Oval shaped and glittering, the Professional Pits were everything the Judge's Pits were not. The hierarchy of the spectators was regulated by a series of tiers with guards at their entrances and exits unlike the pandemonium down below. A seething mass of red clamoured in the lowest levels for the best view while those seated in the higher levels enjoyed a roomy cushion and a good position to see the action. The Supreme Councillor had a special box surrounded by four layers of soldiers and Shadow Foxes. An array of electric lighting had been messily installed in order to support the great dimming eye of light above the centre of the arena. The combined effect created an illumination dim and bleeding. It reminded Roe of a wet sunset.
Minutes went by and Roe saw Daegal rush between the Master of the Pit, a retired soldier wearing a brightly polished coat of armour, and the Supreme Councillor who was clearly losing patience at the delay. Just as Roe began to wonder if he was going to see Samson that evening, a faint squeaking sound came from the far side of the field as a small gate was cranked open by a skinny fox almost unable to do the job.
But the fox that entered looked far worse. It was a shred of an animal, unbalanced as it moved and covered in a thin coat of balding fur. At first he thought there was no possibility this weak little creature could possibly be Samson. The mighty and unstoppable fox who had taught him everything about combat. As he slowly approached, a tired bent sword dragging at his side, Roe caught a glimpse of his eyes and knew it was the fox who had raised him.
He felt the briefest sensation of hope come over him only to have the feeling banished by the deranged look in Samson's face.
Fleas and flies buzzed around him, a crusty foam had dried around his muzzle, and as he came face to face with Roe, the younger fox staggered away terrified by the stench and stare.
“You've done nothing,” Samson began. “Five years and you are the hero of the pits and nothing more.”
His voice was low but still boomed regally, in stark contrast to his outward appearance.
“Samson? What happened to you?” Was all Roe could manage to say in response.
“I grow old seeking the answers you are meant to find. Have you spoken with the vixen called Ursula?”
“Ursula?” Roe whispered, trying to place the name. “Oh, your final instructions on the river bank. To be honest, your abandonment shifted my priorities to surviving in the present, rather than finding out about my past.”
Roe looked to the crowd, whose impatience at the delay was manifesting itself in an increasingly louder rhythm of stamping.
“You have done nothing.”
“Samson, why did you call me out in this manner? Surely if you knew where to find me we could have met and I could explain what has actually been going on.”
“I was not interested in seeing you,” the old fox growled. “I challenged you to a fight only to draw out Gremian, the great betrayer, so I might kill him. I am sick and will not survive for long, but however long I live, it will be longer than that fox above us. Even if the last strike of my blade kills me, it will kill him first.”
A white spittle had formed around the mouth of the fox, his eyes were blood shot, and his entire frame shook with anger.
Suddenly Roe realized what was wrong with Samson and a great panic gripped his heart. It was the frothing sickness. The evil disease which drove a fox into a mad frenzy of violence. The smallest bite could pass the infection on to another. The sickness had not been seen in Angland for at least a century.
“Samson have you left the Isles? Have you travelled beyond the shores of the great channel?” Roe asked.
“I have been everywhere, Roe, and seen much. But that is irrelevant now. All that matters is revenge.”
The crowd had begun to throw rubbish from the stands, which rained down on the two of them. Roe had to think quickly. Samson needed immediate treatment but instead was readying himself for a suicidal fight.
There were over a hundred guards within the stadium, all there to protect the Supreme Councillor. Highly trained, they would descend upon Samson and tear him apart. Even if both he and Samson were healthy and alert they would have little chance of escaping alive. He had to be clever. This very fox had said many years ago, 'In any hopeless situation, a true fox can always find a way out.'
Samson looked to Roe and said, “Goodbye, Pup. I do not blame you.”
The solution came to Roe the same moment he leapt into the air to restrain Samson's attack.
The disease took hold of Samson, forcing Roe to press the old body hard into the ground in order to avoid the sharp chaotic opening and closing of jaws.
“You told me to find cunning, Samson. Well, I have.” He yelled into Samson's ear under the confused roar of the crowd. “I have also found a new job and the man you intend to kill is my new boss. I can't let you.”
Samson's eyes went wide and Roe knew that the rage at his betrayal would break the old fox, so he did the only thing he could and struck Samson on the back of the head with the hard metal guard of his sword.
Samson pushed with an adrenalin-charged hind leg, sending Roe into the air and sprawling into the dirt across the stadium. The old fox rose, snorted and stared at Roe over a heaving mouthful of drool. He took a step towards the younger fox, wheezed a last gasp of air, staggered for a moment, then fell unconscious in the dirt.
The crowd issued an enormous boo at the brevity and lack of violence in the fight. Roe responded with an enormous frustrated roar. It was a voice that had spent the last five years dormant and forgotten.
“Silence!” The call cracked the air and reverberated off the walls of the arena. Gremian stood in astonishment. The rest of the crowd quickly forgot their disappointment and came to a staggered quiet.
He continued in a loud but restrained voice. “Do not panic and do not move. As of tomorrow, I am a soldier of the palace and I act in that capacity now.”
Gremian regained himself and called down to Roe in response. “Tomorrow is not today, fighter. Explain yourself before I stick you on the lowest rung of a Shadow Fox regiment.”
“I beg your patience, Supreme Councillor,” Roe began respectfully. “As soon as this fox approached me, I realized there was something not right with him. He has been across the Great Channel. He has been upon Europa and has brought the frothing sickness back with him. He must be quarantined.”
The crowd remained silent for a moment. Then, as they absorbed what Roe had just said, erupted in a series of screams and a panicked wave rippled through them.
“What! Kill the fox now, Sky Fighter, before he starts an epidemic.”
The guards struggled to keep the terrified crowd from causing a deadly stampede, and were on the verge of losing when Roe's next statement was enough to freeze their desperate exit as well as their fear.
“This fox is Samson, the Undefeated, the General of the Council, leader of its armies and betrayer of the Great Burrow of London! I give him to you as your prisoner, Supreme Councillor!” His voice echoed through the tumult as he crouched and bowed his head.
The crowd turned their collective heads towards the small pile of fur unconscious on the arena floor below them. Everyone had heard of Samson. They were taught about his great betrayal twenty years earlier, and everyone except Gremian thought he was long dead.
Roe remained in the centre of the arena as the consequences of his actions played out before him. A cage on wheels was brought out and Samson was quickly pushed inside of it. The soldiers were careful to keep well away in case the sleeping form should awake and give them a deadly nip. The crowd calmed once Samson was out of the arena and a great cheer went up for Roe, the common rabble rushing on to the fighting pitch, picking him up, and carrying him out through the main exit. As he rode the wave of celebration, he caught the hard stare of Gremian watching him go.
*
Wild with excitement, his remaining eye whirling in its socket, the Supreme Councillor paced at such a speed around the restrained Samson that it almost looked as if he was
doing a dance.
“Who would have thought, certainly not me, that you would be such a fool as to return to London. What were you going to do, kill me at the pits?” he said with a laugh. “Perhaps you should have challenged me to a fight and not my newly acquired star fighter.”
Samson was delirious. An iron cage hugged his torso tightly, restraining his legs and pinching his tail against his back. A metal collar was riveted around his neck with a damp chain attached to it and to a stone pillar standing behind him. Unable to move within his metal binding, he was leaned away from the pillar, at a stiff angle, causing the collar to choke but not kill him.
The rotunda in front of the Palace of Collaring had been cleared of all civilians and a group of Shadow Foxes were setting up for the public trial which would take place the following day.
Frustrated with Samson's lack of response Gremian disregarded the risk of infection and planted his forepaws on the old face pushing it into the granite. He sniffed and growled, scraping the back of Samson's head on the rough stone before callously releasing him back onto the chain.
“Pour some water on him, dammit, I want him awake for this,” he commanded his attendants, who immediately grabbed buckets and rushed towards the palace.
“To the Tate Spring, you fools!” he shouted after them. “I want cold water to counteract this dementia!”
A narrow canal housed a swift flowing river which, born out of the ground beneath either side of the palace, circled along the outer walls, then rejoined in a mighty whirlpool beneath the bridge at the rotunda's entrance. It continued on a subterranean journey, the outflow of which had never been discovered.
The attendants promptly shifted and stumbled towards the water's edge.
Gremian watched them go, then withdrew a splendid blade from an ornately decorated scabbard hanging at his side and took a few precise swings in the air.
“It's been a while so I'm not sure I am going to be as accurate as I once was. Besides, with only one eye I try to focus on the big picture rather than the little details.”
Four vixens approached the pillar warily, each with a bucket of frigid river water between their jaws. They heaved the water onto Samson and ran back across the rotunda towards the far wall along which the river flowed.
A hollow rough moan came from Samson as he strained to open his eyes and staggered to put his weight back onto his paws.
“Good, good. I want you to know, Samson, that I've given you very little thought over the past twenty years. When I received word about a village with a great warrior and sent a small attachment to investigate I was disappointed to learn of their defeat. But I had no interest in pursuing you. Can't you see I've got much more important and much bigger issues to deal with now?”
“You are a betrayer,” Samson wheezed. “A fox without honour.”
“I never really had much use for honour, it's true. But you hold it in such high regard it blinds you. It was so easy to manipulate the council in such a way as to find that abomination of a pup as a threat and to get them to give me the responsibility of doing away with him.”
“Hailey had come to trust you, as I had, and we had told you our route of escape so you could make sure it was clear of exit guardians. You are from such an honourable family.”
“Don't speak to me of my family,” Gremian spat. “They mistook honour for strength. They lost everything and it cost me my inheritance and my adolescence. The only way I could claw something back for myself was in the pits. With that blue-eyed pup and that vixen out of the way, the route to the top was as clear to me as the rising sun over a battlefield of dead enemies.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Samson breathed out heavily. “Come a little closer Gremian, let me have a look at that working eye of yours.”
“Taking the eye did me far more good than harm, Samson. I returned to the Great London Burrow an injured hero! Still, I would like to repay your little kindness.”
Whipping the blade in a neat tight arc, the tip cut through the face of Samson and in a fraction of a second blinded his left eye forever. Thick blood bubbled up from the seam and Samson slowly flexed his jaw open releasing a foam of saliva. He did not cry out, rather, swung his good eye out to stare at Gremian.
“You can keep the other eye. You'll need it tomorrow during the trial. When we find you guilty, you will beg for me to use the sword on you, but that isn't the punishment for traitors. You remember Hrypa? He is very old, with an unsteady hand but he doesn't really need a steady hand for his speciality, does he?”
Samson looked away remembering the state torturer. A demented fox who had gotten the job because he showed no sympathy and felt no empathy. He followed the commands of the council without question or remorse. Samson couldn't help the image coming into his head, of a young fox who's skin had been slowly peeled away by Hrypa. The torturer had a habit of making armour out of the skin of his victims. The torture had gone on for hours by the time Samson arrived and it was the gaze in the young fox which he remembered most of all. He did not look Samson in the eyes but upon his blade. Hrypa was incensed when Samson brought the torture to a conclusion by taking the young fox's head out of mercy. It was a slight the torturer would never forget and one he now had the opportunity to avenge.
A brazier had been set up near the condemned, one which burned with a pile of black coals. Out of it Gremian casually took a red hot poker which he flipped into the air and thrust into the bloody opening that had been Samson's eye. The wound cauterized quickly and Gremian grunted with displeasure when the old fox didn't call out.
“I'm going to go now, Samson. Wrap that eye in bandages,” he instructed one of his guards. Careful he doesn't bite you and pass on the frothing sickness. I want him looking fit for trial in the morning. Good night, Samson, and welcome home.”
Gremian turned away and began trotting up the palace steps. Samson shouted back at him.
“I pulled you out of the pits, Gremian. You used to be my best student. Why did you betray us?”
He turned back and considered the old remnant of a fox.
“You still don't understand, Samson? I always liked you, of course. It is unfortunate the pup came to you. But to cure the Light is to kill the council or at least the power that we have.” A pleasant mood suddenly settled over the Supreme Councillor, as if he had set down a great burden. “Oh, and used to be? I think I still am your best student.” He disappeared into the void of the palace door.
“No, not any more,” whispered Samson thinking of Roe. “To cure the Light...yes...to cure the light...all for power...to...kill...a..cure.”
The guards watched the supposed greatest fighter in history mumble to himself before collapsing forward, his eye cracking and blood splattering from the wound across his face onto the ornate marble floor. They retreated to their fire and to the bar of iron waiting there, white from the intense sparking heat. Samson smiled as they burned the blood dry around the hole of his eye once again.
*
After escaping from the raucous and out-of-control crowd at the Professional Pits, Roe found himself in front of Daegal, finally telling his friend the truth about his past and the fox who raised him, but still keeping his true name a secret.
“So you were raised by General Samson? That would be good and potentially financially rewarding if he hadn't been branded a traitor years ago and wasn't going to be executed tomorrow morning!” Daegal pounded the tiles within the Inari armoury with a weapon-shaking dance that his frame hadn't attempted for many years.
“He's not going to be executed, Daegal, because I am going to rescue him.”
“You are what?” Daegal screamed. “Besides the fact that he has the frothing sickness and is likely to pass it on to you as a thank you for his rescue, he is being guarded by nearly five hundred Shadow Foxes and at least fifty seasoned soldiers. You'll never get near him.”
“Oh, come on Daegal, I am the Sky Fighter. I am the one that stopped him from attempting to kill our
Supreme Councillor. I am the hero of Greater London. They will let me confront the old fox because they will hope to see more taunts and more of a show. Tomorrow I will be officially working for the Palace anyway so I will be one of them with all their rights of access.”
“What are you going to do then? Are you going to just walk away with him? Gremian wants to see him suffer and die more than anything else. There is no way you are going to change his mind.”
“Nor do I intend to,” Roe responded.
“You are going to fight your way out? Even if it costs you your life? Why didn't you just do that today at the pits?”
“At the pits it wasn't the guards I was worried about. We might have been able to fight them off and there are a million secret ways out of the arena. Samson was out of control and there was no way I could have kept him from attempting to kill Gremian.”
Daegal looked at Roe sceptically, wondering what possible good was going to develop out of the situation.
“Daegal, Samson raised me from a pup. He may not have been the most gentle or understanding of parents but he is the only parent I have.” Roe picked up an old spear as he spoke and pointed it towards Daegal. “What would you do if you had the chance to save your parents?”
“I would sacrifice everything for them,” Daegal said. “All right, Sky, all right. You realize if you escape they are likely to come looking to the Inari in the hopes of finding you. We'll need to clear out of the base for a while.”
Mercia entered at that moment with Cedd riding on her back.
“Sorry Daegal, I didn't know you were in here. Cedd, go back to the barracks.” Cedd trotted, out saying a quick hello to Roe.
“Why will we need to clear out the base, Daegal? Whatever it is I am going to be part of it,” she said resolutely, without looking at Roe.
Daegal and Roe passed a considered look between them and silently agreed there was no way to keep Mercia out of what was about to happen.
The Progeny of Able (The Burrow of London Series Book 1) Page 14
