The Gladiator Read online

  The Gladiator

  Cold Fury: Book One

  by Jon Kiln

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews.

  Chapter 1

  Draken held the small bowl to his lips, sipping at first, but finally taking greedy gulps of the hot oil. Candlelight set the shadows dancing in the supplication room even in late afternoon, when some sunlight still made its way past the monastery’s five spires. The oil burned all the way down. Intense pain made him grimace, but he didn’t think blisters would form on his throat the way they had when the ritual was new to him.

  Setting the ornately-carved bowl down on the altar, Draken reached forward with two fingers to put out the flame that heated the plum-sized pitcher of oil. The searing sting of open fire meeting bare flesh was not officially part of the ritual—in fact, there was a metal snuffer at the altar made specifically for smothering the flame—but to Draken it was as cleansing as drinking the hot oil. He got to his feet and headed into the stone passageway.

  Brother Keller was there, smiling in a way that did not touch his eyes. A hand emerged from his dark robes and landed on Draken’s shoulder.

  “Brother Dimiter, are you drinking your sins again?” the older monk asked.

  Dimiter was the false name Draken had given when he’d taken his vows as a monk at the monastery. He felt hypocritical hiding his identity to become a holy man, but sometimes these things were necessary.

  “It is a good ritual,” Draken said.

  “Yes,” Brother Keller nodded. “But there are many other rituals that please the gods. I see you here… often.”

  Draken would not have guessed his activities would be of interest to Keller, but he pretended not to be disturbed by it. He began walking down the corridor, and Keller’s hand fell to his side and promptly disappeared within the fold of his robe. He took long steps to join Draken as he walked. The cool of early Autumn could be felt in the stones under their bare feet.

  “I don’t mean to offend,” Keller said. “We just worry that—”

  “That what?” Draken responded, turning to face the man who pursued him. “That I’ll bring the displeasure of the gods because of my supplication? That I’ll ruin the sanctity of this place?”

  Keller looked shocked at Draken’s outburst. Clearly, he was not used to monks with tempers. “Not at all,” he said quickly. And then, in softer tones, “We worry that you will be hurt by the ritual.”

  Draken laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve danced with things more dangerous than hot oil.”

  “I don’t mean the oil.”

  “What then?” Draken continued down the hall. If only there was somewhere he really needed to be, some excuse to get away from this hound.

  “Your past. It can—”

  “No!” Draken said, resisting the urge to spin toward the man, maybe land a punch square on his mouth. Not because he hated him, but just to make him stop talking. “You cannot ask me about that. You have no right to ask, and I have no responsibility to tell. I shed that when I came here.”

  “But that’s exactly the problem. You didn’t. We all see it in your eyes. It keeps you from fully joining our brotherhood, as much as you want to.”

  They emerged into the open air of a walkway that could be called a battlement had violence not been totally forbidden to the monks and their monastery. The sunlight was thin here, as if it were an imitation of the real thing. Though night was still hours away, Draken could feel its promise already.

  “I know the church asks us to leave our pasts when we take up this mantle, but that’s an ideal,” Keller went on. “Sometimes we don’t match up to that, and I don’t just mean you. It happens to us all, now and again, especially when we joined the brotherhood as adults. Many of the monks here feel the same way I do. They are concerned for you. You need to face whatever is in your past. Talk to someone.”

  “But I made a vow…” Draken growled.

  “We all made vows,” Keller said abruptly, dropping his act of extreme patience. Some of the monks in the courtyard looked up at Keller’s outburst, but none with disapproval. Draken felt like he’d been ambushed. They’d all wanted Keller to talk to him, it seemed. “But we are also human! It may not be your responsibility to talk about your past, but it is your responsibility to serve the four-five gods, isn’t it?”

  Draken said nothing.

  “It is,” Keller answered for him, his volume finally falling back to the intimate level only Draken could hear. “And you can’t do that if all you ever have heart for are the solitary rituals of penitence. You need to talk to someone.”

  These words flared up the anger and rage in Draken’s heart, not least because they stung with the feeling of truth. He counted to five in his head before responding, so he could speak reasonably. “I don’t want to burden any of my brothers.”

  Keller smiled again, but this time with more sincerity. “Then go to town. A tavern. Anything. Talk to anyone. It will help. I don’t think that violates any of your vows.”

  The word tavern hit Draken with the force of a dagger, but he didn’t show it. Keller had no way of knowing how completely alcohol—and the activities it incited in him—had dismantled Draken’s life before. It had been almost a year since his last drink, but not an hour went by that his mind didn’t remind him he wanted another.

  “I can’t go to a tavern,” he said, dangerously close to revealing too much of his past, and Keller took an unconscious step back.

  “Then somewhere else,” the monk said. “A library, an inn. Anywhere someone might be willing to listen. And don’t return until you’re able to serve the vow you took.”

  Draken nodded, the pain of this dismissal descending slowly but surely like a great weight.

  “But, Dimiter,” Keller said softly. “Do return.”

  Chapter 2

  He didn’t find his confidant in a library or an inn. He decided he couldn’t risk anything so close to a tavern, as his brain was already screaming in panicky joy at the thought of just one ale, just one ale, just one ale. Dressed as he was in the trademark dark robe and inimitable silver necklace of his order, Draken aroused no suspicion as he wandered from one farmhouse to the next on the outskirts of Merri. Farmers’ children brought him food—soups and fatty cuts of lamb—because it was good luck to feed a monk, and the people knew no one needed luck more than the young in these troubled times. They were more likely than anyone, even the very old, to succumb to Her Sickness.

  Each night Draken would sleep under the stars, or the rainclouds if they were out, refusing the many offers for room and board. He did accept the blankets that were brought to him, usually by the women of the households, as well as their advice regarding the softest spots of ground on which to sleep.

  It wasn’t until he’d been gone for over a week that Draken saw someone he felt comfortable talking to. The girl, maybe fifteen years old, was tending mules at her uncle’s stables when Draken approached her. She dropped the burlap bag of grains the moment she saw the intent behind his walk. She fell to her knees and stretched her arms out toward him on the ground, a sincere kowtow.

  “Whom do you serve?” he asked the girl.

  She mumbled something, but he couldn’t make it out.

  “Rise,” he said with, he hoped, the same soft voice many of the monks used when they spoke to him. �
�I didn’t hear you.” Draken was young, only twenty-six, and it felt strange to him to act as one with such authority. But he also knew if he didn’t give orders this way the girl would assume she’d done something wrong.

  She scrambled to her feet and pulled her thick, dirty-blonde hair from her sallow face. “I serve… Kohlel?” she said, more as a question than anything.

  He raised his own arms to the sky, uttering the prayer of Kohlel, god of sustenance, the shortest prayer of the four-five gods, a rush of ancient syllables in a language only spoken by the monks. He transferred the worship she’d shown to him to her god. He hadn’t really needed to ask which she served, though; virtually all farmers served Kohlel.

  Perhaps Keller was right. It felt good to complete a ritual like this, so different from the few private rites he normally contented himself with. “I need you now,” he said, and fear flashed on her face. “No,” he said, quickly quelling her worries, “there are still no sacrifices. That has not changed. I need to talk to you, and you need to listen.”

  She nodded almost before she’d had time to digest his words. He guessed the most important thing he’d said was no, so she knew her life was not forfeit. And then she looked at him expectantly, ready to do his will, ready to listen for as long as he needed, and he knew why he’d chosen her. She looked just like Carella had when she was fifteen.

  He started his tale with the first important event he could ever remember experiencing.

  ***

  One night, his father asked him to come into his bedroom. The single candle by the bed seemed not so much to reveal the room as prevent Draken’s eyes from adjusting to the gloom of it. His father coughed, and the familiar timbre of it was like a warning call.

  “Father?” Draken said, rushing to the man’s bed, who only three weeks before had been as fit as any of the merchants in Figa. Karillo Wellstroma was only thirty-seven, but now he looked old, sunken into the bedclothes as if they were trying to swallow him.

  “It’s Her Sickness, son.”

  “No,” said Draken, but he didn’t need any convincing. No one coughed like that, like they had a shard of glass lodged in their throat and another in their lungs, unless they had Her Sickness. His father was a dead man. “No, no, no,” he cried, his tears running onto his father’s face.

  “It’s all right,” his father said, smoothing the boy’s hair with one shaky hand. “I go to the service of Dramm-Teskata. Now carry me to the tub. I need to prepare myself for the journey.”

  Draken did as he was asked. His father laughed, bemused, when he lifted the man’s body as if it were no heavier than a pillow. At age ten, Draken Wellstroma was already stronger than his older brothers. It had been a point of pride for him that he would carry two casks, one under each arm, into his father’s wine shop while Debbin and Pul had to struggle with one apiece.

  “You know where you get your strength, don’t you?” Of course Draken did. His father had told him many times. “Only Rada could give a young man such strength. You must have been born under a broken sky, though of course your mother and I didn’t know it at the time. The astro-priests assigned your night to Shinna, but… Ah ahh…” his father said as Draken lowered him into the steaming water. He let his body adjust to the heat before going on. “Not many people serve Rada these days. When my father was your age, there were many. Legions of men who served the army. Some women, too. But not now. I think it’s because there has been peace from war for so long, Rada is not needed as often. But I also think this means you are special. He will use you for a great purpose. When I am gone, I want you to care for your brothers. Find work. Debbin can run the shop, but you may need more money than he will be able to bring in since his knowledge of the business is not as… vast as my own.”

  “Don’t talk like this!” Draken said. “You can run the shop yourself when you get better!”

  “How many recover from Her Sickness?”

  Draken said nothing.

  After he was done bathing and was dressed in a nightgown, his father sat at the edge of his bed. “Go get your brothers. I need to speak to you all.”

  ***

  “Were your brothers angry that your father doted on you? That he told you to take care of them, and not the other way around?” the girl asked. She’d told him her name was Maradi.

  “Well,” Draken answered, “they didn’t know. As far as I remember, he never said anything of the sort to them.”

  Maradi’s mother caught Draken’s eye from the kitchen window. She waved politely, then turned her attention away. Draken was impressed that she didn’t come out, offer him food, tell him he could come inside, or otherwise disturb this important conversation. He thought most of the farmers and their wives would, but Maradi’s mother seemed more sensitive to Draken’s true needs. Not food or drink or comfort, but to tell himself to this girl. He smiled inwardly, thinking about how he’d gotten Maradi out of a whole day’s worth of chores, no questions asked. In fact, they’d praise the girl for her service in listening to the wandering monk.

  He looked at the girl—so much like Carella had been at that age, and continued his tale…

  Chapter 3

  Draken and Pul were on the north end of town, where boys often met for mock fights and light betting. The shadow of the Dramm-Teskata temple overtook the dusty arena of their play even just two hours past noon. Many of the boys who came here to fight each afternoon were arena hopefuls. The fighting arena in Figa was the largest in the known world, and a man could make a mighty living as a fighter there. Two boys, indistinguishable under the dry grime that covered them, were locked in a seemingly unbreakable grip, and Draken’s mind wandered.

  Draken wondered what his father might have said to Debbin, his oldest brother, in private. He could only guess that Debbin knew it was his responsibility to run the wine shop, as he had started barking out orders immediately after they’d returned. Debbin’s haughtiness had been deflated, however, when he’d realized how little was left to be done around the shop, and soon he had taken to hiding in father’s office—Debbin’s office, Draken reminded himself—to count the money and write the letters for orders and changes in stock.

  One of the boys relented and fell in a defeated sprawl in the dusty ring. There were shouts from the boys who’d betted on him and against him, presumably some were angry and some were joyful, but it sounded the same to Draken’s ears.

  “You go,” said Pul. At first, Draken wasn’t sure he’d heard his brother right. Most of the boys who fought in the ring were fourteen or older, closer to Pul’s age than Draken. Draken had never considered going in. Seeing his little brother’s hesitation, Pul said, “Come on. I’ll bet on you and we can split it half-and-half.”

  Draken still wasn’t sure. “But what if I don’t win?”

  Pul’s face twisted in an unflattering smile, and he did nothing to hide his own envy when he said, “You won’t. You’re much stronger than these kids.”

  Without waiting for his acceptance, Pul shoved Draken into the ring. There were cheers and mocking laughter. Draken was sure the boys, both those betting and those who came only to watch, assumed Pul was punishing him. The only time he’d seen a boy his age in the ring it had been like that. The younger boy would get beaten to an inch of unconsciousness and then walk home on his own, feeling very penitent indeed about whatever crime he’d committed against the family.

  Is that what Pul was doing now? Did he somehow blame Draken for their father’s death?

  There wasn’t time to think about it. His opponent stepped into the dusty ring, and the jeers and laughter and false cries proclaiming Draken’s sure victory got louder, bouncing off the high, flat walls of Dramm-Teskata’s temple. He’d seen the older boy before, Fraad Lasa’s son, Draken thought. One of the merchants who had done business with his father more than a few times over the years.

  Fraad’s boy was tall and wiry, and his shaggy black hair looked more like a wig than the real thing. He didn’t look happy about the arrangem
ent, but when he flexed his thin arms and Draken saw the tight cords of dense muscles threading his bones, he knew he wouldn’t go easy on him even if he didn’t relish the thought of beating a younger boy. At least he would probably try not to maim Draken.

  Draken didn’t know how to fight. At least, he didn’t have much practice since his older brothers had stopped trying to bully him once he’d become much stronger than them. Draken had once given Debbin a black shiner that had lasted almost ten days. He’d been glad that his brothers had left him alone after that, but now he wasn’t so sure. Even if he was strong enough to beat this boy in a fight, an unlikely thought, by itself, how could he win without knowing how to feint and punch and dodge?

  Fraad’s son approached him from twenty feet, and Draken couldn’t believe how swiftly the boy moved. It was like a wraith out of Draken’s nightmares, come to life. Without knowing what his mind was doing, Draken began sifting through his memories of the many fights he’d witnessed in this place. He’d never thought he’d paid especially close attention, but he must have. A bevy of applicable moments paraded in front of Draken’s mind’s eye like instructional paintings, and when the first blow came—a powerful, whiplike punch Fraad’s son had to pull back to deliver, Draken ignored the instinct to dodge and instead leaned into it, robbing the punch of its momentum. The older boy’s fist landed with a dull thud on Draken’s shoulder, and Draken found he was in the perfect spot, very nearly hugging the older boy.

  He remembered what shorter opponents had done in similar situations. He locked his hand behind the beanstalk that had just been hoping to punch him and threw their combined weight to the side. The older boy was still off-balance due to his punch, and they both fell without argument. Draken, prepared for the fall, was back in action the second they hit the ground.