“Thus does our Tyrant win the worship of his people,” Ignobold remarked at Conan’s side. “He saves all the easy fights for himself and humiliates his political foes and flunkies in the bargain. They fear the scorn of the mob if they refuse to join him in the arena, even more than they fear the ordeals he will put them through.”
As the staircase was lowered and the dead lions dragged out by horse teams, the first of the afternoon’s single combats was announced. Conan had not seen the morning’s postings or heard what fights were planned. He was interested nevertheless to see Sarkad, one of the established sword-champions of the arena, pitted against a new and unknown fighter, a foreign wrestler dubbed Xothar the Constrictor.
The two met at the centre of the arena, since Xothar, not having participated in the morning’s combat, entered through the Champions’ Gate. He was built short and squat, olive-skinned like a Turanian, with his brutally thick neck and upper body bare in the sun. He exercised himself as he walked, putting his chest and arms through snakelike contortions, whether to impress the crowd or loosen himself up for the fight it was hard to say. Sarkad, his opponent, was not very likely impressed, since he bore a sword, and Xothar’s only visible weapon was a short-tailed flail tucked into his waistband.
Yet the sword was heavy and long, Conan noted, more suited to hacking through a coat of mail than pinning down a near-naked adversary. And Sarkad, though he cast off his buckler and helmet, retained a shirt of chain links that must have burdened him considerably. Evidently he anticipated the fight never coming to grapples.
After saluting in Commodorus’s direction, the two came together. As Conan foresaw, the nimble wrestler was able to dodge the mightily swinging sword blade... twice, thrice, and then dance inside its arc as the swordsman fought to bring it scything back. Xothar’s flail swung useless in one hand... till it flew with a quick toss up into Sarkad’s face, momentarily blinding him. By then it was too late; the wrestler snaked one arm around his opponent’s neck, while his other fist knotted itself in loose mail links.
Sarkad sank to his knees. His sword swung, faltered, then flipped free as he was borne down onto the sand by Xothar’s more purposeful, concentrated weight.
The crowd’s roaring filled up the long moment that ensued. There was mad waving, rhythmic stamping, and an eager flow of bodies through the stands as patrons swarmed to place their bets—or collect them, Conan thought to himself, since surely the loser had been held down long enough to qualify Xothar for a pin.
After a moment the Constrictor broke his grip and stood up, alone. His opponent sagged limply onto the sand, pale and unmistakably dead. A puzzle, that, since no knife or flow of blood was in evidence. Conan had heard no bones snap, nor seen Sarkad convulse in death-agony. Sitting there in the sun’s blazing light, he felt an eerie night-chill creep down his neck. Never in all his battles had he seen a man throttled so swiftly and efficiently.
Xothar, prancing and flexing his cable-like arms to the applause of multitudes, strutted from the arena. The next fight was slow to be started, because of the crowd’s pleasurable excitement bubbling over from the first.
This combat pitted Sistus, one of Dath’s nominees from the wharfside alleys, against another relative newcomer named Callix. For this encounter, Sistus played the traditional role of a dock fighter or fisherman, taking a fish fork, weighted net, and gutting-knife as his only weapons. Conan had watched him train; evidently he had prior experience angling in the river-shallows, or perhaps fighting on the docks.
Now his net whirled and billowed in the air without any awkward entanglements, weaving a formless web of danger for his opponent. Young Callix possessed helmet, spear, shield, and sheathed sword. Yet, once battle was joined, he found that he could not manoeuvre safely in the net’s reach, and was forced continually to give ground.
His mistake was in casting the spear, which was all that kept wily Sistus at bay. The lithe street fighter easily ducked under the cast, moving up close while the other dragged out his sword. Callix parried the first sweep of the net with a swing of his short blade; then, on the recoil, he was struck unprepared by the massed leaden weights of the net, which slammed into the side of his helmet with a dull clang. Staggering backward, he soon tripped in the net’s toils. Mercilessly the long, barbed trident jabbed home, skewering its human target as effectively as any flopping fish.
In his triumph, Sistus was calm and stony-faced. He dispatched his victim with a quick stab of his knife, then untangled his weapons. Scarcely looking up to acknowledge the avalanche of applause, he exited via the Gate of Heroes.
“A splendid victory,” Commodorus said from his viewing-porch. “And now for our third and final combat.” Pronounced by the Tyrant, the words were repeated by criers stationed around the arena wall. “In salute to the heroes of Luddhew’s circus, our new performer Conan the Slayer will fight our acknowledged Sword master, Mudazaya the Swift.”
To Conan the news came as a grim surprise. He had half expected to fight again today, to be sure; to avoid troubling over it, he had not sought to learn the postings in advance. But to go up against Muduzaya, of all his fellow gladiators—so soon, with no chance to make changes, or plans...
Many of these swordslingers were boon fellows, surely enough, but the Kushite was the one he held closest to a kindred spirit. That moment he resolved himself not to kill or gravely wound Muduzaya, whatever the cost.
Walking out to the centre of the arena, strapping on his ungainly helmet for the shade and concealment it offered, Conan tried to catch his friend’s eye. But his opponent went resolutely ahead, plodding straight on without looking up. A pair of arena slaves scurried alongside the Kushite, on the pretext of polishing his black-enamelled shield and touching up gold highlights of his broad metal waistband—a harmless bit of showmanship afforded the reigning champion. But Conan received an odd impression—that the two were actually guiding the warrior along, coaxing him to his place of combat, perhaps because he was incapable of getting there himself. Their solicitous attentions lasted all the way to the arena’s centre, where the white sand was newly raked, and no trace of blood remained. The two even helped him to turn and raise his sword to the Tyrant—according to custom, as Conan likewise did. Then the slaves were gone, scurrying back to the rest area.
Facing Muduzaya, Conan could see that it was true. The midnight-skinned warrior was stupefied— drugged, no doubt of it, by something put into his refreshment jar. Though the fellow held his sword at the ready, there was a dull sluggishness in his face, an opaque barrier between thought and action.
Experimentally, Conan crossed swords with him. Everyone in the front rows must have heard the dullness of the clanking riposte. The Kushite was all but paralysed, scarcely able to fight.
Someone had sought to weaken Muduzaya, Conan guessed, to take the edge off his superb swordsmanship. But why?... Thinking back swiftly to Halbard’s recent complaint, and to his subsequent death, he saw the answer. After all, Muduzaya was the favourite, the Sword master. Surely he was the object of countless high-odds bets in this battle against a relative newcomer, a mere upstart from Luddhew’s mime-troupe. For the champion to lose this fight to Conan would be an upset—it would reverse the odds, and reap the odds makers a sizeable fortune. It was as the Kushite himself had warned: those who rose to popularity and prominence had better beware.
The crowd grew impatient at the stand-off, seeing no bloody action and hearing only occasional listless scrapes of the warriors’ slack steel. “Fight, you overblown cowards!” hoarse cries began to echo across the stadium.
“Slay the Slayer, brave Kushite, and get me back my money!”
“You two were put here for butchery, not a dancing contest!”
“Show us some blood!”
Along with the exhortations, stones and bits of nameless rubbish began to pelt the sand around them. Conan saw that they had better fight or risk being mobbed by patrons who no longer wished to remain spectators.
“Come on,
move,” he told Muduzaya, smiting at the big man’s sword with his own blade. “Snap out of it, fellow! You must put on a show of fighting to satisfy these jackals.”
He ducked and lunged, making a pretence of agility. Beating the Kushite’s sword to one side and then the other, he watched it drift back vaguely to its central position before Muduzaya’s face.
Conan’s efforts drew only jeers. “Go on, slaughter him,” the onlookers called. “If he will not fight, the Circus has no use for him! Or are you, too, a man-loving coward?”
Sweating with heat and exasperation at the centre of the vast empty arena, Conan felt helpless, like an insect caught on a blazing hearth. “Muduzaya,” he challenged, “come on and fight!” To get the Sword master’s attention he smote soundly at the man’s helmet-rim with the flat of his blade, once, then twice. “Come on, then, you great oaf! Are you as worthless as the rest of your cowardly brothers from Kush? Stand and fight, or I’ll kick you back to your stinking jungle wallow!” Between the clanging blows and racial epithets, something in the black man’s expression changed. His eyes behind the nose-piece narrowed, and his nostrils flared. Then at once, his great sword began to cleave and flail, ringing off Conan’s blade like a hammer on an anvil. From the crowd, a roar of bestial frenzy suddenly erupted.
“That’s the way,” Conan encouraged him, “give them a real show for their pennies! Then one of us can feign a mortal wound.”
A moment later, taxed by Muduzaya’s vigorous attack, he rasped out, “Good, man, that’s enough! You can let up a little—I don’t want either one of us to be killed.”
But the drugged champion, well-launched in his berserk attack, obviously did not hear or believe. He kept up the assault, driving Conan back with every swing of his whizzing sword.
“Stop it, you great buffoon, I did not mean what I said before!” Conan was growing weary. He doubted how long he could keep up this fruitless parrying and dodging. “Feign a low cut, and I’ll take the fall—oof!”
Before the words were well out of the Cimmerian’s mouth, Muduzaya’s sword came shearing in waist-high. Conan’s blade was caught in an awkward cross-body guard; it deflected Muduzaya’s blow with a ragged rasp of steel, but its near edge was beaten into unguarded flesh, causing blood to welter down the pale-skinned fighter’s chest. Stumbling off balance in the soft sand, he was thrown headlong.
“Aii, Muduzaya!” bettors roared from the benches. “Carve the upstart northerner into bloody gobbets! All hail our Sword master!”
Conan, afire with pain and unsure himself whether his fall had been real or feigned, had a sick sense of what would follow. He saw his fierce adversary looming tall and dark above him, eyes flashing beneath the ugly helmet-visor. He saw the great sword swing up overhead, as the crowd’s roar climaxed. He raised his own sword in uncertain defence., making ready to kick a leg out from under his would-be slayer if chance permitted. Muduzaya swung his sword down at a broad angle, battering Conan’s blade flat onto the sand. The victor’s big sandalled foot shifted and came to rest on Conan’s elbow, pinning down his sword-arm. The crowd went mad with cheering.
“All right, fellow, you’ve made your point!” Conan muttered, watching for any warning of a killing-stroke. “Now get off me, and I’ll play dead! Act as if you won the fight.” He supposed that his wounds, though largely superficial, made his carcass resemble a vulture’s feast.
Muduzaya lowered his sword and laid its point against Conan’s chest—close enough to chill the skin, close enough to be smeared with the blood that seeped from the open wound. Then he raised the reddened blade high, to a convulsion of cheering.
“That will teach you to watch your Cimmerian potato-mouth,” Muduzaya muttered.
From the Sword master’s faltering step as he removed his weight, Conan could tell that he was still unsteady on his feet. Yet he made an adequate show of conquest; he threw off his helmet and, with sword raised high above his head, turned slowly in place.
The stadium’s uproar flowed into motion. Alive with enthusiasm at the end of the program, citizens were rushing to collect their bets, swarming to the front rail and the exits, even dropping down the sheer wall into the arena to mob the surviving gladiators.
The pair of attendants from the rest area returned for Muduzaya, looking doubtful about the battle’s outcome. Then at once they were overtaken by running, shouting fanatics who swarmed around the Kushite... and carelessly kicked sand onto Conan’s inert body. Laying hold of their hero in a mass, they hoisted him up on their shoulders and paraded him in circles around his supine victim. Muduzaya sat atop their shoulders unsteadily. But he was well out of reach of the two dubious-looking slaves, who soon gave up and retreated.
The worshippers would take good care of their idol, Conan guessed. He assumed that any ill-effects of the drug would soon wear off. In another moment or two, he planned to jump up and lose himself in the growing crowd.
Then he felt a nearby presence, hands tugging at his limbs. Unslitting his sand-caked eyes, he turned to see two figures stooping over him: red-robed priests, young and grim, with a hand litter waiting behind them.
“Off, wretched ghouls,” Conan snarled at them, trying not to curse too loudly. “Greedy Set-spawn, wait until I die before you make me a mummy!” He hauled himself up to his feet, abandoning his sword and helmet, holding one arm close to protect his flayed chest.
Shrugging, the pair of morgue priests turned and bore away their litter. Only a few onlookers showed surprise at Conan’s sudden reanimation; to escape them, he shoved away into the milling crowd.
Suddenly Conan thought of Sathilda. If she was watching from the stands, she must imagine him dead or severely wounded. Looking up, he could not find her. The row of privileged seats where she had been before was empty. Trying not to make himself overly conspicuous, he scanned the front row all around the oval, but did not see her gazing down. He had been too preoccupied during the fight to notice whether she was still watching.
The flow of the mob was toward the Heroes’ Gate. This part of the arena floor, where the gladiators had been seated, contained the greatest crush of people. Eager spectators had lowered rope ladders and were swarming down to mingle with the champions. The crowd included as many women as men; hoping to find Sathilda among them, Conan pushed ahead.
“For a corpse,” someone said to him, “you look preoccupied. The dead are supposed to be free of mortal cares.”
The voice was sultry and deep, a red-haired woman’s. Conan tried to dismiss her with a sullen glance. But one glance entailed another—such were her lush good looks, sheathed in clinging silk bound with gemstones and golden clasps. Her yellow pantaloons and scanty blouse were but a single twist of fabric, taut as a second skin over her supple charms; and her face, painted and crowned with hennaed ringlets, was a mask from Ishtar’s temple. Ageless and timeless, she presented herself as an expensive bauble in a costly if sparse wrapper.
“Not so dead, after all, perhaps... do I detect a stirring of life?” The woman came near in the throng, frankly examining Conan from head to foot.
He glanced down at himself—gory and crusted with sand, sweat-runnelled, the blood from his chest now mostly dried or stickily oozing. His only garments were his bronze weight-lifter’s belt and his kilt of metal leaves. “Do dead men strike your fancy, then?” he asked, looking back to her.
“I breathe life into them, on occasion,” she told him. “Short of that, I give them reason to stay alive in the first place.” Taking his arm, she led him only half resisting through the Gate of Heroes. “Come along, we can bind up these wounds of yours.”
“What is your name, then—and tell me, do you take such an interest in all the gladiators, or only the losing ones?”
“I am Babeth. And of all the champions in the arena, Conan the Slayer is the one I would least expect to see vanquished. Unless he wished to be.” “You have watched me closely, then.”
She draped his arm across her pliant shoulders as she led him down
the tunnel, though he had no real need of support. “It is the custom of some noble Stygian matrons—if they have idle time, and no other pressing obligation—to select a champion among the arena fighters, and to favour and promote him.” He felt her draw in a deep, decisive breath under his resting arm. “They might choose to encourage him in any number of ways—such as by throwing him a purse of gold the first time they saw him.”
“So.” He nodded in understanding. The gold he had been given was not with him at the moment, but hidden at the cottage, his and Sathilda’s. “A little like backing a prize racehorse, you mean. So tell me, Babeth, what do the noble husbands of Stygian matrons think of their wives’ interest in arena fighters?”
Babeth smiled, taking the opportunity to draw his arm down more snugly on her shoulder. “My husband takes little interest in such matters. He is a Corinthian merchant, and so is gone a year at a time on caravans to his home country. It leaves me ample energy for diversions.”
“I see.” Lacking more to say, Conan went with her through the garden, through whose shade other men and maidens passed arm in arm. Some gladiators already paused to embrace one or two ardent admirers, and to swill wine that was shared out from flasks and skins.
Adjoining the baths was a roofed pavilion which served as a dispensary and dressing-room. Here were massage tables and benches, hot and cold soaking-tubs, and salves and ointments dispensed freely from stone jars by slave physicians. The place was filling fast with athletes and their guests, as were the tepid baths; Conan had hoped Sathilda might await him here. But she was nowhere in sight, and Babeth’s demands on him were insistent.
“Sit on this bench, stay quiet, and I’ll bring water with an infusion of fir-sap. That will soothe your wounds and prevent festering.” She went to command the physicians and, after a few moments, returned with an aromatic, steaming basin. “Here now, lie down and let me wash away this grit.” Her soft hands moved gently over his midsection, spreading the warm, tingling medicine. “The cut is not deep, thanks be to Set.”
Conan the Gladiator Page 13