Farlander

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Shay Madi The chief whip enjoyed his job. At least it seemed that way to Nico, as the stocky man dragged him roughly from the holding pen deep beneath the stadium floor, occasionally spitting the word 'Rshun' from his plump, stained lips as though it was the worst of curses. Twice his whip lashed out against Nico's back, though Nico barely felt it. It was merely one more pain to add to many.

'In you go,' he snarled as he shoved Nico through a rusty barred door. Nico stumbled into a narrow caged passageway which he saw led some six feet to another sliding door, now also being drawn open from the outside.

A guard stabbed at him through the bars with a pronged stave, blunt but painful, forcing Nico through it into the cage beyond.

He tripped over a prone body and sprawled to the floor, crying out as fresh agonies shot through his shattered hand.

Nico could feel pain everywhere, and he was increasingly feverish from it. His left eye had swollen shut; he couldn't even tell if the eyeball was still there. His lips were a swollen mush. Most of his front teeth were broken or missing. It hurt even to breathe.

The door clattered shut behind him and was locked by one of the guards, while the chief whip laughingly called out to the rest of the unfortunates confined in the cage.

'Make way for the mighty Rshun,' he declared. 'Perhaps, if you're kind enough to him, he will save you all.'

Nico curled into a ball and lay shivering. He could smell his own stench and, above it, that of many others. The cage was crowded with men and women waiting to die.

He felt a hand settle on his arm. He peered up from his one good eye to see a man's face looking down at him with concern.

'Here,' he said softly, as he offered a ladle of water. Nico sipped, instantly choked it back up. 'Easy,' soothed the man. Nico drank some more.

With care he tried to sit up, if only to breathe a little better. Almost instantly his ribs were suffused with white heat. Nico gasped.

The man helped him along, and a few of the others cleared a space so he might rest his back against the bars of the cage. He noticed the man's head was shaven and he wore a black robe.

'Yes, I'm a monk,' said the man, in response to Nico's surprise.

Nico merely nodded. It was the only thanks he could offer. He looked around the enclosed space, saw that everyone was now observing him. He let his gaze drop to the straw-strewn, earthen floor.

A roar rose from the arena outside, the muffled sound passing through a heavy gate at the end of another barred passageway. A woman lying on the floor moaned into the dust.

'May you be with the Dao,' said the priest to Nico, touching him lightly again on the arm. The touch was comforting, human. The monk turned away to see to the woman, and to offer her what little comfort he could.

Nico wrapped his arms about himself, moving the limbs with a delicate slowness. He forced his mind to focus on his breathing. Every time he exhaled, he thought of the agony releasing itself from his body. When he inhaled, he thought of stillness.

It seemed to work, after a while – or at least enough for him to think straight. Thoughts were good now. They could take him away from this place.

So he allowed his mind to drift. He thought of sunny Khos, the cottage, his mother. He wished he could see her now more than anything else in the world.

Time passed unawares. The bars of the cage clattered behind his head. It was the chief whip again.

'That one next,' the man decided, and pointed out the woman being comforted by the monk. 'And that one, the monk, too.'

Other guards prodded the chosen captives with their pronged staves, though keeping at a safe distance behind the bars. 'Up – up!' they shouted.

The monk helped the woman to her feet, still holding her close to him. An outer door slid open in the cage. Together, they stepped into the passageway leading to the gate.

'Stop,' said the chief whip.

The guards pressed against the barred passageway and reached inside with leather-gloved hands. They yanked away the woman's clothing until she stood there exposed to their stares. Purple bruises covered her flesh. Bite marks, too. The monk for his part, was allowed to keep his robe, so that the crowd could tell what he was.

A sword was passed to the monk, and then a small round shield. He dropped them both to the ground. 'I won't fight,' he stated flatly.

The guards cursed and prodded him some more. Still he refused to hold either weapon or shield. Beyond the gate the crowd bayed restlessly. The guards gave up on their persuasions, and tied the sword and shield to the monk's wrists, where he let them hang there uselessly. The man's hands were trembling, though he stood tall.

The gate swung open and thin daylight flooded through. Nico could see nothing beyond outside, blinded by the sudden illumination.

Both woman and monk were prodded out through the gate. Then it closed behind them and the crowd roared.

Nico felt the noise deep in his stomach. It almost loosened his bladder. He clenched inwardly, resisting its urge to empty itself. Blessedly, after a few moments, the sensation eased.

'What will happen to them?' asked another young man, his voice dead of emotion. He did not direct the question to anyone in particular.

Yet it hung in the air, calling out to all of them.

'They will die,' came another voice. A middle-aged man, sitting with three others – soldiers if the scars and tattoos they bore were anything to go by, and the way they sat impassively, as though they had often waited together like this for the arrival of death.

They looked Khosian.

Specials, Nico guessed. He knew from his father's accounts, how those underground fighters were often captured when the tunnels collapsed behind them.

Without pity the soldier stared at the young man sitting across from him. 'Men armed with steel will slaughter them like cattle. Or they may be eaten by animals driven mad by hunger.'

The young man turned his head away, biting his lip.

'There's always a chance,' said another, a woman with the old scars of a branding iron evident on both her cheeks. 'If you fight well enough, the crowd might spare you.'

The soldier snorted, and Nico swallowed around a hard lump in his throat. He thought of the young woman out there now, not more than twenty years old, terrified out of her wits. It could be Serese, or any other girl he had known back home. What kind of world was this, where people hungered to see a human being hacked to pieces for sport?

A scream sounded from outside. The woman. The stadium fell silent.

Her sobs for mercy echoed into the cage – then ceased abruptly. Everyone in the cage looked to the floor to avoid each other's eyes, even the bitter soldier.

The monk was shouting something. Nico couldn't make it out, though the words were angry and passionate. A sound followed, like that from a butcher's stall, and then another. The crowd didn't roar this time.

Nico covered his head with one arm, and cowered beneath it. With every beat of his heart he could feel the pain pulsing from his injuries. Again he sought out other things to keep his mind occupied.

He thought of Ash, and how his master had not come to rescue him from this horror.

Perhaps he had, considered Nico, and he lay dead now in the trying.

But Nico refused to believe that. In reality, he considered the old man to be invincible, a force of nature – and you could not kill a force of nature, merely wait for its passing. Where are you, then? he demanded of his master.

Perhaps Ash hadn't tried at all. Maybe some aspect of the Rshun code had stopped him from attempting a rescue. The code did not allow for personal acts of revenge, so perhaps, too, it did not allow for personal acts of rescue, not when the needs of their vendetta were more pressing.

I should have left you when I still could, Nico reflected. I should have taken my chance, and returned home to Khos and my mother.

For a moment he cursed the day that Ash had walked into his life. But in truth it was a superficial emotion, and he cast it away quickly. He did not wish to be bitter about such things now he was so close to his own end. Ash had been good for him. It was Nico's fault he had allowed things to go this far.

Serese came to his mind. Nico would never have met her had it not been for his master. But again Nico's thoughts twisted inside him; he imagined his friend Aleas dazzling the girl with his charms and good looks, sweeping her off her feet after Nico was gone. He imagined how they would both remember poor Nico – how he had been a friend once, long ago, a strange lad, but with a good heart; and how it was a bitter memory, even now, to think how he had died in that terrible way. We should have tried harder to save him, they would say, before returning to their fine bed to sweat away their regrets.

More bitterness, Nico realized. It wasn't like him, or so he had always thought. But his mother could be like that sometimes. Maybe it was true what people said, and your parents rubbed off on you, no matter what.

Someone was addressing the crowd outside: a woman's voice, loud and imperious. It was the Matriarch herself by the sound of it. She was telling them something about Rshun. Nico realized she was telling them about him.

Sweet Ers, he wasn't ready yet. He wondered if he ever could be. A guard approached and prodded his damaged ribs through the bars. He flinched from the touch, still covering his head with one arm. Another guard jabbed his back.

'All right!' Nico snapped as he struggled up.

They forced him into the passageway, where a black robe landed at his feet. They forced Nico to put it on, the effort almost causing him to black out.

Next, they gave him a short-sword and shield. A guard buckled the shield to the forearm above his useless hand. The men were quiet and professional as they worked, like weary drovers glad to be near the end of their day. None would meet his eye, he noticed.

'Don't put up much of a fight,' suggested one of the guards, speaking close to his ear. 'Let them finish you quickly.'

The entrance yawned before him, fat with the bright daylight. Nico shielded his eyes. Terror surged through him, chilling him with uncertainties, as they prodded him out through the gateway.

*

The sun shone overhead, weakened by a thin layer of cloud. The fog he had glimpsed on his journey to the Shay Madi was gone now, though the sand still lay damp beneath his bare feet. A smell of carnage hung in the air: it clung to his tongue, to the back of his throat. He could see trails of blood in the sand, leading to different closed gateways positioned around the walls.

Nico gazed around at the thousands of faces waiting expectantly in the stands. For a breathless moment their stares devoured him where he stood. Someone laughed, and then they were all laughing, a cacophony of howls that was like some awful nightmare come real. Nico shrank into himself. Shame overwhelmed his panic.

'You came to kill us, little Rshun,' called out a voice, and he turned to face the Matriarch herself, who stood in the royal box flanked by Acolytes and priests. 'Now pay for your failure.'

A hush descended across the vast bowl of the stadium. A shadow passed across the sand: birds – black crows – wheeling overhead.

Slowly, a gate began to open on the opposite side of the enclosed space. He heard the snap of firecrackers. Flashes lit the dim interior of the gateway.

A pack of wolves raced out on to the sands.

Nico took an involuntary step backwards.

Soldiers lined the stone walls of the arena, which were too high to climb. The gateway ahead was now closed tight.

Nico counted six wolves in all. At first they moved in some confusion, but then they began to take notice of him. They ranged outwards, around the arena, but closing the distance.

Nico gripped the short-sword tighter. He hefted the blade, trying its weight. It was a hacking weapon, weighted towards its tip. Baracha had made them train at times with such simple blades.

Movement caught his eye and he turned to see a wolf darting in towards him, kicking up sand from its feet, its tongue lolling loose.

There was nowhere for him to run.

Nico spread his feet for balance and raised the shield. It took all of his nerve to stand and face the charging animal; it was, very possibly, the single most determined act of his life.

He swung the blade, almost unbalancing himself with the force of the movement. The wolf snapped its teeth and darted away, its animal reek lingering behind it.

Another sped in from his right. Again, frantically, he swung the blade, just missing as it dodged out of reach.

Three were now approaching him slowly from directly in front. Sweat began coursing off him as though someone had doused him with lukewarm water. Nico backed up against the closed gate. The crowd howled in anticipation.

In the back of his mind a quiet place suddenly appeared, a corner of detachment that he retreated into without question. He took a mental breath, and it provided enough of a space for Nico to wonder what these people could possibly gain from such butchery as this.

Echoes of the crowd's laughter still occupied his mind. He recalled those bitter times as a youth at the schoolhouse, when children had laughed at another's misfortune. Cruel, cutting laughter, without compassion. At times he had even joined in himself.

He thought, too of the monk calling out in anger to this crowd, earlier. All these thousands of people, and that man had been the only sane one here.

It was true and, as he realized it, the shame of their mockery left him. It turned outwards, directed on to the crowd themselves, so that he felt shame for them instead – for their desire to watch the murder of another and take delight in it.

We are all cruel children at heart, he reflected.

Blood flushed to his face. His jaws clamped tight, shooting spikes of pain through his head from his ruined teeth. It came to him, then, that to be terrified of this situation, to cringe away from it, was only to allow it to win, to be right. Better to be angry, he decided. Make a stand.

The six wolves charged.

Nico hesitated for an instant, and then something vital occurred within him. His training suddenly connected with his despair.

With a grunt, he pushed off from the gate and staggered forwards to meet the animals head on – just as Ash would have done.

A wolf raced in from his left, so fast that it left spouts of dust trailing in an arc behind its feet. He smashed its muzzle with the shield, both of them rebounding from the collision, Nico gaining only strength from the agony that burst from his broken hand. He slashed out at another wolf coming in to his right, air whooshing from his throat in rapid pants. The blade opened up its scalp.

As he closed on the group of three, he skipped in his stride and kicked deep and hard into the sand, spraying a cloud of it across their eyes. It blinded them enough that, for a moment, they faltered, shaking their heads – and then he was in amongst them, stabbing and hacking with his blade, smashing with his shield, mercifully feeling nothing as their teeth and claws raked him.

Nico was conscious of very little after that, for he was in a red frenzy. He was aware of stopping one of the wolves in its tracks by uttering his own animal snarl. He was aware of chopping at another until it was no longer of one piece. He was aware of getting bitten deep in the thigh, and biting his attacker in return just as fiercely, his sword stabbing and stabbing.

And then Nico was on his knees in the sand, sucking air into his heaving lungs, and he was done for, his strength utterly spent.

All around him, the wolves lay either dead or dying.

Not a sound stirred in the stadium save for his own gasping and that of one adversary nearby, panting as it lay on its side. An image of doom flashed in his mind, and then it was gone.

Nico was unaware of his own wounds as he looked up to see the Matriarch staring at him across the distance between them. Even from here he could see that her mouth hung open in astonishment.

Nico heard a chant rise from the crowd. He had no idea what it meant.

He spotted an Acolyte hurrying through the press on the stands to reach his mistress. He shouted something into her ear and again her gaze flicked towards Nico. She took a curved knife from her belt and even as he watched, she plunged its blade deep into the messenger's belly. Blade still in hand, now darkly wet, she turned back to face the arena.

'Burn him,' her voice rang out. 'Burn him alive.'

A storm of protest rose up from the crowd. She stood against it, unswayed.

Acolytes appeared from the various gateways around the walls. They converged on Nico, pointing their swords at him so that he would not move.

Not that he could have moved. He dropped his own weapon and rocked back on the sand. He put his face between his knees and sucked in air. He could think of nothing but regaining his wind.

When next he looked up, he saw men busy erecting a bonfire in the centre of the great arena. In relays, guards and soldiers ferried armfuls of planking and chopped wood towards it. Around the stadium people still shouted their dissent. They pushed against the ring of soldiers, some even hurling missiles at them.

The bonfire grew higher.