jaezila had told me how she’d unexpectedly met men she knew when she’d tumbled down the trap in the Temple of Malab, and how she had had to be quick to make them see who she truly was, and therefore give them orders that no harm should befall us. That was why Tyfar had been bound and gagged and not slain, and Jaezila, also, out of the subterfuge. I knew Jaezila was a woman of immense resource and guile. And I knew Jaidur to be a right tearaway. With Nath the Retributor and Hardur Mortiljid they must break through quickly once the attack began.

  So we were called, and with the trumpets flinging brazen notes over us we marched up into the suns’ shine of the Arena.

  To catch the atmosphere of the Jikhorkdun! To grasp at the raw essentials of that horrific place! It repels in utter disgust, and, deeply and darkly, it draws on the ancient tides of blood, demanding sacrifice and dedication and adherence to ancient mysteries old before man stood upright. It was not a nice place. For some, it was the only place in all the wide world of Kregen that mattered.

  As an earnest of my feelings, I will say that I felt disgruntled that in this, the last fight, I did not step out onto the silver sand from the red corner. My comrades over there rattled their swords along the iron bars, and yelled and screamed insults and encouragement, and I was debarred from them. We men selected to face the queen’s champions were herded into a small space to one side of the overhanging mass of the royal box, and from the shadows we looked out upon blinding brilliance. Above us, unseen, sat Fahia and her courtiers, her pet neemus, her slave girls in their pearls and diaphanous gauzes. A square shadow offset to the side from the new balcony lay hard-edged in red and green, twinned shadows across the sand. That podium had not been there when I’d fought as Drak the Sword. I thought I knew why it had been built and stuffed with ranks of archers.

  The three other kaidurs sat on the bench and looked glum. A Fristle woman brought the leather bottles of raw red wine, Beng Thrax’s Spit, and they drank. The heat stifled in our small slot of shadow. Out on the silver sand men fought and died. Herds of coys were driven out to be slaughtered in picturesque fashion. Animals squealed and slashed, struggled and, killing, died. The business of the day wore on. We were a prime fixture, and the stands and benches, the whole amphitheater, was crowded, a solid mass of sweating faces gleaming in the lights of the suns, waving arms and kerchiefs, the black cavities of open mouths screaming. A wall of sound lifted around the Arena. We sat and waited, and sweated.

  The order in which we would step out to fight and lose was: Yellow, green, blue, red. This order had been arrived at by lot.

  Of us all, the least glum was the adherent of the sapphire graint. He licked his lips. Wine drops clustered in his beard.

  “The blues crown the victory pole,” he said. “And don’t you forget it.”

  The men of the diamond zhantil and the emerald neemu looked sullen. The yellow said, “By Nandig’s belly! I wish I was home in Ystilbur, on my farm. I swear each vosk would be like a comrade, ev
ery chicken a friend.”

  “What does it matter what color wins?” said the green. “We are dead men.”

  The blue sniffed. “You knew that from the very first day you signed on.”

  “It makes it no easier to bear.”

  “Think of the men in black.”

  “By Harg! I think of nothing else. Suppose my sword slips, and I nick the queen’s man, and he dies? What then?”

  “Then, my friend, pieces of you will be scattered here and there. You have my condolences.”

  He merely said that; his mind was on his own problems.

  I sat and said nothing.

  By the way they talked, they exhibited the hardened toughness of the kaidur. They lived with death, and now they knew they were going to die. Fahia was not often generous. So there was no screaming and breast-beating, no wailing and panicky thrashings about. These men were kaidurs, and they did what kaidurs did, and when their deaths arrived, then their adherence was to the fight and their color, and their deaths were mere codicils to the greater spectacle.

  Familiarity with the Arena rarely breeds contempt. No man stepping out onto the silver sand often feels more than the impulses of the moment. The drive of the blood through bodies tensed for combat, the battering of noise from the mobs, the stink of spilled blood and the rank tang of a multitude of animal smells, the feeling of greatness and smallness and of impending doom — all these sensations and emotions flit through a man’s concentration upon the single object ahead. He must go out and fight. He must win if he can; but, above all, he must fight.

  The first marked for destruction stepped out onto the silver sand. He walked quietly to the designated place where he halted and turned to face the royal box. The high glitter from that place of regal power smote down. We waited in the shadows, unable to see the royal box but all able to see it in our minds’ eyes. The yellow lifted his sword, and the first Queen’s Kaidur stepped out. The golden trumpets rang. The crowds quieted, ready to be critical. This was no wallowing bloodbath, this was a contest of skills in which the favorite artifice of unequal combat lay not in the weapons but in the men themselves. Sword and shield against sword and shield, with a hyr-kaidur ready to show the crowds his arts in combat against an opponent who was very good, but not quite so good as the queen’s man. They liked that, these folk of Huringa.