Chapter Eighteen

At dusk the delivery wagon paused at a guarded checkpoint, then rolled through tall, spiked gates into a compound filled chiefly with low barracks-like buildings. The wagon stopped before a towering, octagonal-shaped building. Torches set into brackets flamed brightly on either side of the entrance.

A man appeared there, short and heavyset, with bullish shoulders that strained against his jerkin. His head was shaved bald and gleamed with oil in the ruddy torchlight. A dagger hung from his belt, and in his free hand he carried a short club fitted with varying lengths of knotted rope.

Climbing down from the wagon with the others, Caelan found himself eying the weapon warily. He knew what a cattail club was. He’d felt the vicious marks of one on his back more than once, and he never wanted to be punished that way again.

“Get in line!” A guard passed among the new fighters quickly, pushing and shoving them into a straggly row.

The bald man walked along them, his dark liquid eyes making a rapid inspection. When he came to Caelan, he paused and frowned.

“This man is sick.”

The driver from the auction spat and handed over a paper. “Injured while sparring on the block for one of the customers. It’s marked, here, see?”

“Ah.” The bald man held his torch higher while he peered at the paper. “Bought cheap enough.” Then he loosed a low whistle. “Bought by the prince!”

He gave Caelan a second look, doubt more evident in his face than before. Grudgingly he nodded. “That’ll be noted, and you’ll get the better food the prince always specifies. Well, well. He hasn’t sent anyone to me to be trained in months. Not since he hired that fancy private trainer.”

Still nodding, he inked a mark on the paper and handed it back to the driver. “All accounted for. Drive on.”

The wagon turned laboriously and headed out the gates, its slatted sides rattling. The darkness swallowed it, and soon even the tired plodding hoofbeats faded from hearing.

The bald man stepped back and glared at the line of fighters. “Welcome to the common arena,” he said in a gruff, no-nonsense voice. “Otherwise known as the hellhole. Those of you who are veterans, don’t think you’ll have it easy here. This is Imperia, and our arena is like no other in the world. As for you green ones, if you don’t know one end of a sword from the other, you have two months to learn before season starts. After that, you’ll fight or you’ll die. It’s that simple. I’m Orlo. My word is law. Disobey me, and you’ll find there are worse things than death. Am I clear?”

No man answered.

Orlo squinted at them and finally nodded. “Guards! Take them to the delousing tank, then quarters.”

The guards were wary, armed to the teeth, and quick. They shoved the men forward with shouts and oaths designed to confuse and intimidate.

Thinking only of food and a pile of straw for sleep, Caelan followed at the end of the line a little slower than the others. He had his elbow pressed against his aching side for support, and he was almost tempted to ask for some etherd root to chew on to ease the pain. But he dared not make any request until he knew what manner of rules existed here.

Just as he passed Orlo, the trainer swung the cattail club viciously across Caelan’s bare back. The blow drove him to his knees, and the pain from his rib robbed him of breath. His scream lay smothered in his throat, and for a blinding moment he was awash in crimson and sickly gray. His back burned as though on fire, and he thought he might never breathe again.

Orlo circled around in front of him and gripped his hair to pull up his head. “Are you mute, you big bastard?” he growled.

Tears and sweat streamed down Caelan’s face. Somehow he found enough pride to answer. “No,” he said through his teeth.

“Get up!”

Clamping his jaw, Caelan managed to stagger to his feet. He was a full head and shoulders taller than Orlo, but it was the shorter man who had the advantage.

“The arena is no place for cowards,” Orlo said.

“I’m no coward—”

“Shut up!” Orlo raised the club again, and Caelan flinched back. Grinning, Orlo slowly lowered his hand.

Shame flooded Caelan. He knew in that instant he’d failed some kind of test.

“All Traulanders are cowards,” Orlo said. “Big brutes who can’t move and won’t fight. I know your kind.”

Caelan burned inside. No, you don’t, he thought. Not me.

“If you were any good, the prince would have let his fancy private trainer work with you. He wouldn’t have sent you to me.”

There was something ugly in the way Orlo said that, something resentful that flamed in his eyes. Seeing it, Caelan’s heart sank.

“I am going to make you good,” Orlo said. “I am going to make you fight. Or I’ll kill you in the effort. You understand?”

“Yes,” Caelan breathed. It was what he had prayed for while he waited for the auction. Now he wondered why he had ever thought he could do this.

“What is it you call your religion?” Orlo asked. “Severing?”

Caelan did not trust his voice. Cautiously he nodded.

Orlo raised the club with clear menace. “You try that nonsense around here, especially on any of my men, and you’ll taste this. You understand?”

It was clear Orlo didn’t understand what severance was, but his fear was dangerous. “I will obey,” Caelan said. Any other response was unthinkable.

Orlo did not seem to believe him. With a sneer, he gripped the amulet pouch hanging around Caelan’s neck and yanked it over his head. “You won’t need this.”

Miraculously over the years, Caelan’s owners had respected the pouch and left it alone, although slaves weren’t allowed possessions. Now Caelan felt dismay wash through him. “It is my amulet,” he said hollowly, trying not to betray his concern. “I—”

“Liar!” Orlo said sharply. “Trau is a civilized province, not a pagan one. Your kind don’t carry amulets.”

That was true, but until now no one else had seemed to know it. Caelan stared at the little pouch with its precious contents and swallowed the lump in his throat. Lea, forgive me, he thought in despair.

“Please,” he whispered, but with a scowl Orlo shoved him forward.

Thus it began, a rigorous nightmare that never seemed to end. From dawn until dusk they were pounded, forced to run laps along a track of deep, foot-clogging sand while guards on horseback whipped them to keep going. Practice weapons were heavy, blunt scraps of metal with worn hilt wrappings that often left a man’s hand blistered raw or cut open. Injuries passed untreated. Many a man moaned through the night with sprains, bruises, and lacerations. They were fed plentifully and cheaply, mostly barley grain and beans, twice a day. The one blessing was they could have all the water they wanted, and it was always fresh in the barrel.

The first night Caelan tore strips of cloth off his straw pallet and used it to bind his ribs. Even with that tight support, the next few days were an agony he thought he might not survive. Only severance enabled him to bear the pain. At night when he was allowed to collapse on his pallet, he sweated in the darkness and tried desperately to remember everything he had learned at Rieschelhold and from his father’s teachings in an effort to heal himself. For the first time, he had to acknowledge that he’d been a fool of a boy, but there was no going back. That path was cut forever, and he remained, the only survivor of his family, the unworthy one, the rebel and troublemaker who had disobeyed and disrupted and who had lived. Where was the justice in that? Where was the mercy? Where was the rightness?

Truly the gods toyed with the lives of men.

In the first days he was inept and slow. He kept dropping the fake weapons. His footwork stumbled. The trainers swore at him and whipped him. Every time Orlo walked by, Caelan made a stupid mistake.

And Orlo would look both disgusted and satisfied at the same time. “Extra drills for the Traulander,” he would say and walk on.

Increasingly frustrated, Caelan could not understand why he did not improve. Even as a boy in his father’s hold he had never been clumsy. Any physical activity was easy for him. He wouldn’t have longed to be a soldier in the first place if he hadn’t felt himself capable of it. But now it seemed as though all his natural abilities had deserted him.

His rib healed quickly, whether through the mercy of the gods or through his limited efforts to speed its recovery. And although no one made any effort to treat him, Caelan noticed he wasn’t assigned to any practice bouts until he was sound.

Already fit, with a deep chest and powerful shoulders, he found the tough conditioning work honed his body even more. He grew another inch, and his muscles hardened to the kind of definition the trainers called deeply cut. The drills gave him flexibility and a new awareness of his body’s strength. Long hours under the merciless sun bronzed his skin to a dark honey color and bleached his hair nearly white. His muscles rippled powerfully beneath his skin when he moved. He was perhaps the tallest man in training, and the other fighters called him Giant. The trainers all agreed that in looks alone, he would make an intimidating presence in the ring, but they had already laid bets that he would die in the first round.

Caelan knew about the bet, of course, and it did nothing for his morale.

Although he hadn’t prayed in years, now in the privacy of nighttime he lifted his heart to Gault, asking why this was denied him. He had sworn he would do everything in his power to excel, yet here he was at the bottom of the group. The humiliation of his failure gnawed at him constantly.

Training separately in their own advanced drills, the veterans paused to laugh and jeer every time Caelan walked by. Sooner or later all the trainers came by to watch him performing drills. Shaking their heads, they discussed him as though he couldn’t understand what they were saying.

“Orlo said he bested one of Lord Vymaltin’s champions at the auction.”

“Never! Look at the clumsy oaf.”

“I swear it’s what everyone says. It’s why Prince Tirhin bought him in the first place.”

“The prince must have been too drunk to see.”

Laughing, the trainers walked on.

Seething, Caelan focused everything he had on the lunge-and-feint drill he was practicing. He could focus his mind. He had once been able to direct a warding key, after all. He could do this.

Fresh sweat broke out on his face with the effort he expended, but all he accomplished was a sudden cramp in his leg that pitched him down, gasping hard while the other trainees stopped their drills and laughed.

“Silence!” Orlo shouted, swinging his club indiscriminately among them. “Get back to work.”

Pushing his way through the chastened trainees, he came and stood over Caelan, who lay sprawled in the sand, gritting his teeth while he worked the spasm from his leg muscles.

“Get up,” Orlo said.

“Yes,” Caelan gasped out, trying. Hut the cramp wouldn’t release.

A whistle of the knotted ropes through the air warned him. Caelan tried to dodge, but the cattails cracked across his shoulders. The fresh pain drove away all awareness of the cramp.

“Get up!” Orlo repeated.

Caelan scrambled to his feet and stood there, drenched with sweat and shame until he was almost shaking.

Pursing his lips, Orlo stared up at Caelan a long while without saying anything. Finally he beckoned and led Caelan over to a corner of the practice pit.

“What’s the problem, Traulander?” he demanded. “Your religion getting in the way?”

“No, master,” Caelan said quietly. He kept his gaze on the ground to hide his shame and frustration.

“Why won’t Traulanders fight?” Orlo asked.

Caelan clenched his fists. “I want to fight,” he said.

“You don’t act like it. I could whip you bloody and it wouldn’t help.”

“No, master,” Caelan agreed miserably. His plan was dying in his heart.

“Perhaps you’re trying too hard. Relax, you fool, and let it come naturally. The weapon is caressed, not throttled. Settle the hilt in your palm the way you would your woman’s breast. Eh? Make sense to you?”

Caelan’s face flamed, and he shifted his feet. Orlo knew how few women entered the life of a slave, if any. Hut whether advice or a taunt, what he said did make sense.

Orlo sighed and slid the club into his belt. “Assume stance.”

Astonishment filling him, Caelan obeyed quickly. He couldn’t believe his luck at this special attention, but he knew better than to spoil it with hesitation.

“Flex your knees more,” Orlo instructed. “Keep your back straight but loose. Pay attention! Feel how tense you are. You must be a reed, swaying always, never still, never locked up. Lunge!”

Caelan sprang forward, and Orlo skipped out of the way just in time.

“Not too bad,” he said, “for a lumbering ox. Imagine you are standing on a pane of glass. Do you know what glass is, Traulander?”

“Yes, master.”

“Well, well, perhaps you’re more civilized than I thought. Don’t pound your feet. You’re dancing on glass, livery footstep must be light. You are a reed, swaying, always moving. Lunge!”

And on it went, for the rest of the afternoon. By the time he finished, Caelan was dragging with exhaustion but heartened. The next morning, however, when he was assigned a veteran partner for practice bouts, the moment he drew a work sword from the rack he dropped it.

“Hail the loser!” jeered his opponent.

Face aflame, Caelan bent and picked up the narrow strip of blunt metal. The balance was clumsy. Try as he might, he couldn’t even imagine it as a real sword. They were forbidden actual weapons until they entered the arena. Sometimes he felt that if he could practice with the real thing, he might do better. But he might as well wish to walk the surface of the moon.

Many years before, in the previous century, it was said gladiators practiced with real weapons and as many died from sparring as in the ring. But there had been an uprising, with the trainers and guards all massacred. Gladiators had escaped the compound and run amok in the city, raping and pillaging until the army was called out to stop them. Even then, some of them had escaped into the countryside, never to be found. The others were rounded up and executed. Their heads had rotted on the walls of the city for weeks.

Thereafter had come the arena reforms. Haggai—whatever they were—had been brought to live in the catacombs beneath the arena. Weapons were taken away altogether and not put into the hand of a fighter until he was actually secured in the ring. Guards were retrained to a new standard of vigilance. Any sign of rebellion or unrest was punished swiftly with death. The veterans were kept separated from the new trainees, except during supervised practice bouts. And even the veterans were rotated among the barracks on a frequent basis, to keep friendships from forming.

Not that many men grew close, especially knowing everyone was a potential opponent during season. With all fights to the death, it was smarter to keep comradeship to a minimum. Trainees who didn’t heed that piece of advice died quickly in the ring, eyes wide and astonishment frozen on their faces as the sword thrust through their guts.

Like the trainers who expected Caelan to fail, all the other fighters believed it too. They taunted him at every opportunity. Brawling was forbidden, so Caelan had to grit his teeth and take it. Hut every day he worked harder and harder, driving himself more than the trainers did. At night, he lay on his pallet and ran the drills through his mind, visualizing the footwork over and over until he could do it without thinking. During brief moments of rest, he watched the veterans working with each other and he look mental notes of their skills and advanced tactics. They had many tricks and shortcuts that he mulled over constantly. In the darkness, he tried to imagine himself wielding a sword with grace and skill. He thought of reeds rippling in the breeze across the marshes. Sometimes it felt so natural as he lay there imagining it. He could actually feel the heft of a sword hilt in his hand, the tension in his wrist. At such times he believed he could master the weapon.

But by day, even if his footwork improved, his ability to work with the fake weapons did not. It was as though some strange force blocked the messages from his brain to his arm. By concentrating extremely hard, he could finally get his wrist and arm into the correct rhythm and perform the drills correctly, but as soon as his opponent shifted or attacked, Caelan muffed the whole thing and ended up with the blunt end of his opponent’s practice weapon rammed painfully against his breastbone or pressing hard against his neck.

“By the gods, I’d like to cut off your bloody head,” swore Nux when their practice bout ended in the usual way. He held Caelan pinned for longer than was allowed, glaring into Caelan’s eyes.

“I will cut it off tomorrow,” he said. A brawny Serian with a flat broken nose and no front teeth, he was a veteran of the arena and had been here for two years, the longest of anyone.

He fought in a weird style unlike any of the others, and his taunts were the worst. Somehow he always seemed to know what his opponent secretly feared the most, and he preyed on that, laughing as he attacked. He had never been deemed good enough to make it to the private arenas, despite the fact that he’d survived four seasons in the last two years.

A season lasted three months, with three months’ rest while new fighters were trained. That meant each year was supposed to have two seasons. However, when the common arena was at rest, many of the private arenas were in season. That meant any citizen of Imperia, providing he had the means and the access, could attend a gladiatorial contest any given day of the year.

It was a bloody madness, a public obsession at its worst here in the capital city. It used up men voraciously, with the dead piling up in a carnage nearly equal to that of a battlefield. While the war with Madrun continued, there were plenty of prisoners of war to be hauled in to supplement the ranks of fighters.

Many people in Imperia disapproved of the practice, and that disapproval was said to be slowly gaining popularity. Critics who dared speak out claimed the arena games were an outdated piece of savagery. The empire had grown and matured beyond such barbarism, and the arena should be left behind in the dim past of a less civilized era, where it belonged.

Of course to criticize the games was to criticize the emperor, who had organized them long, long ago in his first incarnation. It was even whispered that those who wanted the games banned and the arenas closed wanted the emperor to die that the world might go on into a modern age.

There were many discoveries, many practices of new knowledge supposedly banned by imperial decree. As the centuries had passed, the emperor seemed to want to cling to the old ways more and more. He resisted modern progress in every way possible. That’s why the army was still organized into fighting legions, still armed with old-fashioned short swords for the infantry, still encumbered with ancient rituals while the officers rebelliously wore modern armor plate and carried more efficient weapons.

Now and then people were heard to say, “When Tirhin is emperor, things will change.”

But they did not say such things often or very loudly, without first looking over their shoulders. It was still considered treason to utter such a statement. And officially Tirhin had not been named as successor.

The prince himself was apparently as avid a supporter of the arena as his father. It was the prince who had instigated private arenas and taken his teams out of the common combat. The nobles who could afford it followed suit. The result had left the common arena shabbier and bloodier, with half-trained gladiators hacking brutally at each other with little regard for rules of combat. The masses enjoyed the spectacle, but the nobles came to the common arena less and less. This embittered the trainers, like Orlo, who felt betrayed and abandoned.

It also meant the age-old rule that an arena survivor was rewarded by receiving his freedom did not really apply anymore. Only the privately owned gladiators had a chance of that reward. According to the word in the barracks, several arena champions had won their freedom but continued to fight for plump salaries and special privileges.

Thus, men like Nux were forgotten or ignored. Having survived, they faced only another grinding season, when any unguarded moment in the ring could mean destruction or maiming injury.

Nux knew Caelan was privately owned by the prince. They all did. And while Caelan’s abilities seemed too poor to threaten anyone here, he at least had the nominal chance to leave, which they did not. Resentment flared hot in the practice bouts, and Caelan came out bruised and battered.

“Let him up, Nux!” roared Orlo now, seeing Caelan still pinned with the blunt practice sword on his neck. “Let him up!”

Nux slid the metal edge along Caelan’s neck, pressing hard enough to hurt. His eyes blazed with hostility. “Tomorrow it will be real swords, Traulander. Tomorrow, when I do this, your pretty head will fall on the sand and the crowds will cheer my name.”

He stepped back just as Orlo came striding up. Looking innocent, Nux slid his practice sword into the rack and walked away.

Orlo gave Caelan a kick. “Hopeless,” he said. “I knew it from the first. The prince sent you here to humiliate me. Stupid Traulanders, afraid to fight, afraid of the dark, afraid, afraid, afraid. Bah!”

Still breathing hard from the bout, Caelan knelt on the sand and found himself at eye level with the hilt of Orlo’s dagger. The hilt was wrapped with very fine copper wire and had a brass knob on the end. It reminded Caelan of the old dagger he had bought from the Neika tribesman the day the Thyzarenes attacked the hold.

Mesmerized by the sight of it, Caelan half closed his eyes and listened to the faint song of the metal. It was as though the weapon called to him in a low, nearly inaudible voice. He could almost understand it, and he wanted to hold it.

A swift whack of his outstretched hand recalled him to the present. Blinking, feeling dizzy, Caelan dodged another slap from Orlo and scrambled to his feet.

The trainer glared at him. “Try something that stupid again, and I’ll cut off your hand.”

Caelan tried not to look at the dagger and failed. It still sang somewhere deep within him. Try as he might, he could not shake it. “Your dagger looks very old and fine. Where did it come from?”

Orlo’s mouth dropped open, as though he couldn’t believe Caelan had dared ask a personal question.

Turning red, Orlo raised his cattail club. “Get to barracks! Wash your filthy hide!”

Caelan ducked his head and ran. Humiliation and rage at himself burned within him. He wouldn’t have taken the dagger from Orlo. He wouldn’t have attacked the man with it. He was simply curious. But slaves weren’t allowed to explain. They were judged and punished.

Slaves weren’t allowed to be curious either. No opinions. No conversation. No questions. No privileges.

It seemed he would never learn.

And now there was no more time. Tomorrow morning the games would commence.

As he jogged across the drilling field with the others, he glanced at the arena itself. Dozens of workers swarmed it, scrubbing steps and setting up railings to direct the crowd. Beyond the gates, concessioners congregated impatiently, with their wares and cooking grills stacked haphazardly. They were shouting offers at the guards, trying to bribe their way in early.

As yet, Caelan had not been inside it. He wondered what it would be like. Supposedly the ring was divided into six sections. In the first game, twelve gladiators were positioned, two to a section. The six victors then fought, until there were three. Then there would be a free-for-all among the three men, or lots would be tossed to see who fought first. Only one victor left the ring each day.

On the following day, the lone victor would again be a member of twelve gladiators. The same procedure would be followed. Usually the least trained men fought first, with the veterans coming in fresh on subsequent days. Each week was called a rotation. At the end of the seventh day, the survivors would draw lots to see which day of the next rotation they would fight. And so on, until the end of the season.

In Caelan’s barracks, the trainees were quiet. Most looked frightened. Tomorrow was looming larger and larger. Word had gone round that this was the last day they would see the sun except in the arena itself until season ended. Tonight they would go into the catacombs beneath the arena, a dark mysterious place that the veterans seemed to dread.

And what was the initiation this afternoon? None of the veterans had mentioned it before, nor would they discuss it now, which was odd.

Caelan ignored the whispered worries of the others. Standing in the doorway of the barracks, he stared out at the sandy jogging track and the wall towering beyond it. The sun beat down on the dry earth, and only a slight ragged breeze stirred the dust.

He thought of the glacier of home, the ice-capped mountains, and fragrant pine forests. He thought of the dazzling lights in the winter sky, of the apple harvests and the smoky smell of peat. All that seemed a hundred years in the past. Now he stood here, in a place of death. The smell of it already lay in his nostrils, although combat would not commence until tomorrow. He felt cold and shivery as a strange feeling passed over him. Glancing over his shoulder, he took in his comrades. He had not troubled to learn most of their names, and now as he gazed at them he saw their flesh fade away. They were a collection of skeletons sitting, standing, lolling on their pallets in unexpected idleness. The vision faded, and Caelan wrenched his gaze back to the jogging track.

Breathing hard, he wiped clammy sweat from his forehead. He’d had such visions before. These men were doomed. they would die tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.

And him?

He did not know, but his own death seemed to be the most certain thing of all.