by Maia Tanith
Taark stands still, in front of us both. “No,” he says. “I have claimed her.”
The crowd has quieted, confused by the scene playing out in front of them.
The two lizard men pause, uncertain. “She’s not yours to protect,” Sharb says, kicking the dust at his feet. “We have earned her, and we want her.”
“We kill her mate,” Mereek shrieks, raising his tree-trunk arms threateningly. “We kill her too.”
“Come and get her then, you cowards.” It’s my voice. My stupid mouth. I really need to work on this brain mouth connection. Maybe even take a moment to think before I speak.
Back on Earth my mouth got me in trouble. But here I’m asking for two overgrown evil lizards to come fight me. My mouth is going to kill me.
I stand and step beside Taark. I hold the claw he gave me tight in my fist. In my head this is the scene of the movie where the hero stands to fight, and the baddies get scared. There’s a montage of my life playing, with music leading into a crescendo. In my head I am fierce, and scary, and a force to be reckoned with.
The two lizard men look me up and down. Then they laugh.
Okay, so much for looking scary. This isn’t like the movies at all.
Sharb and Mereek advance. On the ground, Grud is still twitching and moaning.
Taark steps forward. He is now standing between me and the two lizard men. “You’ll have to get through me if you are to harm any either of these women,” he growls.
Mereek laughs again, a high-pitched giggle. “I’ll kill you to death,” he screeches. He really needs to work on his grammar.
Sharb jumps forward. Taark leaps to meet him, his claws raking the scaly skin of the lizard man’s back. If Sharb had been a human man, his skin would be hanging in ribbons. But I don’t see blood at all. It’s like the claws can’t get through.
Sharb backs off though, panting. It must have hurt him, even if Taark’s claws haven’t yet cut through the scales.
Sharb, Mereek and Taark start to circle each other. Taark is leading away from me, for which I am grateful.
I crouch next to the lizard woman. “Are you alright?” It’s a stupid question, I know. It’s all that I can think of to say.
She looks up at me. Her eyes are rimmed with red and her irises are a dark yellow. I notice that her eyes blink sideways. It’s unsettling, or it would be, if her face wasn’t so kind and sad looking. “No, I’m not okay. But I know something that will help. Give me that claw.”
For some reason I know I can trust her. I hand it to her, and she pushes herself to her feet, not without some effort. Then she stumbles towards the twitching and moaning body of Grud.
She looks at me as she bends over and rolls him onto his back. “Our scales are softer here,” she whispers, and points at his stomach. I see a thin line, where the tough scales must join. He is breathing hard and his mouth is foaming. “One of the others has spiked him, and the poison will make him sick for a long time. With a cut this deep, maybe he will die from it, maybe not.”
I nod. I hope Taark doesn’t get spiked.
The lizard woman keeps talking. “My own spikes have been torn out. They did it to all of us women, so we’d be weak, we’d have no way of protecting ourselves. It makes for a more—entertaining—game. The warriors would have to work harder to protect us. But he didn’t protect me.”
I don’t know where she is going with this. Then she lowers the claw and in one fell swoop she rips him open down the middle, like one might slice a loaf of bread. The join between the scales is a weak spot. Grud doesn’t even have time to scream.
And she has just shown me how to defeat the others.
The lizard woman spits on his body. Then she hands me back the claw. “I vowed to myself I would kill him for what he’s done to me. Thank you for giving me that opportunity.” She bowed her head at me. “If we survive this, I am forever bound in gratitude to you.”
I take the claw back. “We are going to survive. We are going to get out of here,” I say.
Something moves in the corner of my eye. I whip my head around and raise my hand, ready to swipe the claw at anything near me. It’s the other two lizard women. They’re clutching at each other. They must have been inching their way around the arena towards us.
Their bodies make my stomach recoil. They are both a patchwork of cuts and bruises. I am so angry at the lizard men. How could someone do this to another living being?
They don’t say anything, but their eyes plead with me. “Stay with us,” I say. “We are stronger together. Taark won’t let them hurt us.”
They nod. I think perhaps they are too beaten up to speak.
I look up towards where Taark and the lizard men are fighting. It looks almost like a slow dance. One will feint towards Taark, he will block, the other will move in, Taark will block again, they will both move back. They are targeting Taark because he is the next strongest. But neither of them wants to risk themselves being injured while they attack him, for fear of losing the final fight between themselves.
Their tactics will buy us time. I need to tell him how to get to their soft spot. I can see now how they guard the soft join on their stomachs. If Taark moves towards them, they will turn so their back, or their side, is to him and their stomach is protected.
I don’t want to run to him and leave these women unprotected. Not that I can do that much, but my weapon is more than they have. “Taark. Taark! Aim for their stomach. It’s a soft spot.”
He can’t hear me over the roar of the crowd. And the crowd is evidently getting restless. Something is thrown into the pit that splatters. It looks like a fruit of some sort. There is laughter from above. Someone else follows suit and more fruit is thrown down, splattering across the ground. One of them hits Taark full in the face. He is blinded for a second. One of the lizard men sees his opening. He swipes at Taark.
Chapter Six
Taark
My world is in slow motion. Something hits me in the face and blinds me for a second. As I wipe my eyes clear, I see the lizard man swing at me. His poisonous barb is aiming for my heart.
I can see it clearly, see the jagged edge of the barb. I can see each individual scale on the lizard man as he swings at me. It is Sharb. I recognize him from the footage played in my cell. I’m seeing every detail of his face, the tongue that flicks in and out of his mouth, his eyes blinking at me sideways. I can taste a sweetness on my tongue. It was a fruit that hit me and blinded me. A fruit that was thrown into the pit by one of the savages watching. A fruit is going to be what kills me.
No. Not just me. There is the kit too. The little harmless kit who is tougher than I ever gave her credit for. I’m not going to let them hurt her. The thoughts are clear, and slow. It’s perhaps the clearest thought I’ve ever had in my life. I’m not going to let them hurt her.
I duck, and the barb slices into my shoulder. A shallow cut, but the poison is excruciating. In that moment my world ceases to slow. I swing back with all my strength and the lizard man flies through the air. At the same time, I stumble backwards. I know the shallow cut might as well be inches deep. The poison is going to disable me within minutes. It could even kill me outright.
Mereek, the dumbest of the lizard men, looks torn. I can see his eyes flicking between me and Sharb. Sharb has landed on his back and is wheezing. The force must have winded him. I’m barely standing, holding my shoulder as it throbs. Mereek can take me down now while I’m injured, or he can attack Sharb. He goes for Sharb.
I’m panting now. If I can slow my heartbeat, the poison won’t travel so quickly. I might still have a chance to kill Mereek when he finishes with Sharb.
Then the kit is next to me and my heart rate spikes. “What are you doing? Get back, get out of the way.” I go to push her out of the way, but I am slow now, and she steps aside.
“I know how to stop them,” she whispers. Her voice is fierce. “In the middle of their stomach, where the scales join. It’s their weak spot. The scales are soft.
You need to get their stomach.”
I am scared for her and my heart is pounding. The poison is travelling through me faster now. It’s making everything look a little hazy. Hannah’s face swims. I laugh.
“There are two of you,” I say. “Two little climbing monkeys.” I giggle. I don’t think I’ve giggled since I was a child. Hannah’s frowning face looks at me from a distance.
“You are poisoned,” she says.
For some reason this is funny to me. I laugh again.
“Oh shit,” I hear her say.
Hannah
Taark is laughing. I’ve never heard him laugh before. It’s a strange sound, even stranger coming from his mouth in the middle of a battlefield. At least he was only scratched. I need to ask the lizard woman if he can recover from that scratch. But there is no time. Mereek rises in front of me. He kicks the body of Sharb away from him and steps towards me. The thoughts of his bad grammar are far from my mind now.
He steps towards me and his tongue darts out. “I can taste your fear,” he says. “You are going to die. I’ll make you die.”
A movement either side of me. The lizard women are flanking me. They are bruised and starved and scared, and they are standing with me.
Mereek pauses.
“Help me get his stomach,” I whisper to the lizard women.
Then we are moving forwards as one and Mereek doesn’t know which way to look. The lizard women leap on him and he is batting them away like flies, but they are going back, again and again. He is stronger, but there are four of us. I swipe the claw, but every time I move, he turns his back to me. He is trying to spike the women with his barb, and we are in unison attacking, and moving back out of the way.
One woman is hit in the face by his fist and she crumples. The other launches at his back wrapping her arms and legs around him. She claws at his eyes. He lets out a scream.
The fallen lizard woman pushes herself up. She launches at his arm.
The last lizard woman lunges, misses, then lunges again, and grasps his only free arm. They fall to the ground. Mereek is on his back, writhing but unable to get away. The lizard women are hanging on for dear life. I lunge forward and drive the claw into the faint line along his abdomen and rake it down. The claw cuts through the scales like a knife through hot butter.
No scream. Just quiet. And the panting of us women.
I pull the claw out. He is dead.
I stumble back and fall to my knees next to Taark. He is crouching, still holding his shoulder. I can see the whites of his eyes. He is sick, very sick.
The scream of the crowd is at an all-time high. The ground is shaking as they stamp their feet and cheer. They are rejoicing in the deaths of three men, rejoicing in the pain and suffering they have just witnessed. They are rejoicing in my kill.
I thought I would feel triumphant to have won. To live.
I don’t.
I am retching into the dirt when the guard pulls my arms behind my back, and half drags, half carries me back out of the pit. I’m dragged through the metal gates and down a twisting corridor and thrown into a cell. Taark and the lizard women are thrown in with me. I wipe a trail of spittle from my chin. A cell, again? Oh come on.
“We won,” I say to the lizard woman, the one who had been partnered with Grub. “We’re supposed to be free. Why have they thrown us back in here?”
She shrugs. “Maybe they will kill us anyway.” She steps over to Taark. He is only semi-conscious. She looks down at the scratch on his shoulder. The skin around the scratch has turned grey. She breathes in through her teeth and her tongue flicks out.
“Will he be okay?” I ask her. I’m afraid of what she will reply.
The other lizard women move in closer to look. “He wasn’t cut too deep. He may live. But he is going to be very sick for the next few days.” It’s one of the lizard women who hadn’t spoken yet. With their injuries and swollen faces I can barely tell them apart. They all have the same striking yellow eyes.
“He will be sick, but he is strong. He will live,” Grub’s mate says.
I sink down next to him and lay my head against his chest. “Thank you for saving him.”
They all look at me curiously. “He’s not the same as you,” one of them finally says. “Why do you care about him?”
“He is the same, inside,” I reply. “He’s good inside.”
We all sink to the floor. The cell is dark. We do not know if anyone is going to come back to let us out. It might have been minutes later, or it might have been hours, but at some point there’s a clattering at the door, and a tray is pushed through the flap. It holds a flatbread and bowl of water. We share the bread and drink the water, and I drip some into Taark’s mouth. I save him the last few mouthfuls of water and it takes all of my restraint to not finish every drop in the bowl. I know he will need it when he comes to.
We fall into a fitful sleep. I’m curled up next to Taark and the lizard women lie next to each other, close but not touching. Sometime later I wake up. I’m hot, and sweating. Taark’s skin is burning up. I shake him to wake him up, to try and give him something to drink. He tilts his head to the side and vomits, half conscious but not able to hold himself up. It takes me and all three lizard women to prop him up on his side, so he doesn’t choke on his own vomit.
“This is a good sign,” one of the women says to me. “He will burn, and be sick, and then he will be better.”
I’m doubtful, but I suppose if anyone is going to know how this poison works, it’s a lizard person. “Is the poison the same for you as it is for claw-men?” I ask.
They shake their heads. “No, it’s much worse for him. We fight all the time. A scratch like this would be painful for one of us. We might be sick, but we’d be conscious.” The lizard woman strokes her skin where her barb has been removed. “Sharb got Grub pretty deep. He would have been close to death. But he might have lived. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.”
They all nod. “I wish we could have watched them suffer for longer,” another says. I shiver at the rage in her voice.
“Why did you all get taken?” I ask. “You don’t act like criminals. Not like your mates.”
“We are from a poor area,” one replies. “Aside from our families, no one would miss us.”
“The alarm would be raised, but our continent has no resources. We can’t fight the slavers.” She spits on the ground at the mention of the slavers, spitting the vile taste of it out of her mouth. “They can be in and out in a night and take a cargo load of us with them. Only the wealthy cities, the cities with air patrols and space defense, don’t get targeted.”
It makes sense. I, too, was targeted as I was from somewhere quiet, where no one would be able to fight the slavers. And one of the aliens had referred to Earth as a slum planet. It goes without saying that no one is going to set up an intergalactic space search for me when our planet doesn’t even think aliens are real. I wished they would though. If I ever got home, I was going to bring proof with me. It would change everything on Earth.
And I want to go back home so badly.
“Do you want to go back?” I ask.
The lizard women look at me. “We all want to go back to our home,” the smallest one replies. Her lips droop slightly from the wounds inflicted on her. “I am going to join the cadet force and defend my home against the slavers.”
Taark’s body shakes as he vomits again. I smooth his brow. His hair is dirty and matted, but still so golden. I want to kiss him better.
The lizard woman sees my fear. “Don’t worry. The sickness will pass.”
“But what then?” I ask. “We should be let free. I don’t know this planet. If they throw us out, I don’t know how to get him somewhere safe. We have no money.”
The smallest lizard woman looks up. “I have a plan,” she says.
“The guards are going to kill us,” the lizard woman continues. “They wanted him to be killed. I heard them talking days ago about how he needed to die in the
Games, that the Emperor had ordered it. They beat him so he was weak. They fed us more than him, so that we’d have a better chance. I guess they didn’t reckon with you being a threat.”
“All of us,” I correct her. “I couldn’t have done anything without your help.”
She nods, and blinks sideways, and continues. “They will still try to kill him. In the Games they say they pardon the winner. But they won’t pardon a political prisoner, like he is. Everyone knows it, but no one will say it out loud.”
I swallow. “All of this—was for show? We never had a chance, even from the start?” I want to break down crying. What was the use of fighting off lizard men if we are simply going to be executed anyway?
“It’s for the Games. The Games are entertainment, and a way of pretending to keep peace. But, yes, they are used for political punishment, too. Think about it—it’s a great way of making people you don’t like...disappear.”
“I’ve heard you can be sent to the Games for just talking about it,” one of the others says. “The Xillian Games are famous in our home planet. Some of us, those who are wealthy and have no chance of being stolen away for the Games, watch it. We all know that it’s political. It’s unspoken mostly, but we know.”
“What else did you hear?” I turn back to the young lizard woman. Taark and I didn’t fight this long and get this far to be assassinated in our sleep.
“I expect they will try to do it quietly. So the public doesn’t find out. The public still believes the winner is set free. It’s not worth it for the Emperor to burst their bubble and get them offside.”
I shake my head. None of it is making any sense. “Why are you telling me this now?”
The lizard women shifts and looks down. “Before today, I didn’t care if you died. I wanted to live, to escape from Sharb. I think we all wanted our mate to win, so we had the chance to escape. You’ve showed me that the rest of us didn’t need to die for one of us to live.”