131 Days [Book 2]_House of Pain

by Keith C. Blackmore

  Barros’s face twisted and reddened, and for a moment Grisholt hoped the man wouldn’t void his guts in the private chamber. That would just be a poetic gesture to seal this ill-conceived venture. But Barros did not, however, and he donned his helm, covering his face entirely. Sputtering like a cat choking on its own hair, the pit fighter took his shield and sword from a nearby warrior and walked unsteadily to the door. Grisholt watched him go, already mulling ways of revenging the Sons’ treachery.

  Then Barros stopped, coughed and gagged, and visibly shivered. His stomach grumbled with volcanic heat, loud enough for all to hear. He stood there, trembling, as if a great hook had him by the sternum.

  Brakuss glanced at Grisholt, who held his breath at the involuntary action.

  Barros grunted loudly, as if clearing his throat. Then he stomped a sandaled foot hard into the stone, the connection startling Grisholt.

  “You all right?” someone asked.

  But Barros didn’t answer. Instead, he grunted once more, louder that time, and threw open the door with a force that made Grisholt jump. Barros rolled his shoulders as he stepped outside and charged the white tunnel, and every pounding step echoed along the stone.

  An amazed Brakuss stepped outside and watched. “He’s gone. He ran the whole way.”

  “He charged the whole way,” Grisholt repeated in disbelief, as if in a nightmare suddenly becoming very, very good. He rushed to the arch opening onto the shimmering sands. His ill feelings vanished, replaced with bloody anticipation.

  “Make them fear,” Grisholt whispered in prayer, ogling the waiting crowds beyond the stone lip of the arena wall, savoring the lingering taint of blood from the last fight.

  *

  Lightning coursed through Barros’s limbs and body, energizing him to a point where he felt every step he took left a stone shattered. He roared to take the edge off, like a kettle bleeding off steam, drawing the attention of the Skarrs. He screamed at them, causing several to flinch. Even the old gatekeeper shied away, recognizing the sheer mountain-pummelling might coursing through the pit fighter.

  The potion was supposed to make Barros stronger—that he had understood before even taking it—but the orange core of snapping, crackling, flesh-melting power now pulsating within him rivaled the face of the very sun. He set his jaws and stretched them wide, hammered the walls with his fist, and left indentations in a mist of rubble. The tidal force racing through his person threatened to burn through his skin or burst it apart.

  What pulsed within him wasn’t just strength—it was so much world-splitting more.

  Barros didn’t wait for the portcullis to rise; he ran to the top of the stairs and helped it along with one arm. He burst into the Pit, nearly choking the hilt of his sword, and could not keep still while waiting for the Orator to finish his introductions. His shield felt frail beneath him, and he cast it aside with a contemptuous yell, bouncing the thing off the arena wall.

  The sound gave the Orator pause. Several people also took greater note of the gladiator from the Stable of Grisholt.

  Barros felt their eyes on him, but he didn’t care. The potion bulged and stretched his veins with every aching, ramming pump of his heart. His eyesight sharpened. Barros bellowed back at the onlookers and clawed at his neck with his sword hand.

  More people noticed his odd behavior, including his uneasy opponent from the House of Razi. Shoor peered uncertainly over his shield, toward the stone arch where his owner watched.

  The Orator droned on while Barros stomped his feet, sending up tufts of hot grit. A painful push of blood surged through his frame, nearly exploding the straining cords of his neck. Barros panted, growled, and threw open his arms.

  When the Orator finally shouted to begin, the gladiator did not simply charge, he exploded from his side of the arena with all the force of a ballista missile.

  Barros thundered across the arena, screaming savagely and seizing his blade with both hands. The weapon whipped up over his head and came down with a howl that nearly ruptured Barros’s throat. Shoor got his shield up to deflect the attack––but the blade split the iron band of the wooden barrier, split the leather bracer protecting his arm, and hewed through meat and bone before losing momentum in a snarl of metal and wood.

  Shoor shrieked.

  Barros’s scream drowned him out. He kicked the wounded man off his blade, sending him flat on his back. Before Shoor could recover, Barros leaped on the fallen warrior. He slashed open a bare thigh. Still squealing, Shoor gripped the sprouting wound with his hand, the pot helm making his voice pitched and frightening.

  Barros gripped his opponent’s helmet with one hand and plunged his sword down, impaling Shoor through the guts.

  The stricken pit fighter doubled up like a dying insect, all breath leaving him.

  Grunting, Barros ripped the blade free and hammered at his foe’s helm in a violent flurry that horrified spectators. The gladiator battered Shoor’s head as if it were harvested grain, and each strike of metal crunching into metal rang out with appalling clarity. When the iron wouldn’t yield, Barros barked gibberish and chopped off an arm. Then the other arm. Then whatever was remaining. He wielded his sword two handed, sending arcs of bright scarlet into the humid air, drowning the heat shimmers.

  An enraged Barros continued chopping, long after Shoor had stopped moving.

  In a short time, the fury began to ebb. Barros slowed down, his limbs losing strength. His shoulders slumped. He staggered back a few steps, letting his bloodied blade hang from one hand. As if awakening from a dream, Barros regarded the speechless crowds, then the mutilated carcass at his feet.

  The stunned onlookers, including a dumbstruck Orator, made not a sound.

  *

  From where he watched, a smile of evil delight curved the corners of Grisholt’s mouth. He gripped the iron flask and eyed it with newfound interest.

  Things had suddenly become very, very good.

  32

  The rumbling voices of thousands broke over the towering heights of brick archways and stout oak timbers, cascading down Vathian marble and Sunjan murals and rolling into the streets surrounding the Pit. At times, the air exploded with mighty blasts of jubilation, exclamations of sound announcing something grand had just transpired within that stony bowl of blood sport. Garl gazed in the direction of the arena at the end of the street and wondered, but usually he tried to ignore it and just listen to conversations… and mind the shadows.

  He leaned against a thick slab of wood, which was also the rear wall of a water merchant’s stall, balancing the fine act of appearing unconcerned yet listening for everything. Dirt coated his new clothes, and Garl inwardly wondered where he’d gotten the dust bath. He supposed it helped him blend in with the refuse besieging the streets.

  He watched for any armed people who weren’t Skarrs, either going to or leaving the arena, or anyone closing in on his personal space. Voices talking about pit fighters gave him pause. Old men who lounged at wooden tables discussing wagers and prospects regularly caught his attention. Passersby not even attending the games might very well know something about a particular gladiator. Once, a very long time ago, in the merchant’s square, he’d learned how a group of fighters for the House of Vandu suffered from diarrhea, straight from a cook’s mouth. Their opponents paid coin for that morsel of information.

  However, Garl hadn’t heard anything thus far about the House of Ten, nor any of its fighters.

  In years past, Garl had had his favorite places to gather information––the streets and food-and-drink stalls surrounding the Pit, the taverns and alehouses after the day’s matches; even lingering about the walls of the houses sometimes revealed valuable snippets that could be pieced together and used against an opponent or even sold for a few coins. Garl didn’t like selling information as there was always the possibility that what he heard could be false, and then he’d be held responsible. There’d been instances where incorrect rumors had been released into the streets, just so the
right ears would catch it at the most fitting time. It had happened in the past to people like Borchus. Sometimes the best bites contained poison, every bit as vicious and deadly as battling on the sands. Truths and lies.

  Garl had once loved the challenge of the games, the bloody spectacle of the arena, but the loss of a leg by an axe and his resulting downfall had forever changed him. Now, the idea of individual combat for the amusement of thousands was madness, especially with a war raging somewhere to the west and north. He’d seen the games once as a boy, introduced to the season by his own departed mother and father. Why they had taken their only son to such revelry of violence, Garl would never know. Life was hard enough without having to watch men butcher each other. His time on the streets of Sunja had only strengthened that belief.

  But this work meant another chance at life. Though he didn’t care for the spectacle of the season, Garl didn’t mind gathering information on the games, which meant coin in his hand and eventually a chance to leave Sunja, perhaps to start over. He’d have to leave. Borchus had seen to that the moment he convinced Garl to work for him once again. Once Garl decided it was time to get out, he would have to leave or perish. There weren’t too many old spies about, but there were plenty of vengeful houses.

  Something clattered behind him, and Garl flinched, froze, and caught a look of surprise from the gray-haired woman managing the stall he was leaning against, her sun-leathered face seeking the source of the noise. In a nearby alley, a young boy stooped to pick up a wooden crate from where it had fallen. Garl watched the youth stack the box on top of a pile of refuse, watched him hold out a steadying hand in case it fell over again, and waited until the youngster disappeared from sight.

  Once he was gone, Garl tucked his crutches in his armpits, rose, and walked off at a casual pace for fear of the ruckus attracting undue attention. Though the very fibers of his mind screamed at him to bolt, he forced himself to not hurry, to at least appear at ease. He scanned both sides of the street, searching for any beggars who might recognize him, who might point a finger. He knew where they usually lurked, and he took care to avoid those areas. Still, with the game he played now, with the physical condition he was in, he had to be extra cautious of where he went and whom he might talk to, despite what Borchus might have said about protecting his back. The agent was presently nowhere in sight, and Garl was a crippled man. Cripples were memorable. The paranoid part of his mind whispered they were very memorable, and one wrong move could attract unwanted attention.

  Borchus—a ghost from his past if there ever was one. Garl mostly believed the story of why the man had fled the city so many years ago, but he wasn’t certain if he entirely trusted the agent. Trust barely existed in the undercurrents of Sunja, where the homeless dwelt, where hellions preyed, where a scrap of food or drink could be in hand one moment and yanked away the next. The question of why Garl was doing this work again rose, and he scolded the inner voice with the answer, hoping to convince it for once and for all. It wasn’t because he wanted to do it, it was because—after being beaten and left bleeding for so many times; after countless meals of scraps picked out of the dirt where others had thrown them; after being ignored by the populace, scowled at as a nuisance, or threatened with violence; and after years of simply surviving as opposed to living…

  Borchus had offered him the opportunity to be a person with a purpose once again––even, Garl dared to think it, a person with hope.

  His crutches dug into his armpits as he swung along a road, keeping close to one side, within the shadows cast by drooping eaves or extended tarps. In a short time, he circled back to the arena, sizing up its brooding magnificence with furtive peeks, and aimed for a row of food stalls set along the Gate of the Sea. He found a niche between a pair of booths and plopped down, easing his crutches off to one side. The gate was just to his right.

  Moments passed, and eventually, a stream of people exited, returning to their lives.

  Garl waited and listened. Some people lingered around the booths, spending a few coins before heading home, presumably. Others stood and ate, dropping their crumbs onto the ground. Garl saw some bread crusts and remembered he had a small loaf back in the cellar with a small chunk of cheese, all waiting to be washed down with either water or the bottle of Sunjan Gold Borchus had purchased. Seeing the unwanted nibbles being tossed onto the ground made him anxious for some reason, and for several heartbeats, he couldn’t reason why.

  Then he realized he was staring right at it.

  The scraps.

  He had once begged for scraps.

  Dread swelling in his chest, Garl got to his foot and crutches, heart now hammering in his chest. He struggled to maintain a casual air, but he desperately wanted to flee. He slipped out from behind the stalls and studied the clutter of bodies, deciding on the best path to take, trying to see everything at once.

  His heart skipped several beats.

  There, through the thinning crowds, appeared two beggars, reaching out with empty hands, pleading as citizens walked by.

  Garl got moving, perhaps faster than he wanted, and wound his way back, away from the Gate of the Sea and the pair of vagrants. He wove through crowds and horse-drawn wagons, placing anything between him and those who might recognize him. The slabs of cut stone flashed by as he kept his head down, and he took only a few more hops before swinging himself down an alley. He turned several corners before placing his back against a white brick wall, peeking back the way he had traveled then looking ahead to the end of the alley.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Garl inhaled, his dark eyes wide and searching as he mentally navigated just where he was in relation to the safety of the cellar. In avoiding the beggars, he’d have to loop around and backtrack a bit—out of his way, but it was safer, and he knew the stone-fitted streets of Sunja.

  His breath hitched in his throat as Strach walked past the alley’s mouth.

  Garl froze for a frenzied flutter of heartbeats. His bladder almost let go. He pressed against the wall and willed himself not to move, hoping he’d caught his whimpers and wishing he could just disappear. At best, he hoped to blend in with the city folks milling around him.

  Strach!

  The man resembled a tall poleaxe that had been crooked at the midway point—lanky but deceptively powerful with a vise-like grip, which Garl had personal knowledge of, having experienced those hands around his neck once before.

  Men and women passed by Garl, not noticing how the man’s eyes darted with fright or how the apple of his throat bobbed.

  The tall thug known as Strach backed up to the mouth of the alley and stared down its winding length glutted with people, his predatory senses suddenly afire. Underneath a slicked mane of tin-gray hair, his sun-leathered face squinted with a question, and he lingered, his attention caught by something seen out of the corner of his eye. Citizens flowed past the splitting rock of his form, and he stood there, looking, smelling, searching.

  In the end, he let it go. Sunja’s Pit pulled him away.

  Garl waited for moments more, breathing, his right hand trembling along the length of crutch he had prepared to swing if Strach returned and cornered him.

  But the man didn’t.

  Eventually composing himself, Garl took a chance to look again and saw that the man had walked on. Images and stories of how Strach had terrorized beggars––besides Garl’s own experiences––rattled all thought and got him moving. He swung out from his hiding place, merging with passersby, and concentrated on escaping.

  Any district where Strach roamed was cursed for the one-legged spy.

  Twisting his way back, Garl put space between him and the sighting and started to relax. Feeling he’d escaped a brutal beating and perhaps avoided the loss of a few particularly fleshy items of importance to him, he got his bearings and decided to continue on to a nearby alehouse, keeping amongst the flow of Sunja’s citizens.

  The evening sun had turned the sky orange when Garl finally sat
on a bench under the open window of an alehouse. Smells of cooking pork and chicken wafted outside, making him realize he was hungry. Conversation came as a muddled din of noise, but Garl sat and eyed passersby while concentrating on picking out anything of interest: talk about women, some louder talk about the serving wenches, and talk about the day’s fights.

  Garl homed in on that one, tilting his head toward the window while separating the sounds from the street.

  Fighters. The men talking were pit fighters.

  Shouting drowned out the speakers, and Garl ground his jaw with frustration. Then the noise subsided, and he heard the same men once more.

  Garl listened, frowning, and then his eyes bulged. The men talked about the House of Ten and the decree of Curge. They prattled on for a short time, glad they weren’t associated with the targeted house, and swore at that bunch of Free Trained who thought they could rise above anything else. The conversation went off into other areas, and Garl strained to hear more, but the knowledge he’d learned poked at him like a pointed stick, urging him to report back to Borchus.

  Excited he’d learned something important and fearful of Strach lurking somewhere nearby, Garl stood and, with a quick inspection of the streets, started back to the cellar.

  33

  The day after the rains, the House of Ten’s pit fighters limbered up with stretches under bright rays of morning light. Machlann shouted out instructions while Koba stalked the perimeter, searching for poor technique. From the balcony overlooking the grounds, Goll and Clavellus watched, their features barely discernible in shade, where the humidity still leeched away strength.

  In front of the living quarters, at the other end of the training area, three men sat on mats, bundled up in swaths of bandages and crude splints. Gobs of healing salves smeared over their flesh kept away bothersome flies. They stared at the morning’s exercise in reflective silence.

  “So…” Halm finally said, feeling how the bandages tightened about his chin when he spoke. He tried very hard to not breathe through his broken nose. A part of him wished that Shan had given him more of whatever concoction had rendered him senseless for a day. The healer said it was for the best after he’d addressed the gaping bite in his arm. The ghastly wound had missed vital tendons, but a sizeable chunk of fat had been chomped out… so Shan only lathered in the foul-smelling ointments he so heavily favored. That morning, Halm had awoken with the others, drunk a vegetable broth for breakfast, and then left the common room for the thin comfort of the three mats waiting in the shade.