“We’re both captives. We should be friends. Is a mere name so much to ask? I’m Nate Reilly.”
There was silence while her eyelids flickered heavily, like those of a sleepy child. The curling lashes brushed her cheeks as her eyes closed, then opened briefly. She sighed. “Bithia. My name of birth is Bithia. But a name has no magic to help you—”
It was a whisper floating into his mind at the same instant the dream ended. Nate jerked upright, startled awake by the abrupt loss of the images beguiling him. Thom grunted, shifting uneasily on the rancid straw serving as bedding, but didn’t waken. Haranda snored.
Eyes gleaming in the dark, Atletl watched him in the dim moonlight, a strangely satisfied expression on his face. He pointed at Nate and then indicated the tattoo on his arm. Nate recalled how fascinated the ruler and the women had been by the man’s inked artwork earlier. “T’naritza,” he said with a nod.
Nate settled against the wall, determined not to examine the recent dream too closely.
“Bithia,” he murmured, pleased by the sound of her name. Assuming he’d experienced a form of actual mind-to-mind communication, then her instant decision to lie on their behalf had bought precious time, maybe even a chance to escape—Nate couldn’t argue with her choice. Trying to think of how to leverage the tiny bits of information he now had, he fell asleep again.
CHAPTER TWO
In the morning, Nate roused from a deep, dreamless state when the guards crashed the door open. There were more soldiers this morning, lined up across the room, at ease against the opposite wall, not bothering the prisoners. The sweet-faced priestess with the braids came in, dressed today in pale green with touches of lavender at the collar and hem. Followed by two servants, she supervised the serving of hot, steaming mush into the four bowls. Each prisoner received a small cup of water, a hard roll and two pieces of fruit as well.
“Generous this morning, aren’t they?” Thom sniffed at the steaming mush and made a face. “Hope we can eat this stuff.”
“Scans showed this planet to be within the acceptable ranges.” Haranda bit into a purple fruit dripping juice. “If the locals can eat it, we probably can too. Mmm, tangy.”
“Food poisoning wouldn’t be my preferred way off this rock.” Nate searched for an unbruised section of the fruit on his tray. “Maja—thank you,” he said to the priestess as she handed him a roll.
She inclined her head graciously and shyly, the two braids falling across her cheeks. She unleashed a breathless explanation, of which Nate understood only the word T’naritza.
“We’ve got to get up to speed on this language,” he said, gazing speculatively at Atletl, who was flirtatiously exchanging words at great length with the lady until a guard intervened. “I’m thinking he’s going to have to do emergency tutoring here.”
“Didn’t hear him volunteer.” Thom took a heaping serving of mush. “Don’t they have eggs on this damn planet? All those bird feathers yesterday, you’d think the cook would serve eggs.”
Ignoring the banter over food, Nate said, “He’s linked with us now, one way or the other. I’m hoping he’s a smart enough guy to recognize the situation and want to be useful.” He looked at his partially eaten piece of fruit and winced, setting the rough wooden plate aside. The idea of eating more overripe fruit made his stomach heave, but the hard roll and the cooked cereal went down well enough. He felt slightly hungover, but thankfully the headache was only a dull echo of yesterday’s monster.
The guards were impatient, talking among themselves and checking fitfully on the prisoners’ progress on their rations. The squad leader waited until Nate and his men had eaten most of their breakfast. Then he issued a flurry of orders resulting in the four men each being locked into a new set of chains that allowed more mobility than the ones they’d endured since falling into captivity. While the new shackles were a definite improvement in comfort over yesterday’s, the design was secure against easy escape.
The priestess watched this with a faint air of sadness on her face. She was definitely not in accord with how the prisoners were being treated. Where exactly did she fit into the whole scheme of things? Could she be an ally? Seeing him watching her, she flashed him a quick smile and then left, taking her servants with her.
“Something’s up,” Nate said as he and his men were herded into the hall. “Maybe we have to start earning our keep today?”
“Where did our guardian priestess go?” Thom checked the corridor in both directions, but she and her two companions were gone from sight.
“Celixia.” Atletl took Nate by surprise with his pronouncement. He made mock motions of braiding hair. “Celixia.”
“Well, we’re learning one thing at a time here—guess the good witch is Celixia,” Thom said as he shuffled through the corridor next to Nate. “Wonder if he knows what she wants with us?”
“Maybe we’ll find out,” Nate said.
The next event on the agenda was an unchained, closely guarded plunge into a cold, communal bathing pool and a change of clothes. Their dusty, tattered blue kilts were taken away by a servant while they were toweling off. Another brought four identical piles of garments, placing a set at each prisoner’s feet.
“Let’s see what the fashionable prisoner wears to the palace. Thom held up a serviceable gray sleeveless tunic and a pair of loose pants, loincloth and sandals. “Oh man, harsh, like this stuff is made out of tree bark.”
“Woven plant fibers most likely.” Nate flipped his new shirt over, preparing to pull it over his head, and paused, fingering a large symbol painted on the front in glaring red pigment. “What do you imagine this stands for?”
“Not going to blend into the crowd with this, are we?” Thom plucked at the symbol on his. “Mine probably stands for extra-large.” He winked.
“My guess is more along the lines of ‘poor dumb fools too stupid not to get captured in the first five moments on the planet.’” Nate’s reply was good-natured. Food, a bath and more favorable treatment gave him hope for opportunities to figure out an escape. Their captors might grow lax.
“All that in one symbol?” Thom asked. “Elegant language on this planet.”
“Will you two shut up?” Haranda yelled at them. “Stop it. Who cares what the damn symbol means? Big tough Special Forces operators, cracking jokes all the time. Well, this isn’t funny in any respect I can see—”
“You’re way out of line,” Thom said, moving closer to the cadet. “You think I’m getting on your nerves? You ain’t seen anything yet. Keep bitching and moaning, flyboy. You and the late Jurgens got us into this damn mess in the first place.”
Nate cut the sergeant off with a shake of his head. “I’ve had enough of your defeatist attitude,” he said, admonishing the young pilot. “We aren’t going to get out of this situation by giving up and making it easy on these people to slaughter us. You have to keep your spirits good and your eyes open. Be observant, watch for anything we can use, an edge, a way to get the better of—”
“So knowing the meaning of this one lousy symbol will set us free? I think the damn alien machinery in the basement played with your mind. Sir.”
Nate and Thom exchanged glances. The stress of their captivity was adversely affecting Haranda, and his precarious mental state could endanger them all at a critical moment.
But before Nate could call Haranda to order again, he hung his head. “I’m sorry, sir, it’s just I never expected anything like this to happen, not to me.” His voice scaled higher on the last word, but Nate decided to ignore the hint of hysteria. He reached over and punched the younger man’s shoulder.
“At least you got us to the surface in one piece. Stick with us, and we’ll get you offworld again, I promise.” Having donned the loincloth, Nate pulled on the loose pants, tied the rope belt and started working on the fastenings of the sandals.
“Yeah, been through worse any number of times,” Thom chimed in, recognizing his cue, as Nate knew he would.
“This type of s
ituation is the reason I didn’t join the damn ground troops,” Haranda said, kicking at his pile of clothing. “Survey duty was supposed to be easier—observe the planets, take measurements, stay out of trouble with locals.”
“Don’t believe what the recruiters tell you, son.” While delivering the belated advice, Thom rolled his eyes at Nate.
Not too surprising to find Special Forces and Survey weren’t on the same page. Are we ever? He and Thom would do everything in their power to bring Haranda through this catastrophic, unintended contact mission in one piece. “Better hurry getting dressed,” he said to the pilot. “Before our minders get impatient.”
The guards hadn’t paid too much attention to all this byplay between the three Sectors soldiers while they were dressing. Haranda hastened to pull on his new clothes. Already done, Atletl leaned on the wall, arms folded, listening to Nate, Thom and Haranda. His attention flicked from face to face, as if trying to assess the men he’d been thrown together with, since he was apparently to live or die as they did.
The guards locked the chains onto each prisoner carefully, as if expecting resistance. Nate calculated the odds, given the large squad of soldiers surrounding them this morning, and decided this wasn’t the time to make a break.
Nate and his men were escorted into the main corridor. Bearing to the right, the group made good time through endless hallways. He kept a mental map so he could find his way through these corridors if ever given a chance. The excursion took them a long way from the cellblock.
Emerging into blazing sunlight, he found himself at the top level of a huge natural amphitheater. The place was filling with chattering, excited people, although no one ventured into the area where the prisoners were directed to sit. Nate took his seat on a hard stone bench with an unobstructed view of a rectangular playing field. The walls were lined in smooth stone, red veined against dark green and black. There were five small openings in the wall opposite them, set in no obvious pattern, spaced about fifteen yards apart. One was low on the wall, three close to the top and the fifth at knee height at the other end. Nate judged the entire court was probably seventy yards long. He leaned over and found an identical set of openings in the wall below him.
Play the game, she said. Had Bithia meant a real game?
The crowd was restless. Occasionally, someone would cheer or chant, which would be taken up by others and then slowly die out.
Thom nudged Nate in the ribs.“Over there on the other side. Isn’t that our pal from yesterday? The head honcho himself?”
“Sarbordon.” Nate filled in the ruler’s name from his dream. Ignoring Thom’s puzzled glance, he stared across the sandy court at the ruler settling himself in the center of a royal enclosure that featured more elaborate seats. The noble raised his arms, and the crowd screamed approval.
“Guess we’re in the cheap seats,” Thom said as he surveyed their side of the court, where all the fans were dressed in clothing not much fancier than their own prison garb.
Haranda touched his arm. “These people are keeping us alive to make us watch games? What’s your guess, sir?”
“No idea. Beats dying.” Nate shrugged. “I hope we don’t have to sit in this damn sun too long. Gives me one hell of a headache.”
“There’s our Celixia.” Thom pointed across the playing field.
“Along with the bitch queen herself and her attendant birds of prey. I wish to hell I knew where we fit in, where this is going,” Nate said. Annoyed at his lack of usable intel, he assessed Atletl, waving jauntily in an apparent attempt to get Celixia’s attention. “I think he knows what’s going on, but this language barrier between us is a definite issue.”
“As long as he doesn’t panic, I guess I won’t worry either,” Thom said.
“Good plan.”
“Here come the players.” Haranda gestured at the far end of the field below.
The ensuing game was exciting, engaging Nate’s attention despite the circumstances. Opposing teams of four players each strove to capture a black leather ball as it shot at random, apparently, from one of the wall openings. The men fought to ram the sphere into one of the openings on the other side of the court. The other team did its best to steal the ball and inflict maximum damage on the other players in the process. Violence and aggression met with roaring approval from the crowd.
The game progressed rapidly, limited to three scores. Whenever one team or the other managed to get three balls into the wall despite the defenders’ best efforts, the proceedings came to a halt. The winning team paraded around the court, arms held high, accepting the cheers of the crowd, eventually moving out of sight into the holding area under the amphitheater. The four members of the losing team were dragged to the middle of the sand and knelt in a line, facing the king and queen.
As the last man on the winning team left the arena, a complete hush fell over the crowd. A quartet of black-clad priestesses escorted by guards marched onto the court. Moving quickly, each woman looped a heavy golden chain over the head of an unresisting player before leading him out through a different exit. Servants carried anyone too injured to walk.
Groundskeepers emerged to rake the sand, hiding the bloodstains from the rough play of the previous round. The crowds fell to animated chatter and wagering, coins changing hands. Servants brought the nobility refreshments. Harsh-voiced vendors hawked food and drink on the commoners’ side. At first nothing was offered to the prisoners, although their guards accepted free drinks from vendors willingly enough. Later in the afternoon, as the games continued, two servants appeared with flagons of watered wine. Nate recognized them as Celixia’s assistants from earlier in the day when she’d brought them breakfast.
He took his flagon and tried to identify her in the glittering crowd of nobility across the way. Catching her eye, he rose, lifted the container as if to make a toast and then drank. She nodded her head slightly before one of the black-robed priestesses reprimanded her, gesticulating in the direction of the prisoners. The guards hastened to make Nate sit and took away his now empty mug.
“Doesn’t bode well for the losers, you think?” Thom asked as the same grim ending repeated after each round.
Nate shook his head. “Our captor has to be showing this to us for a reason. Are you paying close attention? I’m watching for any kind of strategy at work, or is victory obtained primarily by brute force? I thought I noticed a pattern to the passing, especially when the red team was working their last ball.”
“You think we’re going to be the visiting team?”
Nate sighed and stretched as far as the chains allowed, settling on the bench with a satisfied chuckle as he realized the guards were getting nervous. “Not today, I hope. But why else drag us out here?”
“Reminds me of soccer, or Betyran tisba,” Haranda said, clearly enjoying himself.
“You play?” Nate asked.
“Tisba. I was lead wing on the varsity team at the Star Guard Academy, two years running.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Thom said. “I don’t think you had the same kind of rules. The Sectors Star Guard generally doesn’t want its recruits killing each other. These guys are out for blood.”
The day stretched on. Nate watched four more matches, each as rapid and as brutally played as the first two. The final match was played late in the afternoon, and the team in red shirts and shorts was clearly the crowd favorite as the chanting rose to a high volume. “Do you think Kalgitr is the team name or the guy who scored the goal?”
“I’m guessing the man. He’s a bruiser, all right.”
Nate nodded. “Plays dirty too. I think he broke the other guy’s arm.”
“Win at all costs or die,” Thom said. “Nice rules.”
As expected, the red team won, and the leader strutted during his procession on the perimeter of the arena accepting the adulation of the audience.
“Full of himself,” Nate said. “His squad must win all the time.”
When the last set of losers was led away in
the golden chains, the king rose and made a short speech to the attentive crowd, after which the populace filed out. With gestures, the guards ensured that Nate and his fellow captives waited until the arena was empty.
Then they were prodded to their feet and taken out the way they’d entered hours earlier, but not back to the cellblock. Instead, the three offworlders and Atletl were led to an upper balcony on the other side of the palace offering an unobstructed view of a huge public square. The population of the city appeared to have commuted to this area to wait for a follow-on event. A flat-topped, pyramidal dais dominated the area.
“There’s the big guy again. What’d you call him? Sarbordon?” Thom pointed to a flurry of activity on the far side of the dais. “How do you know his name, by the way?”
“The lady told me in a dream.”
Eyebrows raised, Thom eyed him suspiciously. “Right,” he said, drawing the word out. “Had too much sun maybe? Too much local wine last night?”
Before Nate could explain, a fanfare, sounding as if it was blown on massive seashells and repeating three times, brought silence to the chattering crowd below. A parade entered the square from the south. The crowd parted silently to let them pass. In the lead came the musicians, now accompanied by drums and flutes, followed by at least thirty black-robed priestesses.
“No sign of Celixia,” Nate said, scanning the length of the procession, oddly relieved she wasn’t in attendance, given her apparent link to their fate.
“Aren’t those the losing teams?” Haranda pointed to the rear of the long parade, only now coming into view. “I remember that team’s green and blue uniforms for sure.”
Nate had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Sarbordon and his consort walked onto the platform hand in hand. The ruler spoke briefly, after which she chanted for a short time, while the musicians accompanied her. Then the couple retreated to the side, and eight burly temple guards worked at a complicated set of wooden gears and levers set into the edges of the dais. While Nate watched, the stones in the center of the platform parted, sliding into recesses below the pavement. An opening thirty feet across had been created when the guards finally stopped working the mechanism. Leaning over, he caught a glimpse of murky water far below and movement as large, predatory creatures circled in anticipation.
Trapped On Talonque: (A Sectors SF romance) Page 3
