Defiant

by Aaron Hodges

  Ice slid down his spine as the hound stepped onto the sands. He’d almost forgotten about the beast, almost convinced himself it had only been a phantom, an error in his memory on a dark night. Now as it stalked across the sands towards him, his terror came rushing back, the need to run, to flee this awful creature…

  …then Rydian noticed the strange weapons master watching him. Swallowing, he looked from the hound to the man, and remained where he stood.

  Silently the hound approached, circling him once before stretching out its terrible snout to sniff at his hand. Rydian flinched as the wet nose touched his flesh, but he did not take his eyes from Marcus.

  The man stared back, the moment stretching out, until finally he gave a sharp whistle. Turning from Rydian, the beast strode to where the ex-gladiator waited and sat at his heel.

  “Why are you here, Mouse?” Marcus asked softly.

  “Falcon won’t train us,” Rydian rasped. “Even if she would, I doubt her idea of training could make a difference,” he shivered, thinking of Geitsen, his brutal strength. Despite the hope his Manus reader had offered, it had abandoned him in his time of need. “I…I don’t think I’ll survive another bout in the arena, not against a true gladiator. Please, I…I don’t want to die.”

  Marcus did not reply immediately, but stood in silence, watching as Rydian shifted nervously on the sands.

  “What you would ask is impossible,” the ex-gladiator said suddenly. “I am long retired, Mouse. I cannot help you.”

  “Retired?” Rydian breathed. Shaking his head, he gestured to the blades the man still held. “Even retired, I bet you could defeat any of the gladiators from Goma. Pleas—”

  “I said no,” Marcus snapped, his voice rising a pitch, eyes flashing as he raised one of his sabres, as though to fend off an attack. At his side, the hound dropped into a crouch, a growl rumbling from the back of its throat.

  Rydian’s heart lurched and he retreated a step. Despite Marcus’s reassurances, there was a darkness he glimpsed in the eyes of the beast. For a moment he stood frozen on the sands, ready to flee, to abandon this idea. What had he been thinking, asking a madman who went around with a hound to help them?

  And yet…who else was there to ask?

  “Leave this place,” Marcus Aureli rumbled, lifting a finger to point at the door.

  Rydian stared at the outstretched hand. Then he shook his head.

  “No,” he said. Anger rose in Rydian’s chest as he stared at the man who would deny him a future. It was too much, to witness Marcus’s skill, his ability, to know this could help them—only to be rejected. Fists clenched, he took another step. “You must,” he continued, trying and failing to keep the anger from his voice. “You have to—there’s no one else.”

  Marcus stood fixed in place at Rydian’s words, eyes shining in the growing light.

  “I must?” he said at last, voice low, but there was no missing the danger in his tone. He stepped towards Rydian, twin blades in hand, hound growling at his heel. “Who are you to tell me what I must do?”

  Rydian trembled at the rage in the man’s eyes. He’d already gotten himself into one fight today. But…he could not back down, not now. There was more to Marcus’s reaction than simple anger, he sensed. Something to the way he practiced here without companions. To how he had come to the barracks the night before, then left without joining in the celebrations. This was a man alone, isolated not because of circumstance, but choice.

  Why?

  “You’re afraid,” he said suddenly, acting on intuition. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re afraid to try and help, in case you fail. In case the people you train still die. You’re…you’re a coward.”

  Rydian blinked. He hadn’t meant to say that last part. He opened his mouth to take it back, but Marcus was already moving.

  A soft hiss echoed around the courtyard as a curved blade slammed into the sand between Rydian’s feet.

  “Pick it up,” the weapons master rumbled.

  Rydian hesitated as a voice shouted a warning from the back of his mind. Looking from the blade to the ex-gladiator, he saw an emptiness behind the man’s eyes, a madness he had only glimpsed before.

  “Pick it up,” the man repeated, advancing with the second blade, “or die a coward’s death.”

  Rydian yelped as the man charged. Without thinking, he snatched the sword from the sand. Steel rang against steel as the blades came together and sparks flashed. The impact vibrated through Rydian’s hands, almost dislodging the sword. He leapt back, weapon raised before him, clutching instinctively for the straps of a shield that were not there.

  “No shield to protect you now, Mouse,” Marcus growled, then swung again.

  Rydian leapt backwards in response, but this time he was too slow, and he cried out as the blade slashed across his chest, tearing through cloth and flesh, leaving a shallow gash. Rydian staggered as the pain struck him.

  “You cut me!” he gasped.

  “Coward,” Marcus spat, throwing Rydian’s own words back at him. He advanced, blood now dripping from the tip of his blade. “Is that not what they called you, in the stadium? How did it feel, to be so despised?”

  He attacked again. This time Rydian met him blade to blade. Sparks leapt from the collision, then again as he launched a riposte of his own. Fists clenched around the hilt of his weapon, his every fibre thrummed, pulsing to the rhythm of the battle. A fire seemed to swell within, spreading through his core, a burning anger. How dare this man call him a coward, insult his courage? Had he not fought, just as Marcus had suggested, though the world had stood against him?

  Rage building, Rydian imagined himself gathering speed, the power of his blows swelling with each exchange. Marcus attacked again, but this time Rydian imagined himself the warrior’s equal, his curved sword leaping to meet the other. Sparks leapt at the collision, before Rydian twisted, thrusting the blade for the ex-gladiator’s face.

  Marcus spun and the blade cut only empty air. Pain slashed across Rydian’s arm as the warrior’s own weapon found its mark. A snarl tearing from his throat, Rydian lashed out again, and this time the blow forced the ex-gladiator to retreat. Rydian advanced, energy thrumming in his veins, the heat gathering, concentrating in the palm of his hand…

  …and building, growing to a searing, burning flame.

  Suddenly the thrumming was no longer power, but pain. It washed over Rydian, sweeping aside his rage, and crying out, he dropped his blade. Staggering back from the weapons master, he clasped his burning hand before him. Light spilled from his Manus reader, just as it had with Geitsen. But now…it did not fade, but burn, searing at his flesh as though he held a hot poker in his hand.

  The flames tore another scream from him. White spots danced across his vision as he staggered, his mind shrinking from that pain, that agony…

  Slowly, painfully, the Light faded. The pain went with it, receding into the depths of his mind, until he was left standing on the sands again. Spots danced across his vision as he blinked, struggling to return to the present.

  He found Marcus standing across from him, features creased as he studied Rydian.

  “What…” he murmured, but couldn’t seem to finish the question.

  Instead, the weapons master strode across the sands and snatched up Rydian’s hand. Still stunned by the pain he’d experienced, Rydian did not resist as Marcus examined his Manus reader, turning it this way and that, as though he could read something in its dull crystal, in the swirls of steel that enclosed the device.

  Finally Marcus exhaled and looked up from his inspection. “Has this…happened before?” he rasped, fingers tightening about Rydian’s wrist.

  “I…” A lump lodged in Rydian’s throat as he looked into the man’s eyes and saw something there, excitement, or…fear? “This morning, when I woke,” he answered, not wanting to speak of the Mayenken gladiators.

  Nodding, Marcus finally released him and stepped back. A chill spread down Rydian’s spine as he watche
d the man.

  “What does it mean?” he asked. “What’s happening to me?”

  Marcus said nothing, only stared at Rydian, eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure,” he murmured, then shook his head. “But…it seems I must reconsider.”

  “I…what?” Rydian asked, not quite believing his ears.

  Silence answered his question. The ex-gladiator stood as though frozen in place, eyes narrowed, blood still dripping from his curved blade.

  “I will train you,” Marcus said at last. “Hawk and Bloodlust too, if they wish, and any Goman trainees that arrive for this cycle of the games.”

  Rydian exhaled in relief, but the weapons master went on before he could offer his gratitude.

  “From now on, you will address me as ‘sir’ or ‘Aureli’,” Marcus continued. “Falcon and her followers will not be welcomed, so we will train here, each morning, before the sun rises. Do you understand?”

  Rydian stood for a moment, still shocked by the man’s sudden change of heart. Finally though, he nodded. “Yes…er, sir!”

  Marcus Aureli stood for a moment longer, watching him. Then abruptly, he turned and stalked from the arena, the strange hound following at his heels.

  Rydian remained, staring at the spot where man and beast had disappeared. Finally though, he shook himself, and took a moment to inspect his Manus reader. It seemed no different than any other day of his life, though its Light had dulled again. Wondering, he reached down a hand to where Aureli’s blade had bit him, and winced as he felt the wound beneath his fingers.

  The Manus reader had not healed him this time. So where had its Light gone? And how had it renewed so quickly from earlier, for that matter.

  A shiver ran down Rydian’s spine as his mind filled with questions—questions he knew would never be answered. No human understood the technology that powered the devices, only the Alfur. And going to the creatures for help was something he would never do.

  So instead, he went looking for Hazel and Johanas.

  16

  “Another lap, worms!”

  Rydian flinched at Marcus Aureli’s bellow, almost tripping over himself as he ran the circuit around the gladiator complex. The thumping of boots from behind only served to add urgency to the task, and lowering his head, he struggled to pick up his pace. Hazel jogged ahead of him, loping along with easy strides, while Johanas had already fallen behind.

  And behind even him, came the new trainees.

  They had arrived by Alfurian ship that morning, just as Rydian and his friends had the day after the last games. Yet more innocent men and women picked by the Enforcers back in Goma for their supposedly violent nature. They were three as well: a man and woman around Rydian’s age, the last a man who seemed to be closing on his late thirties.

  The three had taken the news of their fate much the same as Rydian and his friends had that first day—with varying degrees of denial, rage, and despair. At least they hadn’t experienced the misfortune of a hungover Falcon welcoming them to the complex.

  Not that Aureli was much better.

  The illusive weapons master had quickly proven more vicious than the hound he kept at his side. There had been no orientation for the newcomers, no moment of quiet to adjust to their fates—just Marcus Aureli’s curt explanations and a command to run, and keep on running until he bid them stop. With the hound growling at his side, not even the boldest of the newcomers had dared question the man’s authority.

  Rydian gasped as he turned the corner around one of the barracks and emerged into the open place surrounding the complex. Despite a month of his own training, his lungs were already burning, his body aching at this fresh punishment.

  In the distance, the trees loomed. He noticed the eyes of the newcomers drawn towards that unknown wilderness, shimmers of fear and apprehension appearing on their faces. Like most Gomans they had never been outside the city walls, never seen the vastness of the world beyond. But they had heard the stories, knew the dangers. In the jungle, the beasts lurked…

  …and yet Rydian remembered well his first day in this place, the temptation of those trees, of a place free from Alfurian rule.

  “Faster!” Aureli’s bellows drove them on, though Rydian risked a glimpse behind.

  The man pounded along behind them, his hound growling at the last of the runners—the young woman called Ruby that had arrived that morning. Fear showed on her face as she glanced back at the beast, though she managed to pick up her pace, overtaking Johanas as he trailed.

  Rydian shook his head, and they continued around the perimeter, puffing and wheezing, running as though their very lives depended on it, Aureli’s hound intervening whenever one of them lagged behind.

  It was an hour before Aureli finally allowed them to stop. One by one, they finished the last lap, collapsing to the ground, gasping, sobbing, coughing as they struggled to draw breath. Rydian and his friends knelt together, but the newcomers turned in fear towards Marcus Aureli, and the terrible beast at his side. Rydian recognised their terror of the creature. He couldn’t blame them. He still didn’t entirely trust the beast himself.

  “Are you mad?” the younger of the men, called Kelvin, gasped finally, straightening and stepping back from the hound’s proximity. “What are you doing with that thing? It could kill us all!”

  “Who? Princess?” Aureli threw back his head and laughed. “She’s harmless.”

  “It’s…it’s a hound,” Ruby rasped, her voice barely rising above a whisper as she tried to catch her breath. “They’re…they’re—”

  “Aggressive?” Aureli interrupted.

  He stomped up to the young woman, face unreadable, the hound padding alongside him. The latest recruits shrank back from the beast, but the hound ignored their fear, reaching out a curious snout to lick Ruby’s hand. She snatched it back immediately, eyes wide, and Aureli chuckled again.

  “We’ve all been judged as aggressive, girl,” the weapons master continued. “According to the Alfur at least. I suggest you reserve judgement until you get to know Princess—as I do with each of you.” His eyes narrowed as they swept over the six of them. “Otherwise, I would have written the lot of you off on first sight.”

  “Why don’t we get the practice blades and find out then,” Hazel growled, rising to her feet. She still obviously hadn’t gotten over the man’s surprise blow on their first day.

  Aureli’s eyes flickered to the young woman. “Ahh, Hawk. I’m pleased you survived your bout in Boustor. Tell me, did the technique I taught you help?”

  Hazel hesitated at his words, before her face reddened and she looked away. Before she could answer, Kelvin spoke up again.

  “Does that mean we finally get to use a sword?” the young recruit asked. There was a glint in his eyes at the mention of weapons, and Rydian couldn’t help but think the Alfur might have been correct in their assessment of this man at least.

  The weapons master turned his jade eyes on Kelvin. “You’re an eager one,” he said, then: “Tell me boy, have you ever been in a fight?”

  Despite his earlier bravado, Kelvin hesitated at the question, eyes taking on an uncertain cast.

  Aureli snorted, turning to the rest of them. “Have any of your sorry excuses for warriors been in a fight before?”

  The newcomers all shook their heads in answer to Aureli’s question, and the old weapons master turned his gaze on Rydian and his friends instead.

  “Well you three, perhaps you can share for our guests what it’s like, in the arena.”

  Rydian hesitated, thinking back to his desperate bout, the struggle, the pain. He’d fought conservatively, always retreating, hardly offering a response to his opponent’s onslaught until that final blow, and yet…

  “It was exhausting,” Hazel took the words from his lips.

  “Exactly,” Aureli said with a nod, looking again at the new trainees. “When you watched the games in Goma, you might have come under the impression a human can fight for long minutes, even an hour, without rest. Th
at impression is wrong. The best gladiators spend most of their days training, all in preparation for a bout that might last less than ten minutes. Any longer than that, and you will see even the best of fighters flagging.”

  Rydian nodded. Aureli’s words conjured memories of the fight he’d glimpsed between Rotin and the Boustoran champion. The woman had been exceptional, her skill as close to Aureli or Falcon as he’d seen, but…in the end, it had not been Rotin’s skill or strength that defeated her, but the Alfur’s stamina.

  “As it is, I’m surprised the three of you lasted thirty seconds on the sands,” Aureli continued, gesturing to Rydian, Hazel, and Johanas. “You won’t get so lucky a second time.”

  A shiver ran down Rydian’s spine as he recalled the Mayenken gladiators’ display on the training grounds. The others might doubt, but he knew the truth. Unless they improved, and quickly, their next opponents would finish them easily. Hazel had drawn a man from Riesor as her next foe, while Johanas had been spared a bout at the next games. Only five named gladiators from each city fought at a games.

  Ruby, Kelvin and the third newcomer, Caleb, were not so lucky, of course. As unnamed gladiators, each would fight in a month’s time, though they would not know their opponent until the minutes before the bout. At least the three would benefit from Aureli’s training, rather than being abandoned, as Falcon had with Rydian and his friends.

  Shaking himself, Rydian forced his mind to the present. His Manus reader had remained dull since the encounter with Aureli the day before, but the memory of the pain he’d felt remained, hovering at the back of his thoughts. What if the device was malfunctioning, and the next time the pain did not cease? A treacherous part of him feared that the agony, and wondered whether he should go to the Alfur after all, but…

  …that would mean abandoning other…possibilities. Recalling the sensation of Light flooding his body, washing away his weakness, Rydian knew he had to take the risk, to wait and see whether it happened again. He needed to know the truth about the device, what it was capable of, whether…whether it could be used against the Alfur themselves.