Slither and I engaged one guard while Ti and Spider, from below, engaged Gor. Big Blue had successfully laid low three of the hounds and though he was obviously bleeding profusely, watched our backs from below to let us know if any of Captain’s guards would attack from behind. I had no weapon so I was distracting the guard as best I could so Slither could close in. The guard stood on one of the narrowest poles. We weren’t making any progress and a shout from Blue told us we wouldn’t have long to deal with these two before Captain’s guards could press in from behind. The pole behind our guard was closer to his position so I performed a standing somersault over his head and then a sweeping kick before he could turn around. He didn’t fall but Slither was able to cut his leg and finish knocking him off balance. He fell with crunch and made no further movement. Ti and Spider were unsuccessfully chasing Gor from poll to poll, trying to pin him down so that they could engage him once more. Blue had maneuvered himself back on top of the platforms to help us engage the last member of the other team. We finally got him wedged between Captain’s guards and each of us.
Though Ti was no longer the closest, she snarled, “He mine.” Slither and Spider moved to funnel the crazed man towards our leader. Sword closed in behind him so he was forced to move to a larger rock formation. Ti stalked him, leaping up to his position with ease. The two opponents circled one another. Though each held shallow slices on their legs and arms, neither seemed to be hindered by their injuries. They parried and danced across the logs, neither making a striking blow. Ti’s anger at Gor had reached a fevered pitch and she wedged her sword into the log she stood on and lunged for the large man. While bulkier than me she still had the balance and grace of a cat. She managed to knock the man from his post. He fell below into a pit of smoldering embers and she just managed to grasp the next post before she too fell. The embers were not enough to make him burn alive but we could hear the barrage of profanity that emanated as his shoes and clothes took light. Ti’s poll swayed suddenly. Gor was hammering at the fire-weakened pole, despite his own pain. Spider swung down and pranced pole to pole, coming up behind the enraged and still burning man. One quick stroke was all it took to make him collapse. Spider clambered back up the poles to stand near us. But the damage had been done to Ti’s pole and it started falling below. She levered herself to the side of log and leaped up just as it hit the ground. She clawed her way up another pole.
Captain’s men had taken advantage of our distraction and pressed in. Big Blue was holding one in a deadlock but was struggling to maintain his balance on the thin log. The other guard had closed in on Slither. However, the guard also kept her eyes on me. She wore little armor except the multitude of scars that covered her nearly from head to toe. There was a flash of movement and small knife was left projecting from Slither’s stomach. I watched as he fell but quickly turned back to my opponent. I was weaponless. Ti was attempting to help Big Blue both maintain his hold on the guard and keep his balance. I turned and fled. Using my agility and speed to my advantage. I lept and bound across the precarious obstacle course keeping my eyes scanning for anything to use as a weapon.
Finally, I came upon what looked like a nest of eggs. As I got closer, a large two headed viper rose up and I could just see eggs. I was clearly not thinking straight because I headed straight for the viper’s nest. The guard was several pylons away and seemed focused on catching up with me. There was a pylon next to the nest. I pushed off the very edge of the viper’s perch, before she could strike and landed on the next pylon. My pursuer had not been so lucky. She landed right in the nest. The viper quickly attacked and kept her hold on the leg of the guard. In her desperation she kicked and screamed at the snake but only succeeded in making the fangs sink deeper. Soon her body was convulsing and thrashing as the poison set in.
I peered around but found no one in my vicinity. I saw several members of my team far off but no guards and no one left from the other team. Then the deafening roar of the crowds shoved its way to envelop my senses; the smell of sweat, blood, and booze, the vibrations from stomping feet, the vibrant array of colored clothing smeared over pale skin was too much for me and I started heaving bile over the side of my perch. I scrambled away from the nest on sheer instinct. I pushed all the sensations away. I saw only the pylons as I moved, felt the stone and wood under my fingers, heard only my labored breath. Eventually, my brain started processing something was in my way. A blood-stained leg barred my way forward. Rough hands grabbed at me and I struggled. Then I heard Ti’s harsh whisper-shout, “Enough. We done.”
Finally, I stopped and stood and saw my teammates standing and watching the crowd. That night we feasted. We did so in the confines of our cells but we still feasted. Our bodies soon bloated with food and grew heavy with fatigue. We slept the sleep of wild animals, of those who had lived to survive and fight for their very existence another day.
XIII
We all dozed and recovered well into the morning. I woke feeling the abuse my body had taken the day before. I was so busy taking inventory of my various aches that I almost didn’t realize I had been covered in a makeshift blanket. It was of very worn cotton but it was clearly clean, of which nothing in these cells could aspire to. I wondered where it had come from. Blue was watching me rise. As I held out the blanket, he pointed up at the ceiling where, far above, there was trap door. He came over and lightly touched my ears and then pointed at the ceiling again. I realized he must be telling me that another like me had dropped it below. I could not help the tic up in my pulse or the sudden bloom of hope that overcame me. Blue helped me hobble to the central part of the chamber where we typically had food. The smaller cells had all been abandoned, except Ti’s. The gates to this wing had been left open, that is except the one leading to the colosseum. The only food was remnants from the feast we had glutted ourselves on the night before. A new water barrel had come down this morning but no new food.
I folded the blanket as small as I could and crammed it in a crack in the wall before the rest stirred. Ti was the last to join us in finishing off the crumbs. We sat in silence for a long time.
Spider’s dry whisper shout of a voice nearly startled the lot of us, “Ti, what is next.”
She pointed at Spider and herself, “Three day’s rest, little food.” She then pointed at Blue and me, “You, you perform tomorrow.” This was accompanied by a crude gesture that clearly indicated that sex would be involved. My sudden wide-eyed stare must have made my fear very clear because Blue tried to put a comforting hand on my shoulder but I slipped out of reach and glared at him, angry for the role he would obviously be required to take. Of course fear was the strongest.
This town bathed in the blood of the changed and gloried in watching their deaths. What would they require us to do to each other in this? This almost seemed more of an invasion of my being than the fighting and deaths the day before. I already feared the nightmares that would haunt me any night I wasn’t too exhausted to dream. They would be taking my body and shaping it to their whims tomorrow. I withdrew from the others and went to one of the two cells that didn’t already have a corpse rotting in it. He did not say much but Blue was probably the closest thing I had to a friend. Despite the deaths yesterday, he seemed a gentle giant. I likely hurt him turning away from his comfort but I would just have to add one more grain of guilt to the beach’s worth of shame building in my mind.
I must have dozed because I woke to muted sounds coming from above me, in the halls and stands of colosseum. It was so persistent, I drug myself to the main chamber to see if the others knew what was happening. Ti must have been waiting for my return because she signaled me over to her.
“What is happening out there?” I asked before she could speak what was on her mind.
She dismissed the noise with a wave and said simply, “Death.”
The noise came in waves and there were periods of seeming silence before we heard the muted roar of the crowds again. It was at least an hour later when the sounds seemed to hit
a fevered pitch before they trickled away and ceased. Ti was still seated next to me.
“Tomorrow. You go, bathe. When time, do not fight. You fight, they want more fight. They hurt more,” she rose and walked back to her cell and we did not see her in the remaining hour before our cells became pitch black. After that first day, they had never come back to add new torches, so we all learned how to get around in the pitch black that descended in the early evening hours.
That night, I held the blanket that had been given me, wishing, hoping, begging Vorn to rescue me before tomorrow. I fell into a fitful slumber filled with nightmare mazes and death.
A rope was dropped into our pit of cells just as light was again entering. It had a loop and the guards above shouted out orders to Blue and I. I made as if to avoid it but Ti had been behind me and she shook her head and forced me to place my feet in the rope and I was jerkily pulled upward. As soon as my head was above the hole, a bag was thrown over it and tied and my hands became bound once they had me pulled up. It was not long before I heard the guards grunting in effort to pull Blue from the pit. Based on the rustling sounds, he was likely bound as I had been. The walk to the bathing chamber seemed to take eons in the musty dark hood, however, I had counted under 300 paces before we stopped. I was shoved roughly into a room, the hood yanked from my face, but the binds on my wrists stayed in place. Before my eyes adjusted to what seemed a blinding light, I heard the snick of the lock. Soon my eyes adjusted and I saw that there was one individual in the chamber and large tub filled with water that had a slightly floral scent to it. Blue had not also been shoved inside, for which I was thankful. The person was a Fnon. She simply stood beside the bath and waited. There was only one window, far overhead, which is what let in the light. I could hear the guards shifting impatiently outside the heavy door. One glance in that direction confirmed what I had suspected, I was being watched through the barred window by eyes that were both slimy and filled with avarice. There was nowhere to hide my nudity and I needed time to think, so I simply stripped down and focused on the thought that I had walked nude when I had traveled alone in the mountains and again around Vorn with no qualms. It was hard thought to hold onto because it made me think of Vorn, and the fear that all of this would happen and the hope that I might be saved were at constant war.
I stepped into the tub and the Fnon woman seemed to animate suddenly. She had wash towels and soap of two kinds. Obviously the pungent lump was the insecticide again and the carefully shaped one, was of finer quality and had a subtler scent. I hated that I was grateful for the insecticide as much as the fine soap. My fur had become infested in the cells among the others who were as unwashed as I was. I lathered myself with the harsh soap and waited as the Fnon woman poured warmish water over me outside the tub. Then I returned and repeated the process with the finer soap. I would not say that I had forgot about the guard, how could I? However, I had learned to place my mind in that numb state that it sometimes seemed to occupy when I simply needed to survive.
There was a commotion at the door. The sounds of frustration were coming through the narrow window. After a moment my heart leapt. I knew that voice! Hope bloomed in my chest so forcefully, I nearly choked on it. I stumbled out of the bath toward the door, heedless of my nudity and dampness. Before I reached it, the door swung open and Vorn stepped in but the expression on his face was cold and aloof. I stopped, unsure of how to take this new version him.
“This is what you give the champion? A child? I may do many things for the Good Mayor,” he spat the title out, “But this I will not do. Find another.” He stalked out of the room before I could even say a word or catch his eye. The guards quickly followed him and shut the door once more.
I began choking on sobs before I even realized I was reacting to the scene. I had hoped beyond hope that he would rescue me but instead he damned me back down to the pits. Before long my guards came back in the room, shoved relatively clean clothes at me, placed the hated hood back over my face, and took me back down to the cells.
Ti was surprised by my return, “What happen?”
I sobbed out the story of knowing the “Champion” who had just rejected me. I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved to not go through with their original plans or sob because my heart had been smashed on the floor of the bathing chamber. She looked at me thoughtfully. She did not try to comfort, it was not her way.
She shrugged, “Come eat. We get some food today.”
I choked down the swill broth that constituted rations, pulled the blanket from the wall where I had left it, and curled up to sleep.
XIV
After a night of fitful sleep, I was up before the sun and the others in the cells. I felt limp like some essential piece of me had finally broken or been stolen. I thought this was what I would feel after completing their original tasks for me yesterday but here I felt it anyway.
We were ushered outside once again with no food. We would be allowed a short time to see what the competition for today would be. From our vantage point on the ground, it seemed as though walls had been erected haphazardly in such a way we could not see any other part of the colosseum. Ti pointed us to look at a hasty sketch in the dirt. She had drawn a basic maze.
“We have to complete a maze?” I was a bit flabbergasted that something that big had been built over the last few days.
“Yes, no exit, no win. Just live. Just Die,” though her speech was clipped she made her meaning quite clear.
“Do we work as a team today?” Spider asked.
Ti leveled her hand back and forth. “We placed inside in…” She used a hand gesture to indicate the bags they put over our heads to fill in for terms she did not know. “You fight guards. Maybe fight us. Other problems? Yes, other problems to stop.” She signed the impressions of several of the same beasts we had fought above just days before.
Ti continued to give us pointers on how to survive, most of which I did not hear as I was wrapped up in my own sorrow. Ti got my attention specifically at one point and motioned to Spider as well, “No climb walls.” She pantomimed guns firing. I couldn’t believe they would waste ammo, which was a precious commodity just for these games; then again, it seemed their gluttony in the misery of others seemed to have no limits here.
Blue had been silent since he had been returned early that morning. He moved as if he had been given new injuries that lay hidden under his meager clothes. The air around him was brittle with tension and his demeanor seemed to dare us to pity him. He looked at me, his eyes asking me questions. I simply shook my head. We heard a gong at which Ti ushered us back inside to wait.
Once back inside the depressing gloom of the cells, Blue came to sit beside me. He took my hand in a way that might have looked like a comforting gesture. I felt an object slide, roughly coin shaped, slide into my fingers.
“I will help you,” his voice could barely be called a whisper it was so low but those few words, the first full sentence I had heard from my almost friend, managed to convey anger, determination, pride, and even care.
He moved away when I nodded that I heard him. I glanced at the object he had handed me. It was a wooden disc but, on its surface, had been carved my face. I knew beyond any ability to reason that Vorn had made this. Before midday, we were fed another barely edible broth. I saw that Ti sipped at hers but did not actually eat much of hers, so I followed her lead and as secretly as I could dumped the contents of my meager bowl near a cell that fetid odors continued to waft out of.
Even though I had ingested little, I could feel drugs take hold quickly and I barely managed to hide the disc before collapsing near the outer wall.
I awoke to the feeling of something nudging my side. The bag was still on my head but my hands were free. I started to move but froze when I heard a deep growl emanating from above me. I felt its breath as it blew out against my clothes. In the next instant I was nearly crushed as a very large bristly furred animal lay atop me, seeming content to stay there. Each time I tried to move my h
ands to take off the hood, I felt more than heard the growls that came from its ribcage. I started to hear other noises. The sounds of a crowd getting keyed up. I could smell the alcohol and street foods being offered. My stomach grumbled, this seemed to trigger something in the beast because in the next instant, its weight lifted off of me. This time when I reached for the hood, it let me. I was really quite impressed with how smart the beast was. The question was, what was it trained to do once I was free? The beast was clearly a mutation of a domesticated canine. It still held some of the traces of “cuteness” in its floppy ears and wagging tail but that was overshadowed by the quill-like fur down its back, its lengthened canines, and plate-sized paws.
Before I could do more than stare, he (its gender was quite evident now) butted against me, knocked me down, and then turned to face the open side of the passage. The growls coming from it now were so deep I could feel it anywhere I made contact with the ground. As a shadowed figure stepped into my view, the growls escalated to snarls and the beast positioned himself above me, preventing me from getting a good look at the other person.
I heard a tongue-clicking sound and the hackles on the beast lowered and the growling lessened in intensity but he did not move away. I began to push against him to see if he would move. He was easily at least 300 pounds and did move, though reluctantly. The figure turned out to be Ti. She signaled for me to follow. The beast chose to let me go but stayed within a pace’s distance. I tentatively held my hand out to it as we moved deeper into the maze. It sniffed but backed off once more.
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