Defiant

by Aaron Hodges

  A weight settled in his stomach. He longed for his father, for his mother, to return to how things had been just six months before, to a time when the world—grim as it was—had made sense. Now his mother was dead, her legacy tarnished by accusations of treason, Rydian had been condemned, and his father doomed to a life abandoned by those he loved.

  Swallowing, he drew in a breath as the last light faded from the day. The pain of his bruises had finally begun to recede, the fire of their bites lessening as his Manus reader began to pulse again. He turned his hand to examine the device, surprised it had recovered its Light so quickly. It lit the world around him.

  Such a simple thing, it seemed, a ring of metal encasing a crystalline orb implanted into his flesh. Again he reached out for his father, but again there was nothing. Obviously the Alfur had ways of interfering with the devices when they did not want a human to contact the outside world. Otherwise, he was sure the truth about the gladiators could not have remained secret all this time.

  Its charting function still worked though, which he discovered as he flicked on the illuminated map. It showed only the six buildings of the gladiator complex, along with a distant line that must have been the coast he’d seen from the air.

  Rydian swallowed as he stared at that line, a longing rising within—to escape, to leave this place, whatever the danger. The complex had grown quiet with the darkness, though lanterns had been lit in the barracks behind him. The shouts and laughter of the other Gomans only seemed to grow louder as the night drew on.

  Beyond the lanternlight, though, the darkness of the forest beckoned, whispering of freedom, of a chance to begin again. Except…that promise was a lie. Rydian had seen the primates for himself, lurking at that invisible boundary the Alfur had somehow created to keep the beasts away. But to enter the forest was to enter their world, to venture into their lairs. No, the jungle could offer only death.

  If only Rydian could convince himself the life of a gladiator promised anything different.

  He clenched his fists, watching the Manus reader grow brighter. He could do it, he could enter the trees. The device would light the way. Perhaps it might even scare off some of the beasts, preserve him in the wilderness, perhaps it wouldn’t be the end of him…

  Rydian had just started to his feet when the sound of footsteps carried through the dark. Frowning, he looked around to find a silhouette approaching from the lights of the complex. A moment later, the strange man, Marcus Aureli, took shape. Rydian was so surprised that he hardly noticed the creature padding along at the man’s side.

  Not until the hound gave a yelp and leapt towards him.

  Crying out, Rydian scrambled to his feet, but with no time to find his balance he tripped and fell instead. He struck the ground with a thump—and then the beast was upon him.

  He gasped as something wet and slobbery rasped against his face. Teeth clenched, he struggled to fend off the beast, to keep it from his face, from tearing out his throat.

  It was a while before he caught the sound of laughter above the snorting of the creature. In his panic, Rydian thought the man had lost his mind, that somehow he had set the mad beast upon him.

  Finally though, the laughter trailed away and a sharp whistle sounded in the night. Immediately, the hound’s weight on Rydian’s chest vanished, though it was a moment before he could bring himself to believe the creature had abandoned its prey. Blinking, hands still raised to fend off another attack, he looked around and was surprised to find the hound had returned to the man’s side.

  “Are you insane?” he gasped, shoving himself to his feet. “That beast…”

  He trailed off as Marcus reached down and stroked the creature’s head. In response, it lifted that terrible snout and…licked his hands?

  “I take it Princess left you in one piece?” the man’s voice carried through the night, though he did not look up from the beast at his side.

  Swallowing, Rydian took a moment to check his limbs and face were intact before offering a reluctant nod. “I…guess so,” he said grudgingly, then: “You…you’ve tamed it, haven’t you?”

  “Ay,” Marcus replied shortly. Giving the hound one last stroke, he straightened and strode across to where Rydian stood. “I wanted to prove something to myself, that the legends were true.”

  “…legends?” Rydian murmured, before understanding dawned. “You mean the stories about man and hound, about them working side by side, don’t you?”

  The man nodded, turning his eyes to the jungle. “There are…some who claim the legends are just tales spread by the Alfur, to deceive us.”

  Rydian swallowed, glancing again at the hound, which had followed close on the man’s heels. “But…how? There are still some in Goma. They’re fine when they’re just pups, but when they mature…”

  He suppressed a shudder. Every so often, someone would find a litter of the creatures in some back alley. The wise killed the creatures where they found them. But there were always those who thought themselves above the laws of nature, who believed they could tame the beasts. It always ended badly, as the beasts inevitably grew to adults, and turned against their human masters…

  …and tore them to pieces.

  “Trial and error,” Marcus replied with a grunt.

  When the man did not elaborate, Rydian glanced again at the hound. It continued to stand at Marcus’s side, panting softly, eyes on its master. The creature certainly didn’t seem like it was about to try and tear him limb from limb.

  Rydian returned his gaze to the ex-gladiator, but the man’s eyes were elsewhere. Following his stare, a gasp slipped from Rydian’s lips as he noticed the pinpricks of lights that had appeared above. A thousand thousand tiny lights spread across the dark horizon. They seemed to dance and swirl in their brilliance, though when he focused on just one, its point remained fixed in the sky.

  Stars.

  Memories flickered in his mind, of tales his parents had told him as a youth, about a sky filled with the lights of the universe. Of stars, the lights of suns from galaxies far from Talamh, homes to millions of planets, to life. They had not been seen in Goma for generations, but here…

  He swallowed, contemplating that infinite expanse with renewed interest. Looking past the beauty, he caught some glimpse of the infinite beyond his planet, and felt small. Somewhere up there was the home planet of the Alfur, farther beyond reach than even the silver towers in which the creatures had taken up residence on Talamh.

  And finally, Rydian knew the futility his father and so many others had come to accept. Humanity, however much it resisted, persevered, could not even overthrow the few hundred Alfur that had taken Talamh. How then could they hope to tackle that infinite expanse beyond the stars?

  “My first night in this place still stands in my memories, even after all this time,” Marcus spoke suddenly, his voice soft, barely a whisper. “The terror, the despair…” He paused, glancing in Rydian’s direction before returning his eyes to the sky. “The glory. I knew I would die when I stepped into the arena, struck down by a better man, my death made a spectacle for the crowd.”

  He shook his head, eyes still on the stars. “Yet to be able to stand here, seeing the Light of the universe for the first time, I felt it might almost be worth it.”

  Rydian snorted, tearing his eyes from the vista to look at the strange man. “I see only our doom.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Marcus murmured. “Yet I see something else, the infinite of our universe. Tell me, in all that expanse, do you think the Alfur are the only creatures to exist?”

  “I…” Rydian paused, frowning as he glanced again at the strange man standing beside him. “What are you saying?”

  Marcus chuckled. “That it seems reasonable to believe, if the Alfur could come from the stars, another species might too. One free of their rule, an opposition to their power.”

  Rydian’s heart palpitated at the man’s words. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. For just a moment, he allowed h
imself to contemplate the implications. Another species, another planet, free from the rule of the Alfur? What would that be like, the freedom to decide your own future, your own fate?

  A gentle pulse came from Rydian’s palm and he glanced down to see the Light of his Manus reader fading. He shuddered as the cold, crushing weight of reality returned. If there was another species, a counter to the Alfur, why had they not already come? Humanity had endured centuries under Alfurian rule.

  Clenching his fists, Rydian shook himself, angry he’d allowed the old man to distract him.

  “Easy for you to have hope,” he said bitterly. “You survived that first day on the sands.”

  “I’m still surprised that I did,” Marcus replied, arms clasped behind his back. “But somehow, I found a way. Then again, and again, until one day I found myself the longest surviving gladiator in Goma…and champion.”

  “You’re a warrior,” Rydian replied, as though that were an answer.

  “I was many things before I came here,” came the answer, and in those words, Rydian sensed a grief he had not seen earlier, a pain.

  He swallowed. “How…how did you change?”

  Marcus seemed to hesitate, before letting out a sigh. “You seem like a good lad,” he said finally. Rydian frowned at the unexpected praise, but the ex-gladiator continued before he could speak. “I know you don’t want to be here. You’re not alone in that. But there’s not much any of us can do to change our fates here. Not unless…you take your chances with the jungle. But I warn you, the beasts out there are not half as friendly as Princess.”

  Shivering, Rydian found himself staring at the distant trees. Even in darkness, he felt he could see movement, as though the creatures lurked just beyond sight, waiting. Shuddering, he forced himself to look away.

  “So what do I do?” he whispered.

  “Fight,” Marcus replied.

  And with that, the ex-gladiator turned and retreated back into the lights of the complex.

  Rydian watched him go, still struggling to decipher the meaning behind the man’s words. His body ached and he yearned to give in to his despair, to do as Marcus had warned against, and choose the beasts over life. And yet…as he watched the ex-gladiator disappear between the buildings, Rydian found himself turning and following the man back towards the complex, towards the light.

  He wasn’t ready to give up.

  Not yet.

  10

  Rydian sat in the shadows beneath the arena, listening to the muffled roar of voices from above, straining for some hint of the mad battle that waged overhead. It was no good, of course. The amphitheatres in each of the five cities had been built by the Alfur. The ceiling overhead was of smooth metal rather than brick, making the reverberations of the human crowd almost inaudible, let alone the individual blows of the gladiators who fought on the sands.

  Steeling himself, he glanced at the Lightscreen on the wall. It formed an image of the arena above, of two gladiators battling furiously on the golden sands.

  He watched Falcon as she crossed blades with a blue-clad gladiator of Mayenke. The woman spun and danced, easily evading her opponent’s attacks as she put on a show for the watching crowd. It had been clear from the start which of the two would emerge victorious from this bout. Despite her revelry and lack of discipline, Falcon was a force to be reckoned with.

  A cold breeze blew through the chamber in which the gladiators of Goma waited and Rydian shivered, wrapping his arms about himself. His emerald uniform was suited to the humid, jungle environments of Goma and the complex where they had trained for the past month—not the cold mountain city to which the Alfurian ship had couriered them that morning.

  Boustor.

  Looking about the room, Rydian studied the other gladiators. He’d spent the last month mostly avoiding his new comrades, unable to face their apparent cheer—let alone Falcon’s abrupt mood swings. For their part, the Goman gladiators took little interest in the newcomers, sticking instead to their own cliques within the team. Even the strange Marcus Aureli had remained distant since that first day.

  Today, though, that was the least of Rydian’s worries. He glanced down at the paper he held in his hand, the one with the number twelve scribbled on the back. At the bottom of the nearby Lightscreen, two numbers glowed brightly: 22 and 46. The numbers belonged to Falcon and the Mayenke who still fought desperately on the screen above. But when the bout was done, when one fell and the other emerged victorious, the numbers on the pillar would change. And two new gladiators would know their fate.

  Watching the numbers, Rydian couldn’t help but wonder who he would meet in the ring. Would it be one of the black-clad Boustorans, fighting in their home stadium? Would the crowd jeer at Rydian’s every success, and applaud his fall?

  Or perhaps it would be the dark-skinned Riesorans in their scarlet uniforms. Rydian shivered, recalling what he’d glimpsed of their gladiators on his first day. They had trained together in a coordinated, unified way the chaotic Goman team could never dream of reproducing.

  Swallowing, he forced himself to look away. At least his opponent would be another of the trainees that had arrived with him that first day in the complex. The Alfur were not so cruel as to match experienced gladiators with those yet to win themselves a name.

  But they would all have to fight this games, to earn their names.

  Rydian shook himself. It made no sense to worry over who he would face. He had no power over that outcome. Rydian could only control his own actions, his own terror. Letting out a breath, his gaze slid to the weapons that lay on the bench alongside him. No practice weapons these, the shield and gladius glinted in the Light of the Alfur. He had seen some of the other Gomans training with other arms, but these were the traditional weapons of the gladiator, the tools with which he had chosen to fight.

  Rydian wrapped his hand around the hilt of his gladius. This was the weapon that would determine whether he lived or died today. He’d practiced with it, had fought Johanas and Hazel with the dulled practice blades, yet the weapon still felt clumsy in his hands. All he knew were a few basic thrusts and parries.

  Stifling a sigh, Rydian replaced the weapon on the bench and rested a hand on the shield. Constructed of wood with a steel embossing around its circumference, he was at least more comfortable with the leather strap around his arm. Not that he found much comfort in that—after all, there was only one way a match could be won: death. Only a blade would suffice for that.

  Rydian released the shield’s leather strap, then flinched as a roar sounded from above. A hushed silence fell in the chamber as the gladiators looked to the Lightscreen. In the image, the graceful form of Falcon staggered back from her opponent, blood streaming from a cut on her arm.

  The room held its collective breath as the Mayenken gladiator charged after her, blade raised for the kill. Suddenly, Falcon’s death seemed a certainty. Despite his dislike for the woman, Rydian’s stomach tied itself into a knot as he watched, waiting for the woman to fall.

  A moment later, it was over.

  Rydian blinked, staring at the Lightscreen, not quite able to believe what he’d witnessed. The Mayenken gladiator lay dead on the sand, his life blood pumping from a terrible gash in his throat. Beyond, Falcon walked calmly back towards the tunnel that led down into the Goman chambers.

  Laughter broke out between the other gladiators as they turned expectantly towards the entrance, a moment before the woman herself appeared on the stairwell. The calm expression that’d she’d been wearing above had vanished already, replaced by a scowl as she held a cloth to stem the bleeding from her wound.

  The other gladiators moved forward to congratulate her, but Rydian could only sit fixed in place, still struggling to understand what had happened. One minute, Falcon had been standing fixed in place, helpless before the man’s charge. The next she’d surged forward, moving with impossible speed, her blade sweeping beneath her foe’s guard to claim his life.

  Shivering, Rydian leaned back ag
ainst the cool wall behind him and turned his attention to his companions. Hazel wore her usual scowl, though it might have been softer today, as if not even her frosty attitude could endure in the face of what was to come.

  Seated alongside her, Johanas looked as nervous as Rydian felt. His eyes kept flicking to the arena entrance, as though at any moment he expected a pack of hounds to come bounding down the stairs. His fists were clenched, every inch of his enormous frame taut.

  Rydian suppressed a sigh. Over the last month, the three of them had done their best to train themselves—at times together, at times apart. But despite the fate they shared, little in the way of conversation had passed between them. Now Rydian found himself regretting the lost opportunity for companionship. The other gladiators might drink and revel in their success, but these two at least understood the terror he faced.

  “Bit of a mess we’ve found ourselves in,” he said finally in an attempt at conversation.

  Before either of the two could reply, a buzzer sounded in the room. Rydian’s eyes snapped open, darting to the Lightscreen, before he exhaled with relief. 30 and 49. Neither were his number, nor his fellow Gomans’.

  Rydian turned back to the others, but when neither responded to his earlier comment, he determinedly tried again.

  “So,” he said, sitting straighter on his bench as on the Lightscreen overhead, two figures appeared on the sands. “So…how did the two of you find yourselves here?”

  It was more awkward than his last attempt, but at least this one generated a response.

  “None of your business, mouse,” Hazel snapped, using the nickname she’d come to use for him over the past few weeks.

  Alongside her, Johanas looked up and seemed about to speak, but a rumble from above quieted whatever he’d been about to say. Rydian stifled a sigh, before laughter drew his attention to group surrounding Falcon. She seemed to have perked up now, the grin returning to her face. It took only a moment to see why. A bottle of ale had appeared in her hand. As he watched, she downed almost half its contents in a single swig.