Hero Grown

by Andy Livingstone

  He wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened. But at lease little gnat was better than little pet.

  ‘Next,’ Corpse’s voice intoned.

  Brann hardly saw his opponent before the flat of a wooden blade tapped the side of his head. His vision starred and unfocused, he wobbled to the side to be welcomed by grins and slaps of praise. The way parted, though, when Tyrala approached. Firm fingers felt their way around his ribs and examined his scalp for bumps. With a grunt of approval, she led him away from the bustle and sat him down. Crouching, she handed him a waterskin.

  ‘Just winded. Rest, deep slow breaths and many sips of water.’ She stood. ‘Lucky boy. The shield saved you from being crushed.’

  ‘Luck is nonsense.’ Cassian was standing over him. ‘He saved himself. Instinct pulled that shield across.’

  Brann didn’t have the breath to correct ‘instinct’ to ‘terror’. So he smiled instead.

  Marlo walked him back to the Food House after the sparring had ended. They walked in silence until Brann stopped him, a thought that had nagged him for a while slipping into his head.

  ‘Why six?’

  Marlo looked at him, head askance. ‘Because that is the age I was when my life took this turn.’

  ‘No, I’m not talking about you coming here. I mean everything here.’ Brann waved his arm around. ‘We train for six days at a time. We do things six times over when we train. There are six buildings around the courtyard. There are six trainers for the fighters. Six times in the hot and cold baths for recovery. Whenever this school competes, we have sent six fighters to the contest. There are even six bloody benches in Cassian’s garden!’

  ‘You’re obsessed,’ Marlo laughed. ‘But you are right. And there are more examples if you can see them.’ His finger jabbed Brann’s chest and he looked at the school’s symbol on his tunic. ‘Six lines form the two swords.’

  ‘Oh, by the gods,’ Brann groaned. ‘This is driving me mad. Why six?’

  Marlo’s eyebrows flicked up and down mischievously. Six times. Grinning, he beckoned Brann off the path and crouched on some looser ground. ‘Look,’ he said, and Brann knelt beside him.

  Marlo poked one finger in the dust to make an impression, then two beneath it and three beneath them again. ‘See, six dots in precise balance. Walk round it – whichever way you face it, the sides are the same, the points are the same. Three equal sides plus three points at the same angle: six again. Perfect balance. It is the symbol of the lady Tyrala. It was her belief, the Balance of Six, that brought Cassian back from the world his misery had taken him to. This,’ he laid his hand on the double-sword emblem on his tunic, ‘is the outward sign of this school but this,’ he thumped a fist into the centre of the six dots. ‘This is at the heart of everything we do here. This is how we live.’

  Chest heaving, Brann knelt, his sword lying against the chest of the barrel-chested man on the cracked and rutted ground before him.

  The crowd was loud with the sounds at the end of a fight: the delight of wagers won and the disgust of those lost. Loud enough to almost drown his opponent’s words, ranged as they were around the lip of the wood-lined circular pit that was large enough to hold twenty men in line, arms outstretched and fingertips touching, but at this time home to only two. One kneeling, one on his back looking up.

  ‘Gods, but you were quick. I never saw that coming.’

  ‘I had to be. I would have run out of energy long before that.’ Brann grasped his wrist to pull him to his feet. ‘I have to say, you seem remarkably cheerful. I don’t want to poke the wound, but you did just lose.’

  The man shrugged. ‘I fought my hardest, and them up there could see that, whether they moan or cheer. I thought I had you a couple of times, but I have fought on this circuit for long enough to know when I just come up against a better man, simple as that.’

  Brann blew out a breath, shaking slightly from the rush of the fight. ‘I thought you had me more than a couple of times.’

  ‘Never in doubt, if truth be told, though I always hoped for a slip that might let me in. Just one thing, youngster. You have a tendency to dip your shield slightly before you strike. An inferior fighter will use his experience to read these signs and close the gap between your talent and his.’

  The boy smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It is no disadvantage to me to tell you. I doubt we will meet again in the circle. I found my level long ago, but you are destined for higher venues than this. May fortune be at your back and not in your face.’

  ‘You too.’

  The man grinned and slapped him on the back, oblivious to the rivulets of blood trailing from the line across his chest and the nicks on both arms, his left thigh and right ear. He ambled towards a ladder that had been lowered into the pit. Brann smiled and headed to a similar ladder at the opposite side, reflecting that there are just some people you come across who cheer you up just by being in their company. Another of those waited at the lip of the pit.

  ‘Your sixth victory from six since Cassian entered you in these contests in the city pits,’ Salus beamed, helping him up. ‘You know the boss’ll be happy at that.’

  Brann glanced over at Cassian, who was in conversation with a Scribe, and a high-ranking one from the look of him. And the old soldier looked far from happy. ‘Really? Doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be the scribbler’s words doing that. The Boss will have been pleased with your performance. Not much wrong with it.’

  ‘Apparently I give away when I’m going to attack by dipping my shield.’

  Salus shrugged. ‘That’s easy to work on, but hard to spot. Good of Altan to mention it. He’s been a good honest pro for a number of years, now. His words are worth a listen.’

  ‘That’s something I never imagined.’ The next fight was starting and Brann moved a few paces back from the crowd and took the chance to sit for a while.

  Salus settled beside him. ‘What? That Altan would give good advice? He’s a good lad.’

  Brann laughed. ‘No, no. Believe me, there have been many who have been less than pleasant when beaten by a newcomer, or when watching their colleagues be beaten, either in these pit contests or even in practice at our own school. But I have come across one or two decent ones like him.’ He stared at the cloudless blue of a sky that seemed to stretch forever and thought how different it was from home. ‘When we heard the stories growing up of the gladiators, as the storytellers called them, it was enormous titanic contests that always ended in one man lying slaughtered.’

  ‘Too expensive. Stories are stories and this is real life. If fighters are bought in, they are not cheap. And once they are in a school, they work a lot, so they eat a lot. Weapons cost to maintain. There are all sorts of things I don’t even know about need to be paid for just to keep a school going. It takes a while to train a new fighter to the standard and style of your school, so it takes time for him or her to earn. The contests pay the schools to bring contestants, and we can hire out fighters as bodyguards on short contracts, but the income just gets a school by. We can’t afford to keep replacing fighters who go off and get killed. When you think that this circle, in this gathering point for caravans, is replicated in other caravan points, market quarters, docks, living areas, anywhere that people gather all over the city, that’s a lot of fighters who would be cast aside on a regular basis. That’s why the death fights create such interest. Such entertainment is kept for certain occasions, or for the depravity of the… well, whatever. They don’t happen much. The entertainment is in the contest, the skill or strength that wins them. The main risk in most contests lies in the winning or losing of the wagers laid by those watching.’

  Brann saw in his face that there was no point in asking. He grunted. ‘And I can see why the enormous titanic fights are an exaggeration. I’m knackered after just a few minutes. And that’s after training hard enough to get ahead of Breta in the runs.’

  The man’s head nodded in an amused snort. ‘You should m
aybe think of raising your standards a touch.’

  ‘You will have to raise your standards very much.’ Cassian stood over them, his tone unusually grave.

  Brann scrambled to his feet. ‘I know I dip my shield. I’m sorry, I’ll work on it.’

  Cassian’s eyebrows raised, but he didn’t pursue the detail. ‘You’ll work on a great deal more than that. And quickly.’ Apprehension started to churn Brann’s stomach. ‘They want to move you to the Arena. I tried to tell him that any fighter would need a year at this level before we could even judge if they were ready, not the half of it that you have had. You could be badly injured, not through the fault of an opponent, but from your lack of experience. But he was just a Scribe, he only carried the message.’ The man put a hand on Brann’s shoulder. ‘My poor boy, first they put you in a death fight with no preparation, and now this. I don’t know who, or why, but someone influential is hunting you. And we have no choice but to send you out to run before the hounds of their plans.’

  Brann knew who. And why. But he merely shrugged and looked at the cart that would take them back to the compound. ‘Better get started then.’

  Chapter 4

  ‘He fights well, this boy of yours.’

  She had taken to drawing a chair beside his as he lost himself in the view from his window and the thoughts in his head. Even his wife had never dared as much. But she was not his wife.

  He had long since stopped wondering who she was, or had been. Or why she was there. Or what her reasons might be. There was an acceptance of her presence. It had grown, but he could not tell himself when it had started. That was the thing about acceptance: you did not tend to question it.

  But that voice, that dry whispering voice. It seized his attention with an irresistible power and ease like nothing else he had encountered in his years. And he had encountered a great deal in a great deal of years.

  ‘He does.’ It could not be denied. Seven victories in as many months since graduating from the peripheral pits to the Arena was a feat that would make an experienced fighter proud, never mind that they had been against fighters of seven different sizes and styles. Whoever they put before him, he had found a way to beat them. He took no acclaim; where others postured and played to the crowd, he would walk out with a brief wave of respectful acknowledgement and, at the conclusion of each fight, would face four ways in turn and place his hand on the symbol on his chest, homage to the school that trained him to claim these victories.

  And the masses had warmed to him. They loved him. They flocked to his fights like no other, the pale young boy from the North with the unpredictable style that entertained beyond empty showmanship.

  ‘But he needs more.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’ The astonished uncertainty in her voice was a rare pleasure.

  ‘He is only half of what he must be.’

  ‘How much more need he be? How much more can he be? What more must he gain, must he prove? When you expect too much, failure is the only outcome.’

  ‘Fate expects,’ he snapped. ‘Situations demand. If he cannot bear the load, he is not the one we seek and we must cast our net again.’

  ‘He must be the one.’ She stood and paced closer to the window, her eyes distant. ‘I feel it too strongly for it to be otherwise. But can what is needed be brought from him? Can it be done?’

  ‘It can.’

  ‘He will need to grow, to learn, to change.’

  ‘I will ensure it.’

  She shuddered, as if a chill had lanced through the heat. ‘I fear for him.’

  ‘You should.’

  ****

  Brann was emerging from his cold plunge in a cascade of dripping water and a gasp that rang against the walls as Marlo stuck his head around the corner.

  ‘By the balls of the gods,’ he spluttered. ‘Well the male ones. Gods, I mean. Male gods, not male balls. Although they are male as well, I suppose.’ He heaved himself quickly from the pool. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t get any easier in that pool. There’s something just not right about doing that.’

  Marlo laughed and threw him a towel. ‘I thought you Northerners were used to the cold. Is it not always that way there?’

  Brann’s laugh was abrupt. ‘Sometimes it seems like that. Sometimes it heats up, to as much as just “chilly”. Occasionally, we get a few days of sunshine, and then we make all the usual jokes about that being our summer. But mostly we get rain. Sometimes as snow, but mostly rain. A lot of rain.’

  ‘Snow?’

  Brann smiled at him. It was always a slight comfort when, in a land where he found so many things to be strange and unknown, there were still some crumbs of knowledge he had that would hold mysteries for others. ‘It’s like rain, but colder. And whiter.’

  Marlo pondered it. ‘I would like to see this snow.’

  Brann grunted. ‘Catch it while you’re young, then. It’s fun for children and an irritation for adults. And it’s cold, much colder than you ever know here.’

  ‘And yet you find the plunge bath unbearable?’ Marlo’s curiosity wouldn’t let this go. ‘When you were born into this cold wet land?’

  ‘Believe me, when you are born into it you don’t seek it out. We spent our lives trying to avoid it, under several layers of clothing or near a fire.’ He wrapped the towel around him. ‘Anyway, what are you here for?’

  Marlo fetched his tunic. ‘I have a surprise for you.’

  ‘That’s hardly what you want to be saying to a semi-naked man.’

  ‘Enough. I’ve just had my lunch. Put your clothes on.’

  Brann grinned and adjusted his belt. ‘So?’

  Marlo turned and walked towards the door. ‘We have an adventure to go on.’

  Brann was used to the other boy’s infectious tendency towards exaggerated enthusiasm, so he followed without great expectations of the surprise involving anything remotely exciting. But, still, he followed with a smile. He found it impossible not to do so with Marlo.

  When they left through the front of the house rather than the rear, however, he was thrown. ‘Where are we going? You do remember, don’t you, that I was fighting yesterday? I have an afternoon session with Tyrala and her manipulation torture.’

  ‘You don’t,’ Marlo said over his shoulder. ‘It was the lady’s suggestion that you take some time away from everything. It is just as important to let the head recover as the body, she said. Come on, keep up.’

  Brann trotted alongside him. ‘So where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ was all Marlo would divulge, and proceeded to chat cheerily the entire way into the heart of the city about anything but the destination. Brann did notice, however, that the areas they were passing through were becoming less and less salubrious. A few curious glances were thrown his way as they walked, as if he seemed familiar but, out of the context of the Arena, up-close and devoid of sweat, blood and grime, they just couldn’t think where they knew his face. He was only vaguely aware of it, though, his own attention drawn away from them by the bustle of the city. His eyes darted constantly, drawn by a whirl of shifting movement, colour and sound. Buildings seemed so close, people so numerous. They turned a corner to a narrow street, wide enough to allow a cart in only one direction should one choose to enter it. Not that any cart driver would attempt it, jammed as it was with stalls along one side, sellers stationary behind them and, in front of them, those buying or perusing or haggling or chatting or passing through or waving or arguing or, presumably, thieving swirled amongst each other like grains of sand caught in eddies of wind. He stopped, the scene as much a barrier as a stone wall.

  It took Marlo a moment to realise Brann was no longer beside him. He wheeled round with a look of alarm that faded to a smile. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’

  Brann frowned, staring at the crowded street. ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘No, not the street. And not funny that way.’ The boy moved closer to Brann to let a baker carry past a tray that trailed the most appetising of smells in its wake. ‘I me
an the feeling you get after living in the compound for a while. How everything outside it seems so strange when you come back to it. I grew up in this city and it only takes me a month in the school before I feel weird when I come out of it. You’ve had a lot longer than that. Don’t worry, it’ll pass before long.’

  It was true. Brann hadn’t realised how much the boundaries of the compound had become the boundaries of his world. Even when he had travelled to the Arena, he had done so in a covered wagon, hidden like a prized asset. Now the humdrum routine of the city seemed alien to him. That it was so visibly normal to all around him left him feeling apart from them, distant, detached, as if watching them in a dream, moving among them unseen and unnoticed by all around, just like he had felt in the aftermath of…

  … his brother’s death.

  The image of Callan flooded Brann’s vision: jolting with the impact of the crossbow bolt, the claret stream of the life draining from him and the way his arms, his legs, his head all hung as he carried him. Shivering became shuddering, and his right hand grasped at air repeatedly. He reached his left hand for the wall of the building, fell against it and sank to the ground, the rough surface drawing scrapes of blood from the top of his arm.

  Marlo stared helplessly at the boy, stunned into indecision by the sudden nature of his transformation. A deep voice spoke casually at his side. ‘Gladiator?’

  Marlo saw a face beaten by the elements into creased leather. Stubble that looked as rough as the wall Brann had scoured himself against was equal on the lower half of his face and on his scalp. Marlo found himself stammering. ‘No. I, I’m just a trainee. But he is.’

  ‘I was talking about him.’

  ‘Yes, he fights in the Arena. Have you seen him there? Or maybe before, in the local pits?’

  The man grunted. ‘I have not seen him in any of those places. The theatre of steel lacks allure when you have lived its reality. Some memories are best not stirred.’

  ‘Then how did you know? About him? That he was a gladiator?’