The Gladiator Read online

  The only reprieve that Draken had was the fact that, like himself, the man used a short sword and shield. Even though the man’s bulk should have tended him toward battle axes or iron knuckles, Vgar chose the weapons Draken was himself most comfortable with. Draken had lost a few matches in his time, but never to a practitioner of his same art. He was undefeated in his class, and he intended to keep it that way.

  A few hours before his match with Vgar, Pul came into his personalized waiting room, scratching at his new beard and furrowing his brows.

  “Why are you growing that?” Draken said with mock sweetness. “I miss the cute little mouth of my older brother.”

  “All the managers wear beards. You’ve seen them.”

  “Oh? Is that what you are?”

  “Very funny.” Pul sat in his normal seat, folding one long leg over the other. He looked down at the arena, where a warm-up battle was being fought with little gusto. Most of the arena’s seats were empty. But Pul knew they would soon be packed, waiting to see if his little brother would be killed.

  “Remember when you had to wait in the changing area with the other whelps?”

  “No,” Draken said, “I’ve blocked it from my mind. But I do remember when you had to pay admission to watch me fight. You’ve grown up so much!”

  “All right, so you can joke around. Do you think you can also manage to stay alive in this next fight?”

  “What? Vgar? Why are you worried about with him? Those big guys are always slow.”

  “He’s not that slow,” Pul said on the heels of Draken’s words, as if he’d been expecting Draken to raise this point. And it was true, Draken knew. Vgar was a lot slower than he was, but as far as being a “mountain fighter”, as they were sometimes called due to their enormity, Vgar really wasn’t that slow.

  “Okay,” Draken said, a little more seriously. “But what do you want me to do about it?”

  “We both know pulling out now isn’t an option. There’s way too much at stake.”

  Draken nodded, but his heart sank a bit. He would never have admitted it to Pul in a million years, but dropping out had crossed his mind. Draken didn’t think it would ruin his career. People would understand that he didn’t want to die. Not now, with his whole life ahead of him. Even if he knew he’d never really pull out of the competition, he realized he’d carried a secret hope in his heart that Pul would at least bring it up.

  “How much is the bet?” Draken asked. He said the bet, but it was actually a huge conglomeration of bets, a complex smattering of odds and wagers that Pul, as manager, had complete access to.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Pul said. “If you even walk out of that pit we’ll make money.”

  Draken gulped. He’d thought he had more die-hard fans than that in the stands. Were people really so certain he’d die?

  “And Draken, walking out of that arena is all I’m asking you to do,” Pul said, his voice dropping down to something like a whisper. Pul’s whispers always reminded Draken of the last few days before their father’s death. That week, all of them had whispered, as if by talking too loudly they might break the tentative grasp their father had on life. “I know I push you to win so we can turn a profit. And you’ve done that. But this guy… he’ll kill you if you don’t stay down.”

  “You want me to throw it?” Draken said. This, too, had crossed his mind, but had been discarded as unthinkable.

  Pul laughed, the last thing Draken would have expected. “No!” he said. “I’m telling you if you go down hard, stay down. Let the pit-judges call it. But actually… I’m not sure it will come to that.” His eyes went hard as he looked at the fighting pit. “I think you might actually beat this guy.”

  Chapter 8

  Draken could feel each of Vgar’s footsteps, making the ground shiver beneath them as he took his place in his starting circle. It is like watching a mountain, he thought. Just like watching a mountain walk toward you.

  Vgar was dressed, as was Draken, in the uniformly tin armor of their class. It was identical in every way except its size, and covered only the vital organs, leaving the arms and legs completely unburdened and unprotected. On Vgar’s feet were gigantic versions of the laced arena boots Draken wore on his own feet, regulation wear to ensure fair play and lack of tinkering. Only their weapons were their own, and for their class this included the shield which was as much for offensive blows as for protection.

  Since Draken and Vgar were in equal standing so far for the season—each were undefeated, though such a run was not too uncommon when fighters reached the final matches—it was Draken’s seniority with the Drammata circuit that dictated that he got to take his place in his starting circle first. The irony of such a young fighter having seniority had not been lost to the news-callers and corner-jesters, as Draken had seen and heard a number of bits about how he was the “Old Babe,” a name he assumed had been bestowed upon him affectionately.

  The sheer volume of the crowd gave Draken pause. He’d never seen them so animated. They howled like mad dogs, screamed and cheered, and some of the girls were weeping as if losing their first lover. But this display did not mask the fact that they were all entertained. Were they truly so eager to watch a young man die?

  The pit judge came out, a fat man dressed only in the traditional black loincloth that symbolized his neutrality. He approached Draken, first publicly searching him for poisons or unregistered weapons and then checking Draken’s joints and bones for problems Draken himself might be unaware of. The judge worked with such a flourish, he almost seemed to dance around Draken. Well, isn’t that appropriate? Draken thought with a cynicism that was new to him; fully alien. This is, after all, just a part of the show.

  The pit judge then did the same for Vgar. There were boos from the crowd, but not nearly as many as Draken had expected. They liked Vgar too, it seemed. Maybe they were drawn to his exotic background in the south, or the color of his skin, which was so dark it bordered on novelty for their region.

  Soon, sooner than Draken had thought possible, it was time to fight. The deafening cries from the stands were like the amplified rumble of an approaching earthquake mixed with the tinkling crashes of its destruction. How much of that rumble was caused by the feet of the approaching Vgar, Draken couldn’t say. He only knew that a giant was approaching.

  It was like Draken was watching someone else’s battle. His mind noted dispassionately a few details about Vgar he’d never noticed in all the matches of his Draken had watched in preparation for this fight. Like how Vgar didn’t carry the thin-lipped, evil smile most of these bulky types used as their show of confidence. No, Vgar’s eyes blazed with a one-track desire. The desire to win, or maybe to kill. Draken wasn’t sure there was a difference in the man’s mind between the two. He’d also never noticed how long Vgar’s stride was. This no doubt accounted for some of the speed with which he moved, carrying his bulk with an agility Draken had not seen before in a mountain fighter. The last thing he had not noticed, or maybe it was a new addition, was the brassy knob at the end of Vgar’s sword handle. A pommel. It was clearly made of some dense metal, the kind that could crush a man’s skull if applied to it with enough force.

  And then, Draken’s world switched back on, and he realized Vgar was there, only two feet away. It was almost too late. Draken dodged a downward slice meant to divorce one half of his brain from the other. A monumental roar, singular in its intensity, sounded from the stands. While he was still rolling from his dodge, Draken realized his muscle memory had taken over. His body leapt up behind Vgar, causing the giant to turn, and then Draken’s body half-feinted, landing a glancing blow that was not meant to wound but to reposition the fighters to a more amenable configuration.

  Draken knew he needed more than rote motion, and he struggled with his murky brain to bring it back into action. Not just reciting motions but improvising, devising. In a word: fighting.

  Vgar wasn’t quite as fast as Draken had feared, but up close a new problem reveale
d itself. His skin looked tough as rhino leather. Draken’s sword was sharp, as he’d paid out the nose for a metal that could be honed to an almost unruly edge, but suddenly he was filled with the fear that no matter how well he fought he’d not be able to piece this monster’s hide, even though he knew the tin armor would be penetrated easily enough.

  It seemed Vgar had more than brute force on his side, because a moment after Draken’s expert feint, Draken found himself reeling from a blow he didn’t even see. Vgar had slammed his brassy pommel into Draken’s shield, low, where the center of Draken’s hold couldn’t keep it steady. Before he could think of how to respond to the awkward motion, Vgar had used a move Draken had never seen, Vgar’s sword came from the side, moving swift as a ball-stick children played with in the alleys, nothing like the heavy metal it was.

  The blow was unlike any Draken had ever received in the arena, or anywhere else, for that matter. The sword tip clicked the side of his helmet, but that hardly slowed it at all. When it dug itself into Draken’s cheek and the taste of blood exploded into Draken’s mouth, he thought, I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

  Draken felt air in his mouth, and he realized it was the opening in his cheek. He could feel it flapping as he rolled.

  Vgar towered over Draken, and Draken saw something like a cold, distant pity in the giant’s eye as he raised his sword high to deliver the fatal blow.

  Chapter 9

  “It’s all right,” Draken said, patting Maradi’s back as another spasm of coughs shook her body. “It’s all right.” He knew it wasn’t all right. She was coming up on the end, and it had come fast. “I’m going to get your mother.”

  He only hoped he wouldn’t be too late. She sounded exactly the way his father had when he’d slipped into unconsciousness for the final time. But Hamma wasn’t in the house, and she didn’t come when he called to the stables. He ran outside, yelling, “Hamma! Hamma! Come quickly! It’s Maradi!”

  Running toward the road, with his robe bunched up in his hands like a girl’s skirt, Draken was overcome with a crazy impulse to simply keep running. Find someone else to talk to. It actually wasn’t that crazy. Maradi was going to die whether he found Hamma or not, whether he stayed or not. His presence made no difference in the grand scheme of their lives, which was an improvement over his average. He had much more experience in making lives worse.

  It was an overcast day, the kind that would have turned Draken’s mind back to those final days with his father, and the path of violence his father had unknowingly sent him down, even if he had not been recounting his life to a stranger.

  Nearly half a mile from the farmhouse, he found her. Walking alone towards him.

  “Where have you been?” he said.

  “One of the mules escaped. It’s one we don’t own. We just take care of it.”

  “Did you know,” he said, “that she will be dying today?”

  Hamma appeared undisturbed by this. “Yes,” she said. “I thought she probably would.”

  “Then why didn’t you stay home?”

  The woman shrugged. She was not that much older than Draken, but now she looked aged almost beyond recognition. They walked in quiet for a while, pebbles crunching beneath their feet. Finally, Hamma said, “I didn’t want to say anything that might weaken her faith in her final hours. I thought her soul would be… safer with you.”

  “Weaken,” Draken said, and then stopped. He smiled. He couldn’t help it. He’d just known her act of piety before had been at least part bravado. No one could have that much faith in Dramm-Teskata, that most horrible of gods, the giver of life and the spreader of death. “So you have doubts.”

  “Everyone has doubts,” she said. “Except Maradi.”

  Draken looked at her.

  “You were a fool to come out here after me. She needs to die with you by her side, with your story on your lips. That’s her great service. Nothing would please her more, you must see that.”

  Before she had even finished the sentence, Draken was running back to the girl’s bed, cursing himself for being such an unworthy monk.

  When he got to the girl’s side, she was not yet dead. He didn’t know if she could hear him, but he went on, hoping she would know on some level that the tale was being told.

  Chapter 10

  But something happened as Vgar’s sword fell to end the short life of the so-called Old Babe. Later on in his life, Draken would think of this as being the moment he turned completely from Shinna, the god of all beauty, to Rada, the god of struggle. It was like the rage that had overcome him the day he’d almost killed Fraad Lasa’s son five years before, during the fight whose echoes had swiftly led him into the waiting arms of Figa’s arena, but more powerful.

  It was the fire of Rada, roaring inside him.

  It was so strong, so sudden, so consuming in its purpose—and so utterly brutal—that he almost could not believe the gods approved.

  There wasn’t time to avoid the blow by rolling. Instead, Draken’s hand, balled into a fist before he’d even thought about it, met the short sword on the way down, hitting the cold steel on the wide plane of the blade, knocking it far enough off the mark that it hit the dust instead of his forehead.

  To hit such a swiftly-moving target, so quickly, was an almost inhuman display of speed and foresight.

  His cheek was still bleeding, but Draken didn’t even notice. He didn’t even feel his body, except as a bundle of eyes to give him information. There was no pain or sensation beyond what was strictly needed to process the situation and react.

  The half-second of Vgar’s astonishment was enough. It was a lifetime for Draken, who sprung from the ground by arching his back and springing off his hands the way he’d only seen corner-jesters do. His shield was a lost cause. Having been knocked ten feet to the left, it might as well have been on the other end of the world. Even though not having it felt like he was working without one of his arms, the shield’s absence didn’t dampen his spirits. He was on a high too exalted to be dampened. Death might not even do it.

  Vgar was turning, but too slow. Draken’s blade, wickedly sharp, pierced the thick tangle of roots that made up the giant’s right bicep. The sword went all the way through, which Draken knew was a mistake. Too many times he’d seen fighters lose battles they’d seemed destined to win because they could not dislodge their blades from the flesh of non-mortally wounded opponents. But the blood-fever surging through Draken wasn’t about to let that happen. He thrust his whole body backward while simultaneously vice-gripping the handle so it wouldn’t slip. It didn’t come easily, but he was able to untether the weapon from his prey.

  The giant’s roars mingled with those of the crowd, and Draken fancied he was fighting them as well, battling with a physical embodiment of their doubt that he could best this mountain fighter. The layers of meaning only made the bloodletting sweeter, and Draken took the falling thud of Vgar’s heavy short sword in the dirt as his call to action.

  Seeking the same cheek, the left cheek, as Vgar had slashed, Draken made another expert stab. He felt the giant’s teeth clink on either side of the blade, and he knew he could end the foreign celebrity’s life there and then, with one expert hack toward the back of the man’s head. He was strong enough to administer the deathblow.

  The crowd seemed to know this as well, for they went silent. Intuitively, he knew it was not the work of death, the reverence of life as it were, that held their breath in their lungs, but the fact that he was just a boy. Men had died in this arena. Children, too. But a youth had never killed. It seemed an uncrossable barrier to them, some great taboo that should never be broken.

  And he thought that was exactly why the fire of Rada which burned within him made him slash backward, leaving the top of Vgar’s head attached by only the most tenuous of threads.

  ***

  “Thank you,” Hamma said to Draken, as she pulled the white sheet over the now-still face of her daughter. Draken had seen a number of dead in his life, but non
e who seemed so peaceful. Maybe there was some truth to what Hamma wanted to believe. Or maybe the young girl had just been a holy fool. What difference did it make now? Her soul no longer inhabited this plane of existence, and the world was left to continue on its path without her.

  “I’m going to send for the death dealer now,” Hamma said. “Maybe you should go.”

  Draken rose to his feet, his head slightly bowed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “This is all any mother could wish for.”

  Chapter 11

  When Draken returned to the monastery two days later, he did not expect to find it in such disarray. It was late evening, the time for introspection and prayer, but he saw many lamps lit, and could hear commotion even from the other side of the moat. The monks at entry let the short-bridge down for him, but he noticed the haste with which they brought it back up, sealing themselves and Draken inside as if battening a window against a storm.

  He could not find anyone willing to spend the time to explain what had happened, or what was happening, as they were all too busy with errands he couldn’t guess at. So he made his way to Brother Keller’s office in the forth-fifth spire. In theory, there was no god more prominent than the others, but in practical application, the monk whose office was in the double spire of Dramm-Teskata was always treated as head of operations.

  When Keller saw him, he excused the senior monk who had been whispering conspiratorially with him and told Draken to sit across the desk from him.

  “You’re back,” Keller said. “That was fast.”