Gladiators Of Hapanu

Chapter 18

Kuka turned out to be right. Within weeks Blade was the most famous gladiator in the Games, except for a few veterans who'd been fighting for up to twenty years. He was certainly the most famous beginner in the history of Gerhaa.

Some of the fighters were jealous, but only a few could be suspected of harboring grudges. Skroga put it bluntly:

«It'd be different, you wanted to cut up men right and left. They know you don't kill much if you don't have to. They also know you're good enough, mostly you don't have to. So your big name won't hurt them.»

The only real complaint anyone seemed to have against Blade was that he hadn't killed Vosgu of Hosh while he had the man at his mercy. «The ghosts of a lot of beginners would stand up and cheer louder than the bastards in the stands if they saw Vosgu with steel between his ribs,» one man said.

«The bastards in the stands» were a different matter from Blade's comrades. Their favor could raise a gladiator to the heights, but it seldom lasted long enough to keep him there. Blade knew that he was in another race against time, a deadly one, and there was no guarantee he'd win. He didn't even know where Meera was, let alone how to reach her and get her out of Gerhaa.

For the time being, though, he was fairly well off. The crowd seemed to like his style of fighting, even if it led to spectacular displays of skill rather than gruesome piles of bodies for the Horned Ones. The spectacle grew even more brilliant when Blade began to be matched against more experienced fighters. They met him at his own level, and once he and Skroga went at it with sword and shield for a solid hour and a half. By the time they finished, the water between the amphitheater and the Island was practically carpeted with scarves and flowers.

Blade was helped along by a piece of good luck. Three weeks after his first fight was one of the great religious festivals, with more than a hundred fights spread over four days. Blade fought seven times, the last two times as the leader of a team. One team was six men, the other twenty. Only four men in the history of the Games had ever been team leaders their first year, and none the leader of a team of twenty.

That not only helped Blade's reputation among the crowd, it helped him among his fellow gladiators. They now knew he could lead with the same skill he'd showed in fighting. A few still objected to this rapid rise of a beginner, but practically no one didn't trust him or admit his extraordinary abilities.

All this was helpful, but still not enough. What finally opened doors for Blade was gaining a reputation among the noblewomen of Gerhaa.

Blade's first summons to a noblewoman's bed set something of a pattern for the others.

As he marched across the bridge to the Island of Death one morning, he saw something fall to the planks at his feet. It was a lady's golden arm ring, with an embroidered silk scarf trailing from one side and a piece of parchment tied around the other side. He started to step over it, then saw his name written in Kylanan script on the parchment. He picked it up and tied it to his belt, then marched on across the bridge with the rest of the fighters.

He wasn't scheduled to fight until a team event halfway through the afternoon's program, so he had plenty of time to unwrap the parchment and read it. In fact, the message was so short he was easily able to memorize it.

Blade the Englishman

If you are fit after today's battle, show the scarf and ring to the guards at the entrance to the barracks. They will let you pass out. Come to the rear door of the House of Taranda in the Street of the Wheelmakers, between the second and third night hour, and follow he who lets you in.

Blade was folding up the parchment when Skroga came over to him and looked down at the scarf and ring, then at Blade. «It was for you?»

«Yes.»

«Not a surprise to me. Don't hope for too much, and guard your back. Some places in Gerhaa can do more hurt to those of the Games than this Island.»

«I've survived in such places, Skroga. But thank you for your warning.»

«Good luck be yours, then.» The older man turned away without a further word, but some of the other fighters were now staring at Blade. He stared back until the men found other things more worth their attention.

The fighting went as smoothly as a factory assembly line that afternoon. Blade wound up sweaty and bruised but unhurt. After his bath and a light supper, he pulled the cord that rang the bell in the guardhouse on the surface. As usual when there was only one man coming up, they lowered the sling used to deliver prostitutes and supplies for the fighters. Blade climbed into it, was hauled up to the surface, and presented the scarf and ring to the men waiting there.

All of them laughed coarsely and one of them was bold enough to slap him on the back before their captain called them to heel. The captain frowned at Blade, then nodded and gave him a Slave Pass.

«Very well. Go where you've been called. But if you're not back by dawn, you'll be posted as a runaway. You understand?» Blade understood. Runaway slaves in Gerhaa were tortured to death, painfully and horribly. Slow disembowelment was the current fashion. Right now he was particularly determined to live. This call to the House of Taranda had interesting possibilities, even if it started from nothing more than some lady's unsatisfied lust. Blade thanked the guard captain with elaborate humbleness, then walked out into the evening.

The walk was long and several times he was stopped and had to show his pass. By the time he reached the back gate of the House of Taranda, it was completely dark and raining heavily. Blade splashed through ankle-deep water rushing down the streets toward the drains that carried it into the Great River. For at least a few hours tomorrow the twisting, stinking streets of Gerhaa would be almost clean.

Once he'd knocked on the back gate and showed his message, things moved swiftly. A cloaked servant led him up a winding stairway inside the wall of the house. A small door opened at the head of the stairs, and beyond the door lay a richly furnished bedroom. The carpets on the floor were ankle-deep, the bed was richly carved and inlaid with Blood of Hapanu and pearl-shell, tapestries covered the wall, and herbs burning in several brass pots perfumed the air.

On the bed a dark-haired Kylanan woman reclined. She wore a loose red gown slashed to the waist between her full breasts and to the thigh on either side. A jeweled girdle held her waist in. Her face was too broad for real beauty and was practically caked with makeup, but she was far from unattractive. Blade found his opinion of the noblemen of Gerhaa dropping another notch, if they left women like this seeking the embraces of fighters from the Games.

As Blade stepped into the room the door closed behind him and the woman rose from the bed. She smiled. «You are as magnificent here as when you fight upon the sands,» Blade was wearing only his gladiator's outfit. The woman reached out a hand and ran it over his shoulders and down across his chest. «There is all the strength in you anyone could need. Such a night I shall have!» Blade couldn't help noticing the «I.» Apparently he wasn't going to be much more than a living tool for the lady's pleasure.

The woman pointed with one hand to her pillows, while the other hand went to the clasp of her girdle. Nestled between the two pillows Blade saw a small ivory-handled riding whip. He looked back to the lady as the girdle fell to the floor. She shrugged her shoulders and the gown followed it. Her breasts were massive, almost too large in proportion to the rest of her body, but firm and solid.

«Well?» she snapped. «Are you all muscle and no sense? I thought you were more, and so did others. If they are disappointed….» She left the threat unfinished. Instead she turned away from Blade and threw herself face down on the bed, her ample buttocks raised.

Blade decided to play the role the lady was giving him. It wasn't much to his taste, but being hauled off to a slow and painful death was even less so. He stepped up to the bed, reached for the whip with one hand, and ran the other lightly down her back. She grunted in annoyance. «Later, later, for that. First the whip.»

Blade suppressed a sigh. Then he raised the whip and brought it down across the lady's buttocks with all the strength in his right arm. She screamed and quivered all over, but it was a happy scream. For a moment Blade was almost sure he was going to vomit. Then he struck again, and again, and again, throwing himself into the lady's game to shut out of his mind the obscenity of her pleasure.

Suddenly she was no longer screaming, but writhing and sobbing, pressing herself flat on the bed and clawing at the blankets with fingers and toes. Her buttocks were red with a pattern of criss-crossing stripes. Blade hadn't drawn blood, and didn't know whether to be glad or sorry.

Then the woman turned over. Her hair was a tangled bird's nest, her large nipples were now immense and swollen, and the hair between her thighs was drenched. Her mouth was so slack that Blade expected her to start drooling like an idiot. Instead she sat up and reached out with both hands, hooking her fingers over Blade's loinguard and drawing him toward her. «Off with that, you!» she gasped. «Off!»

At the moment Blade would rather have made love to a Horned One. However, he had no choice. He reached down, plucked the woman's hands from his loinguard, and started unhooking it.

The lady with the whip was the first. She wasn't the last. Fortunately most of the others didn't have her peculiar tastes. They were just as demanding, but only demanded what a normal man could give a normal woman. That was just as well. Blade had plenty of stamina for the hungry women of Gerhaa, but he had no stomach for perverts. If he'd had to deal with too many like the lady with the whip, his temper would have snapped sooner or later, with disastrous results.

As it was, going to bed with Richard Blade, super-gladiator, became a fashion among the idle, neglected, curious, or merely lusty ladies of Gerhaa. Not just among the noblewomen, either-the wives of respectable merchants sometimes found him to their taste. Once four middle-aged matrons gathered together and entertained themselves with Blade. The scene reminded Blade of a bridge party so much that he had to fight back laughter. The only difference was that instead of decorously playing cards, the ladies were all naked and practically fighting for the next turn at Blade. That session nearly wore Blade out, for the ladies not only knew what they wanted but knew how much.

Sometimes Blade was given a handful of copper coins or one or two silver ones. Sometimes he was given odd bits of jewelry or the silk scarves that every lady in Gerhaa seemed to have by the dozens. Most of the time he was given nothing at all. No doubt the chance to get out of the fighters' barracks and have dozens of the choicest women in Gerhaa was considered to be enough of a reward.

Blade wouldn't have called most of the women particularly choice, but he was indeed getting rewards far more important than money. He was learning his way around Gerhaa. He carefully memorized streets and alleys, until he could have found his way around some quarters of the city in total darkness. He was also learning a few of the city's secrets-or at least things which had been secret from the Forest People. He didn't have to ask many questions, either. Mostly it was just a matter of keeping his eyes and ears open and listening to the murmurs of love-drunk women.

The Kylanans were familiar with the kohkol tree and its sap. It was the secret of their crossbows and siege engines. They took ropes of woven hair, soaked them in boiled kohkol sap, then smoke-dried them. The result was something like an incredibly tough rubber-and extremely powerful weapons. Blade even heard hints that Gerhaa's bows and catapults were better than the ones at home in Kylan. He couldn't help wondering what the Emperor of Kylan might think of that, if it was true.

The other secret was that Gerhaa was not nearly as strong as it seemed. The walls were indeed nearly impregnable, and the ships patrolling the Great River were enough to stand off the canoes of the Forest People. The garrison was not nearly as formidable. It numbered barely three thousand armed men permanently on duty, half regular Kylanan soldiers and half the Protector's Pets.

These weren't supposed to be all the city's defenders in wartime, of course. There were the nobles and their household retainers, most of them armed and trained. They might be formidable and they would almost certainly be loyal to the Protector. Too many of them owed him too much to do anything else.

Free citizens with a certain amount of wealth were also supposed to keep weapons and be ready to turn out with them. From what Blade could see, most of these weapons were useless and most of the people didn't know how to use them. Even if they turned out, how much could they do?

What was there to bring against these defenders? There were the fighters of the Games. There were the poor, who would almost certainly fight against the Protector, whose Guard abused them for sport. There were the household slaves, who would fight almost anybody for a chance at freedom. They might not fight very well, for most of them were women, boys, or old men, but they would fight without caring about the cost to themselves. Finally there were the Forest People, however many of them could make their way down the Great River to the city.

It might be impossible to gather all these enemies and hurl them at Gerhaa, but «impossible» wasn't one of Richard Blade's favorite words. Gerhaa could be taken. Blade was as sure of that as if he'd seen the words carved on a block of the city's walls. When it was taken, the danger to the Forest People would be gone, perhaps forever and certainly for generations.

Now all he had to do was create that impossible alliance and unleash its armies against the Stone Village.