“We’ll take that one, if you’ll saddle it for us,” Rief said, and the stablehand led the animal to the front of the building.
“So do you know horses?” Rief asked Alec rhetorically as they walked forward as well. Minutes later, Alec pulled Rief up behind him, and they left the clan grounds, riding into the city.
“What do you want to shop for, healer?” Rief asked him as they cantered along the road. Alec opened up his supply bag and pulled out some of his herbs.
“You want to go shopping for plants? You’ve got gold – you could buy jewels, or your own horse, or fine tapestries, or silk clothes, and all you want is roots and stems? You have just officially dropped down into the ‘disappointing’ category, healer,” Rief spoke in his ear, but then she leaned against him affectionately for a minute. “Alright, if it’s such that you want, we’ll go to the farmers market. Go right up ahead, and we’ll come to a large square. We’ll go past many fine stores with respectable wares, and then there will be another square where the farmers market is located. My mother used to take me there when I was young.”
Alec followed her directions, but as they passed the fine stores, he paused in front of many at Rief’s direction as she pointed at elegant items, but in each case Alec simply shook his head, then rode on by, teasing her to the point that she punched his ribs repeatedly. “How can a man who doesn’t talk manage to make me so mad?’ she asked in exasperation.
When they arrived at the farmers market, Alec tied the horse to a rail, then led Rief around the perimeter of the square, stopping at several stalls to inquire about prices for several items. Many plants were foreign to him, never before seen in the Dominion, but his imprinted memory identified them and the particular medicinal values they might hold. They continued to buy materials to the degree that Alec eventually bought a second bag, and began to put specimens in it as well.
“Healer, we need to go if we’re to reach the tournament in time,” Rief told him two hours later. They returned to the horse, placed the bags in their saddle bags, and rode away. Rief directed Alec towards the tournament grounds outside the city. Foot traffic, carriages and horses all grew more common as they approached the great fair where so many people were enjoying themselves. Alec wove through and around, until he found a corral where all the Indige horses were safely protected. “We may be here all day,” Rief informed the attendant, and then she led Alec away towards the ring where the fencing contests were held.
“It’s not as popular as the jousting, but there’s still a pack of people who watch these matches,” Rief informed Alec. “The early matches are usually when the good fighters mop up the easy opponents, and then later this afternoon, the contests get evenly matched. By tonight when it’s down to the best of them, the benches will be packed with people watching. They’ll be watching you, I’m sure,” she told him as they came to the front of a large, oval stone structure.
“This is the Indige healer, a contestant,” Rief told an official with a scroll.
“He’s to go over there. He can leave the pads with you, sister. This is a real contest, you know,” he added.
Rief looked at Alec, then back at the official. “He won’t wear the pads, but I’ll need to go with him. He can’t speak, so I’m here to interpret,” she said.
“Aahh, we can’t do that,” the officer replied, standing a little straighter now. “You send him in. He’ll find his way, I’m sure.”
Rief looked at Alec. “I’m sorry healer, you heard him. I’ll take a seat in the front row, and you can come to me if you need any help,” she tried to sound positive, although Alec could tell she was upset. He was less worried than she was, and as she leaned up to kiss his cheek he smiled at her, then turned and walked into the interior of the structure.
Men of all sizes, and wearing all manner of colors were walking around inside the building, and soon Alec found another man who seemed to be running the situation. “You’re from Indige clan, obviously,” the man said. “Are you the one listed as the healer?” Alec nodded. “You’re cutting it close. Stand in pen two; you’ll be the fifth group out. The first is just leaving now,” he nodded his head towards a bright doorway, where the sunlight from the center ring contrasted sharply with the dim interior in which the warriors waited.
Alec went to pen two, and found two other men waiting there, one in Canare’s yellow and one in Scarle’s bright red. He looked out the window and saw three men fighting each other in the center of a sandy pit, where a roped off ring narrowed the hundred foot wide field to a twenty five foot wide circle for combat. As Alec watched, one combatant dealt a severe slice to the ribs of another, who fell to the ground and crawled out of the circle while the remaining two circled each other warily for half a minute. Then the swordsman in orange and blue showed himself to be a very good warrior as he aggressively engaged and easily beat his opponent.
He turned and saw the other two in his pen looking at him, weighing his ability as an opponent. One of them had to be the obvious expected champion of this round, though Alec wasn’t sure which it was. Scarle’s warrior murmured something in a low voice to Canare’s, who nodded briefly, and then they said no more.
Alec turned again to watch the second match. Again, one person knocked out a second, and then the third knocked out that winner. Apparently there was a set order for how things were expected to go. Alec looked at his two opponents, both grown men with much more muscle and mass than he had, and he realized that he would be the expected first sacrifice.
The third group battled, and then the fourth group was called out. “Pen two, you’re next. Do you have your chosen weapon for the day?” the official called out. The other two men from his pen pulled their swords from their scabbards, showed them to the official, who made a mark on them, then dispatched the warriors to the doorway. “This is your weapon for the day youngster,” the official told him with little attention as he marked the sword. “Go stand and wait.”
The fourth group finished, and Alec’s group stepped out into the ring. The crowd gave a tepid round of welcoming applause, and looking around Alec saw that the upper tiers of benches, and many of the boxes, were empty. Rief was easily visible, the only Indige colors in the front row, and Alec waved to her as he approached the circle.
“I’ll make it your foot if you want,” the Canare fighter said to Alec as he passed. “It’ll be enough to be honorable, but you won’t suffer permanent harm.”
Alec realized he was offering to fix the fight. Alec shook his head negatively with vigor, and took his spot. “I offered him a chance,” Canare said to Scarle, and then the bell rang.
Chapter 27 – Battling in the Arena
The Canare swordsman stepped confidently towards Alec. As the Scarle fighter hung back, the swordsman swung swiftly at Alec, who confidently parried and riposted, bringing a look of surprise to his opponent’s face. “Was that lucky or are you less hapless than most sacrifices?” the swordsman asked conversationally.
Alec didn’t answer, as he was physically unable to, but for the moment his attention was wholly focused on his sword. It had felt and sounded terribly wrong upon contact. Another thrust by his opponent followed swiftly, and Alec lunged out of the way. He did not have his warrior ingenaire abilities engaged, and was fighting using the skills he had learned in uncounted hours of practice at Goldenfields and Oyster Bay. He followed with a wide swipe that clanged as it drove his opponent’s sword downward, and Alec sprang away.
“You’re not an easy mark, are you?” Canare called. He approached Alec with more caution now, and Alec stared at him closely, judging how to respond. Suddenly Alec realized the Scarle warrior was entering the fray as he heard the faint scuffle of feet in the sand. Engaging his powers now, Alec fell flat on the ground, feeling Scarle’s sword scratch his shoulder and neck. Rolling three times, Alec moved to a new location, sprang up, and raced at Scarle, swinging high, low, high, and then thrusting at the man’s thigh. He felt light pain from the scratch in his back as he moved,
but ignored it as he slid his blade into his opponent’s flesh. He pulled it immediately away after only piercing the skin a couple of inches, and stepped back to see what would happen.
The Scarle warrior looked down in astonishment. “You think I’ll be the first one to leave with just a slice? Think again,” and he charged, just as Canare came around at Alec from his right. Swinging his sword in a figure eight, Alec engaged both his opponents in one motion, then rolled forward in a somersault between them, lancing out with his blade to slice Scarle’s ribs as he went. Abruptly, he felt his ingenaire powers flicker away, and he was back to fighting on the basis of his own skills, without time to ponder the loss of energy.
Alec rose to his feet, took another stab at Scarle, pinking him in the right shoulder, then stepped back. The man dropped his sword in pain, then looked at Alec. He raised his hand in salute, and as he did, the Canare swordsman unexpectedly swung hard, aiming at the Scarle’s unprotected ribcage. Seeing the foul play, Alec dove forward, blocking Canare’s deadly thrust, but feeling his own sword shudder painfully as he did. Alec redirected the cheap thrust into the ground, but as he did so, his own sword snapped off just a foot above the hilt. Astonished, Alec stepped back and stared at the sword.
The Scarle swordsman took advantage of his rescue to concede and limp rapidly away from the battle ring, and Alec stood with his stump of a sword, facing the highly confident Canare champion. “You may actually be the best of the three of us, Indige, but without a weapon you’re doomed to lose. And it’s not going to be a ceremonial cut to the foot this time either,” the man said viciously, his blood full of battle rage.
Alec calmly stood still, realizing that he was going to have to take a chance and let the Canare swordsman very close to him in order to have a chance of defeating him. Alec stamped his foot hard and advanced a step, then stamped again, trying to rush the man to action. And without explanation, his warrior energies were restored and engaged.
His tactic worked, as Canare came at him with his blade extended, seeking to ram his blade into Alec’s ribs. Using his powers to accelerate his reactions, Alec let the tip of the blade reach within a foot of his chest, then swung his broken shaft of metal abruptly upward, knocking the blade away. He swiftly pulled his blade back down, letting the jagged edge of metal score across his opponent’s face and chest, and checked the swing back up to cut the tendons in his right wrist, so that Canare dropped his sword before he could even raise his hand to his injured face.
Alec stepped back three steps quickly, and his opponent fell to his knees, cradling his injured arm against his injured chest.
Those who were present in the stands were standing on their feet cheering Alec’s accomplishment. Alec slowly walked out of the ring, then waved a hand in acknowledgment of the cheers as he walked back to the opening. Just before he entered the door he stopped and turned. He saw Rief, standing and clapping for him, and she waved as she saw his glance in her direction. He waved back, then walked in.
“Tremendous display, young man! Terrific job. You were mislabeled a bit, weren’t you?” an official came up to him to say. “We’d schedule you as the winner in the next round, but without a weapon I don’t imagine you plan to go on.” Alec looked at him directly, and nodded his head. He held up his sword and shook it.
“You want to move on? You’ll be a marked man,” the official offered him another chance to decline.
Alec shrugged his shoulders.
“Very well,” the man said with a sigh of resignation. “You’ve got quite a while until we move to the next round. Be back here in two hours.” Alec shook his hand, and walked away. He started to walk towards a quiet corner to inspect his weapon, but a stream of well-wishes kept coming up to him to congratulate him and to commiserate on the broken weapon. Realizing that he would have no peace among so many who were aware of and interested in what he’d done, Alec left the gladiators’ chambers and went into the stands, thinking as he walked. His powers had disappeared, then re-emerged. The timing had worked well this time, but troubled him. If it happened while he was facing a swinging weapon, the results could be catastrophic. It reminded him of the sudden, temporary loss of healing power he had suffered while treating his shoulder. Could it be something about Michian that disrupted the power? Not able to reach a conclusion, he finally reached his objective and plopped down by the startled Rief.
“Healer! Healer!” she almost squealed with pleasure and pride. She started to expound on his battle, but he motioned to his mouth and his stomach.
“How can you even think about eating right now?” she demanded, but she stood up, and together they left the stadium to go to some food stands.
“What happened to your sword?” Rief asked as they walked away from a stand that sold skewers of chicken. Alec pulled the ugly stump of metal and showed it to Rief, looking closely at it as well. Along the broken edge he saw rasp marks and indentations that made him suspect the blade had been sabotaged. Someone had deliberately weakened the metal so that it would snap under pressure.
Rief did not understand what Alec saw, but only looked at the weapon as a diminished blade. “Everyone was so amazed when you stayed in the ring to fight with that. You should have heard what people were saying. And when you let the Canare fighter charge at you like that at the end, I was sure he was going to skewer you,” she recounted for Alec. “I covered my eyes, and then everyone cheered, and when I looked, you were standing there and the other fellow was down!
“Do you get to change weapons for the next fight?” she asked in a much lower tone as they walked along. Alec shook his head. “Should you drop out now?” He shook his head again. “You don’t have to take this type of chance just for the sake of the clan,” she told him, looking around to see if they would be overheard. “Do you think you can win even with just that?” she asked, and he nodded. She looked intently in his face. “I believe you can too, healer. Now, let’s get you back to the arena.”
Minutes later they were back at the gateway. “Good luck, healer. I’m sure it’s my kiss that gave you luck to win last time, so here’s another,” she said, then leaned up and kissed his cheek again. Alec grinned, and walked into the dark spaces where the swordsmen waited.
The crowd of prospects had dwindled tremendously as a result of the hours of early battles to cull out the weakest opponents. Alec found a seat on a bench that allowed him to watch the battles out on the sandy floor. Yet he hardly noticed how the fights progressed as he thought about his sword. Who would have tried to sabotage his chances of success? He’d had the weapon with him since he’d left the clan home. It must have been tampered with before he even took it from the armory. Could the armorer have done it to him? Alec couldn’t imagine why, but there were many things he did not know or understand about the people and the culture he was in. He had no idea how secure the blade had been, but he suspected it had been available for anyone to touch it since yesterday.
But other than the armorer, only Cander and Rief had been present when he had selected the blade. Alec realized he had narrowed down the list of possible traitors to Cander, the son of the clan leader. Why would Cander have tried to do this? Alec remembered Cander’s interest in Rief; was the man jealous of Alec’s relationship with his personal extension?
Alec sat slumped against the wall, puzzling away at his problem, until a man he didn’t recognize, wearing the Indige colors, tapped him on the shoulder. “You did well for us,” he said. “Your next match is almost up. You better check in and get in your pen,” he advised.
Alec nodded his thanks, and did as directed, winding up in a pen with just one other man. His opponent wore only a plain white, short robe, without house colors. They stood in the pen without speaking, and soon were ushered out to the roped circle in the sand. Alec re-engaged his ingenaire powers at a low level, and in only a matter of minutes had used his metal stub to knock his opponent’s blade from his hand and out of the ring. The result was a disqualification, and the first bloodless match A
lec had seen.
He walked back to the official who was recording results. “Don’t go far, half-blade. Your next match is only half an hour away. You’ll be in pen 7,” he told Alec, then turned to speak to another fighter.
Alec spent a few moments splashing water on his face, then went to his pen, and waited alone for fifteen minutes. As the time for his match approached, no opponent appeared, and Alec wondered what would happen next. He was called to the doorway, and as he stood there, a very large man in brown strolled up, and brushed against Alec as he walked by, knocking him back a step. The obvious effort to intimidate him annoyed Alec, and he took a deep breath to calm himself.
The match in front of them came to an abrupt end, with the loser receiving a severe wound to his stomach. Alec watched a stretcher bear the man out, and as it passed him he dropped his warrior powers, then used his healing powers as he reached out and touched him, giving him a small jolt of energy to reduce the internal damage. Satisfied that he had done something positive, he dropped his healing power, and re-engaged his warrior power as he passed into the rope ring.
His opponent approached slowly, and before they got within blade distance of each other, the man threw a handful of sand at Alec’s eyes. Alec saw the motion, and with his enhanced abilities, he threw his body to the side, avoiding not only the effort to blind him, but the bull-like rush that followed as the brown clad swordsman tried to take advantage of the inability he had anticipated for Alec. Seeing the charge, Alec flicked the edge of his sword at the back of his opponent’s knee. He missed the crucial muscles he had wanted to sever, but did slice open a vein from which blood began to flow freely.
Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian Page 18
