“Naw. You got put with us, you! Green as grass, you are. Now you’ve missed two draws. What’s your nick?”
“I’m telling you,” Caelan said warily, never letting his eyes off Nux for a moment. “Just luck.”
“Get off, Nux,” called one of the other men. “You saw how they pounded him in training. It’s luck.”
“Better be. But why’s he here with us? Don’t deserveit.”
Grins broke out around the room. “Why, the trainers are just giving us the privilege of killing him instead. Right?”
They laughed, and Nux moved away. Caelan sagged on his stool and wiped sweat from his forehead. Another moment gained, but he knew it was only a matter of time.
The guards didn’t return until the following week. Caelan knew they had been drawing veterans from another room. The next draw missed him again. He began to wonder at his luck just like the others. They muttered and glared.
“Midway through season already, and him left,” Nux complained to the guards.
“Shut up!” one of the guards retorted. “What’s it to you?”
They left with a slam of the door.
Nux stood up and came over to where Caelan was standing. His eyes glared over his broken nose, and his teeth were bared. “You ain’t being saved, not you. I’m going to—”
“Better save yourself for tomorrow,” Caelan said quickly, tensing himself on the balls of his feet in readiness for attack. “If you use up your strength on me, then you’ll die in the arena.”
Nux drew back with a frown, looking momentarily frightened. “Gault’s blood!” he swore. “You putting a curse on me?”
The other men exchanged looks. “Giant put a curse on Nux.”
“A curse.”
They murmured and shifted back.
“It’s not a curse,” Caelan said, although if they wanted to think so he wasn’t going to try too hard to talk them out of it. “Just a prediction. You jump me, and I won’t go down easy.”
Nux lifted his hands and took a step back as though agreeing.
Caelan relaxed and straightened.
At that moment Nux attacked with a roar, driving him back against the wall with a thud. Nux’s fists were like battering rams, pummeling him. Caelan drew in his elbows and blocked the blows as best he could, then struck back, catching Nux in the jaw and sending him staggering.
Nux crashed into the table, breaking it like kindling, and lay sprawled there, shaking his head and blinking.
Someone helped him up, but the fight was over. Blowing on his aching knuckles, Caelan slowly eased away from the wall and kept a sharp watch on the others.
Nux kept touching his jaw and wagging it back and forth. He glared at Caelan, and the hostility in the room was thick enough to cut. Caelan steeled himself, but Nux finally swung away and pounded on the door.
When a guard opened it, he said, “Take me to the haggai.”
He returned just before dawn, bleary-eyed and smug, looking well satisfied with himself. Then he and five others went out to fight. That night, however, Nux did not come back.
None of them could believe it.
‘The guards said he lost an arm,” Bulot said. “You know what happens to a man without his arm.”
“Bleeding like a stuck pig,” another contributed. “Great gouts of it shooting across the tunnel. He died before he got to the surgeon.”
“Nux dead?” Bulot kept saying over and over. He was a short, wiry man, quick and agile. “I can’t believe Nux is dead. He was too good. The best in the arena. He can’t be dead.”
“If he lost his arm, like the guards said, then he’s a dead man.”
Another man spat on the floor. “It’s the giant’s curse what’s to blame.” He pointed at Caelan. “He hit Nux, hurt him somehow.”
Caelan wanted to tell them it was probably Nux’s visit to the haggai that had sapped his strength, but he held his tongue. They were all like rats in a cage that seemed to shrink daily. Caelan was feeling crazy from being cooped up in the gloom all the time. He needed exercise and sunlight, not just halfhearted drills in a stinking, half-lit tunnel where the guards took them twice a day.
That night when the lots were drawn, Caelan was missed again. No one spoke a word as the guards noted names and numbers, but the fighters’ eyes lingered on him with clear hostility.
He sweated through the night, afraid to sleep, certain they meant to throttle him in his bunk. But no one moved against him. In the morning, they huddled together in a conference that he pretended to ignore, but he could not relax. Not this time, not when they blamed him irrationally for Nux’s death.
The lock turned with a noisy rattle, and the door was slammed open. “On your feet!” bawled a guard with a list. “Bulot, Mingin, Hortn, Rethe, Chul. Move it, now!”
The named men shuffled for the door, yawning and stretching and scratching. But the others were up as well. They closed in on Caelan and shoved him forward. “He goes too!”
“What?” The guards frowned. “Not unless he’s on the list”
“He’s on today’s list,” someone insisted. “Let him take Chul’s place. He ain’t fought once this—”
“Neither have you, Lum,” the guard retorted. The spokesman turned red but he didn’t back down. “Let the giant take Chul’s place. He don’t belong in here with us. He ought to have been fighting with the other trainees, days ago.”
The guard’s frown deepened. He peered at Caelan. “I don’t know you. Name?”
“Caelan.”
“You’re no veteran.”
“No.”
“Never fought!” someone yelled gleefully. “Never even held a sword in his pinkies!”
They roared with laughter.
The guard was looking very stern indeed. “What in hell’s name are you doing in here?”
Caelan shrugged. “I was put here.”
“Don’t get cute.” The guard glanced over his shoulder at his companion. “You heard of any special orders about this one?”
“No.”
“Let him fight!” the gladiators cried. “Let him fight!”
The guard hesitated, then shoved Chul back, into the room. He jerked his head at Caelan. “Come on, then, if you’re so eager. Move!”
Suddenly it was happening. Caelan’s ears roared, and his head seemed to be floating above his body.
He found himself pushed down a tunnel lit by torches. He felt hungry, but he knew it was nervousness that gnawed in his belly. Sweat broke out across his body. His clothes felt too tight. His eyes were burning, and he couldn’t see well. His hearing was even worse.
Somewhere, they were stopped in a gloomy chamber with the rest. Twelve men who might have practiced and eaten together the day before, but who now avoided each other’s eyes, conscious of what was to come.
In silence, they stripped off their clothes and put on minimal loincloths. Little flasks of oil stood rowed on shelves. The men smeared the greasy stuff over every inch of themselves, and Caelan followed suit, aware that the oil would make him harder to hold and therefore harder to kill in a clinch.
The door banged open, and Caelan jumped about a foot, his heart hammering foolishly. One of the fighters noticed his reaction. He nudged someone else, and they chuckled softly together.
The sound had an evil, hostile quality that made Caelan swallow hard.
Orlo came in, flanked by four other trainers. Bald and burly, he stood with the cattail club in one hand, his feet braced wide and his other fist on his hip. He glared at each of them in turn.
When he saw Caelan, he blinked and dropped his jaw. In that instant, explanation was revealed in his face. He had clearly forgotten about putting Caelan in with the veterans. It was as simple as that.
Then he recovered his composure and cleared histhroat. “We have a good crowd today,” he said sternly. “You will give them their money’s worth in entertainment. Any man shirking or trying to save himself will be speared by the guards. Am I clear?”
As
he spoke, he glared straight at Caelan.
“You’ll fight your unworthy guts out today. You’re a miserable lot, this pick. But you’ll fight like champions, each and every one of you! The emperor is here today. Aye, here to see your blood spilled.”
The fighters exchanged looks. Caelan felt both confused and excited. Outside he could hear the crowd roaring thunderously. Something elemental and primitive in the sound made his blood charge. He wiped his sweating palms on his thighs and wished his heart would not beat so fast.
Orlo gestured, and the other trainers passed out leather fighting harnesses. Caelan’s fingers fumbled with the unfamiliar buckles; then his hands were pushed aside.
Orlo stood beside him, stripping off the harness and fetching another one. It looked old. One strap had been mended. But the leather was well oiled and cared for. Caelan noticed the straps were dyed blue, even as Orlo let it out a notch, then another, then another in order to buckle it across his chest.
“Breathe,” he commanded.
Caelan obeyed.
“Too tight?”
Caelan felt the restriction and nodded.
With a grunt Orlo used the point of his dagger to make an additional hole and loosened the harness. “Aye, that fits right. Were you worth it, you’d wear a custom-made one.”
Caelan fingered the leather, remembering his disrobing so long ago when the masters had forbidden him to wear blue. Then, blue had represented life. Now it stood for the taking of it.
He swallowed. “Does blue show who owns me?”
“Aye.” Orlo stepped back and looked him over critically. “Although you’ll be a humiliation for the prince quick enough.” He showed his teeth in a mirthless grin. “Perhaps it’ll be worth it, just to see his face. Hah!”
The fighters filed out and marched double-time up a ramp. The cheering was louder now, deafening as it echoed through the stone. With every step, Caelan felt his blood stirring. He opened his mouth to suck in lungfuls of fresh air. He could smell sun-baked earth as well as roasted goat and sweetmeats.
They stopped, half-hidden in the shadows. Beyond an archway flanked by soldiers in full armor, dazzling sunlight streamed down. A breeze blew in, bringing heat to the dank coolness.
Orlo walked ahead, pacing back and forth in the archway as though he were about to enter the ring himself. Another trainer passed down the row of twelve men with lots for them to draw.
Muscles tight, Caelan drew his bronze tag. His thumb traced over the number. He would go in ring six. Handlers moved among them, pushing and shoving them into the correct pairs. Caelan eyed his opponent, a grizzled heavyset man he had never practiced with before. He was relieved it was none of the men he’d been quartered with lately. His opponent refused to look at him at all and kept his gaze stubbornly on the floor.
Irrational hope rose in Caelan as he noticed the gray in the man’s hair and the slight flabbiness of his muscles. Perhaps he would have a chance after all. Youth and quickness must count for some advantage. But to temper his growing optimism he reminded himself that experience outweighed almost everything else.
The first pair was pushed forward to a spot at the top of the ramp just short of the archway. The armored soldiers there hastily crossed their spears across the archway, but the gladiators ignored them.
Caelan heard a creaking noise, and the pair for ring one disappeared into the floor. He stared, mouth open, and could not believe it.
A few seconds later, the second pair were positioned on the same spot, and they also sank from sight.
As the line moved forward, Caelan saw that a section of the floor was really a platform that was lowered into the bowels of the catacombs beneath the ramp. He relaxed, ashamed of his own amazement. No sorcery was at work here, just simple mechanical devices.
When it came his own turn to descend through the floor, he watched with curiosity and saw sweating slaves hard at work on the pulley ropes that lowered and raised the platform. Down here beneath the ramp, he could see the framework of heavy beams and timbers supporting it.
“Move along,” a guard shouted, and Caelan had to jog along a curving passageway with his opponent at his shoulder.
Halfway around, the man started puffing, and he ran as though his knees hurt him. Caelan filed the information away. He was determined not to go down in the first round.
The inside wall of the passageway was built of thick boards with bolted doors set into it periodically. At the sixth door, the arena guards stopped Caelan and his opponent. The door was opened, and they stepped through into total darkness. A piece of cloth was flung over Caelan’s head. Instinctively he started to fight it, then held himself still as a weapon was pressed into his hand.
It fell heavy and thick. The haft of it was wood. When he ran his other hand along its length, he discovered it was only a club. Disappointment crashed through him. Was this to be his fate, bludgeoned to a pulp like a dumb animal?
“Go,” said the guard and pushed him up a ramp.
At the top he stumbled through a doorway, guided by another guard who yanked off the cloth as he passed. Caelan found himself stumbling outside in dazzling sunlight. Squinting, his eyes watering, he staggered around in deep sand. His opponent came jogging out after him and lifted his arms to the crowd, which was already roaring in excitement.
It was impossible not to gawk at the stone bleachers of spectators rising up on every side, impossible not to be stunned by the enormity of the sound, impossible not to be distracted by the burning sand under his bare feet and the heat itself that radiated up furnace-hot in the bottom of the arena.
His opponent might be old and out of shape, but he was arena-seasoned, and in those first few critical seconds he reached Caelan and swung his own club into Caelan’s kidney.
The blow drove Caelan to his knees with a yell of pain that was drowned out by the crowd, already surging to their feet and cheering with bloodlust.
From somewhere through the haze of agony, Caelan could hear Orlo’s exasperated voice: “There are no rules in the arena! Remember that, you blockheaded fool, or you’ll be dead in the first five seconds.”
The opponent swung again, and Caelan somehow wrenched himself around in time. The club thudded deep into the sand beside him. Caelan rolled and kicked, knocking his opponent’s feet out from under him. The man should have fallen but he didn’t. Miraculously, he kept his balance and went staggering over to one side.
Wincing, Caelan climbed to his feet, grateful for the momentary respite that gave him time to reset himself. He didn’t deserve this second chance. He knew that. Already he was berating himself sharply for his initial mistake. If they had been equipped with swords instead of clubs, he’d be dead by now.
He couldn’t afford to make another mistake. Most certainly he would not underestimate his opponent again.
Warily, they circled each other in the heat. The walls that confined them thudded occasionally from the impact of combat in the adjacent ring. The crowd went on screaming in waves and surges of sound, now on their feet, now sitting down again, calling out encouragement and curses alike.
The opponent moved like a crab, low to the ground, well centered, his eyes steady on Caelan. He dragged the tip of his club on the sand as he moved, conserving every bit of his strength.
But while Caelan noted his tactics, the younger man was also aware that not keeping a weapon high and poised meant wasting precious seconds of time to get it into position.
He attacked, yelling Trau cheers at the top of his lungs, and caught the opponent fractionally off guard. As he expected, it took the man a small amount of time to dodge and lift his club. Still he managed it, blocking Caelan’s swing so that the two clubs struck each other with a sharp crack of sound.
The impact jolted into Caelan’s wrist, and he nearly dropped his weapon. Desperately he changed to a two- handed grip and swung again just in time to block the opponent’s attack.
They blocked and swung furiously for several moments, then retreated to cir
cle again, each catching his breath while looking dangerous for the crowd.
Caelan was learning fast how to provide entertainment while staying alive. He also knew that the longer this conflict lasted, the more spent he would be. And there were still five more opponents ahead of him, providing he survived this one.
As though sensing Caelan’s momentary lapse of concentration, the opponent attacked. Some piece of Orlo’s instructions filtered through Caelan’s mind. Instead of dodging back, Caelan rushed forward, stepping inside the man’s lunge. With the club whistling over his shoulder, Caelan jabbed his own weapon like a dagger, thrusting it deep into the man’s solar plexus. The opponent’s face turned pale. He staggered back. Caelan could hear Orlo’s voice shouting in his mind to drive hard.
Swinging short, Caelan caught the man in the ribs. The opponent fell to one knee, still trying to bring up his own club. Caelan knocked it from his grip. Cheering rose in the air, and Caelan felt something inside him cry out even as he swung his club one last time.
It bounced off the man’s skull with a sickening thud. The opponent’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled to the ground.
Breathing hard, Caelan straightened up and turned around. Sand clung to his sweaty arms and legs. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, then remembered to raise his weapon in a victory salute to the cheering crowd. Most people weren’t even looking in his direction, but he did it anyway.
Then he saw the door had opened to his ring, and a guard was gesturing at him impatiently.
Obediently, he circled the fallen man and went inside, where the cloth was immediately thrown over his head and the club ripped from his hand.
He was hustled down the dark ramp and out into the circular passageway to a nearby stone tub of water.
“Climb in,” the guard told him.
Still panting, Caelan immersed himself in the cold water. It acted like a shock to his system, cooling him off rapidly. Blowing water from his face, he shook back his dripping hair and stood up just as his opponent’s body was carried by on a stretcher of leather webbing. He wanted to ask if the man was dead or merely stunned, but he knew better than to ask. It was considered bad luck in the ring to know until the fighting was finished.
Reign of Shadows Page 29
