‘They will have to make haste, however,’ Vacheron added, ‘for the last champion to leave the pit will be rewarded with death.’
That’s not good, Jack thought.
‘Of course,’ Vacheron said, ‘it would not be the Great Games if we did not have great hunters.’
The assembled guests murmured keenly at this.
Two towering masked figures arrived beside Hades on his stage.
One wore black, the other white.
At first glance, in their ceremonial helmets, they looked similar to the minotaur Jack had killed in his cell, but as he looked more closely at them, Jack saw significant differences.
First, they were much taller than the minotaurs; hell, these guys were both probably six inches taller than Jack. They were not hairy half-men. They were men.
Then there were their helmets.
High-tech and fearsome, they were not bull helmets. Instead, they were fashioned in the shape of lion heads, male lion heads with great manes.
Lastly, unlike the shorter minotaurs, these two masked men did not have bare chests. They wore lightweight body armour: chestplates, shoulderplates, combat trousers and steel-toed boots. Only their well-muscled arms were uncovered.
Vacheron gestured toward them. ‘Meet Lord Hades’s greatest hunters, Chaos and Fear. As the champions battle the maze, Chaos and Fear will hunt the champions. Beyond that, there are no rules save for the ancient Rule of the Arena: a champion may keep whatever he can carry from the battlefield, be it a weapon, a treasure or even a gruesome trophy of conquest. Luck to all. Begin!’
At Vacheron’s final command, a great noise erupted and to Jack’s immense confusion, several things happened at once.
Surging torrents of water came bursting out from the pipes in the outer wall of the uppermost trench.
All fifteen of the champions beside Jack leapt off the mark like sprinters at the Olympics, jumping down through the gates in the wire ceiling into the first trench.
Jack paused.
What choice did he have? He glanced up at the barred hostage cell where Lily, Alby and Sky Monster stood staring fearfully down at him. If he didn’t compete in this, they would die.
Screw it, he thought and he slapped on his new bull helmet and jumped down into the maze.
THE WATER PIT
The First Trench
Jack landed in a grey stone trench that was already knee-deep in sloshing water.
Noises came at him from every side.
Clang! Clang! Clang! The gates in the wire ceiling swung shut above his head.
The roar of the water surging out of the large pipes filled his ears. Thousands of litres were gushing into the trench every second.
The trench wasn’t wide—it could fit perhaps two people across—so it filled fast; but at seven feet deep, it was still high enough to crowd in over Jack.
He saw some of the other champions nearby.
They weren’t wasting time.
They were all clambering up and over the inner wall of the curving trench in an attempt to get to the next, lower level before this one flooded.
And suddenly the whole concept of the pit became clear to Jack. When each concentric trench filled up with water, it would cascade over into the next, then the next.
Once the water hit the bottommost trench, however, it would start rising up again, filling the entire pit, consuming the pyramid before it eventually came level with the fish-wire ceiling.
If you didn’t traverse your way down the trenches and then climb back up the pyramid to the exit crane arm in time, you’d drown when the water reached the wire ceiling and overcame you.
Once again Jack felt like the kid who had arrived at school unprepared for the exam. Everyone else seemed to know what was required but him.
The water was already up to his waist.
He thought for a second that he could wait for the water to rise some more and just ride it over the lip of the trench, but then he remembered the two lion-headed hunters who were coming to hunt them. He couldn’t dawdle.
So Jack copied the others and started for the seven-foot-high inner wall of the trench—
—just as he saw something sweep into the trench, borne on the water, rushing into it from one of the pipes, something large with a speckled sickly green body.
Whatever it was, the animal disappeared beneath the sloshing waves.
‘That can’t be good,’ Jack said aloud.
He dived for the wall, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. Something large brushed against his leg just as he lifted it out of the water and fell over the wall into the next trench in a clumsy heap.
The Second Trench
Jack landed hard on the dry stone floor of the second trench, the landing making his bull helmet fall askew. He threw it off and looked up—
—to see one of the two gold-painted minotaurs rushing at him with a knife!
Jack raised his own knife, the one he’d taken from the original minotaur attacker in his cell, and deflected the blow, falling backwards at the force of the attack.
That must have been an unspoken rule of these Games, Jack thought: the combatants were free to kill any of their competitors at any time, as one less competitor gave you a better chance to win.
The golden minotaur swung again with his knife and Jack blocked the blow.
Then with a deafening roar, water came blasting out of the huge pipes on this level and it too began filling with water.
The gold minotaur kept advancing on Jack, swinging and slashing, and Jack back-pedalled, desperately fending off the frenzied assault.
But then moving backwards in this way, Jack stumbled into a column of water gushing from a pipe and slipped and fell.
The minotaur, knowing that it had him, lunged through the water at Jack—just as another large animal came rushing out of the pipe, carried on the water, and slammed into the minotaur, knocking him off his feet!
Jack propped himself onto his elbows to see some kind of fish—it was gigantic, easily eight feet long—mauling the hapless minotaur.
The minotaur’s helmet came loose and the half-man screamed as the fish tore at him.
But then the minotaur started hacking at the fish with his knife and blood fanned out into the water.
Amid all the hacking and splashing, Jack got a good look at the animal.
It was a fish all right, one of the ugliest fish in the world.
It also gave him a clue as to where he was.
It was a giant catfish, Bagarius yarrelli. Jack could tell by the flat head, the long greenish body with mottled spots, the vicious teeth, but most of all by its nasty-looking ‘barbels’—the long stringy filaments that extended out from its snout like cat’s whiskers.
The giant catfish was a creature of southern Asia, ranging from the swamps of Vietnam to the deltas of Pakistan and the rivers of India.
Am I somewhere in southern Asia . . . ?
That didn’t concern him now. As the now-helmetless golden minotaur got the better of the fish, the water from the first trench started overflowing into this one, and suddenly it began to fill even faster. The minotaur ignored Jack and leapt over into the next trench.
‘Son of a bitch, this doesn’t stop,’ Jack breathed as he dived for the next wall, looped an elbow onto it, hoisted himself over it and tumbled downward again.
The Third Trench
Jack landed with a splash inside the third trench.
Water was already flowing here. The helmetless golden minotaur scampered away to the left. No other champions could be seen. Jack figured his scuffle with the minotaur had allowed them to get well ahead.
He stood . . . just as he spied one of the lion-headed hunters—the black one, Chaos—striding around the bend from the right and raising a crossbow mounted on one of his forearm guards.
The crossbow fired . . . on a reflex, Jack dived clear . . . and the bolt whistled past him.
Jack landed in the water, lifting his head to take a breath, just as a giant catfish came lunging at him! He rolled again and the fish rushed by.
Jack was on his back now, half floating in the water, face up, feet up.
The hunter dressed as a black lion continued to advance on him, raising the crossbow on his other forearm guard.
Jack had no defence.
The hunter fired.
Shwack!
The crossbow bolt slammed into the heel of Jack’s left boot: the woefully oversized boot he had taken from the minotaur who had attacked him earlier. But the boot’s sole was thick enough to absorb the bolt and Jack was, amazingly, unharmed.
Jack wasn’t sure who was more surprised, him or Black Lion dude.
He wasn’t going to stay and find out.
As water began to cascade over the upper wall of this trench—and now with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his left heel—he dived awkwardly over into the fourth and final trench.
The Fourth Trench
Once again, Jack landed in water, only this time it was waist deep. The flooding was accelerating.
He saw the pyramid rising above him, the only way out.
The other champions were indeed well ahead of him. They were clambering up the pyramid, using either the ramp that spiralled up the outside of the almost-vertical structure or some hand- and footholds cut into its flanks.
A great cheer rose up as the leading champion reached the summit, grabbed the crystal sphere and held it aloft. He was a tall guy with a square jaw covered with rough ginger stubble. Kitted out in a flak jacket, lightweight hockey helmet and combat boots, he looked to Jack a lot like a Navy SEAL or an SAS trooper.
The ginger-bearded trooper dived into the crane arm above the pyramid and crawled through it to the exit where he was met by more rousing cheers from the spectators.
Jack swore.
No cheers for me. I’ll be happy just to get out of this pit alive.
He reached for the nearest handhold in the wall of the pyramid only to feel something clamp down on his right foot and yank him underwater.
A giant catfish had his right boot clenched tightly in its ugly jaws!
Jack lashed out with his left boot, kicking hard until—disgustingly—he stabbed the catfish in the eye with the crossbow bolt protruding from the heel of his boot.
The fish released him and Jack resurfaced, gasping.
Suddenly a colossal amount of water came tumbling over the trench wall above him, pouring over it in an unbroken stream: water from all three of the upper trenches was now cascading into this, the lowest level.
In an instant, Jack was neck deep in sloshing water.
It was like the water itself was chasing him.
He reached for the handholds cut into the wall of the pyramid again and started climbing up its side as fast as he could.
Scaling the Pyramid
Soaking wet, heaving for breath, his fingers shaking as they grabbed each handhold, Jack climbed the almost-vertical pyramid, pursued by the ever-rising water.
It was rising faster than he could climb. It rose up his body: over his knees, then his belt, then his ribs.
Jack looked up as he climbed, to see how far he had to go, when something flashed across his field of vision, something white, leaping across from the last trench wall onto the side of the pyramid.
It was the white lion-headed hunter.
Jack watched in horror as the white lion—Fear—landed on the side of the pyramid above him and grabbed the ankle of one of the other champions scaling the structure: one of the gold-painted minotaurs, the one who had lost his helmet while struggling with the catfish before.
Then, very deliberately, Fear leapt off the pyramid, taking the gold minotaur with him!
Both the white lion and gold minotaur fell down the face of the pyramid and splashed into the water right beside Jack.
The minotaur surfaced first, arms paddling, trying to swim back to the pyramid.
But then, as Jack watched from only a few feet away, Fear grabbed the minotaur, took him under, and held him under.
For a brief moment, the water sloshed over Jack’s head and in the muffled underwater spectrum he heard the mechanical wheezing of a scuba-diving regulator.
And he realised: the lion-shaped helmet that Fear wore had some kind of breathing apparatus inside it.
This wasn’t a fair fight.
Fear was going to hold the gold minotaur under until he drowned—
No sooner had the thought hit Jack than something large splashed into the water on his other side and a strong hand suddenly gripped his right boot.
It was the other hunter, the black lion named Chaos.
He yanked Jack down with tremendous force and Jack had time for one last deep breath before he went under.
Underwater.
It was grimly silent down here compared to the roaring world of gushing water above.
Jack saw Chaos beneath him, gripping his right boot, holding him under, using the helmet-mask to breathe.
He saw the gold minotaur beside him—still in the grasp of the white lion named Fear—struggling desperately, before the minotaur went limp and simply hovered in the void, dead.
Jack tried using the crossbow bolt sticking out from his left heel as he’d done earlier with the catfish. He unleashed a kick aimed at Chaos’s throat, only to see the arrow bounce off the thick armoured neckguard that Chaos wore.
Jesus . . .
Chaos kept gripping his other boot.
Jack wriggled and bucked and kicked with all his might, until—with a sudden jerk—his oversized right boot came off completely!
Jack planted his now naked foot on Chaos’s lion helmet and pushed off it. He shot upward and resurfaced, gasping for air.
Thanks to the still-rising water, when he surfaced Jack found himself three-quarters of the way up the pyramid.
This was good and bad.
Good because he was closer to the summit.
Bad because at his current rate of climbing, the water would beat him there and he still had to crawl through the crane arm to the exit.
He gritted his teeth. Grim determination swept through him.
I’m not going to die here.
I can’t stop now. I won’t stop now.
I’m gonna get through this.
Jack snatched the nearest handhold cut into the stone and climbed. Climbed fast, as fast he could, racing the rising water.
It was going to beat him to the top.
But he kept going anyway.
Water swirled and sloshed around him. Giant catfish whooshed past him. They came so close their whip-like whiskers lashed his body.
He reached the peak of the pyramid long after the last champion had left the pit, at the exact moment that the rising water flooded the summit. Now the entire forty-foot pyramid, which had once stood proudly in the centre of the pit, was completely submerged.
Jack saw the horizontal crane arm barely three feet away from him, stretching away for about seventy feet to the exit. The wire roof of the pit was right above it.
He dived for the crane arm as the relentlessly rising water swept up through its steel bars and consumed the whole crane arm and Jack as well.
Seen from the viewing balcony, the entire circular pit was now completely filled with water.
It looked like a perfectly round pool, rippling with low waves. The shadows of several giant catfish could be seen prowling under the surface.
Hades’s two huntsmen, the black and white figures of Chaos and Fear, were allowed to emerge from the entry gates.
The water went still.
There was no sign of Jack.
The crane
arm led to a single hole cut into the floor of the arena and it, too, was now filled with water. It looked like a flooded manhole.
Hades watched it, curious.
The spectators watched it, hushed.
The other champions—soaking wet and breathing hard—watched it, waiting.
From their hostage carriage high above the arena, Lily, Alby and Sky Monster watched it, holding their breath.
No movement.
No nothing.
No Jack.
And then there was a splash of water in the exit hole and Jack’s head appeared.
He crawled out of it on his belly, panting, heaving, gasping for air, dripping from head to toe in his jeans, t-shirt and single oversized boot.
He rolled onto his back, sucking in oxygen.
‘Fifth warrior!’ Hades called from his balcony. ‘You are the last to emerge.’
Jack felt his blood run cold. Had he just survived all that only to have his head blown off now?
Hades smiled.
‘Yet one other never left the pit, one of the promoted golden minotaurs,’ Hades said. ‘So while you are the last to emerge, you have not come last in this challenge. You have earned the right to continue in the Games.’
He smiled at Jack, looking like he had very much enjoyed frightening the daylights out of him.
Hades turned to the tall man with the ginger stubble holding the crystal sphere.
‘You. Champion. State your name and your house.’
The champion removed his lightweight helmet to reveal a head of closely-shaved orange hair. He spoke in a polished British accent. ‘I am Major Gregory Brigham, Your Majesty, from Her Majesty’s Special Air Service, the SAS. I represent the mighty and glorious Deus Rex, the Kingdom of Land.’
Hades said, ‘You have won the Second Challenge so you are entitled to the traditional reward: anything that is in my power to give, you may have. All you have to do is name it.’
Major Brigham nodded. He seemed aware of this honour.
He jerked his chin at the champion next to him: a shaven-headed man wearing the combat fatigues of the American Army Rangers.
The Four Legendary Kingdoms: A Jack West Jr Novel 4 (Jack West Junior) Page 3
