“You … speak my language very well,” I said, waiting to see if that would earn me another strike to the face. My nose was in pain, but there seemed to be no swelling or bleeding, even though he’d leveled me to the ground with his attack.
“Our labor force at the camp is largely your people,” Rin said. “I’ve had to learn to speak as one of you in order to make my desires known to the slaves.” I could practically feel him smiling beneath the mask, daring me to object.
I couldn’t. I was at his mercy, after all, that much was plain.
I was a slave.
“As I said, I’m here to teach you how to fight,” Rin went on. “I do not believe in doing so gently, either, for when you face your foes, they will not hold in mercy in their hearts, or be gentle. This will not be an easy process for you. You will experience pain.” He sounded pleased about that. “Pain is the fire in which we will turn you from a weak, soft little man,” he made that sound like the greatest insult of all, “into a … well, a less weak, less soft man.” He started to walk around me in a slow circle. “You will not enjoy this. If you are a fool, you will quickly become frustrated and will surrender, which will lead to a never-ending cycle of pain. Not by me,” he parted his hands as he orbited me, “but in the Coliseum, where you will die, and they will bring you back by magic, and you will die again, and again, and again … until there is not enough left of your mind to tell you how to grip a sword. Then, and only then, will you be sent to the camps, where you will mine ore until such time as you die and we will bring you back again, and again and again … because teaching you how to swing a pick over and over again is much simpler than teaching someone how to use a sword effectively once they’ve lost all else.” I could not see his face, but he spoke with an intensity that suggested he felt strongly about this practice.
He came back around in front of me and stopped, his baton before him. “Now, let us begin.” And he reached behind him and tossed me a baton.
I caught it after fumbling it a couple times first, barely getting it before it slid out of my grasp on the last bounce out of my hand. Rin laughed at the ridiculous display and drew another baton from somewhere in his back armor. It looked the same, like a length of steel shaped into a cylinder, a walking staff cut in half, forged of metal.
“In the Coliseum you will use a sword,” Rin said. “Steel, pathetic, the weak craftsmanship you’re used to seeing and using. We like to watch you beasts do things the way you prefer to, after all, and trying to give you our weapons would mostly be like handing a dog a knife and expecting him to cut his food with it, sit at the table, and eat with manners. We don’t expect that of you, so …” He gestured to the baton in my hand. “That is one of our weapons, and before you get any ideas about using it on me … know that if you hit my armor, it will do nothing.” He clanked a hand against the mammoth slab of metal stretched across his chest. “Go ahead. See if you can.” He lowered his guard. I eased in toward him, afraid he was going to spring a trap on me. He narrowed his eyes. “Hurry, fool, I haven’t all day to waste with you.” I jabbed my baton at him and it clanked noisily off his armor.
Then he brought his up with blazing speed and slapped me under the left armpit hard enough that I dropped instantly like someone had cut my legs from beneath me.
When I came back to myself again, I found Rin standing over me, humming lightly. “Now that we’ve established that you are as powerless with one of these in your hands as you were without, the training can begin. On your feet.”
I worked my way back to my feet slowly, standing on my unsteady legs. I knew now for certain what I’d suspected before; that there was something about these batons that inflicted far, far more pain than an ordinary stick.
“Now you’re wondering how these work.” Rin held up his baton in front of me. “But explaining would be like trying to teach a fish how to walk on land, so don’t dwell on it when you should be devoting your very limited capacity to figuring out how to fight. Because dogs can fight, you see, it’s what they’re good for. Animals fight when provoked, it’s what makes them something other than food, what elevates them from being dinner to being the entertainment we watch over dinner.” He sounded almost delighted to inform me of these facts of the world. “Now, try and defend yourself against this very, very slow attack …”
He came at me, and while he was slower than he’d come at me before, he still left me once again on my back, moaning in pain.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, standing over me, as the blackness around my eyes receded and the blue sky overhead filtered back in.
“Do you not already know the answer?” I asked, clutching at my chest where he’d sent spires of angry flames into me. I hadn’t seen flames, and there was no sign of burns, but my skin felt as if it had been set on fire. He stared down at me expectantly, so I answered him. “Yes, it hurts.”
“Good,” Rin said mildly. He raised his baton up again, bringing it down and drowning my consciousness in another flood of pain. When I blinked my eyes open again, he was still there, but his helmet was off, and he was staring down at me with those red eyes. “There are two types of animals, you see … the ones who are broken by pain. They are like a hill of sand in a flood, waiting to be washed away, losing all structure when the flow gets heavy enough. The others can be guided by pain. It is their teacher, and they can learn from it.” He brandished his baton over me, looking at it as he ran a finger along its length, studying it as though it held a secret of life. “Let’s see which one you are,” he said, and he hit me with the baton over and over as my screams filled the air until, mercifully, I lost consciousness.
15.
Cyrus
When they appeared in Reikonos Square, Cyrus felt no need to mount Windrider, and so he merely took the reins in hand and started his stroll to the east, walking silently toward the Guildhall Quarter. The night was dark, torches blazing all around to shed light on the square.
“Did I never teach you manners?” Quinneria asked him crossly as she fell in next to him, her robes ruffling as she hurried to keep pace. The moon hung overhead still, though Cyrus thought he saw the first hints of light on the horizon. The spring was almost over, summer coming soon to settle on the human capital. “To stride off without a word.”
“Perhaps you were more focused on sneaking in the basics of magic,” he said. “I told you where we were going before we left the Realm of Life.” He cast a tired eye in the direction of the markets. They were still doing a reasonable, though not booming, trade in the nighttime hours.
She took the chastening in stride. “Cyrus—”
“I’m sure you have wonderful motherly advice,” he said, “but as I feel I’ve been somewhat hammered already today, perhaps we could just … put it aside for now.”
“I cannot simply put it aside,” she said, and now she showed herself in the strain of her voice. “I am with you, in all of this. You seek revenge and I understand it, for I remember the thoughts in my own head when your father died. I, however, had a child to anchor me still to this life, and you do not. I can imagine what grief will do to your mind—”
“Terian was right,” Cyrus said, walking down the quiet street away from the square, leading his tame horse behind him. “I have moved beyond white hot, uncaring grief and the desire for simple vengeance. The task ahead is not an easy one, and throwing myself upon Bellarum’s sword is not my plan.” He sniffed the night air, frowning as he caught a whiff of someone’s chamber pot. “Every superior enemy I’ve brought low has been defeated because of calculation on my part—when to fight, where to fight, and how to fight them. Those are my considerations. If Bellarum has allies, I’ll need to peel them off like meat from a bone.” He gave her a look. “Don’t worry. I won’t rush foolishly into death. I will make sure this is done right.” For her, he didn’t say. Nor did he see fit to mention what might happen afterward.
“I understand all that,” Quinneria said. “And while I am pleased that you are back to strategizing
, as your mother my concerns remain—”
Cyrus let a hearty sigh. “This was so much easier when I thought you were just a cook who worried about me a little more than was healthy.”
“I want to see you come out of the other side of this,” she said. “Vara was dear to me as well, and while I obviously did not care for her as you did, I think my detachment might better let me say what she would want at the end of all this.”
Cyrus blinked, stopping in his tracks. Windrider stopped with him. “What would she want at the end of this, do you think?”
“She would want you to come out the other side and live a life,” Quinneria said. “Not just get your revenge and depart this land into sweet, comfortable death.”
Cyrus stared at her, his gaze smoky. “You know I feel that way because—”
“I’ve been through it,” Quinneria said. “I know the desire to simply have it over with, that urge to give up the fight that is life when you’ve lost so much as you have, Cyrus. I know it well.”
“As you pointed out,” Cyrus said, “I have no child to keep me moored once this is over. No part of her to make me stay behind, no Sanctuary to be responsible to.”
“You have me,” she said. “I am still with you.”
“That may not be enough,” Cyrus whispered, and he started the horse forward again.
She was silent for the rest of their journey into the Guildhall Quarter. Cyrus listened to his feet shuffle down the dusty street until he reached the four corners where the largest guildhalls sat. With a careful look over the facade of the Endeavor guildhall, reminiscent of Termina before the fall, he eased toward the front entry at the corner, tying off Windrider’s reins at a hitching post, then nodding to the troll guards out front.
“My name is Cyrus Davidon,” he said, causing the two of them to squint down at him, “and I’m here to see Isabelle.”
Neither of them spoke, though they traded a look. One of them started to say something, and then he examined Cyrus with a further glance. Apparently deciding his course of action, he turned his head and shouted, “Cyrus Davidon to see Mistress Isabelle!” into the open doors.
Cyrus waited, feeling like rock as he stood there, his armor creaking as he shifted slightly. It hadn’t always done that; this was new. The mail rattled beneath the plate. He heard movement inside the hall, where firelight flickered against white painted walls, and a shadow started to come toward him.
Isabelle emerged a moment later, resplendent in her white robes, a perplexed smile sitting atop her lovely, sculpted face with high cheekbones. She stood framed between the trolls for a moment staring at Cyrus, and he stared back at her. Their eyes met, and he could not think of a thing to say. He felt his lips part, and something threaten to leap from between them, some undignified, teary words, and he held them back.
She stared at him, and he watched the subtle change. She straightened, growing slightly taller as she pulled herself up, her mouth falling open slightly as she stared at him. Her hand came up, and she clasped her breast as though to protect her heart, to ward her from the pain she sensed coming. “Cyrus?” she asked.
He tried again to speak, and no words came out. He swallowed his pride and his feelings, closing his eyes for just a moment before opening them again to see her staring at him in the full flower of despair. She knew.
“Vara,” Isabelle said softly, the first tear streaming down her cheek a moment later, after he managed a nod. There was no more need for words between them, for she knew everything he had come to tell her.
16.
Alaric
When I stepped foot in the Coliseum for the first time a few days after my first encounter with Rin, it was with full knowledge of two things: one, that whoever I faced would be intending to do far, far more violent harm to me than Rin had. And second, that I was in no way ready to fend them off. Both of these facts came to me courtesy of Rin after our fourth lesson together, another one in which I spent the vast majority of my time on the ground, in agony.
They herded us through the gates of the Coliseum and into the open air, a crowd cheering at deafening volume, sun shining overhead, dirt beneath our feet. I had a sword in my hand, which, though plain and basic, still put my old one to shame. It was functional, not beautiful, with long lines of sharpened blade and little else to recommend it. Still, it was my only chance of survival, and I gripped it tightly as such.
When my line of thirty men with swords met our opponents less than a minute after being herded out, my thoughts about aesthetics were swiftly forgotten.
What became clear to me, staring across the open dirt floor of the arena, was that our opponents were human and that I had never seen any of them before. They were dressed in something akin to what I’d seen on the mining camp commander who had visited on the day I was sorted to fight. They wore grey, smooth cloth, no armor of any sort, but their bodies were sinewy and tanned, not flabby as we’d started to become in our barracks. For all I knew, these men had been in the next building the entire time. It wasn’t as though we were allowed out to wander when other groups were around. It made the whole camp a very mysterious, isolated place outside of our barracks.
Our opponents in the grey clothing had a look I didn’t see in any of the faces of the soldiers I was with. These men were hardened, had done this before. Someone was bellowing over the crowd, shouting some sort of announcements as our opponents faced us and stared, looking like they were examining a particularly fine meal. I saw smiles, bared teeth, no fear.
When I looked at my own men, the contrast could not have been more marked. Olivier looked like he was about to sit in the dirt and let death come to him; his leg had obvious traces of wetness, and the tip of his sword was jumping inches from the shaking he was doing.
“Stay close to me,” Stepan said from my side, his sword at least steady. Mine was doing better than Olivier’s but worse than his, so I took heed.
“RA-HGREN!” the announcer’s voice shouted, and our foes broke into a dead run at us, hollering war cries as they came. Their sandaled feet kicked up dust and their legs pounded, exposed by their short breeches.
I saw no mercy there, and none of my line made to charge them. Whatever bravery the army had when it left Enrant Monge had been beaten out of it by the long march and the brutal, bloodless defeat at the hands of the blue men. When the enemy force slammed into us, only half us managed to raise our swords in any kind of a defense. The rest of our attackers tore into men who turned their backs, who were screaming and trying to run, or who simply stood there and flinched when death came.
No, I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t even battle in the sense I’d been trained for. It was slaughter, fatted calves marched out for easy dinner.
I blocked the enemy who came at me, my blade bouncing his off. He looked surprised when I did it; it was a very basic thing I’d learned between Rin’s instruction and my own lessons, and it worked well. My opponent was faster than I was, but I managed to land a glancing blow against his leg as I turned it aside, and I felt a strange satisfaction at this. I brought my sword up again to ready for the next exchange, a faint smile breaking out on my lips.
Then he yelled in my face, causing me to blanch. He knocked aside my weapon, and punched me in the face.
As strange as it is for me to relate this now, the humiliation of that moment hurt almost as much as any I’d experienced up to that point. In spite of Rin’s warning, I had thought that maybe, just maybe, I could weather this storm and come out the other side. I’d felt a faint surge of hope as I turned aside the first attack, and having that yanked away was like being dropped after first rising a few feet from the ground. Those feet counted, and I felt them in the landing.
The punch to my face broke my nose once again, and set my eyes to watering uncontrollably, hot tears of fury arcing down my cheeks as I squinted and tried to see what was happening. The yell had surprised me, but the punch had felt like insult to injury, even though it was really injury added to insult. How peculiar
to feel pain at someone merely yelling at you, especially given all I’d already been through.
My foe drove his blade into my chest quickly, and when I looked up at him, I saw cold, uncaring eyes staring back at me for the space of time it took him to pull his sword from my chest. It made a sucking noise and blood burbled out, a lancing pain piercing straight through me. I screamed, and my opponent stared at me for a brief second with pitiless eyes. A dog might have spared more compassion for my plight. Then, without so much as a backward glance, the man who murdered me was off and away, doubtless to kill his next opponent.
The searing fire in my chest and back made me curl up in the dirt, trying to staunch the flow of my life’s blood from the hole my enemy had made. It hurt as if someone had taken an old length of wood and driven it through me. It felt like agony, and it felt wrong, and as I clawed at my chest, I only wished for some way my fingers could fix it, could make the pain stop.
No relief came, though, until the light finally faded, the clamor of battle around me fading, and I slipped into death with all the ease of a man drifting off to dream—but without any hope of waking, or seeing anything in the darkness other than a nightmare.
17.
Cyrus
“Are you ready to go home?” Vara asked, her blond hair flashing in the warm, noonday sun, a coy, languid smile pressed against her red lips. She sat atop her horse, in control, hoofbeats slow and steady with every step her animal took—
“Cyrus!”
Cyrus awoke out of a sleep he did not know he’d fallen into to find someone hammering at his door. A lamp burned at his bedside, casting the dark room in pale orange light. Cyrus sat up in the bed, recalling that he’d come back to Saekaj Sovar after his meeting with Isabelle. Apparently he’d fallen asleep at some point, and now he had no idea what hour it was, whether it was day or night, nor—
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