“As to the scheduling of today’s events, I regret that the final roster of games was not displayed before this morning. I hope you all had the opportunity to place your wagers on those contestants you deem worthiest. Some of the delay, I regret to say, resulted from the death of one of our arena’s bravest heroes, the champion known to you all as Halbard the Great.”
At this eulogy, a loud murmur went up from the crowd—not truly a sound of grief, but a collective acknowledgement of unexpected change, disappointment, and the passing of familiar things.
Conan, where he and the other gladiators lined up to wait in the last vestige of shade along the arena’s eastern wall, took the opportunity to scan the benches as the audience sat in relative calm. The latest improvements to the Circus appeared to be complete, he noticed—in particular the high-arched stone terrace that sheltered the lower sections of the privileged on the west side of the oval stadium. Peering up into the shaded area, Conan made out a familiar group from Luddhew’s band, including Sathilda, still in her costume. The acrobats had been invited in, then, to keep company with the rich and powerful during the main spectacle. The crowd fell silent again as Commodorus resumed speaking.
“Setting aside the untimely loss of a hero, we still have much to celebrate—such as the brave young fighters who have newly proven themselves, and the skilled seers, acrobats, and exotic beasts of Luddhew’s circus who have extended their stay here to entertain us further. Our fondest welcome to them all,” he proclaimed, speaking between bursts of applause.
“Furthermore,” he went on, “we are privileged this morning to entertain a guest. In addition to all the celebrated divines and military commanders, the nobles and luminaries who regularly grace this arena with their presence, I am honoured today to enjoy the boon companionship of High Prefect Bulbulus. As we know, Bulbulus is an honoured appointee of city and church, the chief administrator of all the civil guards and magistrates. Welcome, Bulbulus!”
At his sweeping gesture, a small portly man came forward from the balcony seats. Purple-togaed and crowned with a gilded, high-crested helmet that wobbled visibly on his balding brow, Bulbulus gave the impression of being a reluctant bureaucrat rather than a staunch civic authority. He did not try to address the noisy crowd, but waved dutifully and lingered in the Tyrant’s shadow.
“Forward, then, to our spectacle,” Commodorus declared as the Prefect Bulbulus retreated. “But first, citizens, let me ask, what think you of armed brigands? I refer to military renegades of a foreign kingdom, who enrich themselves by preying on the free commerce between mighty Stygia and our beloved sister-state, Corinthia. What is your opinion of such marauders?”
The crowd’s view on the subject hardly remained a secret; a tumultuous roar shook the stadium benches, with thousands waving their fists in wrath.
“Do you think,” Commodorus demanded of his subjects, “that any such raiders from the eastern mountains—cowardly Khauranian deserters, vicious as they are—can defeat the champions of our Circus arena?” He folded his arms across his chest. “Keeping in mind, as always, that if they do triumph they will go free?”
The latter part of his question was all but drowned out as the watchers shrieked and clawed the air, some rising to their feet and almost tumbling forward into the arena in their frenzy of bloodlust.
“Well enough, then,” Commodorus proclaimed. “Silence now, for the prayer and invocation to be pronounced by our Temple Primate Nekrodias. Then bring on the captives, and let the games begin!”
As the bald old priest rasped forth benedictions in unpronounceable High Stygian, there was a bustle of preparation from the far end of the arena. This door, by which Luddhew’s circus had entered on the first day, was known to the public as the Challenger’s Gate. Now it opened, letting an ill-assorted crew on foot and horseback issue forth.
They were tall, straight-nosed warriors dressed variously in desert and mountain garb, most of it ragged and soiled. A common hue among them, nevertheless, was the yellow-brown of Khauranian military costume. Most of them retained some piece of standard armour, its silvering largely worn away—either a helmet, shield, or hauberk, supplemented occasionally by metal gauntlets and greaves. The only weapons in view were swords and daggers, with no sign of the lances and bows such cavalry troops would usually carry. Indeed, of the score or so captives, only a half dozen were mounted. Some of the few horses looked bony and overworked, while the fresher ones moved skittishly, as if ill-trained and unfamiliar with their riders. The troops themselves were underfed and abused; yet they were fighters undeniably—lean, hard men burned deeply brown by desert suns.
As they moved out into the arena, spreading in a rough formation with horsemen grouped at either end, the gladiators likewise formed a line. Among the Circus heroes were no mounted men; but from the sides of the arena came two chariots, each with an able driver and a four-horse team. Each chariot took aboard two of the gladiators to wield sword and lance from the fighting-platform. Muduzaya and Roganthus alike jumped up onto chariots, but Conan stayed afoot, preferring to keep control of his own movements.
As the battle-cars rolled wide to manoeuvre, there was a general stirring in the gladiators’ ranks. The arena fighters grunted, snarled, and yelled abuse at their opponents as they swung swords overhead to limber up their muscles. The Khauranians, for their part, came forward silently in a well-drilled military phalanx, with horses on either flank. Conan could see that they would make formidable foes, as he had expected.
The stadium fell silent. Only scattered shouts of encouragement or long-winded abuse burst forth from the benches as the two lines converged. The fighters squared off, sizing one another up and choosing targets.
Then, of a sudden, horsewhips flailed and the two chariots swooped inward. The flanking Khauranian horsemen spurred forward, and the lines of foot-warriors charged together in sudden violence.
Along the centre of the line, steel clashed fiercely and angry yells volleyed forth. The horsemen closed in from either side, but were scattered by the bulky speed of the chariots, which the ill-conditioned cavalry mounts could not face. The Khauranians closed their line expertly, standing firm before the gladiators’ onslaught; but the chariots wheeled near with swift, close passes, one passenger swinging his sword while the other hurled javelins from short range. The force of these attacks were too much for any line of foot-soldiers. In short order the mountain men were menaced afore and behind, forced to flee or shield themselves from hard-thrown shafts. Their formation broke, and the yelling gladiators surged furiously through their ranks.
Conan faced off against a swart, broad-faced campaigner whose upper lip was already cleft by an old, sloping scar. The Khauranian fought skilfully, using a rusty steel buckler to ward off Conan’s strokes and slashing back with his own curved sabre. The man would have been far more deadly in a saddle, Conan guessed; his footwork was slow, perhaps from over-long marching or ill-treatment. A sharp kick to the back of one knee served to trip him up momentarily; by batting his helmet forward with a resounding stroke, Conan edged behind him. His point then found the lower edge of the Khauranian’s armour backplate, and he ended the man’s life with a swift upward thrust.
Even as Conan dragged his sword free of the slumping body, a horseman thundered down upon him. His blood-smeared blade came up tardily; but it mattered little, because the skittish cavalry mount swerved aside a hand’s-breadth early. The rider’s stroke whirred high, sliding off Conan’s point. The horseman cursed and wheeled the reluctant beast around, raising his sword for a killing stroke. Conan let the man come, crouching low to make him lean outward; then, instead of parrying the blow, he darted inside, close enough to be lashed by the horse’s flying mane and tail. Springing up and seizing the man’s taut descending wrist, Conan wrenched him sideward out of the saddle.
The Khauranian, to his credit, did not stay prone on the sand for long. He rolled, keeping hold of his sword. As he leapt to his feet, he lashed back at Conan with a frenzy of s
word strokes.
But he was outmatched. His blows lacked force, due perhaps to his fall from the horse or some earlier injury. Leaving a false opening, Conan dodged and let the cavalryman overextend himself and stagger in the loose sand; then he darted back in with his blade, finishing the man with a quick, merciful thrust.
In spite of the howling and clangour on all sides, Conan imagined he heard an extra pulse of cheering when the horseman died. His ears traced faint, shrill ravings nearly lost in the din. “Conan!” the distant worshippers cried. “Hail, Conan the Slayer!” Raising his ungainly helmet, he shook off the praise with the sweat of his sodden mane.
Of the broader fight, little remained. The scattered Khauranians, if not trampled by the chariot teams, fell prey to the more concentrated force of gladiators. The horsemen, rallying to support their comrades, were soon battered or speared out of their saddles, and the unmounted raiders were gradually run down and hacked to pieces. Most of the renegades died fighting in the middle of the arena; only two threw down their weapons and ran for the gates—which, in spite of their yells and thumping, remained shut. The charioteers soon overtook these last fugitives and finished them, mere paces away from the savagely cheering onlookers.
Conan did nothing more to dispatch the already beaten foe. Surveying the scene, he felt vaguely disappointed. The Khauranians, galloping free in their foothills, would have been superb fighters. But here in the Circus, after being starved and scourged across a hundred leagues of desert and sold downriver, they were broken men. It seemed unfair, an artificial display.
Every last gladiator was still on his feet. None of them as far as he could see, had worse than a creased limb or a split scalp to show for the battle. As the red-robed priests came out with their hooks and barrows to drag away the dead, the arena fighters re-formed their line. Beneath thunderous, echoing waves of applause they walked abreast toward the Tyrant’s viewing-perch.
“Splendid,” Commodorus declared, pacifying the crowd’s tumult with broad sweeping gestures. “A fitting end, one that must have been decreed by the gods, and a tribute to our champions’ prowess.” With a stately wave he returned the salute of the gladiators, who stood with swords upraised below him. “Heroes of Luxur, we hail you!”
The cheer that followed his words, augmented by fierce stamping on the stone ledges, exceeded anything that had come before. It shook the stadium, making the very sand shiver and leap under the warriors’ feet like water a-simmer in a copper kettle.
“Now for a lighter undertaking,” Commodorus resumed when the feverish energy had died down. “Our honoured guest, the Prefect Bulbulus, has consented to partake in a public demonstration with me. To do so, we will descend into the arena.”
At this there was a new surge of cheering and stamping, combined with hoots and jocular noises. Evidently what Commodorus proposed was familiar to the patrons, well-received, but no great surprise. Preparations were already under way at the end of the stadium; a great ramp, gilt-railed with carpeted stair-steps instead of treads, was brought into the arena. The twenty or so slaves who manhandled it obviously meant to set it in place beside the exit door, known as the Gate of Heroes. Down it, the Tyrant and any others could easily walk into the arena from their viewing-stand.
Meanwhile, the gladiators proceeded to a row of benches and tables along the arena wall, where slaves waited with drink and light foods. Using pitchers and sponges, the handlers laved sweat, blood, and sand from the fighters’ sunburned limbs and helped them wipe their weapons and armour clean.
With the day’s heat growing intense, some of the warriors shucked off hot metal plates and heavy protective garments, letting whole pitchers of water be dumped over their heads. This was done to admiring cries and bawdy exclamations from the spectators just overhead. Most of these were females, prosperous-looking Luxur wives and buxom maids who draped themselves forward none too decorously over the stadium rail. From this spot, Sathilda was no longer in sight; Conan hoped it was plain to her that neither he nor Roganthus had been hurt.
In the middle of the arena, where attendants with donkey-carts, rakes, and shovels hurried to scrape up the blood and horse-droppings and smooth the sand, new preparations were under way. A long crimson carpet was unrolled, leading from the foot of the temporary stairway to a spot near the centre, where two soft divans and a small table of beverages were set forth.
Then, to a flourish of trumpets and a rattle of drums, two figures descended the staircase. Commodorus strode briskly and proudly, with a bow in one hand and a full quiver of arrows over his shoulder. Paunchy Bulbulus, walking beside him, moved with a somewhat comic air of reluctant uncertainty. He was burdened with a long spear, far too heavy and ungainly for him to cast; to the crowd’s amusement, he seemed to have trouble even holding it upright on the steep stair. Both men also wore swords belted around their waists. Behind them followed two palace guardsmen with long halberds. But near the bottom of the staircase, these two, on the Tyrant’s brisk command, halted themselves at attention and did not follow their masters into the arena.
Commodorus, with his prefect barely keeping up to him, strode boldly onward to the table and divans that made a little island of luxury in the sea of sand. The two did not take seats but stood in watchful expectation. And, after the applause and general levity at the two ill-matched figures, a similar hush fell over the crowd.
In the far end of the arena a door opened. It was the wide low portal next to the endmost one, known as the Beast Gate.
From the darkness of the tunnel emerged shaggy, formless-looking creatures—steppe-lions, three in number, tawny beasts with bushy black manes and dark-tasselled tails. Even as they crept into view together, they darted and twisted with ill-tempered growls, swatting at one another and at the unseen keepers who goaded them forth. The rearmost creature batted the next down onto the sand in a whirling, snarling frenzy that echoed across the arena like ripping canvas. The fight was ended by a deep, full-throated roar from the leader, and all three animals stalked forward, scanning the flat expanse before them with beady eyes well-accustomed to searching southern grasslands.
They did not linger long at the far end, for they were jeered and pelted by the crowd above the entry gate. With irritated snarls they came forward at a slinking run, fanning out swiftly to hunt the only prey that recommended itself in the vast pit: the ruler Commodorus and his portly prefect, where the two stood waiting at the arena’s centre.
The jungle beasts were starved, Conan could tell even at a distance. Their ribs showed up as faint lines on their sinuous flanks, along with other marks and scars of their capture and transport. The Cimmerian had seen larger bush-lions, but never more single-minded ones; they crept forward by rapid turns, evidently intending to confuse and distract the quarry until they had worked close enough to pounce.
Commodorus watched them with a show of calm unconcern; he even turned to the table to pour himself a goblet of refreshment from one of the pitchers. Bulbulus, for his part, looked ill-at-ease—or rather, frozen to the spot. He clutched his oversized spear two-handed, with its butt dragging in the sand. The jerky motions of his ungainly crested helm as he scanned the approaching carnivores betrayed undignified alarm. With a nervous head shake he refused his host’s offer of a drink; and he could not resist a longing glance toward the carpeted stair, which brought a murmur of contempt from the crowd. His gaze was soon drawn back to the stalking predators as they moved dangerously near.
Conan, where he sat beneath the arena wall, could hear isolated remarks from the crowd. “Run, Bulbulus, you quivering fool!” one heckler called. “Scurry off home before you soil your toga!”
“Who ever appointed you to command our city’s guard?” another jeered. “Watch out, the lions are closing in!”
“Look at him, he’s shaking in his sandals,” a disdainful female voice cried. “What if the nomads were battering down our gates? Look at Commodorus, now. There’s a man who knows how to fight!”
As she spo
ke, the Tyrant drew his heavy bow and let fly the first of his arrows. It struck the lion creeping up closest on the left, making the beast leap up in surprise and bat its own flank in baffled rage.
Responding to this distraction, the other two animals loped forward toward their prey. Commodorus's second arrow smote the foremost lion full in the chest. The strike caused it to halt in its tracks, then topple over dead in the sand.
Amid the crowd’s lusty cheering, the flank-grazed lion bolted forward as suddenly as if it had never been wounded at all. Bounding to the edge of the carpeted sanctuary, the beast compressed its wiry body and sprang straight in toward its enemies, hurtling over a silk-lined divan.
Commodorus’s hasty bowshot appeared to strike the animal in mid-air. The bright-feathered shaft lodged in its throat, yet in no way turned aside its momentum. The convulsing body of the mortally wounded lion passed between the marksman and his fleeing companion; its death-throes knocked Commodorus down and clawed the bow from his grasp, sending it flying end over end, the bowstring shredded.
That left the third, uninjured lion loping smoothly forward, gathering itself to pounce. Bulbulus, still holding his useless weapon upright, was caught crouching off balance in the sand. He was afraid to turn his back on the menace and bolt for the stair, which was impossibly far away.
Commodorus, always quick to act, regained his feet. Snatching the heavy spear from the witless prefect, he swung the gleaming point around and butted the near end firmly in the sand. The lion, springing with a thunderous roar that same instant, hurtled straight onto the steel blade. Its body was impaled on the shaft, which bent and skidded in the sand but did not snap.
Once again the stadium reverberated with wild cheering. Commodorus raised his arms and saluted the crowd, calm and unruffled in his role as champion. The Prefect Bulbulus backed away from the slumped carcasses of the two beasts, then turned and limped gracelessly toward the stair, obviously having no other thought in his mind but to leave the arena. His host, after some moments of posturing with his foot on a lion’s carcass, turned and strode dutifully to catch him. Rejoining the guards, the two mounted the stairs to the arena’s rim.
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