Gladiators Of Hapanu

Chapter 16

The guards who came to take Blade to the Protector's palace were two regular soldiers and two Guardsmen. They hustled him up the stairs as if hungry wolves were chasing them and broke into a trot once they reached the street.

After the first few corners the Guardsmen began to pant, then they started to slow down. As they did, the regular soldiers seemed to catch their second wind. Their muscle-corded, tanned legs pounded as steadily as the pistons of an engine. It amused Blade to keep up with them easily, and it amused both him and the soldiers to see the Guardsmen struggling more and more desperately to keep up. By the time they'd reached the palace, halfway across the city, the two Guardsmen were gasping and coughing like a couple of tuberculosis patients. The two soldiers couldn't help winking at Blade as they turned him over to the Guardsmen at the palace, and he trusted them enough to wink back.

The Guardsmen who took charge of Blade obviously resented that little victory over their comrades. For a moment they looked at him so fiercely he was afraid they were going to take out their resentment on him. Before they could move two officers appeared at the top of the stairs and called them off.

One of the officers was Cha-Chern. He looked Blade up and down with what could only be called a leer on his face as they climbed the stairs. «The Protector may indeed find you interesting, barbarian. You would not be to my taste, but our master's tastes are not mine.»

Blade was happy he didn't have to reply to Cha-Chern's remarks. Then they reached the top of the stairs, the bronze doors of the palace swung open, and for a moment he couldn't have replied even if he'd wanted to. The spectacle of the palace was too staggering.

Beyond the door was a room five stories high, with a balcony across the rear, stairs curving up to each end of the balcony, and a quadruple archway under the balcony. Everything was on a colossal scale, dwarfing human beings to the size of ants.

It wasn't just a matter of sheer size, either. As Blade studied the room, he couldn't find a single square inch of wall or floor that wasn't decorated. The floor was inlaid with marble and other polished stones, separated by silvered metal bands. The columns of the arches were carved from something like blue jade into the forms of Horned Ones, birds, and snakes. Each step of the stairs was made of a different kind of stone, except for a few made of carved and polished wood. The railings of the stairs and the balcony were complicated metal lattice-work, all enameled or gilded. Everywhere Blade saw Blood of Hapanu, some faceted stones the size of a man's fist, others as fine as dust.

The walls were covered to twice the height of a man with paintings and mosaics. Some were landscapes or river or forest, others were abstract, but most were the most explicit erotic scenes Blade had ever seen. Absolutely nothing was left to the imagination. Every possible act that men, women, and animals could do with or to one another was set down in loving detail.

Along the walls stood more of the Protector's Pets, the leather of the officers brilliantly dyed and tooled and the armor of the men silvered. There were also a few servants scuttling back and forth, as nervous as mice passing under the noses of cats. None of the servants wore anything except makeup and heavy perfume. More perfumes floated out into the chamber, so overpowering that Blade was fighting not to cough.

The only thing in the whole chamber that wasn't part of the display was the ceiling. That was plain stone, painted or whitewashed to a pale ivory color. Blade found it a relief to look upward and rest his eyes and brain with the ceiling. Then his escorts prodded him toward the stairs. He went up them, his escort falling back as he approached the top. In a chair of plain white wood in the middle of the balcony sat the Protector of Gerhaa.

Blade stopped as the Protector's eyes met his, then examined the man. The ruler of Gerhaa looked hardly more than a boy, except for his eyes. They were large, dark, luminous, and full of hints of more knowledge than any three sane men ought to have. Otherwise the Protector was short and not particularly handsome, although well-muscled. He wore only knee length breeches embroidered with gold and a belt with a curved sword, and his skin shone with scented oil. He'd shaved the top of his skull and let the hair on the sides of his head grow down into long trailing sideburns, stiff with grease and heavily scented.

Across his lap rested a truly awe-inspiring badge of office — a staff four feet long, with a gold shaft and silver tips. The gold and silver were both almost hidden, though, under masses of Blood of Hapanu, forming swirling patterns up and down the shaft. At each end the silver flared into a mounting for a stone nearly the size of a hen's egg.

The Protector rose gracefully, putting his staff aside. Liquid fire seemed to flow up and down it as the light danced along the stones. The man beckoned to Blade. «Come to me, my fine barbarian friend.» Blade took one stiff step forward and stopped. The Protector laughed. «I said-come. To those I call friend, I give pleasure, not pain. May I hope to call you friend?»

The voice was low, smooth, and polite. To someone who wasn't looking at the Protector, it would have sounded like the voice of a civilized man making a reasonable offer. To Blade that voice completed the picture of the Protector he'd started building when he saw the man's eyes. He had to force himself not to take a step backward and raise his fists. This man was unclean, from head to foot and from his oily skin inward to whatever lay at the heart of him. It wasn't just his sexual vices-they were probably the least important thing about him. It was everything about him-more than Blade could have found words to describe.

The Protector sensed Blade's hesitation. He came toward the Englishman, cooing like a dove, hand outstretched to pat Blade comfortingly. Then abruptly he stopped, fingers inches from Blade's skin, as if a bear trap had closed on his leg. He'd seen the look in Blade's eyes and read their message.

If you touch me, you will die. Nothing you can do will stop me. Whatever you have for brains will be splattered all over your expensive interior decorating,

The Protector of Gerhaa had more than his share of bad habits, but stupidity wasn't one of them. He sensed that the man facing him was ready and able to kill him bare-handed, even if he died in the process. The Protector also sensed that even if he avoided a confrontation now, he'd never be safe or at ease with this man loose in the palace, or indeed within a hundred yards of him. There were other things to be sought beside pleasure.

So the Protector's hand froze in midair. Then he slowly lowered his arm and turned his head without stepping back. «Heh! Take him away. He is magnificent, but I should not be selfish. He will do as well in the Games, and then all can enjoy him.» Then he shrugged and sighed elegantly, as the two Guard officers came up the stairs to lead Blade away.

After the diseased decadence of the Protector's palace, the underground barracks of the gladiators in the Games of Hapanu came as a positive relief to Blade.

The barracks were a series of caves and tunnels far underground, on the west side of the city. More tunnels led from the barracks out to the Island of Death, where the Games of Hapanu took place every ten days, as well as on the various sacred holidays and every day during the week of the High Feast of Hapanu. This added up to about forty rounds of Games during the standard Kylanan year, more than enough to demand a steady flow of gladiators. Some of the fights were to the death, and even those that weren't often left men crippled for life or disabled for months at a time.

The tunnels to the Island of Death were the only way out of the barracks for the thousand-odd gladiators there. The stairs up to the city twisted and wound, with iron doors locked from the outside at several points. Even if by some chance all the doors could be broken down or unlocked, ten men could hold the stairs against an army. In fact there were only four armed men on regular duty in the guardhouse at the head of the stairs. That would be enough to call for help from the soldiers' barracks three streets away, then hold the head of the stairs until that help arrived.

There was a good reason for locking up the gladiators of the Games. A fifth of the thousand were usually beginners, too frightened to be rebellious and often too inexperienced to be dangerous. The rest were among the toughest fighting men Blade had ever seen in any Dimension. Most of them could use almost any edged or pointed weapon with either hand, and feared neither guards, soldiers, the Protector, nor Hapanu himself. Left where they had any chance at all of breaking loose, these men would be trying it once a week.

For the same reason that the gladiators were locked below ground, they were left very much on their own. Food, equipment, medical supplies, and prostitutes for their amusement were lowered down a shaft on ropes. Their water came from two springs in the rocks, and their wastes and dead bodies were dropped down another shaft leading to the Great River. They cared for their own sick and wounded, kept their own discipline, punished their own criminals, and generally behaved more like a small town or a ship's crew than a band of cutthroats. Guards seldom entered the barracks, and when they did they came down forty strong.

«Makes sense, the way everybody sees it,» said the man who explained the situation to Blade. He was a one-eyed, bald, and horribly scarred veteran called Old Skroga. He'd been the chief of one of the tribes on the far eastern frontier of Kylan, captured in a border skirmish and sent here to Gerhaa because he was too likely to escape from anywhere on the other side of the ocean. He'd won more than two hundred fights, killed twelve opponents, and been wounded fifteen times himself. There was obviously very little he didn't know about the Games of Hapanu or the men who fought in them. Just as obviously, he wasn't telling Blade everything he knew.

«They try to keep soldiers down here, they'd lose five a week at least,» he went on. «We'd lose more, so many we'd give them no fun upstairs before long. So they leave us be and we give them no reason not to.»

«What about matching men against each other in the Games?» asked Blade. «Can they afford to leave that to you?»

Skroga looked sharply at Blade. «You see enough, but maybe say too much about what you see. But you see true now. We fight how they say and who, but they don't say 'Fight to the death!' much. When they do, they don't see what they want, and then they change. Why you think so many of us still live and fight after ten years?»

Blade returned Skroga's look. «That's exactly why I thought there must be some agreement about how you fight. I do see enough, most of the time. That's why I'm still alive and fighting.» He didn't make his tone an open challenge to Skroga, only a firm reminder that he should be taken seriously.

In fact, Blade didn't have much trouble being taken seriously from the first, and even treated with some respect. His size, build, and scars hinted that he was a fighting man. His first few practice bouts with the gladiators chosen to break in new men proved it. They used wooden swords and untipped spears, but in spite of this and in spite of pulling his blows, Blade put two of his four opponents out of action with broken bones.

That attracted a good deal of notice. His fight with Skroga attracted even more. The old man was slowing down a bit, but his experience more than made up for it. Blade found himself having to use all his strength, speed, and skill to hold his own against Skroga. The fight lasted more than half an hour, without either man collecting more than a few bruises, and eventually it was Skroga who called a halt to it.

That fight was enough to mark Blade among the gladiators as a man to watch. They began to stand him drinks, invite him to join them for meals, advise him on the tricks of possible opponents and how to have his weapons custom-built for him when he could afford it.

They were also intrigued by his story. A man who was neither of Kylan nor of the Forest People, but an Englishman from beyond the known world, was hard to understand. It was even harder to understand how he'd come to be such a skilled fighter and so iron-nerved that he faced the prospect of the Games with no visible fear. Some said he must be mad, but Blade used his fists on one or two who said this too loudly or too often. After that, most said he must have been not only a warrior but a chief among the English.

Many of the gladiators from the Forest People had heard of Swebon, and they were particularly ready to think well of Blade. As one man put it:

«In all the Forest and among all the People, Swebon is known as a man who thinks each thought three times before he acts. If this Blade is indeed a sworn friend of Swebon, a good man has come to us.»

The speaker was a lean, undersized Banum named Kuka, with the middle finger of his left hand missing and a ghastly scar down his right leg. Blade learned that he came from a village the Fak'si once raided under Swebon's leadership.

«It was then that I lost the finger,» he added. «I wish I could say that I lost it to Swebon, but I did not. I was running to join the battle when I tripped over a root and fell. The finger was broken, then began to rot, so the priests cut it off.» He seemed more amused at his own clumsiness than anything else.

There was another attitude Blade found among the gladiators after he'd been accepted among them. They were all one band. It did not matter what a fighter had been before he came to Gerhaa, whether Forest People or Kylanan. It didn't matter what tribe of the Forest People he'd belonged to. It didn't even matter what crime he'd committed, if he was a criminal. He was accepted or rejected for what he did as a fighter in the Games of Hapanu, and for nothing else.

To be sure, the Ten Brothers, the informal committee for governing the barracks, had more Kylanans than Forest People on it. That was inevitable, as Kuka himself said.

«Many of those who come to us from the Forest think only that they will die. They do not think how they may live. So they do die, and many of them soon.» Kuka gave Blade a sharp, appraising stare. «I think you will live to become one of the Ten Brothers, unless the Forest Spirit is unjust.»

«I will rely more on my strength and good steel than on the Forest Spirit,» said Blade.

«As you should,» said Kuka, and patted Blade's hair.

Once more the notion of the gladiators of Hapanu as the crew of a ship occurred to Blade. They were men apart, cut off from the outside world, able to depend only on each other, living or dying without anyone's caring as long as they put on a good show. They were a good crew, proud, skilled, and tough in spite of the inevitable handful of bad apples.

They were also a crew without a captain, apart from the Ten Brothers and Skroga. There was no one who could lead them in one particular direction. If such a leader emerged, what might happen with a thousand tough fighters all ready to march?

Quite a lot, Blade suspected. However, before he could hope to offer himself as that leader, he would have to gain a name for himself. That meant not just surviving but winning in the Games of Hapanu.