Arena

by Karen Hancock

  “True,” Tuck agreed, retying the cloth around his head.

  “Then why’re we here?” John demanded.

  “Maybe to rescue Meg,” said Callie.

  The way Pierce looked at her, she surmised it wasn’t a bad guess. He only said, “These people stink of fire curtain. No way we’re to stay with them.”

  “So what do we do?” John asked.

  “Take Meg’s advice.”

  Pierce turned to Rowena as she rejoined them.

  “Well, that got his attention,” she said. “You say you already checked it out?” She indicated the opening.

  “It’s in bad shape,” Pierce told her. “The way the ground shakes around here, I wouldn’t risk using it.”

  Rowena waved off the concern. “Those shivers relieve the pressure so there won’t be a big one. And the General says the tunnel’s clear all the way.”

  “How can he know that?”

  “He knows.” She took off her helmet and scratched at one of several oozing sores on her barren, bristling scalp. Tufts of longer hair stood out here and there, but most of it had been hacked close, presumably in an attempt to tend the sores. Part of one of her ears was missing, as well, the remainder swollen and distorted.

  “So who is this general, anyway?” John asked. “And how’d you hook up with him?”

  Rowena got a funny expression on her face. “We’d be dead if not for him. Muties had us hemmed in and outnumbered three to one when the General and his men drove ’em off.”

  “How many men does he have?” Callie asked.

  “About a hundred then. Not so many now.” She scratched the nub of her ear and settled the helmet back into place. “So how were you all planning on getting into Splagnos?”

  “Cross the plain and slip through the gates,” Pierce said.

  Rowena gaped. “Don’t you know anything? No one crosses the plain. It’s a good thing you found us.”

  Pierce looked amused. “I think we’ll take our chances topside. Good luck with the tunnel, though.”

  “What?”

  He turned away.

  “You can’t leave.” She hurried to block his path. “We should work together. It makes sense. We’d be a bigger force. And we are on the same side.”

  He held her gaze levelly. “I don’t think so, Row. But thanks anyway.”

  As he started past she seized his arm. “You can’t go. Not until you meet the General.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—because you have to!”

  “No, I don’t.” He slipped from her grasp and started across the plaza toward the Splagnosian plain. The rest of his group followed, Meg scampering childlike to Callie’s side. They’d only gone a few yards when seven men appeared over the rubble twenty feet to their right.

  Big men all, they were uniformly armored and more heavily armed than the others. Their leader was solid, broad-shouldered, and tallest by a head. His dark goggles and clear respirator covered a bearded, strong-featured face, and long black hair flowed from under a horned Zelosian helmet.

  Callie recognized him instantly.

  CHAPTER

  28

  Garth expressed his own recognition with a curse and turned to Rowena. “This was your surprise?”

  She smiled.

  “You told me he was dead.”

  “I thought he was.”

  Garth crossed the remaining ten feet that separated them. His dark goggles glittered like spider’s eyes, and the closer he got, the more suffocating his presence became. His face was hard and haggard. Black threads cavorted about him and the exposed portions of his face flickered iridescent yellow—both indications of regular fire-curtain exposure. And Pierce was right about the smell, almost sweet, with a tinge of decay.

  He stopped in front of them, standing a good foot and a half taller than when they had parted. Pierce met his stony regard unflinchingly, but Callie fought to hold her ground. The psychic force of Garth’s personality was even more daunting than his size, and his close proximity generated the same tooth-gritting sensation as a fire curtain.

  Pierce spoke quietly. “Hello, Garth. I guess you made it up the canyon all right.”

  “Sure did, buddy. Thor and Lokai with me.” He half turned, indicating two of the men who had accompanied him. Thor’s hair had grown out in a mane of red that billowed around his helmet. He was almost as big as Garth. Lokai, by contrast, was all bones and teeth.

  “It was one rockin’ hot fight,” Garth went on, “but we made it. Without any help, either.” He spat off to the side. “Matter of fact, we’ve come all this way without kissing up to one stinking alien. Did it all on our own.”

  What about the weapons you carry? Callie thought. And the armor you’re wearing?

  He grinned at Pierce, his chest swelling. “Told you it could be done.”

  And the fire curtain. You can’t deny that’s alien made.

  “We’re gonna go all the way, too. Straight through Splagnos to the portal.”

  “Are you?” Pierce said mildly.

  “Hey, if it wasn’t for us, these fool gaters’d all be dead. You should’ve seen those muties run when we came up. We’ve got a reputation, you know. No one tangles with Hell’s Horsemen. That’s what they call us—Hell’s Horsemen.”

  Rowena handed him a water bottle. He spat again, then drained the vessel in huge, sloppy gulps, liquid spilling down his beard and chest. Done, he handed it back to her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, goggle eyes fixed on Pierce. “You come through Zelos, too?”

  “Of course.”

  Garth shook his head. “I am truly amazed. You are one lucky sucker!” He turned to Rowena. “You check the subway yet?”

  “Earl and Grandy are now.”

  Garth motioned for Thor and Lokai to go below, as well.

  Pierce started forward again, continuing in the direction he’d been heading when the newcomers arrived.

  “Did I say you could go anywhere?” Garth asked.

  Pierce eyed him sidelong.

  At the stairway’s mouth, Thor and Lokai paused.

  “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” Garth said.

  “And we have a lot of city to cross before dark,” Pierce countered. He brought the SI up, bracing the butt on his hip.

  Garth laughed. “You know, I thought you just said you were gonna cross this city before dark. Isn’t that crazy?”

  Pierce walked on.

  “You’re gonna get those people killed,” Garth yelled.

  Pierce ignored him as Callie and the others followed.

  Garth erupted in an explosion of curses. “You’re not gonna do this to me again.”

  Pierce kept walking.

  “NO!”

  The back of Callie’s neck crawled. Then a wave of rage slammed into her, washing through her like liquid fire. Red tinged her vision, violence swelled within her—and changed, instantly, to paralyzing terror.

  He’s doing this, she thought. Find the link and you can turn it off.

  Feeling as if she was drowning, she fought through the emotion, seeking the connection with Elhanu. Warmth bloomed within her as his reassuring touch drove away the dark passions. Exhaling deeply, she walked on. An instant later green fire slammed into her back, hurling her forward into the rubble. She smelled ozone, but when it faded she was unhurt. Pierce helped her up and they kept going.

  “You stop now, Pierce,” Garth roared, “or I’ll set my men on you. You know we’ll win.”

  They’d almost reached the first rise of blocks when a fountain of rocks erupted to the left, and then one of the fallen pillars danced upright to fall at Pierce’s feet, a yard from crushing him. Dust billowed up as another psychic wave assaulted them, sluicing by Callie like water around a rock.

  As it died Pierce wheeled, SI leveled. “Back off, Garth.”

  Growling, the bigger man lifted a meaty hand, the motion sharp and jerky. Pierce’s weapon leapt from his grasp as if on a string and sailed through the air
, clattering to the ground at Garth’s feet. Callie stared, struggling to accept what she’d seen. She knew there were Trogs who could do this, mutants in the wilds, but Garth was not— Understanding made her sick and cold. His size, the edge in his voice, the growths on his arms—she had seen it all before.

  Suddenly a wall of bodies hurtled toward her from the right, armored giants that took at least three hits to drop—the rest of Garth’s men, she realized, hiding out of sight until needed. She shot three of them before she was bowled over.

  Shortly she and her friends were disarmed, relieved of their belts and headbands, and lined up at gunpoint before the substation opening. Garth strutted up and down before them, the dark goggles still obscuring his eyes. He stopped in front of Pierce.

  “When you left,” he said, “you might as well have taken the rest of the group. Those that didn’t desert worried about everything, doubted my every word. In the end, it got them killed. And left the rest of us fighting for our lives. I lost an eye, Thor lost his hand, and Lokai’ll never be the same. You’re not running out on me again.”

  He turned to his followers. “We’ll let them lead the way. If those rumors of poison gas pockets are true, they’ll be the first to know.”

  “General, sir—?” One of his men slipped through the ranks, panting. “Splagnosians just entered the city.”

  Garth gave passionate and profane vent to his annoyance, then ordered everyone into the hole. “The drones’ll come first, so make it fast, people.”

  They hurried into the substation, herding their prisoners before them. A wide stair descended through successive curtains of age-stiffened vinyl slats to a vast shadow-swathed rotunda. Hand-lamp beams revealed lines of sagging wooden partitions and crumbling walls extending toward them from beneath the great fall of debris where the ceiling’s center had collapsed. Massive iron beams rusted with age, angled amid boulders and dark veins of earth. To the right of the entrance, railed passenger aisles gleamed dully before a pair of featureless sliding doors in the curved outer wall. Several Watchers clung to that wall, their eyes reflecting the light in eerie yellow-green disks.

  Callie followed Pierce down the stair, sneezing in the dust, her nose burning from the acidic stench of mites. In the darkness she could hear them chittering and rasping. At least it was cooler here.

  The prisoners were prodded into the ruins of a three-sided vendor’s stall, stone walls crumbling at waist height. Relieved of their boots, they were left under guard as the rest of the men began assembling what appeared to be a pair of generating poles.

  “Are they making what I think they’re making?” Callie asked Pierce in alarm.

  He nodded grimly. “They’ve got some injuries to heal, and if they’re planning a run on Splagnos they’ll want to be as strong as possible. There won’t be time for this later.”

  “When they come through, though,” she whispered, “won’t they want to eat and . . .” She trailed off uneasily.

  Pierce’s jaw muscles rippled beneath the grizzle of his beard. “The eat part for sure.” He directed her attention to where several of the Horsemen were emptying their absconded packs, tossing aside clothes and equipment, but piling up any food or E-cubes they found.

  Rowena came over to gloat. She wore one of their stolen belts and had removed her goggles and helmet, leaving only the respirator. “You thought you were so smart,” she sneered at Pierce. “That you were the only one who could get us out, the only one who could really understand the precious manual.” Her face twisted. “What a worthless waste of paper that turned out to be. All those glowing promises, the armor, the invincible belts—not much good to you now, are they?”

  “It’s not the equipment that matters, Rowena. It’s the source.”

  “Your alien master, you mean? Wonderful Elhanu, who’s promised to deliver us all? Well, where is he? Where was he when the Trogs attacked? When forty-seven of our friends were slaughtered on the road from Rimlight? Where was he, Pierce?” She advanced on him till she was shouting in his face.

  Her voice faded into silence. Everyone was watching them. After a long moment, Pierce said quietly, “I think you know.”

  She slapped him. He stood like a stone, holding her gaze.

  Her face fluoresced yellow-green. “You are so arrogant! So absolutely convinced you’re right. Even now, even here, you still believe he’s going to bail you out!”

  “Only if it suits his purpose.”

  She shook her head. “What’s happened to you, Pierce? You used to be a man.”

  “Rowena!” Garth’s rough voice echoed through the chamber. “Knock it off. I need you over here.”

  She eyed Pierce a moment more, then stalked away.

  “She hates you,” Meg said, standing at Callie’s shoulder. “Ever since we split, everything was always your fault.”

  “It’s not me she hates,” Pierce said, settling against one of the walls. “It’s Elhanu.”

  “Or herself,” said Callie, watching Rowena squat beside Garth as the two bent over some kind of box.

  Meg was hovering too close again, as if she took comfort in the nearness. Puzzled, Callie looked at her. They’d taken her helmet along with those of the other prisoners, and like Rowena, her hair had been hacked away. A seven-inch gash lay open and suppurating on the side of her head.

  “Oh, Meg,” Callie murmured. “What happened?”

  Meg probed the swollen skin around it with hesitant fingers, tears glittering in her eyes. “No one would sew it up. And we don’t carry antibiotics. Garth says we don’t need them as long as we have the curtain.”

  “Which you aren’t using.” She’d known that from the beginning. Meg lacked the curtain aura.

  “I didn’t like what it did to me. I didn’t like what it did to them. I guess maybe I saw—well, anyway, I only used it a couple times.” Her eyes watched Garth’s men, setting up their generator. “It’s getting better, though. I think it’s going to heal, given enough time.”

  “The scar will be horrendous.”

  Meg smiled bitterly. “As if that matters.”

  “Of course it matters. The Aggillon may be able to resuscitate us, but they might not be able to do anything about scars. Teish, do you have some of that miracle salve?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I’ve got some,” John said, handing over a small plastic vial.

  Callie took it and sat Meg on a tilted block.

  Her friend eyed the vial. “Miracle salve?”

  “We got it in a harries’ nest. More than that, you don’t want to know. But it works wonders.”

  “You were in a harries’ nest?”

  Callie nodded. “They ignored us. I guess they only get aggressive outside their nests.” She frowned at the wound. “I oughta wash this first.”

  She got up and asked Lokai, who was their guard, for some water. He met her gaze sullenly, dark eyes blank in his gaunt face. After a few seconds, he looked away. “She chose to let it fester, she can suffer with it.”

  “Don’t be a jerk, Lokai. Give me the water.”

  He shifted uncomfortably, and then Garth joined them. “There a problem here?”

  Like the others, he had removed his goggles. One of his eyes rested blindly askew in a horribly scarred socket. Now he grinned at Callie with a familiar leer, and she fought to keep from walking away.

  “I want some water,” she said.

  Garth stroked her face. “You still look good enough to eat, babe.”

  She slapped his fingers and he grabbed her hand, jerking her close.

  “Don’t get feisty, girl. I can have anything I want from you, anytime I choose.”

  “Except my respect.”

  His eyes flashed and his teeth bared. Then he smiled. “Maybe I only want your body.”

  She glared at him. “Can I have the water?”

  Working his jaw, he released her and motioned for Lokai to get it. But he stood grinning while the man complied, and when she turned away, bottle in
hand, he pinched her bottom. She flinched, swallowed her cry of outrage, and hurried on, his laughter burning in her ears.

  Pierce stood twenty feet away, fists clenched. Whit blocked his path, one hand on his chest, the other on his arm. John had the other arm.

  “You know he’s nuts,” Callie murmured as she drew even with them. “It’s not worth making trouble over.”

  Pierce didn’t acknowledge her comments, his gaze fixed on Garth. She exchanged glances with Whit, then returned to her patient.

  Meg hissed at Callie’s first touch but held still after that. Presently she said, “You know him? The General, I mean?”

  “Remember Garth?”

  “The one who abandoned you on the trail?” Meg turned wide eyes upon her. “That’s him?”

  “He’s bigger now. And uglier.” Callie set the rag aside, fingered oily salve from the vial, and daubed it onto the wound. Meg hissed again and ground her teeth until she was finished. The stuff stung fiercely— Callie knew from experience.

  As Callie recapped the container, Meg sobbed. “Oh, Cal, I’ve been such a fool. And I’m so sorry I said all those things to you.”

  Callie sat back on her heels, wiping her fingers on her pants. “Well, I deserved most of it. And you were right about me and Pierce.” She smiled. “I am in love with him.”

  Meg’s eyes rounded. “Does he know?”

  Callie nodded.

  Her friend glanced over her shoulder at him, sitting now with Whit and John, their backs braced against the tottering masonry. “Does he . . . care?”

  Callie held up the hand with the ring on it. “You might say that.”

  Meg’s eyes widened further. She seized Callie’s hand and pulled it close to inspect the ring, a single blood crystal on a band of gold. “He gave this to you?” She looked up. “You’re going to marry him?”

  Callie nodded, enjoying Meg’s shock. “When we get back.”

  She expected Meg to squeal and giggle hysterically. Instead, after a minute of stunned silence, her friend burst into tears and threw her arms around her. As Meg bawled into her shoulder, Callie patted her back, completely bewildered.

  “I’m sorry,” Meg blubbered. “It’s just—from the night I left you at the lake it’s been one awful thing after another. Coming down that road was a nightmare. We had to leave the injured, and they begged us to kill them so the Trogs wouldn’t get them. There was no place to hide, no place to rest. We didn’t sleep for days. And then the harries came. And the fear—you have no idea. Constant terror, never knowing what was going to happen. I thought I’d go crazy. When the General saved us, we were so happy. But then he—”