A well-groomed man wearing expensive-looking silk robes entered the arena once the melee’s dead and wounded were carted away by a small legion of slaves. A blackened circle was scorched into the sand where the flaming oil had burned, and the sand was stained dark in other places with large bloodstains.
“And now, gentlemen and ladies, allow me to present your prime match this evening. The challenger hails from the renowned gladiator stables of House Pasikos, a young gladiator known as Ironshanks. He recently proved his mettle by defeating the Blade Brothers with a mere dagger while chained to a gladiator comrade for the duration.”
The crowd cheered obligingly as Elyas strode onto the floor, broadsword and shield raised in the air. Huge braziers ringed the arena floor, casting a ruddy firelight for illumination. The firelight’s brightness limited his view of the crowds above, the indistinct masses filling the many tiers of seats.
He could feel Nesnys’s searing gaze upon him as he walked stiffly to the center of the arena. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she regarded him. She must have suspected he wasn’t in peak health but could do nothing at that point but watch him get slaughtered.
The thought heartened him, to his surprise. Not only would he be at peace, free of her clutches at last, but her egotistic plans for him would be thwarted in the end.
“And now, may I present the Champion of Leciras and all of the Nebaran Empire, hailing from His Imperial Majesty’s own revered gladiator stables of House Isiratu. He remains undefeated after more than half a hundred challenges! Raise your voices and welcome the Sledge!”
The crowd’s earlier noise was nothing compared to the thunderous eruption as they welcomed their beloved champion. The very ground seemed to quake beneath Elyas’s feet from the roaring masses, who undoubtedly knew their champion would make quick work of his latest challenger, a virtual unknown.
The Sledge was a half-giant, a very rare species in all Easilon, perhaps the only one of his kind, and was built like a statue carved crudely from granite, with bluff, squarish features, and a body massively thick in proportion to his eight-foot height. Elyas guessed him to weigh probably a thousand pounds if not more. His limbs were thick slabs of muscle and his skin the bluish-gray color of mountain stone. Ridges of white scars mottled the Sledge’s hide. His black eyes, a normal human size, looked unnaturally small beneath his heavy brow. He wore a simple helm and was bare chested, with a broad studded belt and heavy plate leg armor: cuisses, poleyns, and greaves that covered him from hip to ankle. A gigantic greataxe was clutched easily in a fist larger than Elyas’s head. In his other hand, he held a massive tower shield nearly Elyas’s height.
Balor’s balls… Strength is useless here. I have to rely on my maneuverability, which unfortunately is lacking at the moment. If I can flank him and strike hard at his back, I may have a sliver of a chance.
Elyas waited while the Sledge drank in the crowd’s adulation. The giant walked the perimeter, thrusting his axe and shield high to renewed waves of cheers. Eventually, once he’d made his rounds, the cheering subsided enough for the announcer to continue.
“May the gods bless this glorious battle, and may the greater warrior prevail! Begin!”
The Sledge moved well for a creature of his size. Though not quick by any means, the giant was fairly agile, careful to avoid being flanked as he and Elyas circled each other warily.
“This is not my day to die, little man,” the Sledge rumbled, displaying blunt teeth resembling tombstones in what might have been a smile.
I fear he’s right about that.
Elyas didn’t reply. Instead, he took a quick step forward and thrust with his sword at the Sledge’s abdomen just above his belt. The Sledge saw the move coming, for he stepped back and brought his shield across to hammer Elyas with it. Elyas stepped to his left, out of the shield’s range, and swung his broadsword upward, thudding into the thick gauntlet of the giant’s axe hand. The Sledge responded by dropping his axe like a falling tree at Elyas’s head. He blocked with his shield, deflecting the strike aside, yet the power behind the blow still sent him staggering. A follow-up shield bash grazed his sword arm, but he used the momentum of the blow to spin clear of danger.
The Sledge pursued, the spiked tip of his greataxe prodding at Elyas, forcing him to duck and dodge from his opponent’s huge reach advantage. Twice, he tried to get inside the Sledge’s reach to strike, but on each attempt, he was met by the monstrous tower shield blocking his path. They circled around the arena in such a manner, Elyas relegated mostly to dodging, for he couldn’t get close enough to score a blow to the giant’s unarmored hide.
Mayhap he’ll tire quickly and provide an opening, though I fear I won’t have the stamina to hold out long, myself.
A few boos reached his ears from the impatient crowd. Elyas feinted high, and his opponent raised his shield for an easy block, but instead Elyas dove beneath the shield’s rim, rolling in the dirt and hacking at the back of an armored leg, trying to hamstring the behemoth. His sword didn’t quite reach the intended target and instead clanged off the thick greave. He rolled to his feet and immediately stabbed at the giant’s back. He was rewarded when his sword tip thudded into the thick muscle beneath the shoulder.
The Sledge grunted and spun. Elyas’s blade tore free of the muscle, and blood spurted, although much too little to indicate any serious wound. The crowd’s boos turned instantly to cheers at the sight of blood, however.
Elyas threw himself backward, out of the way of the giant’s sweeping axe and shield. His roll and desperate evasion left him wobbling on his numb thighs, a stab of pain again making itself known from his injured ribs.
The crowd roared in anticipation as the Sledge bulled forward, shield cocked back as he unleashed his greataxe in a mighty horizontal slash. Elyas saw the opening but was too weak to leap over the attack and strike at the giant’s head. Instead, all he could do was stay out of the deadly reach of the axe as he circled away. A painful twinge formed in his left thigh, and he knew he wouldn’t last much longer.
“Fight me!” the Sledge roared, frustrated at Elyas’s continued evasions.
The giant’s probing axe swings abruptly turned into a downward chop, and Elyas saw his chance. He sidestepped, feeling the airflow of the missed strike buffet him, and the Sledge’s enormous axe blade buried itself into the ground. Elyas hacked into the giant’s unprotected upper arm. His strike was solid, and the blade bit several inches into the dense muscle.
But then Elyas’s bruised left thigh spasmed, and he nearly collapsed. Had he fallen, he might have avoided the sweeping tower shield. Instead, he stumbled, remaining on his feet long enough to get blasted aside as the Sledge pivoted, leaving his axe lodged in the ground, and shield-bashed him. The blow launched Elyas off his feet. He cartwheeled in midair and came down hard on his back. Stabs of agony from his broken ribs rendered him momentarily unable to draw breath. He tasted blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten his inner cheek. His head rang from the impact, and the arena seemed to be spinning around him. He was dismayed to find his sword no longer in his hand. He tried to sit up, but his cracked ribs would have none of that—in fact, the number of shattered ribs seemed to have multiplied following the Sledge’s blow, for now both sides of his chest throbbed with agony.
The crowd’s roar grew deafening, the masses eager for Elyas’s death, even as sorry as the fight had been. He suspected they wanted a bloody fatality to make the match worthwhile.
An enormous shadow loomed over him, blotting out the firelight. “Perhaps one day I shall face a worthy challenger, but not this one,” the Sledge boomed. “As I said, this is not my day to die.” The head of the greataxe gleamed wickedly in Elyas’s peripheral vision, resting casually beside one of the half-giant’s heavy boots.
Elyas struggled again to sit up, but his vision blurred and dizziness swept in, his aching ribs stealing his breath. Something hard struck his sternum and pushed him back to the ground almost gently, as easily as a cat’s paw pinni
ng a baby mouse. The bottom rim of the Sledge’s tower shield pressed across Elyas’s chest with a weight that felt like a thousand-pound bar of iron.
“Go now. Meet your god. I grant you a warrior’s death, Ironshanks.”
The greataxe rose up, impossibly high overhead, axehead blazing orange with firelight as it poised there a moment before it came back down, as unstoppable as a falling star. Elyas forced himself to keep his eyes open to witness the finishing blow. The axe hurtled down like Anhur’s own judgment, whipping past Elyas’s ear and thunking through meat. The ground shuddered beneath him at the impact.
Then the pain in his ribs was nothing compared to the lightning bolt of agony that struck him. His vision dimmed, and he screamed, voice ragged as it tore from his throat. A moment later, the axe lifted away, dark blood pouring off the blade’s edge. Horrified, Elyas saw his sword arm lying apart from his body, cleaved off at the shoulder. Blood spurted from the awful wound, and he could no longer feel his aching thighs or pained ribs, nothing but the hot agony where his arm had been.
Thunder sounded in the distance, a roaring sound as thousands of voices celebrated his death. But soon, even that clamor faded into nothingness.
I did my best, Da. I at least died a warrior’s death.
He welcomed the relief of oblivion.
***
Nesnys could only watch, stunned at the result of the battle. She wasn’t shocked that Elyas had been defeated but that it had occurred in such a manner. It was not meant to happen like this. He had posed a poor challenge for the champion, sluggish and awkward on the sands. She had honestly believed he had a fair chance of defeating the half-giant. But Elyas had obviously fought while afflicted by previous injuries.
The ashes of bitter disappointment filled her mouth. She cast aside the goblet of wine, the gold-plated cup denting badly where it struck the low stone wall before her. She rose to her feet, a slow, simmering rage building.
Was this orchestrated as an insult to me? If so, it cannot stand.
Slaves were dragging Elyas’s corpse off the arena floor, two men each gripping an ankle, a third bearing his severed arm, a fourth his sword and shield. A trail of blood led away from the dark pool where he’d fallen.
Off to one side, Pasikos’s healer woman looked as pale as a specter. She rushed forward to examine the body, clearly hopeless about what she would find, but after a moment, she grew agitated and began shouting orders to clear the space around her while the slaves set Elyas’s body down. The healer carried over a large sack full of healing paraphernalia and knelt over the fallen man. A young servant boy scurried off at some order given him.
He lives? Nesnys blinked in confusion. Surely there wouldn’t be such a stir if he were already dead.
Graecin Isiratu, the emperor’s son, was saying something to her, but she ignored him, vaulting over the low wall to the floor of the arena and moving toward her fallen champion.
Elyas’s skin had turned an ashen hue, and his shoulder was a raw, bloody ruin. But the giant had cleanly severed the limb. The healer was desperately trying to stanch the bleeding with a tourniquet bound around what little of the shoulder remained. Oddly, the woman had tears on her cheeks as she worked.
“Will he live?” Nesnys asked, standing over the healer and dying man.
The woman spared a moment to glare at her. “This is your fault,” she snapped.
Nesnys resisted the urge to strike her for her insolence. Instead, she reached down and seized the healer’s jaw roughly in her hand. “I asked you a question, woman.”
Hatred filled the healer’s brown eyes, but she lowered her gaze after a moment, and Nesnys released her grip.
“Too soon to say,” the woman said. “With the gods’ favor, I may be able to halt the bleeding and tend the body’s wounds. Yet without a reason to live, he may choose not to keep fighting.”
With the gods’ favor… My god would never favor a fallen warrior, so why should I? Nesnys stared at Elyas’s face. He looks… peaceful.
A confusing blend of emotions swirled through her in that moment: fury over the insult of the attempt to sabotage her ambitions, a greedy possessiveness when faced with the likelihood of losing a favored plaything, confusion that the man should find peace in death, along with a resentment for his doing so.
Nesnys took a deep breath, one thought surfacing above the rest at the forefront of her mind. “I want him to survive. See that he does, or you shall face my wrath.” The thought of losing her champion was aggravating, all her plans for him poised to come crashing down in ruins.
The healer seemed to hesitate, perhaps tormented as to whether she should defy Nesnys and allow Elyas to be at peace. Before Nesnys could give the woman a taste of the punishment for failure, she obviously made her decision and redoubled her efforts to stanch the flow of blood, which seemed to have slowed considerably, the man all but bled out.
“Ikrem, I need that hot iron,” the healer shouted over her shoulder.
The servant boy returned from the nearest massive brazier, carefully gripping with a piece of leather the hilt of a broad-bladed dagger that was glowing orange. Flesh sizzled when he applied the heated metal to the terrible wound at the healer’s direction.
Gladiators, guards, slaves, and the public all milled around, craning necks to get a glimpse of the spectacle, jabbering excitedly amongst themselves. With great difficulty, Nesnys restrained the urge to dash them all aside with a powerful blast of magic.
As the smell of cooking meat filled Nesnys’s nostrils, she could only watch helplessly, furious at her sudden and unfamiliar impotence, as Elyas’s life rested firmly in the hands of the gods.
Chapter 54
Taren was walking along the boulevard of a burning city. Clumps of ash and glowing cinders rained down from a smoky sky lambent with an infernal red-orange hue. Corpses littered the street. One man dragged himself weakly along the ground, leaving a trail of blood behind and calling out a woman’s name. Black-and-gold-clad soldiers swarmed around Taren, overwhelming and swiftly cutting down sporadic defenders. Homes and stores were looted, women and children dragged into the streets, many of them put to the sword. Others were raped or taken prisoner… or both.
The horrific scene was taking place in the streets of Carran, he somehow knew, though he’d never set foot in the city before.
No, this cannot be. It cannot have already come to this.
He tried to summon the magic to destroy a nearby group of enemy soldiers bursting into a home, which should have proven a simple matter, but he felt nothing—the earth magic wasn’t there. Holding up his hands in confusion, he saw they were insubstantial, and he could see right through his flesh as if he were a phantom.
Nebaran attackers ignored him as they went about their grim business.
A large, powerful man in full plate armor strode past, issuing orders. His voice was muffled and face covered by a hideous full helm sculpted to resemble a horned fiend. The helm and matching suit of armor were covered in burning runes. The armor’s foul enchantment blazed a sickly red in Taren’s second sight, and the warrior laid about himself with his sword, hewing down defending soldiers and civilians alike.
“This shall soon come to pass, Taren.” The voice was calm yet powerful. “Our foes are poised to gain the upper hand.”
He turned to find Sabyl standing beside him, her cloak of shadows stirring in the inferno’s scorching air, bleeding off wisps of shadow like smoke.
“Already, events begin to spin out of control, and your friends have suffered a great defeat. The Balance is in jeopardy.”
“What has happened, Grandmother? I thought Sianna was to travel to Carran and summon the Free Kingdoms to a conclave to organize the kingdom’s defense.”
Sabyl’s starscape eyes threatened to mesmerize him as she regarded him sadly. “Nesnys has captured the young queen and nears her master’s goal of unleashing destruction on the planes. Your friends attempted to rescue her and failed. Sianna Atreus is the key to vict
ory—she must be freed and kept alive. Only then shall her charismatic pleas enlist the aid needed from the other races to band together to resist the invaders. One last thing—the deathless wanderer must stand beside you at the end. This I have foreseen.”
Taren nodded slowly, considering, then made a decision. “I must go to them. Can I turn the tide with my magic?”
The goddess was silent for a moment. “The future remains murky, yet I am confident you have the talent and character to do what must be done.” She placed a pale hand on his shoulder, and strength and courage filled him. “Your training is not yet complete, yet you know enough, Grandson. Beware of Nesnys. She lays a cunning trap with the queen. Awaken now, and fare thee well, Taren.”
He sat up in bed with a gasp, his pulse racing from the intense dream. Not a dream—a vision.
The Nexus sky was still dark outside, and the castle was silent. Before he could get out of bed, a quiet knock sounded at the door.
Nera poked her head inside. “You’re awake—good. I take it Mother spoke with you also?”
“She did. I must go help my friends before it’s too late.”
“Aye. Meet me at breakfast shortly. I’ll summon Flurbinger, for he has vital information to impart.” She closed the door and departed.
Taren slid out of bed and dressed in the stately yet comfortable robes he’d become accustomed to wearing. He focused a moment and projected his thoughts to his friends.
“Mira, Ferret, I need you. We must return to Easilon shortly. Meet for breakfast as soon as you are able.”
He sensed their acquiescence. Mira was asleep but woke at his summons. Ferret was resting in her own way but agreed immediately, eager to return.
Taren buckled his belt around his waist, adjusting Lightslicer to hang on one hip, an ordinary dagger on the other, in the same fashion as his mother had oft done before him. He stowed the rest of his clothes in his pack, donned his boots, and met Mira, who was already packed and ready, in the hallway.
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