by Nathan Long
A little one leaped on my back and stabbed me in the trapezius with some kind of pointy hair stay.
“Fucking bitch!” I grabbed her and slammed her one-handed against an overhead crossbeam, knocking the wind out of her with a squeak like stepping on a mouse.
The rest fell back, eyes like Ping-Pong balls. I was doing something impossible. I was something impossible; a chick strong enough to lift a girl to the ceiling one-handed. They were paralyzed.
I put the girl down, using the most non-threatening movements I could. “Listen, I’m sorry—”
Hesh had heard the screaming. He slammed in with a couple of guards. They saw blood running down my back and weapons in the women’s hands and started laying into them with long paddles like frat-boy pledge-wallopers, cracking heads, shins and asses.
Hesh screamed at them. “You dare damage the masters’ property! I’ll have you diced for this. I’ll shave your heads and make you fuck vurlaks for a copper rill!”
I stepped to him. “Dude. Hesh. Sir. Please. It’s only a scratch. Leave them alone.”
“Silence!” I got another slap for my trouble. “Those who damage the masters’ property must be punished.”
Pretty funny coming from a guy who was giving the masters’ property a world class smack-down. Every girl got a head-to-toe beating, and the girl who stabbed me got double. The paddles didn’t leave a bruise, but they smacked as loud as firecrackers and left red welts that must have stung like bejezus.
When it was over, Hesh and his stormtroopers left without a word. You thought it got quiet the first time I was alone with these chicks—this time it was quieter than a funeral home after quitting time. The women stared at me like those kids in Village of the Damned. I tried again. “Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t want...”
As one, they turned their backs and started taking care of their wounds. Welcome to the sorority.
***
Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling real friendly toward my owners the next day. Lucky for Hesh, he was front office. He didn’t have anything to do with training the gladiators. He would have been dead before we got through roll call.
I was afraid our trainer was going to be worse than Hesh, but the bosses obviously cared more about the fighters than the whores. Zhen was an old ex-gladiator with one arm, and so many scars he looked like a patchwork quilt. He was short, even by Waarian standards, but he stood up ram-rod straight and walked with a bounce even though he had a limp and a cane. He was clean and tidy and as brisk as April in Alaska, talking fast in a voice that hissed like a high pressure air hose. You could see why. His neck looked like somebody’d got ninety percent done beheading him awhile back. He reminded me of my boot camp drill sergeants who, even when they were bawling you out in hundred degree heat, had a crease on their khakis you could slash a tire with. I liked him as soon as I saw him.
After a ten-minute breakfast of grain mash, rare meat and fruit, they lined us up on the practice ground—newbies in front, old hands at the back. Zhen reviewed us like a general, scowling. “Great fire from the sky, what gutter trash have they saddled me with now?”
He went down the row, ticking off our faults one by one. “Blind. Fat. No spirit. Weak. Clumsy.” He sneered at Lhan’s perfect posture. “School boy.” Moved on. “Lack wit. Yellow guts.” And then he got to me. He stepped back and stared. “Tits? Tits on a gladiator? And what can you do, my dainty darling?”
Like I said, I was in an ornery mood. I decided to show him. I jumped over his head. The rest of the school gasped. Zhen just raised an eyebrow. “So, a demon in strength as well as appearance, eh? Well, don’t let it swell your head. Do it again. Jump!”
I jumped over him again, and faster than a nail gun he cracked me on the foot with his cane so hard I couldn’t stick my landing. I face-planted in the dust. He turned to the class, ignoring my howls. “There’s always an opening. Even a demon has to land sometime.”
I ended up being the practice dummy. Anytime he needed to demonstrate a move I was the one he picked. By the end of the day I was black and blue and as burnt as a match head. I didn’t learn anything Lhan hadn’t already shown me, not that first day, but here I really learned it. This wasn’t a few tricks I’d tried one night and half remembered. Zhen drilled us into the ground; the same moves over and over until they became reactions, instinct.
He made me wear the heaviest armor he could find, and wouldn’t let me jump. “You find yourself in a tunnel? A low room? What good is your leaping then, eh, waifling?”
“You got low rooms in the arena?”
He slapped me for sassing back. “Many’s the gladiator buys his freedom with valor. Half the bodyguards in this city felt the sting of my cane. Life has many turns, little one, if you live long enough to walk ’em.”
Which was my only clue that he thought I had potential. The rest of the time we were all scum, fools, stumble-bums and vurlaks. Even Lhan got his share, and he was the best newbie by far. “Save your fancy ruffling for your Oran boudoirs, dandy lad. Your guard is as weak as a prostitute’s virtue, and will get you stuck just as often, but for no pay. Back to basics. Now on your guard!”
And so on for two cycles—different weapons, different styles—swords, axes, spears, nets, spiked gloves, maces, and wild weapons I’d never seen before. Zhen taught us how to kill and maim, and more importantly, how not to kill and maim. I was surprised. Maybe all those old Steve Reeves gladiator movies were wrong, but here, most fights in the arena weren’t fatal. It was a lot more like pro-wrestling. The idea was to put on a good show and not kill the other guy. The matches usually went to submission, that is, where one guy couldn’t continue or the other guy had him at sword’s point. The suckers wanted to see a wild fight and a little blood, and if you made ’em happy, everybody got to live.
That’s not to say there was never any killing. Even though it was kind of fake most of the time, Zhen demanded that we know how to fight for real. Guys sometimes went psycho when they got too hurt, and a fake fight would turn into a real one. Sometimes you had to fight prisoners of war or condemned criminals who had no reason to play by the rules. Sometimes the bosses just got tired of you and told your opponent to get rid of you. If you came out on top in a match like that the bosses might change their mind.
None of that happened very often. It wasn’t in a promoter’s best interests to slaughter his top fighters. It wouldn’t pay him back for all the training and the food we ate. So a good promoter hired a guy like Zhen to make sure the gladiators knew what they were doing and to put together fights that made the crowd stand up and shout. He had his work cut out for him. The arena regulars were connoisseurs of fighting. They knew when guys were going through the motions and they wouldn’t stand for it.
The fights weren’t fixed, exactly. In fact, there was a bonus for the winner—food, money and his pick of the Ho House, but there was a lot of showboating along the way, extra-fancy sword work, a jump or flip to get a cheer out of the crowd. The way Zhen explained it all, I almost thought I could hack it, no pun intended.
I wasn’t so sure about Lhan. Ever since the slave market he’d been less than his cheery self. He was still pleasant, but he’d gone all grim on me, going through his training as focused as a cat stalking a bird, and when I tried to cheer him up, I could see him building his smile one piece at a time.
We didn’t have much chance to talk in private for the first few days, but I managed to pull him aside at dinner one night. “How you holdin’ up, bunky?”
“Well enough, mistress, though much concerned for our friend and his betrothed.”
I chuckled. “You kidding? They got cush gigs compared to us. We could die here.”
“’Tis not a laughing matter. Perhaps they do not face death, but their persons are in danger of a worse violation. I mourn for their virtue. We must escape this place as soon as possible.”
After the hi jinks on the pirate ship I didn’t think Sai and Wen-Jhai had enough virtue left between ’em to fill a sh
ot glass, but I didn’t say that. I leaned in like I was in a Cagney prison picture. “Whenever you say, Lhan. We could go over the wall tonight. It ain’t that...”
“No, Mistress Jae-En. I applaud your eagerness, but with no knowledge of this city ’twould be suicide. We can’t bumble around like the blind. We must know where we go.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I have yet to form it, but for all else to work we must first be valorous here. We must live long enough to discover where Sai and Wen-Jhai are held, and how to make good our escape once we deliver them.”
I had more questions, but a guard heard our whispering and looked our way, so we left it at that. I trusted Lhan. He had the gift of gab. He’d be able to talk the info out of somebody.
***
Pretty soon it became obvious that Lhan and I were being groomed as headliners. Lhan was the best new fighter in the school, and I was second best, even without my leaping. The brothers came out and watched as Zhen made us fight each other, and I could see ’em mumbling together, excited as a couple of record executives who think they’ve got the next Britney Spears.
They had armorers and costumers take our measurements, and Zhen finally let me work on leaping and flipping and practicing with my big old Aarurrh sword as their in-house blacksmith made me a new one to match my new armor. I had a blast, throwing myself around, figuring out all kinds of wild spins and swerves I could do using the sword as a counterbalance.
Their biggest problem was finding me an opponent. The established guys didn’t want anything to do with me. I was a no-win situation. Beating a chick didn’t get them anything. To the audience it would be a big, “So what, she’s a chick.” And losing to a girl? Unthinkable. At the same time, they couldn’t match me with any of the new guys. I was too strong. It wouldn’t be an entertaining fight.
They ended up doing the worst thing possible, at least as far as me making any friends went. The bosses told all the main-eventers that they had a quarter-moon to shape up and start pulling their weight. At the end of the quarter, the guy who was still sucking in the arena had to fight the freak in her debut match. This didn’t exactly win me a lot of pals on the practice field. The old hands hated me because I was a threat. My classmates hated me because I was the teacher’s pet, and the girls back at the dorm? Well, things weren’t exactly rosy in that department either.
I might have become queen of the sawdust circle, but back in the Ho House I was still the weird new girl nobody would talk to.
The top ho was a cold bitch named Fae-Ah, who I think was afraid I would take over. She did everything she could to keep the rest of the girls turned against me, telling them—in front of my face no less—that I was a spy for the bosses, that I had diseases, that my skin color was contagious. They swallowed her shit hook, line and sinker. Half of them thought I was a man in disguise anyway, why not the rest of it? Fae-Ah froze me out of all their conversations, jokes and stories. When I got close, they went dead quiet, and stayed that way ’til I left.
Yaj, the little chick who’d stabbed me that first night, a wild thing with her hair all down in her face, acted like a guard dog, always watching me, always keeping between me and the others. She was a weird kid. Never talked. Not a word. She reminded me of gals I knew back in reform school, cute and wiry, but so balled up from the shit sandwich life had fed them you couldn’t get near them.
I kept my distance. She’d already cut me worse than anything I’d got on the practice field. But one day, when I went back around the cookhouse to take a quick dunk in the trough, I found her hunched over a bucket, washing vegetables, and crying all over her hands. I couldn’t help myself.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
She looked up, then away as soon as she saw who it was. She wasn’t fast enough to keep me from seeing that she was sporting a pair of black eyes and a fat lip. She looked like a raccoon after a three day bender, and her arms were black and blue too.
“Who did this?”
She threw a tuber at me. Hit me in the ear. I know when I’m not wanted. I ignored her and had my bath.
***
A couple nights later I was spending another evening twiddling my thumbs in bed while the hos gabbed on the other side of the room. Suddenly Hesh came in.
The chatter stopped like flicking a switch. Hesh smiled. He liked being feared. He beckoned to Yaj, who still had yellow-edged smudges around her eyes. “Dal-Far says you failed to please him after the last games. You must be retrained, again.”
I saw Yaj pale. She shrank against the wall. The hos held their breath. Hesh raised his paddle. “It’ll be worse if I have to force you.”
Yaj went, trembling. One of the women burst into tears as soon as they left.
My fingernails were biting into my palms. I can’t stand bullies. I never ran with a gang who picked on the weak. Oh sure, we’d steal a Benz for beer money, but that’s robbing the rich. We never hit mom-and-pops and never beat on anybody who didn’t throw the first punch. In fact, most of my assault raps were for sticking my nose in when some big fucker was beating on some squirt who couldn’t fight back.
The bosses didn’t let us out at night. There was a guard on the yard who watched the bunkhouse doors. We pissed in a bucket if we had to go after lights out. My blood might have been up, but I wasn’t totally suicidal. I knew I’d get it if I went out the front door. I looked up. The roof was swamp-grass thatch laid over a wooden frame, angling to a peak over a roof beam. Worth a shot.
The women stared as I rolled off my cot and leaped straight up to the crossbeam below the roof beam. The thatch-frame was just open enough for me to slip through. All I had to do was push up through the grass.
I braced against the roof beam one-handed and used my other hand to knife through the dry grass. It was thicker than I thought, and rustled like a paper suit. I hoped the guards were talking or sleeping down on the ground.
I got one hand through and grabbed the roof peak, then snaked my other hand out and pulled.
There’s an old expression being dragged through a hedge backward. Well, it ain’t much fun forward either. I felt like I was pushing my head through a giant broom. I scratched my skin from shoulders to ankles, but finally I was lying flat on the peak of the roof and holding my breath. The yard-bull had heard something, all right. He was looking all around, but he couldn’t pin-point the sound.
I waited for him to settle again, then went on fingers and toes to the end of the roof closest to the trainers’ house. It was only a twelve foot gap, but another story up. I could have cleared it easy except I didn’t dare take more than a three step run. Any more and the guard would get a bead on the noise.
I ran hard and kicked off the very end of the roof like a switchblade snapping open and cleared the lip of the trainer’s house roof by inches. I landed rolling, trying to hit as soft as I could. Another freeze to listen for trouble, then I started inching my way around the roof, eavesdropping above all the windows. I found what I was listening for pretty quick; a dull smack of flesh on flesh, and a whimper like a dog being smothered under a blanket. The hairs on my neck rose like a ridgeback’s.
There was no glass on the windows—I hadn’t seen glass anywhere on Waar—and the shutters were open. It was easy to grab the lip over the window and swing down to the sill.
Hesh was too busy to notice me. He sat on the bed, naked, his legs wide and little Yaj bumping and grinding between them like a lap-dancer, but with a horrible strained smile on her face. Every time that smile slipped, even a hair, Hesh slapped Yaj so hard her head bounced around like a bobble-head dog in the back window of a car.
Blood rushed in my ears. I didn’t decide to attack him. There wasn’t any decision involved. I just launched.
I clotheslined him across the shoulders. We hit the floor hard enough to skid and he cracked his head against the baseboard.
If that had knocked him out I’d have had some options. He wouldn’t have known who hit him. I could have let him sleep it
off and everything might have been okay. But he was a hard-headed son-of-a-bitch. I’d only stunned him. He saw me, and that was the point of no return.
It occurred to me—now it occurred to me—that I had to kill him. Yeah, I’d sworn to kill him before, but it’s one thing to say you’re going to kill a guy and another not to have any choice about it.
I felt trapped, like I’d been buried alive. I couldn’t breath. What the fuck had I done? Not only did I have to off the guy, I had to be subtle about it. If I stabbed him, or broke his neck, or threw him out the window, Yaj would probably be blamed and end up swinging from a rope. I sobered up faster than a drunk with flashing lights in his mirrors. My mad was gone, replaced by a sick panic.
Hesh was shaking it off, opening his mouth to shout. I clamped a hand over his face and sat on his chest, pinning his arms with my knees. I looked around, thinking like crazy. Yaj was so out of it she hadn’t done much more than step back, eyes focusing slowly. What the hell was I going to do? How was I going to kill him without leaving a mark?
Hesh started struggling, turning purple as he tried to suck air through my fingers, and kicking against the floorboards. I waved at Yaj. “Hold his legs!” She was just with-it enough to sit on his knees.
I finally got an idea. The phone book trick. A cop pulled this on me once when I wouldn’t suck him off in the interrogation room. You take a hammer and a phone book. You lay the phonebook against your victim and hit it with the hammer. The phone book spreads out the impact so you don’t leave a bruise, but the shock transfers, and shakes up the victim’s insides. Use a sledgehammer and you can kill a man without a mark on him. Well, I had a pair of sledgehammers, right on the end of my arms. All I needed was a phone book.
On a table next to me were Hesh’s papers. There was a thick ledger at the bottom of the pile. Perfect. I laid it on his chest. He looked at me, confused, veins starting to break in his corneas from lack of air.
