The rhino obliged them. All 13 feet long and 7,000 pounds of it came thundering at the gladiators, bellowing in terror and rage.
“We have to make it think we’re charging,” Urnkali said. “Double-time!”
They trotted forward, a wall of shields dotted with spears, headed toward one of the most unstoppable animals on earth. Pashera swallowed hard. Did Urnkali really mean to knock heads with the rhino?
“Get ready to split the formation,” Urnkali said. The rhino loomed closer. “Throw javelins.”
Urnkali and Pashera both threw their javelins. A target that size was hard to miss. The missiles thudded home, and the rhino bawled in pain, but it didn’t slow down.
“Spears now,” Urnkali said. Two of the three southern hunters threw their spears just as the rhino loomed in front of them. “SPLIT!”
Those on the left went left, those on the right went to their side. Tiniseph hesitated, so Therold dragged her along with him. As it was, the great beast barely missed Tiniseph, and avalanched right between the parting ranks of the gladiators. Two spears stuck deep in its flanks along with the two javelins, and the spears were in deep.
The third southern warrior lashed out with his spear as the rhino passed and scored a savage thrust deep between the ribs. The rhino cried out again and its legs gave out, and it slid forward on the sand.
The crowd cheered. “Don’t wait!” Urnkali said. “Stab it! Kill it!”
With swords and ax, they descended on the rhino and finished the job in quick seconds. Tiniseph should have helped, but she kept staring at the tiger.
“It’s dead!” Rakum shouted.
“Cut off its head. Pour the blood around. Split open the carcass and spread the guts on the sand,” Urnkali said. “We’ll set a trap for the predators.” She turned to Pashera. “Well, don’t just stand there. Retrieve your javelin.”
Pashera tugged mightily, but the javelin would not come out. Rakum, who was hacking at the tough hide of the rhino’s belly, and was painted red in rhino blood by now, popped up to help her. One flex of his big muscles and the javelin came out easily. He winked at her and went back to cutting at the carcass.
“Let’s hope they’re all this easy,” Urnkali said. Something rumbled on the sands behind them, and she and Pashera turned to see one of the apes barreling down on them.
“Quickly!” Urnkali said, and she and Pashera turned, planting their javelins in the dirt. The giant ape veered off and plowed into Tiniseph, who was too slow to raise her trident.
The ape was perhaps twice as tall as a short man, and massively broad across the shoulders. Its muscles were thick, even slab-like, and pumped with fury. It hit Tiniseph with a thousand pounds of charging, savage ferocity, and she flew across the sands to land in a bloody, broken heap. She twitched once, then lay still.
The ape opened its giant mouth and roared. It fangs were yellow-white and brown, its breath stank like a carrion cart. Its eyes were yellow-red, small and on the edge of madness. To one side, about 30 paces away, the other ape, somewhat smaller, screamed and shook its hands furiously, either urging its mate on to kill or telling it to get away. Pashera couldn’t tell.
Angani, Enara and Elmdra charged, sweeping in on the ape from behind and to its left. Their swords were in its back before it knew what was happening. The ape howled now, and lashed out. Angani went flying and landed hard. Enara and Elmdra pressed the attack, and Elmdra thrust her sword up, right into the ape’s giant mouth. “Eat this, monster!” she shouted.
The ape howled and backhanded Elmdra, who caught it on her shield, but she still went tumbling backwards. The ape roared again, spraying them all with blood leaking from the gaping wound in its mouth. Now it was Pashera’s turn, and she charged forward with a javelin and put it right through the ape’s throat. It fell over backward, spitting more blood. Now the men were on it, the southern hunters using their spears to pin it down, and Rakum using his great ax to separate one of the ape’s arms at the shoulders.
The ape howled and grabbed at the spears, breaking one of them. But its thrashing was ineffective, as its lifeblood ran out of it.
However, the other ape charged in. It screamed, a truly terrible, mournful, yet hate-filled noise. Enara managed to block it long enough for Urnkali to put a javelin in its back, but then the ape struck with its mighty fist and Enara went sailing to land near Tiniseph. From behind, Therold skewered the ape on his sword – the same weapon he’s going to use to skewer me, Pashera thought – and as he held it there, the ape screaming and lashing out, Rakum came up from the side and swung his ax so hard, it buried itself halfway in the beast’s giant neck. The ape slumped to its knees.
More sound of thundering behind them. Pashera turned. “Run!” she screamed. “Mammoth!”
The trio of mammoths came swooping down on the scene of carnage. The humans split into two groups as the battle moved closer to the king’s box. Pashera risked a glance and saw Tol’zen standing on his feet, staring at her – were his eyes wide in shock, or was that just her imagination? But she had no time to think, because the mammoths lumbered closer.
One of the southern hunters reached down to drag Elmdra to her feet. Another scooped up Enara, who was still woozy from her unplanned flight through the air. The third southern hunter had to bodily pick up Angani, who flailed around weakly. No one bothered with Tiniseph. There wasn’t any point. The most beautiful gladiator in the school was now a gooey mess of bloody flesh and broken bones.
Pashera ended up in a defensive line with Urnkali, Rakum, Therold and another male gladiator she hadn’t met yet, a short, tough-looking bald man. “Get the back legs on the closest one,” Therold shouted. “It’s our only chance.”
They ran forward and stabbed the mammoth deeply and mightily, and Rakum hacked at the tendons in the back of its leg. It screamed and moved much more quickly than Pashera thought possible for such a thing, but luckily, it moved away, heading for the wall of the arena.
The mammoth behind it did not move away, though. It charged forward. The humans scattered again. But not quite quickly enough. The mammoth used its tusks to scoop up the bald gladiator, threw him high into the air, then watched him drop. He screamed the entire way and when he hit the ground, he struggled to move, but only weakly. Then the mammoth charged forward and stomped him flat. When the beast’s foot came down, the man’s bald head exploded like an overripe melon.
“Devil take us all!” Therold swore.
There was another blast of horns. More cage doors fell down, releasing the occupants. The flesh rippers and axe beaks were both loose now. The leatherbacks immediately jumped on the giant birds, attacking them mercilessly. The birds fought back with beak and claws. Pashera felt something so close to relief to watch these animals rip at each other rather than immediately attack the humans.
Meanwhile, the lead mammoth, in a blood-frenzy, was still chasing the southern hunters and the three female gladiators around one end of the arena. The hunters kept their distance, dancing around the mammoth, even though one carried the barely-conscious Angani. The enraged mammoth studied them through squinty eyes, taking the measure of its human opponents.
There was an intelligence in the mammoth’s eyes that shocked Pashera. This beast was smart. And it was angry. And it had murder on its mind.
Then it charged. It moved so quickly, lunging for the southern hunter carrying Angani, that the man never had a chance. The beast curled its great trunk around them both, and lifted them in the air. The hunter stabbed at the trunk with a knife, which only made the beast angrier. It slammed them both to the ground, then lunged forward again and stomped them to jelly. The man’s wail, cut off in the gurgling of his lungs collapsing, made Pashera shudder nearly uncontrollably.
Pashera heard their bones crack like dry sticks.
But she had her own problems. One of the axe beaks was alive and running her way in a squawking panic. The flesh rippers, meanwhile, tore into the other axe beak, which lay on the ground, dead or close to it.
And the third mammoth, which had moved to protect the second, wounded mammoth, now turned in her direction, too.
And then the horns sounded. And more cage doors fell to the ground.
The dagger-toothed cats and the tiger joined the game.
The dagger-toothed cats bolted from their cage. They scattered the flesh-rippers, who hissed and howled angrily. But the remains of the axe beak was slim pickings for the big cats. They set their eyes on the third mammoth and padded across the arena, ears back, eyes focused, jaws drooling.
The tiger, meanwhile, seemed in no hurry to leave its cage. But after a few moments, it got to its feet and exited the cage. It slunk low, circling around the far side of the arena from the circus of carnage taking place in front of the king’s box, its eyes shifting from one target to another.
The first mammoth interrupted its stomping of the two humans to bellow in anger and pain. It turned in a circle, and Pashera saw a spear sticking out of its neck right behind its huge skull. The second mammoth made anguished, plaintive noises, and had slumped to lay on its belly by the wall in front of the king’s box. Blood spewed freely from its injured hind legs where the humans had wounded it. Tears flowed from its eyes. It was plainly crying, and that tugged at Pashera’s heart in an unsettling way.
Still, even lying down, the enormous beast’s head was still nearly halfway up the protective fence running around the top of the inner wall of the arena. The third mammoth twitched its short tail and moved its head from side to side. It stood protectively by the second mammoth, scoping out the humans scattered around it.
It’s going to charge, Pashera thought. She knew that if it charged her, she would be dead.
Suddenly, a wall of fur blurred her vision as one of the dagger-toothed cats jumped right on the mammoth’s neck. The other dagger-toothed cat clomped onto the giant beasts nether parts. The mammoth made the loudest, most horrific noise that Pashera had ever heard, and she nearly dropped her javelins to put her hands over her ears.
The mammoth sat down suddenly, unexpectedly. The dagger-toothed cat chomping on its gonads didn’t have a chance. It was flattened like a rug. The other dagger-toothed cat bit savagely and held on, using its huge incisors to dig a hole right into the mammoth’s neck.
“Who do we attack?” Rakum asked Therold.
“Just wait, and thank the gods the beasts are doing the work for us,” Therold said.
The third mammoth lurched back to its feet in a panic, swaying and circling. The second mammoth trumpeted in alarm, but could not or did not move to help; it continued to lay by the wall. The first mammoth broke away from the southern hunters and came charging to the rescue.
The dagger-toothed cat continued to gnaw and dig with its huge fangs. Was that arterial blood spurting now, that Pashera could see? It was! The blood painted the face and shoulders of the cat in bright red.
And then Therold screamed as two of the flesh rippers jumped him from behind. The trio rolled around on the sand as Therold continued to scream, and the flesh-rippers hissed and growled. Rakum roared and ran over, bringing his ax to bear. Urnkali moved to help, but suddenly the remaining ax beak was in her face, fury incarnate, covered in its own blood from the earlier flesh-ripper attack, dripping blood and feathers and gobs of flesh, but still enraged enough to send a human to hell.
Pashera hesitated – should she help Urnkali or Therold? She knew the root of her dilemma -- Urnkali was her “sister” at the school. Therold was her ticket out of this place. Though how he would help her now was hard to say. Just when Pashera had decided to go help Urnkali, that’s when the tiger attacked.
The tiger didn’t roar like a lion or a dagger-toothed cat. Instead, its roar was like a sentence of short, snarly words. Later, Pashera would wonder whether the beast was actually talking.
She heard it make that strange roar as it flashed past her, 10 feet long, a blur of orange fur and black stripes, and so fast, so unbelievably fast. It ran right for the third mammoth and leaped to the great beast’s broad back. This shocked the dagger-toothed cat chewing on the mammoth’s neck. The dagger-tooth released its death grip, dropped to the sand and bolted away. But even before the dagger-tooth cat had hit the sand, the tiger was already leaping again, this time right into the king’s box.
It collided with the surprised guard holding the flame weapon.
The blood-thirsty shouts of the crowd turned to cries of alarm. In the king’s box, someone or something bumped into the sono-enhancer. Screams, shrieks, and the tiger’s snarly roar echoed across the sands. The “Bang! Bang!” of a slug-thrower echoed loudly through the arena. The tiger roared even louder.
Tol’zen! He was in danger! Pashera suddenly knew who she was going to save. She ran forward with her javelins. She ran right to the second mammoth, where it leaned against the wall of the arena, bleeding and moaning as it lay on its belly. Jack-rabbit quick, she leaped up on the mammoth’s back. Then she stuck one of her javelins right between its shoulder blades.
The mighty mammoth, outraged and in pain, lurched back to its feet. Pashera waited for it to get as high as she thought it would go, then she ran forward and vaulted off the top of its skull just as it raised its mighty head in surprise.
The vault gave Pashera just enough room to clear the wall. But then she hit some kind of invisible pain barrier. One of her feet brushed the mysterious field. It felt like her legs came apart at the joints with a rippling, tearing sensation, and she screamed. Her remaining javelin flew from her grip.
Still, she sailed through the air and landed, sprawling, at one end of the king’s box. She didn’t have the presence of mind to roll as the school had taught her to take a fall. The pain from the barrier was too intense. But it was also brief. And as she stood up, she saw her legs were intact, though scraped from her fall. The pain barrier was mental only, and she moved into action again.
She saw orange and black fur ahead of her. She picked up her javelin where it had fallen on the ground and threw it. The javelin struck home, and the awful beast spasmed and roared. A black-skinned arm fell out of its mouth as it did so. The arm was attached by threads of flesh to a broken and bloody torso that stuck out crookedly beneath one of the beast’s giant paws.
Two more bodies lay at the tiger’s feet. At the far end of the king’s box, Kro’tos and the queen hunkered back inside a clustered fist of warriors brandishing swords and spears. Around them, the spectators ran for their very lives.
Pashera had a split second to wonder: Why weren’t more warriors shooting the tiger? Her javelin hung crookedly from terrible beast’s back. Pashera drew her knife and sprang.
She hit something mid-flight. Because she had her knife out in front of her, her knife actually penetrated this “something,” and her blade seemed to disappear in mid-air. A circle of blood welted around where her blade should be. The handle of her knife seemed to be hanging in mid-air.
The collision knocked Pashera to the ground. She looked up, and saw something in the air – a shimmering, a curving of the light. There was something or someone invisible right in front of her.
That curving of the light twisted around – she saw it included a short blade. Did no one else see this? But they were all concerned with the tiger, which dropped whoever it was chewing on and lashed out with its paws to grab another warrior. The saurian screamed.
Another saurian with a slug-thrower stood up from where he’d been knocked down in the stampede to get away from the tiger. He started shooting, blasting indiscriminately with a fear-fueled trigger finger. One shot hit the invisible creature, which shuddered, or at least its curvature of the light twitched. More shots went sailing past Kro’tos, who ducked, a warrior, who did not duck and paid for it with his life, and one projectile hit the tiger, which snarled again, and leapt at the shooter. It was bleeding from at least three wounds that Pashera could see, and that didn’t even seem to slow it down. Tiniseph had been right. The tiger was a monster.
The leather harness with an iron loop on top
protected the tiger from a spear thrust. It raked out with its claws and sent another warrior screaming to the dirt. Pashera realized what that harness was now. It wasn’t a harness at all. It was a saddle. The invisible attacker rode the tiger, right out of the cage and into the king’s box.
Pashera climbed to her feet. The “invisible” attacker was bleeding from two wounds now, and becoming more visible all the time from the simple fact of blood leaking over its surface. There was more blood on its blade. Pashera looked behind the curve of light and felt sick. There, she saw Tol’zen and his wife, Orm’rishet, carved up and bloody, apparently unconscious. Or worse.
Pashera screamed and leaped for her knife hilt, because that at least gave her a target. She grabbed it and swung around, only to go sailing through the air, her knife still in her hand. The invisible assailant had hurled her bodily toward the tiger.
If she’d had time to think about it, Pashera would have guessed that a tiger was not the most desirable landing spot in any situation. And she was right. She plowed into the beast, slamming into its blood-soaked, musty fur even as she twisted around and tried to attack. Because Pashera wasn’t going out without a fight.
Startled, the tiger leapt away again. Pashera’s javelin, which hadn’t really landed deeply, fell out of the tiger’s back and fell to the floor by her. She got to her knees and used the javelin as a crutch to heave herself up to her feet. The tiger stood atop a small mound of seats that had been tossed aside when spectators fled. It was bleeding, angry, and ready to kill again. It snarled, looking left and right, its eyes glinting and absolutely without mercy.
Another saurian warrior, braver than most, attacked with a spear. A second warrior showed up with a slug-thrower and fired at point-blank range. The tiger swiped the first one into oblivion with one slash of its claws. It moved toward the second one, was hit by another shot, and fell over dead.
Pashera raised her javelin again. She whirled to look for the hidden assailant. But there was no curve in the light that she could see. Was the assailant gone?
Slave in the City of Dragons (Dinosaurs and Gladiators Book 1) Page 41
