131 Days [Book 2]_House of Pain

by Keith C. Blackmore

  The Chamber members nodded so fast it was almost comical.

  “Very well. The war, such as it is, is not progressing favorably for us. The citizens of Sunja must not give in to fear of defeat, thus, it’s the king’s wish to amuse them. It diverts their attention away from the Nordish front. The most logical way is to lengthen the games since they’re already in progress. Do not worry about the finances for such an extended period of time, for as always, the king will continue to fund the Pit’s expenses from his own treasury. All monetary awards will remain the same, and each and every victory shall be paid in full.”

  The sound of Odant clearing his throat made Schull’s own tongue curl in his head.

  “You wish to say something?” he inquired with a withering glare.

  “Lord Schull.” The Chamber member lurched. “The games can’t be extended.”

  “What did you say?” Schull interrupted.

  Odant appeared to be struck with pain. “What I meant to say was… it will be most difficult to do such since the season is practically half over.”

  “Lengthen. It.” Schull stated imperiously before smiling coldly enough to impart frostbite.

  “There are problems.” Another member rose to his feet, a balding sort who had perhaps consumed an ocean of beer at one sitting.

  “Problems aren’t a concern of mine,” Schull countered with forced pleasantness.

  “The tournament is elimination style. One loss, and your season is over.”

  “And there’s the problem of an ever-shrinking pool of fighters to draw from once a man is defeated,” Odant added. “There are only a handful of established houses and schools producing gladiators for the games. Even with the addition of the Free Trained––”

  Schull lifted a hand, invoking silence across the room.

  “I gave you my ear, and you pissed nonsense in it. I’m well aware of your… games. Your problems aren’t problems at all, merely thoughtless excuses. All who have lost, who have been eliminated to this point, will be allowed to fight again if they are physically capable. Instead of one loss, make it so that the sum of a man’s inflicted wounds will prevent him from continuing in the season. Essentially, allow them to fight until they drop. The top gladiators, presumably the undefeated or those with the fewest losses, will fight on to the champion’s match.”

  Skeptical silence greeted this.

  “What about the number of fighters? There are ten to fifteen matches in one day. Even with the Free Trained, to extend the games past another month will––”

  “You. Weren’t. Listening,” Schull snipped, stretching his mouth to its contemptuous fullest. “I just said allow defeated fighters back into the tournament. Even if they amass a losing record, let them fight if they still wish. If they can pull steel, let them into the arena. And your blood matches. The rulings on those fits of vengeance are to be limited. No more of this nonsense about just anyone demanding a blood match over the slightest insult. Especially amongst the Free Trained. Bring those dogs to heel. If a House loses a fighter, allow them their chance at retribution, but only if one of their own is killed.”

  The expression on Odant’s face spoke of his spirit nearly broken. This pleased Schull. He sought to instill dread into these old husks. He wanted them to know the king was very much aware of their games.

  “King Juhn, in his infinite wisdom, wishes the games to be extended; thus, they will be extended. I’ve instructed you how to proceed; now see it done. If you do not, I’ll return. And let me be very, very clear upon this matter––I don’t wish to return here. If I do, heads will bounce off this slab of piss-stained rock you seem to think is marble. Your greatest concern is having enough men to feed the games? King Juhn offers this since he has already considered such. His Eminence will scour the city’s dungeons for prisoners capable of wielding a blade. He’ll allow you to arm these he-bitches—to the teeth if you wish or with sticks if it amuses you—for the sole purpose of having them fight in the games. To hew at whoever you place in front of them.”

  Odant cleared his throat once again.

  Schull mentally vowed if he heard that goat-milk-curdling noise again he’d have an Axeman strike the old bastard’s head from his shoulders.

  “We’re to have… criminals… fight in our tournament?” the Chamber member asked almost petulantly.

  “You are.” Schull nodded with false sympathy, inwardly delighting at the old he-bitch’s drooping expression. “The king has, in fact, already combed the dungeons for conscripts and pressed those most capable into service, as his remaining Klaws require fighting men. But several hundred were kept back for whatever reasons—deserters, murderers, thieves. Essentially, the passed-over shite of the lot. Perhaps they would’ve caused more trouble than their worth on a Sujin line. It’s my understanding there are even Nordish captives shackled in chains somewhere. Prisoners taken in battle. These you may use and churn up in whatever fashion takes your fancy. But make the experience… dramatic if at all possible. Uplifting. Anything to take minds off what’s happening on the front. Anything to instill a rousing pride in the watching populace. The king wishes to see sport. Theater if you can manage it. But no outright executions. If he wanted to hear the chop and bounce of the executioner’s axe, he would’ve sentenced the prisoners to death long ago. Do you understand?”

  Odant already looked thoughtful. “Yes, Lord Schull,” he replied on the Chamber’s behalf, as the topper should.

  “Excellent,” Schull announced, grateful that he would be away shortly. He wouldn’t give them the opportunity for any further questions. “Then I leave you to your thoughts and the task ahead. With the King’s blessings.”

  With hurried impatience, Schull turned and left the chamber, relieved that an unpleasant task had been completed. Cracking open that single bottle of grape lodged in his koch’s cabinet suddenly appealed to him. It would do until he found a more palatable quantity, served by women with wide hips and inviting smiles.

  The Axemen followed, frightening reapers on his heels.

  In his wake, the Chamber came alive with an outbreak of voices.

  42

  Nordish Front

  Arrus dawdled until a Sujin shoved him hard from behind, the spear slamming him broadway across his back. The Nordish man tripped in his ankle chains and stumbled to the ground, bringing another prisoner down with him. He rolled onto his side, dead leaves coating his bare, bruised skin, and cowered there while angry voices barked nonsense overhead. The Sujin, chainmail shirt and plates of iron strapped to his torso, loomed overhead with a spear poised at Arrus’s half-opened eye.

  Another soldier yelled, and the one about to puncture Arrus’s head balked. His eyes blinked behind his visor, and he shouted a reply full of venom, but the man withdrew from striking a killing blow. Instead of gouging a length of spear into Arrus’s eye, the soldier delivered a hard boot to the Jackal’s left kidney, the kick powerful enough to rob the Nordish of his breath.

  “Get him up, Noll,” a harsh voice commanded in the native tongue. Dogslaw.

  “I think he’s done.”

  “You think everyone’s done. Get him up.”

  Hands pulled on Arrus and got him to his feet. Four powerful-looking Sujins, three with spears and one with a shortsword, stood ready to kill if necessary. The soldiers herding the Nordish prisoners to the southeast weren’t concerned in the least about executing a few men along the way just to prove a point or to ease their burden.

  Or simply for amusement.

  Ankle chains connected two lines of captured Jackals, totaling thirteen. They had numbered close to twenty before they started marching, but killings along the way had reduced the number. The Sujins didn’t feed the Nordish regularly. When the thought struck the soldiers, they tossed scraps of bread crusts amongst the prisoners or emptied a pot of gruel over some rocks—prompting the starving men to lower themselves and lick it off those hard plates. In two weeks, Arrus had gone from lean to practically emaciated. His cheeks hollow
ed, his eyes darkened, rashes exploded upon his skin, and he panted heavily all the time—much like the rest. The Sujins did give them water––two cups per man, taken from the water barrels hauled along in horse-drawn wagons.

  One in the morning and one in the evening.

  Arrus’s gullet was clawed by a thirst so wicked that he could have drunk piss.

  “Get up, damn you,” Lokan urged. Dirt and sun darkened his own gaunt features, drawing attention to an ugly scar running across his upper lip and cheeks.

  “I’m done.” Arrus grimaced. “I’m going to piss blood this night.”

  But Lokan leaned in. “Get to your feet, Jackal, or I’ll stomp on your skull.”

  That made Arrus study the Jackal in a careful light, and he didn’t like what he saw. He didn’t know Lokan in the least, but right now, Arrus knew he was very close to dying.

  Grunting, he did as told, noting that Lokan obviously disliked the pained effort.

  The Sujin who had kicked Arrus barked an order, and the line got moving along a pitted road hemmed in by a thinning forest. Arrus had no choice but to shuffle along, straining to keep up with the others. Sujins clanked alongside them, grunting and conversing in that piggish tongue of theirs, chuckling at times.

  Arrus wanted to kill them all.

  “In time,” Lokan muttered behind him. “We’ll have our day.”

  “I don’t think so,” Arrus whispered back, eyeing the soldiers fearfully.

  Lokan didn’t respond.

  They marched in silence, naked except for stained loincloths, through a crippling bellows of an afternoon, and a loss of sweat made Arrus tremble with weakness. Two wagons led them along while a third brought up the rear. At one point, a Sujin halted the other line of chained Nordish men and drove his spear through a captive’s midsection in a burst of gore. That killing delayed the line until the Sujins could detach the corpse. The prisoners were surrounded with bared steel and forced to sit while two soldiers directed the Nordish men nearest to the dead man. The death was unfortunate, but Arrus was grateful for being able to sit and rest, if only for a short time. All the while, he stared at the body, ogling it while shivering.

  “Thinking about taking a bite?” Lokan asked nearby.

  The very thought made Arrus shake his head with revulsion. “Haven’t gone that far yet.”

  “I have.”

  A visor-wearing Sujin stepped between the two prisoners selected to haul the dead man. The man grunted a few syllables to another, and a soldier with a battle axe came along and made quick work chopping through the legs of the corpse. Once the body was freed, the prisoners extracted the ankle bits and tossed them into the underbrush.

  “Skolla,” Noll grumped and eyed Lokan with distaste. “Have you lost your head?”

  “No.” He smiled evilly and licked his lips. “Not at all.” He stared at the place where the feet had been discarded then at the corpse being dragged to the side of the road.

  Arrus did not like the gleam in the man’s eyes.

  “If you go that far, you’ll find my length of chain around your neck,” said a nearby man called Heelslik—another Jackal, once tall and sinewy with muscle. Now, his shaggy head appeared as if it had been beaten once too often, his eyes like black marble.

  Lokan bowed his head, convincing Arrus that not all was well with the Nordish man.

  “Curlord’s heavens, I hope we don’t move soon,” Arrus heard himself say.

  “They might march us straight into the grave,” Lokan said quietly. “Or kill us as an afterthought, like that poor curnos they just made shorter there.”

  “I’ve heard stories,” Dogslaw said, leaning in close enough for Arrus to catch a whiff of the man’s rancid breath, “where the Sujin just took a few prisoners at a time and just walked them around behind wagons––like these––until they dropped from exhaustion and died on the spot.”

  “That’s possible,” Noll agreed. “Feels like that now.”

  A group of armored Sujins began talking loudly at one end of the second lead wagon. Other soldiers resting in the rear came to attention, listening in on the conversation.

  “What a curnos language,” Dogslaw muttered and clawed at the loose earth, blackening his already filthy hands. “They have more in common with sows. Any time, I expect them to root at the dirt.”

  “Some words almost sound the same as ours,” Noll noted, “but different meanings. Maddening.”

  “I’ll kill them all,” Lokan seethed, setting his jaw and drawing attention from the three others. “Every last Sunjan. Every last one.”

  Arrus met the eyes of Noll and Dogslaw. Neither put his thoughts into words. In the background, the shouting dropped off and became more civil—at least for men speaking a pig language.

  “You control yourself, Lokan,” Dogslaw whispered. “Until the time is ripe.”

  “When?” Lokan’s voice grated just a little too loudly, drawing the attention of at least two Sujins carrying spears. Arrus felt his innards constrict.

  “I don’t know when,” Dogslaw answered, “but it’s coming. I promise.”

  Lokan abruptly leered at the visors looking in his direction, a horrid grin with receding gums. Arrus didn’t understand the language, but their postures told everyone the Sujins were not impressed with Lokan’s behavior. Then the Nordish man did a truly disturbing thing. He clawed up a portion of dirt and ate it, jamming it into his mouth and chewing with relish. Specks dropped from his lips.

  A glaring Dogslaw swatted him across the head for that, and Lokan spat most of the filth out.

  One of the officers barked an order, and the Nordish men were prodded to their feet. It took longer to do so after each rest, and Arrus felt his entire body groan from the effort. Not much longer, he suspected. At least they left them their boots. If they had to walk barefoot along this pebbly road, he suspected he would’ve been killed a week earlier.

  “Hold firm, Jackals,” Dogslaw grunted to those close enough to hear. “This journey’s coming to an end. One way or another.”

  The wagons got moving.

  They marched again at length, leaving the dead Jackal on the side of the road. Arrus didn’t know how far they had gotten before he heard the calling of crows.

  By evening, they’d left the sparse shade offered by the overhead tree limbs. A golden ocean stretched out before them, swaying ever so slightly under a sky bloated with purple clouds and a bleeding horizon. The Sujins said nothing as they marched along, but the eyes of the Nordish men widened. None of them had ever been this deep inside enemy territory. They’d heard of the flatlands and the wheat fields of Sunja but had only distantly wondered if one day they’d ever actually see them.

  The Sujins herded them along, and the Jackals walked, enraptured with this undiscovered country.

  As the sky darkened overhead, the wagons halted for the night. Chains were attached to wheels, and the twelve survivors were surrounded by a square where each point was a watchful Sujin. Arrus didn’t think they needed the guards. No one had the strength to do anything. A pair of Sujins rationed out cups of water to the Nordish prisoners and surprised them all with chunks of bread and strips of salted beef. The food startled the Jackals, but thoughts of final meals vanished with the first bite.

  If they were going to die, at least it would be with full bellies.

  After eating, they collapsed like old men, on beds of long grass. Gnats or other multi-legged pests took to and crawled upon their bare flesh. Arrus swatted at his limbs, quickly grew weary, and resigned to stare at the stars peeking out from the Curlord’s heavens.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered.

  “The Sunjans have stars just like us,” Noll muttered sleepily. Lokan and the others already slept. Dogslaw even snored.

  “What will become of us, Noll?” Arrus asked. “Speak plainly. Please.”

  Noll exhaled softly. “Oh, we’ll all die. No doubt. Our war was done the moment they took us prisoner back around those hills.”

&nb
sp; “Thank you,” Arrus said.

  “Arrus.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your brother was a good man.”

  The stars twinkled in a wisp of milky gauze, millions brilliant.

  “Thank you, Noll.”

  “You’ll be seeing him shortly, I expect.”

  Arrus frowned at that.

  He supposed the older man was right on that point.

  In the morning, the Sujins fed them well once again, much to the dismay of the Nordish prisoners.

  “This is it,” Heelslik muttered while he gulped down his portion of bread and salt beef. “They’re fattening us for a killing.”

  “For something,” Noll agreed.

  “They won’t let us get too strong,” Dogslaw muttered. “For fear of attacking.”

  Arrus didn’t care. After two decent meals, he felt ready to roll over and die. He almost felt like a man again. Starvation. Once, the word had meant nothing to him, but now, having experienced it, he didn’t think there was anything crueler.

  “At least Lokan isn’t eating dirt anymore,” Heelslik said.

  Lokan heard his name and looked about, a frightening wildness haunting the depths of his eyes.

  “You still with us, Lokan?” Dogslaw asked with some concern.

  “Still, Jackal,” Lokan said, looking to the southwest. He smacked his lips loudly and then commented. “Something is out there.”

  Puzzled, they all gazed off in that direction but could see nothing.

  A short time later, the Sujins marched the prisoners toward the shifting horizon, while crickets scratched with the breeze.

  By evening, they all saw it.

  It rose up on a monstrous plateau like the stony crown of the Nordish Curlord himself.