131 Days [Book 3]_Spikes and Edges

by Keith C. Blackmore

  He’d do all that… after he butchered another one of the Free Trained pretenders.

  The House of Ten wants their blood match. A scoff passed his lips. The very thought twisted his features in contempt. They could have their blood match.

  Bubruk wanted Curge’s gold. And he was perfectly willing to lop off a head to get it.

  *

  “So this is where the privileged watch the games?” Muluk asked in wonder as he limped inside the private chambers reserved for the House of Ten. “Even smells clean.”

  “Attendants clean the rooms at the end of the day,” Clavellus said as he eased himself inside. “I wasn’t sure they would these days, but I know they did so years ago.”

  “There’s little time to waste,” Goll remarked, paying scant heed to the condition of the warm chamber. “Master Machlann, see to the lads while Muluk and I see to the Madea.”

  Muluk’s face clouded with doubt.

  “Don’t think you can make it?” Goll knew his countryman had been struggling through the streets. Muluk’s wounds had healed quickly under Shan’s skill, but the long cut to his right thigh left him with a limp not even the healer was certain about.

  “Oh, I think I can.” His hairy face bobbed eagerly. “Little bit more won’t hurt. It’ll spite the gash.”

  The bravado was lost on Goll. “This way, then.”

  With Muluk struggling to keep up, Goll followed the tunnels, grimacing at the growing stench. A foul blend of sweat, blood, and offal threatened to burn away his senses and made his eyes water. The smell was so offensive, his breathing in the very air brought him to the brink of sickness. He couldn’t imagine what the place would be like at the end of the season. Nor could he believe he’d actually slept in such a hole.

  “Dying Seddon,” Muluk gasped.

  “I know,” Goll said.

  The foul taint of the Pit’s underbelly permeated their clothes and skin, but they eventually made it to the Madea’s desk. The white-haired arena official with the near-perfect part down the middle of his scalp lorded over a gladiator, informing the man of his forthcoming battle. Numerous Skarrs stood guard on either side of the desk, fearsome and unmoving. The huge matchboard displaying the day’s fights hung over the Madea, so Goll took the opportunity to study the lettering. Familiar names had been written.

  “I don’t miss this place,” Muluk whispered near his ear.

  “Nor I,” Goll agreed without stopping his reading.

  “It’s ripe down here.”

  “Hm.”

  “Looks even more crowded than before.”

  That prompted Goll to regard Muluk. Both Krees then peered into torchlit guts of the Pit.

  “You’re right,” Goll said faintly. “There does seem to be more.”

  “How’s that, you think?”

  “No idea.”

  Having finished with his business, the Madea dismissed the man with a wave of his hand. The official paused and smoothed his white robes before taking notice of Goll. The older man inhaled sharply, unaffected by the dreadful air, and beckoned the pair forward as if calling dogs.

  “Your business?”

  Goll decided he didn’t care for the Madea’s authoritative tone. “I’m Goll of Kree, Master of the House of Ten. And this is Muluk of Kree, Second Master of the House of Ten.”

  “Masters,” the Madea countered, his black eyes considering them. “It’s not so often I greet masters of a house. Usually, they send a messenger.”

  “We’re short of hands this day.”

  The Madea waited, uninterested.

  “We have a change of fighters for one of our blood matches,” Goll carried on.

  “A change?”

  “Yes. Our man Torello was scheduled to fight Cota this day. He cannot due to injury.”

  “Injury?” the Madea asked dubiously. “What manner?”

  Goll didn’t think the question was necessary, but he answered all the same. “Twisted his ankle.”

  The Madea stared down his nose at Goll and tightened his lips in distaste. “You say you’re with the House of Ten?”

  Goll paused. “We’re the Masters of the House.”

  “The House of Ten.”

  “Yes, the House of Ten.”

  “So you wish to withdraw from the blood match?”

  “No, we wish to substitute another gladiator.”

  “Ah,” the Madea said with ill-concealed impatience. “Who?”

  “Junger of Pericia.”

  The imperious arena official frowned and regarded his charts. He leaned back and arched his head to check the matchboard.

  “Junger of Pericia…” he finally rumbled. “He already fights this day.”

  “Now he’ll fight twice for the House of Ten. In both blood matches.”

  “In both?”

  Goll frowned at the man. “Is that a problem?”

  The Madea smirked as if entertaining children. “The change is noted. Will that be all?”

  Goll met the other’s stare and believed a much more respectful tone from the arena official should be in order.

  “That’s all,” the Kree finally answered, his features becoming rigid with insult.

  “Very well. Our business is done, then.”

  The official went back to his paperwork and charts, ignoring the pair before his desk. Goll tensed, unimpressed with the interaction and about to voice his feelings.

  Muluk, however, hooked Goll’s arm and pulled him away. “Let that one go,” he said as they navigated bodies back toward the white tunnel.

  “But you heard it as well?”

  “Aye that,” Muluk said. “Thick and raw. But then, I remember him treating the Free Trained no different.”

  “My point exactly. He still considers us Free Trained.”

  That made Muluk think.

  Saying no more on the subject, they returned to their private chamber.

  *

  The arched window beckoned Clavellus the instant he stepped foot within the chamber assigned to the House of Ten. He went to the sill and planted his elbows upon its coarse brick, the curls of sand audibly shifting under his weight. For the first four fights, Clavellus remained rooted to that very spot, enjoying every moment that followed, the skill displayed, every clang of steel upon edged steel, and the blood that flew. He studied the Free Trained and often chatted with Machlann, who resided on the taskmaster’s left, peering into the arena and watching with a subtle smile shining through his moustache and beard. They observed the gladiators and made mental notes for the future.

  Goll watched the fights as well, committing the names of the victors to memory in case the same men might later be paired off against a House of Ten fighter. Clades and Muluk went off to place the wagers, while Brozz and Junger alternated between standing and sitting, mentally preparing themselves for the Pit.

  And after the fourth fight, when Clavellus and Machlann quietly congratulated each other for predicting the victor, Goll spoke up. “You truly missed this, didn’t you?”

  The old taskmaster smiled the question away.

  “The smaller games become boring after so many years.” Machlann pointed out the window. “This, Master Goll, this is the premier event, the truest test of the fighting arts, the grandest of shows.”

  “Where even a lowborn hellpup can achieve wondrous heights. I often wonder why? Why do I enjoy it so? I shouldn’t really. No civilized person should. It does nothing to advance us, as the thinking arts do. And yet…” Clavellus shook his head. “It’s in our blood. Conflict. To fight. To survive. Either with the spoken word, clenched fist, or sharpened knife. For the noblest of reasons or purely for pleasure. And if we are moved to fight, we are equally moved to excel. Some may say this profession is the ruination of all. And I agree, even wish it wasn’t so, but it’s the way of things. The world will always need warriors. Always.”

  Clavellus’s attention drifted to the arena attendants grooming the sands before the fifth match of the day. “You should get
Brozz ready.”

  If he heard his name, the tall Sarlander didn’t respond to it. Goll studied the gladiator. Brozz sat on a bench, hunched over and holding his helmet. His great moustache made him appear brooding, and the dangling necklace of screaming crow heads did nothing to brighten his image.

  “Brozz,” Goll said, prompting the Sarlander to look his way. “It’s time.”

  He straightened and stood until the ceiling was mere fingers above his black hair. His leather armor creaked. He held his shortsword and small axe.

  “Listen now,” Goll cautioned. “Your opponent belongs to the House of Tilo. A house gladiator. Expect a much more experienced warrior, very well trained and not to be taken lightly. Don’t be reckless. If the opportunity is there, kill the man, for he will have no hesitation about killing you.”

  At the mention of killing, Brozz’s indifferent gaze flickered to Junger where he leaned against a wall. The Perician met the pit fighter’s eyes for a brief instance before glancing away.

  “Don’t concern yourself with him,” Goll commanded with a trace of disdain. “You listen to me. They’re all still looking to collect Dark Curge’s bounty placed on your heads. On our heads. Send them a message. To seek our deaths means their own. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Goll declared softly, inspecting the Sarlander’s weapons and armor. “Then fight hard. And win.”

  Brozz looked over Goll’s head at the stoic faces of Machlann and Clavellus. The older men said nothing, but they heard Goll’s words. Brozz couldn’t read their expressions, but he sensed that they were as divided on killing as Junger.

  An arena attendant knocked on the door. Exhaling, Brozz donned his helmet and answered.

  Like the shadow of death itself, the Sarlander emerged from the doorway and stained the white tunnel with his presence. The arena official, a little man dressed in plain white garb, stood back and pointed. Brozz didn’t need to be shown the way. He left the official with a relieved expression on his face, no doubt thanking Seddon for sparing him.

  Despite his fearsome appearance, Brozz didn’t especially like killing a man simply for the sake of killing. It was the sole reason why he’d left his homeland in the first place. To his knowledge, no one had ever deserted the Gorsha. The very idea of leaving was beaten from the heads of the men. One only left when one died and not before.

  The Gorsha was the edged will of the Grand Vir, the most capable and deadliest of all within the Sarland’s army. Brozz been given to the Gorsha as a child by his parents, to be trained from the very beginning. To be taken so young had been the highest honor for the parents he never knew. Brozz would be fashioned into a protector who guarded not only his ruler, but his land, people, and family.

  When he was able to walk, the Gorsha began shaping him. They trained and conditioned him for innumerable hardships. In time, the Grand Vir’s command was not only Brozz’s duty but his life’s meaning.

  But somehow, the sense of right and wrong was never entirely erased from Brozz.

  And over time, the Gorsha ceased being the glowing thunderbolt of might wielded by the Grand Vir. The Sarlander ruler used the Gorsha not only on the battlefield but also for more personal, more secretive, displays of power, each one more brutal and sinister than the last. The Grand Vir wielded his warriors like the sharpest knives, imposing his will upon even the very people the Gorsha had sworn to protect and defend.

  Or so Brozz had believed.

  The final act that had broken Brozz came when the Grand Vir commanded the Gorsha to execute an entire tribe of hill folk who had failed to provide sufficient tribute to the Sarland ruler. As punishment, children, men, and women numbering well over seven hundred had been put to the sword. Over wine, food and gold.

  Like an unwilling player in a nightmare, Brozz had done his share during the mass executions. He remembered everything, every life he’d taken. Every face rotted his heart and left him hollow, ashamed. A part of him––the caring part––had perished with those doomed hill folk. The faces of the dying still haunted him, driving him. If Saimon indeed existed, Brozz knew he’d be swallowed in the hellion’s fire and darkness for those evil wrongdoings.

  Slaughtering innocents over goods the Grand Vir hoarded and ultimately wasted was wrong. Brozz had no reservations about killing as he’d been trained to do so since childhood, but a reason had to exist, a reason far better than taking away poor people’s possessions simply because they were due.

  That day broke whatever spell the Gorsha held over him.

  At the end of the executions, while the Gorsha set fires to the village to erase the butchery from the land, Brozz had entered one small house and discovered a tunnel underneath loose floorboards. Without knowing where it went or how far, he decided to take it. He set fire to the walls and the doorway, ensuring he’d have time to escape if the Gorsha attempted to follow.

  The question of where the tunnel went, if anywhere, didn’t matter to him. He’d either die for his wrongdoings or get away. To his dismay and good fortune… he escaped.

  The tunnel was actually a cellar laden with dried food and clay jugs of water. He discovered another door at the back and, with his torch held before him, entered the real tunnel— one that took him all the way through a mountain.

  Brozz remembered almost returning to the Gorsha, but only for a fleeting moment. The ghosts of those he’d killed stopped him. He struck west, looking back only to make sure he wasn’t being pursued. If the Gorsha caught scent of his leaving, they would send hunters to find him. To his knowledge, they did not.

  Three years later, he arrived in Sunja, just in time for the gladiatorial games.

  Brozz didn’t know if he would stay with the House of Ten beyond this season. He felt the games drew too much attention to him. But he needed coin, and his skills lay in taking lives. And escaping that feral nest called general quarters had been a gift in itself. Even escaping the city felt good.

  Both Junger and Goll had reminded him of why he left Sarland. They made him think about what lay ahead and where he was going after the games. They also reminded him of who he was. If there was killing to be done, Brozz would choose who lived and who died.

  As the Sarlander walked the white tunnel, he wondered if Goll would be angry.

  He decided he didn’t care.

  25

  When Brozz stepped through the raised portcullis, Zilos, from the House of Tilo, waited for him. With the butt of a short spear thrust into the sand, Zilos stood with his weapon and silently judged his opponent while the voices of thousands rolled across the expanse like an ocean’s surf.

  His legs drew Brozz’s attention almost immediately, as they appeared thick and muscular and capable of carrying the man for days if needed. Zilos wasn’t tall—far from it. He appeared just a few fingers taller than Borchus. Unlike other opponents, Zilos wore no armor at all, showing off a well-conditioned body, colored by the sun and lashed with an assortment of scars. A masked cowl dyed red covered his face except his eyes, eyes that blazed, warning the Sarlander’s senses.

  This was a house gladiator in all his deadly splendour.

  Above them, the Orator completed introductions and shouted for them to begin. Zilos yanked his spear from the sand and whipped it around his body in an unsettling blur before pointing it at his foe’s gut.

  Brozz’s hands tightened on his own weapons. He walked forward to meet this challenge. Tensing like a spider, Zilos crouched and waited. His skin gleamed with perspiration. He didn’t speak, and in Brozz’s mind, that was good. He really didn’t care for the ones who talked.

  The audience cheered and cooed in delight, anticipating the approaching violence.

  Brozz circled to his left, wary of the spear’s glistening blade no wider than a dagger. Zilos aimed its tapered tip at Brozz’s abdomen, but his intense eyes locked onto Brozz’s and held them. Zilos’s coiled body informed the Sarlander that the man took him very seriously.

  Zilos drew back as if
wielding a battering ram instead of a spear and attacked, the weapon whirling about his small body in a masterful display of skill. Brozz parried the flashing blade twice and countered with his hand axe, but the smaller man darted well out of reach, kicking up sand as he went. The spear compensated for his short arms and lent the House of Tilo’s warrior a reach equalling Brozz’s.

  Brozz waited, weapons held at guard, stooping only slightly, watching his foe’s eyes.

  Zilos wound himself up once again, spinning his spear from one side of his body to his other, and launched himself forward. That deadly weave enveloped Brozz, and for telling heartbeats, the pit fighters attacked and countered, adapting and anticipating each other’s strikes. They circled left and right, marring the groomed sands.

  Brozz knocked away the spear tip only to have the butt slam upside his head, too fast to avoid. He staggered back. Zilos followed, slashing for an arm and drawing a bloody line across Brozz’s left bicep. Zilos split the leather hide covering the Sarlander’s chest. More blood flowed.

  Brozz stabbed for a head and missed, but his hand axe chopped down––barred from parting Zilos’s skull by the man’s spear.

  Brozz yanked, looking to pull the man off balance.

  The crowds burst into cheers as Zilos leaped, kicking both feet into the Sarlander’s hard stomach and driving him back. The sand scalded Brozz’s skin as he went down, rolled over, and regained his feet in time to parry a thrust meant for his guts.

  Brozz slashed with his hand axe and opened Zilos’s cheek to the bone. The cut was enough to send the smaller man jumping back. His chest burned, but Brozz focused on Zilos, and the pair circled each other again, drawing closer, their weapons weaving and bobbing as if smelling blood. Fat beads of red trickled from their frames and dappled the sand.