Guardians Of The Coral Throne

Chapter 10

Blade's first fight in the Arena came two weeks after Figurades bought him. It was not much of a test. Against Blade none of the three opponents lasted more than ten minutes. Two of them had no more chance than a twelve-year-old boy. The third was either more skilled or more desperate, but even he lasted ten minutes only because Blade realized that he shouldn't kill too quickly. The crowd in the seats of the Arena had the same fondness for seeing slow, painful deaths as the Karani soldiers did. Blade couldn't bring himself to slice the man apart piece by piece, but he did manage to play with him long enough to have the crowd howling in bloodthirsty delight. Then the man launched a wild charge at Blade. A moment later he was flat on the sand at Blade's feet, blood pouring from his mouth and from the spear wound in his chest.

Blade learned a good deal from that first fight. He learned even more from watching the rest of the day's fighting. By nightfall, it was obvious that only fights involving the less skilled gladiators were usually pushed to the end. The magnates of the Empire of Karan were more than happy to gratify the mob's lust for blood. But as a rule, they were unwilling to dip too deeply into their pockets to do so. A first-class gladiator ran from four hundred gold pieces on up. But the poor wretches who died by the half-dozen cost their masters no more than fifty or a hundred apiece.

Yet there was a catch in that pattern, a catch that Blade kept in mind on the way back to Figurades' slave quarters that night. What happened when really good fighters faced each other, each owned by a master with a well-filled purse? Even against a half-trained fighter, bad luck or an accident could still kill an expert. Against an equal, the risk was even greater.

Then suppose betting was heavy, so that one side might gain a tempting prize by a kill? Or suppose someone wanted to put on a particularly spectacular show of skill with weapons? Blade wondered how long it would be before he got caught in a situation like that.

He saw experts pitted against each other the very next week, in fact. Iscaros sent seven of his most formidable gladiators into the Arena. Five of them walked out of it, leaving behind two dead comrades and no less than seventeen dead opponents and a wildly cheering crowd.

That day Iscaros was accompanied by a woman who made Blade start the first time he saw her. For a moment he thought he was looking at Tera, flaunted on the arm of her master. Then he looked more closely and saw that this woman, though much like Tera, was a good head taller and stood and gestured like one born to command. The simple robe that flowed down from her slim shoulders glittered with a wealth of tiny jewels that not even the arrogant Iscaros would have lavished on a slave woman.

«Who is that woman with Iscaros?» Blade asked the one-armed ex-gladiator in charge of Figurades' team.

The man grunted and spat openly over the railing into the sand below. «That-that-«He apparently couldn't think of a word bad enough. «That woman with Count Iscaros, she's Princess Amadora. 'The Gift of Ama,' the Love Goddess, her name is. Certainly fits her, too. Can't live a day without a man's tool in her, they say. Count Iscaros must have more than meets the eye, for her to keep him around this long.»

Blade looked at the princess again. No, she did not look that much like Tera. This woman had no more life in her face than in the diadem perched on top of her high-piled hair. Then Blade remembered that in Karan the diadem was a sign of royal blood.

«Iscaros aims high, even so. Can't the Emperor stand between him and Amadora?»

The other man granted and looked at Blade as though he had just asked why water ran downhill. «Not a chance. She's the Emperor's own first cousin, and ten good years older. She did a fair bit to raise him up after his father died. Now, though, I think likely she's aiming to raise him higher still.»

Blade knew by now the ceremonial method of slow execution in Karan. «On a wall hook, with a gilded cord around his throat?»

The man looked at Blade warningly and cleared his throat. But he also nodded. Blade decided not to ask if Amadora was aiming for the Coral Throne herself. That question was neither wise nor at all necessary.

Was Iscaros aiming just as high? Certainly he would have a chance to do so, as long as Princess Amadora kept him around. That made the game he was playing against Pardes even bigger than Blade had suspected.

Blade did not much care who ruled in Karan. But he did care about being so trapped in games played by its mighty men and women that he could not lift a finger to help or even find Tera. It was maddening to realize that he might never even know if she was dragging out her life in some third-class brothel, or lay dead in a secret grave, tortured to death by Iscaros for an evening's amusement.

Blade decided that if he had a chance to kill one high-placed Karani and one only, it would be Iscaros.

The summer wore on, the fights in the Arena now coming two and three times a week. The competition among Karan's rulers to put on the best and bloodiest show for the screaming mob grew more and more intense. Before too long, all of the competitors except for Pardes, Iscaros, and two or three others with either great ambitions or great wealth or both dropped out, unable to stand the pace.

The showpiece of Iscaros' team was a trio of men only a little smaller than Blade. They always fought as a trio, one with broadsword and shield, one with a two-handed axe, and one with trident and net. Each of them was formidable alone. As a team they swept all before them until no one could be found to bet against them and only the cheapest and most expendable fighters were sent against them. Finally they disappeared from the Arena, after gladiators picked to fight them started killing themselves rather than appear in the Arena against the Three of Iscaros.

Blade, meanwhile, built up a modest reputation of his own as a spectacular executioner of unskilled and semiskilled fighters. Only twice did he meet men who were anything like a fair match for him. Building a reputation by satisfying the crowd's barbarous thirst for blood disgusted Blade. He was also quite sure that his lack of equal opponents was no accident. Somewhere in the background, Pardes' massive hand was at work, playing his piece as he thought best.

The summer was more than half over when one evening before the games the one-armed trainer called Blade to his office. As Blade entered, he saw a large wicker basket sitting on the table, a bronze tube tied to the handle with a gold cord. The trainer nodded to Blade, who broke open the tube and read the letter inside.

It had no salutation, no signature, and no manners. It said only:

In tomorrow's fighting you shall be matched alone against the Three of Iscaros in a Game of Rescue. Your victory shall earn much. (For whom? Blade wondered.) His Sacred Majesty shall be present, wishing to appear before his people as he prepares his march into Scador. It is wished that you eat no food and drink no wine except from this basket.

Blade had heard rumors of an invasion of Scador, but this was the first definite word. In any case, there was a more important question.

«What is a Game of Rescue?» asked Blade.

The trainer smiled. «One of the great shows of the High Arena, Blade. You will be remembered for being part of one, whether you win or lose. I can think-«

«Think after answering my question, please,» said Blade.

The trainer made a mock bow. «As Your Exaltedness wishes. In the Game of Rescue one or more beautiful women are tied naked to a stake in the center of the Arena. One side tries to rescue them, the other to keep them from being rescued. At the end of the fight, the victors rape the women.»

Blade could not keep the disgust out of his voice. «There, in front of half of Karanopolis?»

The trainer shrugged. «Why not?»

At that moment, if someone had presented Blade with a switch that would have destroyed the whole Empire of Karan and everyone in it, Blade would have pulled it without thinking twice. His fist came up by sheer reflex. Only after a long moment was he sure that he was not going to spatter the trainer's brains all over the opposite wall.

After that moment, control returned. He looked down at the basket, then at the trainer. «I think I shall eat nothing and drink nothing except water from the common tap until the fight is over,» he said. «Send this basket to the slave girls, or feed it to the pigs, or do as you wish with it. I shall not eat any of it.»

The trainer's mouth was still gaping open when Blade turned on his heel and strode out of the office.

Once he was back in his own room and felt completely calm, he considered whether he had gambled too much on a gesture. He decided he hadn't. Twelve or even twenty-four hours' fasting would not slow him down or weaken him enough to decrease his chances even against the Three.

Was the basket from Iscaros or from Pardes? Was the food and wine poisioned or not? It didn't matter now. What did matter was that both Pardes and Iscaros would undoubtedly hear of Blade's gesture, hopefully before they came to the Arena tomorrow. They would both be wondering what was going on in Blade's mind, both be wondering if this little piece would suddenly start moving along its own path!

The idea of making two of Karan's mighty game-players even slightly confused and uncertain was very pleasant for Blade. It was so pleasant that he found it easy to get a good night's sleep, untroubled by his rumbling stomach or any thoughts at all of tomorrow's fight.