The House of the Stag

by Kage Baker

  “You’re a liar, whatever the color of your skin is,” said Gard, and lunged at him.

  Quickfire beat him back. “Wait for it! You’re supposed to wait until the arms master says the fight can commence. What is this? Is he left-handed too, my lord?”

  “No; but you are, and so he will fight you left-handed. He fights equally well with either hand,” said Silverpoint.

  “Or equally badly,” said Quickfire, his bravado returning. “Well, come on!”

  “You may begin,” said Silverpoint, and he backed away a few paces and watched keenly as the fight commenced.

  “Null point. Null point. Null point. Good, well done, but null. Point to Quickfire. Null point. Point to Gard! You see, Quickfire, how swiftly he learns?”

  “ ‘Gard’?” said Quickfire, panting as he dodged and cut. “What kind of name is that, Gard? It sounds like the noise you’d make choking on a fruit pit.”

  Gard ignored him and avoided the rain of quick, slicing cuts that followed and wondered if it was his opponent’s habit to follow an insult with a sneak attack.

  “Null point. Null. Null. Null. Gentlemen, you are welcome to watch, but you must remain beyond the yellow line. Null. Null. Point to Gard. Quickfire, you’ll be beaten by a half-breed savage from the forest. Null point.”

  “If I had you home in Mount Flame City, Gard, you know what I’d do with you?” said Quickfire. “Geld you, so as to make you docile, and then I’d dress you up in servants’ livery—just as though you were a man—and keep you in the front hall, to answer my door.”

  Quickfire stabbed and cut again, a twisting underhand move difficult to parry, and Gard thought, Yes, an insult followed by a trick. Will he do it again?

  “Someone else may be gelded today, hothead,” said a voice from the crowd that had gathered on the sidelines. It was a bass so deep Gard felt it vibrating in his bones. He did not glance at the speaker, but from the corner of his eye saw that one or two were standing there who towered above the others, and he had an impression of garish color.

  “Null point. Null point,” said the duke in an emotionless voice. “Gentlemen, remain beyond the yellow line. Null. Null point. Point to Quickfire. Focus or die, Gard.”

  “What, you mean I get to kill him?” said Quickfire, grinning.

  “No. Null point. That was general advice. Shotterak, I will not ask you again. Null point, null point, null, null, null—”

  “So, Gard, did it take you long to learn to walk on your hind—”

  He’s doing it again, thought Gard, and lunged.

  “Point to Gard! Match.”

  There was a roar from the sidelines, general applause. Quickfire saluted with his blade and lowered it, smiling ruefully as he rubbed his shoulder. “He fights like a man, in any case. Clever beastie!”

  Gard saluted, but did not put his blade down until Quickfire walked over and returned his own to the rack. “Very well done, really,” said Quickfire, pleasantly enough. “Considering. You must have been a fighter before you came here, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Gard.

  “Ah, well, and here I thought you a poor ignorant brute. No wonder my lord duke is investing such time in you! I do apologize. Dendekin Quickfire,” he said, thumping Gard on the shoulder. “Where I come from, we have two names, you see? Seriously, what does your name mean?”

  “ ‘Death,’ “ said Gard.

  “Nice,” said Quickfire. “Come and have a drink with me, Gard.”

  “He may not,” said Silverpoint. “We have not finished here.”

  “Another time, then,” said Quickfire, and thumped Gard once more on the shoulder, rather hard, and walked away.

  Shotterak was a Repeater, a bound demon slain and rebodied weekly. Consequently it never mattered how well he fought; consequently he drank a great deal and took as many drugs as he could swallow, or inhale, or (in his case) shove under his carapace to be absorbed through his lubricating glands. Silverpoint had nothing but contempt for him.

  Gard heard Shotterak rattling along behind him one day after a training session as Gard was on his way to Triphammer’s cell.

  “You. Gard. You’re the one they used to call Icicle, eh?”

  Gard stopped and turned. “Yes.”

  “I heard about you. Grattur and Engrattur. They said you’re one of us. Only, you’re not a Repeater? How’s that?”

  “I’m not bound.” Gard watched Shotterak’s face work as he tried to reason that through.

  “Oh,” said Shotterak at last. “Neat trick, that. How’d that happen?”

  “No one knows my true name. Not even me.”

  “Oh.” Shotterak lurched along beside Gard a moment, his lips moving in silence, then he broke into a broad grin. “Not even you! So you’ll be out of here in one death! Oh, lucky bloody you.”

  “I hope so.”

  They were at the door of Triphammer’s cell when Shotterak turned to Gard. “What was that trick, again?”

  “No one can know my true name.”

  “Right. Right. Well, you did us proud, beating that little burn-arse. Good for you. Wish I had a few tricks like that.”

  “I just watched him,” said Gard.

  “Right. See, if I knew a few tricks, I’d fare better in the arena.” Shotterak held up his arm, black blood oozing from the broken carapace. “Old Shotterak, he just goes in swinging, as seems natural, but there’s always some bastard with a trick. And then, smash and hurt for old me, and they’re all cheering for the bastard.”

  “What’s this?” Triphammer looked up as they came in. “Evening, Icicle. Nine hells, Shotty, what is it this time?”

  “Broke arm,” said Shotterak, looking shamefaced.

  “Nine hells. You can give us a minute, can’t you, Icicle, while I paste him back together? Go for a nice soak in the hot pool. Come on, old crab, let’s clean it out. You know what this comes of, don’t you, Shotterak? This comes of fighting with a jawful of grass. And now I’ve got to give you another quid for the pain, so you’ll never get clean of it, and I’ll bet my mother’s golden bones you’ll be stoned the very next time you step out on the sand again, eh? Eh? And then you’ll die again, and the rest of us get to force down crab stew for three weeks.”

  “Probably,” said Shotterak with a guttural giggle.

  “Because you’ll never learn anything, and you know why? Because you’re a stone-headed demon, that’s why. No offense, Icicle. Never amount to nothing, Shotterak, because you have no self-control.” Triphammer picked bits of broken carapace from the wound, shaking his head.

  Gard sat in the pit below the arena, watching as sand scattered in kicked-up flurries. The dry sand, at least; the bloody sand stuck to the wall where it was thrown.

  “It’s easy,” Triphammer assured him. “Well, so long as you’re fast. And careful. You watch, see? Body part goes flying off, you jump up there, grab it with your hook, and sling it in here. Man goes down, you jump up, hook him by the collar, and same thing. Keep it clear for the fighters so nobody trips up, and they appreciate that. Most of them, anyway.”

  “Is this a punishment?” said Gard, watching as the two sets of legs circled each other. One pair looked as if they belonged to Shotterak; the other pair were scaly and a disagreeable shade of yellow. From high above them somewhere came a chanting, and a stamping, and an indefinable sound compounded of hunger and eagerness and rage.

  “Punishment! No, no. When they punish you for something, you aren’t in any doubt about it. No, this is more like interning, see? Your first real chance to get out there in the arena without risking your life. Usually.” Triphammer dodged as a foot swept a wave of sand into the pit. “Haaiii! Shotterak, you ass. He’s got no science, you see that? None at all. And he’s smarter than Pocktuun, that one’s got no brain at all hardly, he ought to be able to outthink him. But I’ll bet you my next ten dinners Shotterak goes dow—”

  There was a sickening crack and Shotterak’s arm came spinning across the arena and landed trembling on the edge
of the pit. Gard reached up and pulled it in. The stamping and chanting fell silent suddenly.

  “What’d I say? Did I speak truth or what?” said Triphammer. “Pitch that in the bin that’s going down to the Larder. The rest of him will follow in a minute, you wait and see.”

  Unpleasant sounds came from above, the most unpleasant being the chanting that rose again, a lustful encouragement. Gard strained on tiptoe to look up into the arena. A great roar from on high, and Shotterak’s head came bounding across the sand toward him. Gard caught it and pulled it down.

  Triphammer whistled. “Haaiii, poor ninny! What’d I tell him? Look at all that green around the jaws. Wouldn’t listen, would you, eh?” he said, addressing the staring head. “Pitch it in the bin, Icicle. Now you’ll have to go up and fetch what’s left of him.”

  Gard shoved his hook up through the opening and scrambled after it gingerly. He found himself in stifling heat and blinding light. The sand burned his feet. Thirty paces away, Shotterak’s body lay bleeding out black on the sand, twitching as though it too found the sand painfully hot. Beyond it, lumpen Pocktuun was exulting, stamping his feet and lifting his cleaver on high before lowering it to lick the blade.

  Gard advanced with the hook held out before him on its long handle. He snagged Shotterak’s corpse between the remaining arm and the shoulder and backed away hastily, dragging it toward the pit.

  Doing so, he drew Pocktuun’s attention. The tiny head turned, the eyes protruded on their stalks to focus on him. The immense lipless mouth grinned crazily. Pocktuun stalked toward Gard, swinging his cleaver. From above the chanting rose again, and laughter, and screams of encouragement.

  “Come on, Icicle! Hurry!” cried Triphammer.

  Encouraged by the applause, Pocktuun bounded forward, shaking the floor as he came. Gard raised the hook to fend him off. Pocktuun swung, and the cleaver cut the hook clean away, leaving only the long handle with its hewn end sliced on an angle. More laughter, more clapping, and the tight focus of massed attention.

  Gard was aware of no fear, strangely, though a moment ago he had been sweating and terrified; only a sense of annoyance, and even that faded away under a crystalline calm. Red-red-yellow-green. He stabbed four times with the sharp point of the long handle, blows almost too quick to see. Pocktuun tottered to a halt, chuckling uncertainly, even as his body began to spurt blood like a slow fountain.

  Again, the sudden breathless hush. Pocktuun dropped his cleaver and dabbled his thick fingers in the blood jets, peering down at them in wonder. He toppled slowly, as though going to kneel, and fell on his face in the sand.

  Deafening noise. For the first time, Gard looked up beyond the glare of the lights. There in rows going up were people in rich-worked clothes, in colors for which he knew no names, yet, purple and peacock and ruby and midnight hues. Their faces were narrow or heavy, but all unnaturally smooth. Their eyes were glassy, fixed, alight with the curious emotion he had seen only twice before: when he had been beaten for their delectation, and when he had slain Catering before Lady Pirihine. Beyond, in the topmost stalls by the distant ceiling, slaves leaned down to watch, no less avid.

  And they were cheering him. They were standing in their seats and shrieking. The masters were tearing things from their garments and flinging them down toward him, and the objects dropped into the glaring sand like rain all around Gard. He looked down in wonder. Buttons, and aglets, and pins and little ornaments, all of some yellow metal.

  He looked up again, into the only calm face there. Duke Silverpoint sat alone in a booth on the lower wall, silent. He met Gard’s gaze and nodded, only once, and made no sound at all.

  “They want me to do it again?”

  “You diverted them,” said Silverpoint drily.

  “You were a novelty,” said Bhetla. He was the clerical slave whose duty it was to schedule the amusements in the arena; he was lean and dour and ancient, of an ancient race nearly gone from the world. “An armored champion taken down by a mere sand cleaner, practically unarmed, without one boast or challenge. Not only will they see it again, they will demand to see it fifteen or fifty times before they weary of the spectacle.”

  “But … does that mean I have to go up against the others with nothing but a broken pole too?”

  “It does.”

  Gard clenched his fists. “I won’t die for their amusement. I refuse.”

  “Then you must kill your opponents. Every time. I think you can,” said Silverpoint.

  “With respect, my lord, he was outrageous amazing lucky,” said Triphammer in a trembling voice, as he kneaded Gard’s shoulders. “Never seen the like. You can’t ask the gods for luck like that a second time! ‘Here, please deliver a pint of luck every third day, payment’s under the loose brick next the doorstone.’ They’ll get affronted. He’ll get himself killed and it’ll be a sinful waste, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t,” said Silverpoint. “And it wasn’t luck. He knows that as well as I do. Don’t you, Gard?”

  Gard looked down, sullen. “Pocktuun was stupid. He was showing off, and he couldn’t see very well. And he made the corpse hook a spear, and I know how to kill with a spear. That’s all it was.”

  “Very good,” said Silverpoint. “Very good. You will find it easy to do the same once or twice more. Then they will make it more difficult for you. Accordingly, we will step up your training. Eight hours a day. I will bring in specialists to spar with you.”

  “I suppose that’s all we can do,” said Triphammer mournfully. “Up in the Repeaters’ dormitories, you should hear the challenges they’re inventing for this boy. ‘I will crush his skull and eat his liver for the honor of the Repeaters!’ ‘The Repeaters will avenge this insult! I myself will grind this tiny worm into the dust! He will beg for death by the time I’ve finished with him!’ That sort of thing.”

  Bhetla made a scornful sound. “All talk and theatrics. The louder they are, the stupider.”

  “What were all those yellow things the masters threw down at me?”

  “ ‘Yellow things’! Hark at him! You big jungle booby, that was gold!” cried Triphammer. “That’s the stuff you use to trade for food and drink and a soft bed, down in the cities! They were throwing it to you as an honor, on account of they were so impressed.”

  “Do I get to keep it?”

  “Oh, gods, no. It’s all been raked up and returned by now,” said Triphammer, briskly pummeling Gard’s upper back. “You’re only a slave, after all.”

  It fell out just as Bhetla had said: fifteen and more times the masters demanded to see Gard venture out with no more than a pointed stick, to face roaring titans. He killed them all, regardless of how loudly they declaimed or how garish the paint on their armor. Yet each time the applause grew a little fainter, ended more quickly. The last time, Gard found himself confronting a hurriedly rebodied Shotterak, who gave a halfhearted wave of recognition before he was slain again.

  “I smell a change in the air,” said Triphammer gloomily. He was watching from the sidelines as Gard trained. “They’re getting bored. You ask me, they’re going to want to see something really different, next time.”

  Gard, circling his practice opponent with a pair of matched blades, paid no attention. Fraitsha, his opponent, was lean and sinewy, with skin black as a grape and blades of differing lengths in each of his four hands. Gard ventured in, attacked, was beaten back.

  Silverpoint nodded. “I think we can surprise them.”

  Fraitsha advanced, whirling his four blades in tight circles. Gard fell back, sprang sideways, flanked him, and nearly scored a hit on Fraitsha’s lowermost right arm.

  “Something’s going to surprise them, if they don’t open their eyes and ears,” muttered Triphammer, with a curious choice of words, an idiom over which the Translator mopped and mowed before settling on the nearest explanation it could find: secret or coded exchange for private hearing.

  Gard wondered what that meant. Silverpoint looked sharply at Triphammer. “That
is none of our concern,” he said, then added in the same peculiar idiom, “But if it were, we would wish them more blind and deaf, the filth.”

  “True enough,” Triphammer sighed. “Still, it’ll disrupt things. Oh, good one, Icicle! Fraitsha, he’ll disarm you yet. Dis-arm you, eh?”

  “Shut up,” said Fraitsha, but Gard had circled him faster that he could turn and laid two quick cuts in succession on the high leather collar of his practice tunic.

  “Fraitsha is slain. Well done, Gard,” said Silverpoint, as Fraitsha lowered his blades in disgust. “Why were you distracted, Fraitsha? See what comes of eavesdropping on what doesn’t concern you?”

  “It concerns us all,” said Fraitsha, rubbing his throat.

  “We will not discuss this,” said Silverpoint. Fraitsha shrugged and went to put his blades away. Gard slid the twin swords back into their scabbards, worn crossed on his back, and practiced drawing them again. Out, with a flourish, and back; out again, and thrusting. He was rather pleased with himself.

  “Look at him!” said Triphammer. “You keep at it, Icicle. You’ll get so you won’t turn a hair, no matter what they send you up against. I just hope they don’t want to see him fighting a onetimer like himself too soon. Or one of the women.”

  Gard dropped one of the blades. “Women?” he said, turning to stare.

  Silverpoint gave him a keen look. “Ah. I perceive a weakness.”

  “I can’t fight a woman!”

  Triphammer got to his feet. “I’ll just go up to the Convent and let them know you want one of them, shall I, my lord?”

  “Madame Balnshik, I think,” said Silverpoint.

  “There aren’t any women fighters,” said Gard, not exactly stubbornly; he was sweating. “That would be wrong. How could I kill someone with a womb? And breasts? That would be … that would be … very wrong.”

  “Perhaps it was wrong in your tribe,” said Silverpoint, condescension in his voice once more. “I expect your females were reserved for bearing young. Amongst civilized races, however, females have the right to engage in other careers. Some of them study warcraft.”