Hero Grown

by Andy Livingstone

His brow furrowed. ‘He must learn.’

  ****

  Sunlight flooded the room in soft peace and Brann watched through the open window as a bird wheeled lazily against the early morning sky.

  He had risen, run, washed and returned, and still she slept. She looked so tranquil and content that he hadn’t been able to resist slipping back into the bed. Soon he would fall into her daily routine, accompanying her as she performed her state duties, entertaining and enchanting the womenfolk of the high-ranking visitors, an activity that was as important to a congenial approach to the discussions of the men as the words of the Emperor or his brothers themselves; and attending her in whatever leisurely pursuits took her fancy, from riding, with or without a hawk, to strolling the streets or merely sipping wine and watching the world from the shade of her roof terrace. He saw little of the Emperor or any other member of the royal family, a fact that he was perfectly happy with. And while Persione was clearly not by any means perfectly happy, still she seemed to have thawed somewhat. She was attentive to the princess almost to the point of obsession, but then it was her role to be around her unless dismissed. Brann mused that the public side of his life was good. And then there was the time they had alone, which was better.

  He raised himself on one elbow to see her better. The strand of soft hair that had fallen across her face. The gentle rise and fall of her ribs. The slightest fluttering of her eyelids. The…

  The crash as the door was smashed open.

  Before Myrana was even able to scream, Brann was already on his feet, sword in hand. His eyes scanned the intruders as six heavily armoured men rushed in, rapidly forming a wall with rectangular shields. Movement behind signalled brief activity before the shield wall knelt to reveal the four archers with bows drawn and wickedly pointed arrowheads aimed in their direction.

  ‘Behind me, Princess,’ Brann shouted, moving to position himself between her and the danger. He stared at the soldiers. To rush them directly would see him pierced by four arrows before he could complete a pace; to dive to one side to try to avoid the shafts would expose Myrana to their deadly hail. He was trapped. As his eyes fell upon the Hawk symbol on the chests of the archers, Loku walked in behind them.

  ‘Get away from him, Princess,’ the man shouted. She scampered across the bed, dragging on a gown before she left the cover of the bedclothes. He looked at Brann. ‘You knew we could not shoot if the Emperor’s niece was anywhere near you.’ His voice was contemptuous. ‘You are pathetic.’

  ‘I was protecting her,’ Brann snarled.

  ‘With what?’ Loku’s tone turned mocking as he looked up and down the boy’s nakedness. ‘It’s a pity for you that you only have one impressive weapon on you.’ Several of the men sniggered.

  Brann’s rage was rising. ‘Come out from behind your coward’s barrier and we’ll see how many weapons I need.’

  ‘Oh, my concern is for the Lady Myrana, not a petty duel.’ He looked over at the girl. ‘I only wish I had arrived in time to prevent the attack on your virtue, My Lady.’

  ‘Attack?’ Brann was aghast. ‘I would never hurt her!’

  The man roared. ‘You dare imply that a member of the royal family would willingly surrender her body to a base-born common guard?’ His voice turned to a hiss. ‘To do so would bring public humiliation on the Emperor himself. Her standing would be destroyed. At best she would be cast out from the family, at worst, public confidence in the ruling family would be rocked. Should a member of that family be capable of such stupidity, what other misjudgements might the family be capable of? No, the only explanation is for the princess to have suffered a violation of her honour of the worst sort.’ He walked around the far end of the soldiers to approach the princess. ‘It could only be that he attacked you.’ His eyes stared into hers. ‘Is that not so, My Lady?’

  She looked at Brann, her eyes wide and starting to fill. Her head moved as if to shake, and he readied himself to defend her, no matter what followed her denial. He automatically started scanning the space he had around him, the positions of the soldiers relative to each other, the eyes that would betray even the slightest nerves, the work of the past year capturing the situation in one sweeping glance. He looked back at her.

  It was then that he saw it. The tightening around her eyes; the hardening within them. The clench of her jaw. The slightest straightening of her back, settling of her shoulders, raising of her chin.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Loku’s voice rasped, though he didn’t even turn to look. ‘Seize him.’

  The soldiers braced themselves and began to edge warily forward, his reputation competing with the fact that he was naked and held only a sword.

  But there was no need for their caution. His blade had dropped to his side and hung listlessly. He stared without comprehension. She had drained the fight from him with a single word.

  His arms were grabbed and held fast by two men on each side, but he offered no resistance. He watched numbly as Loku stepped closer to Myrana, studying her. ‘Of course, yes,’ he said, his tone matter-of-fact and analytical. ‘The evidence is compelling, is it not? Take, for instance the gown.’ His knife cut a small nick in the neckline before he used both hands to rip the expensive material to the hem. He threw her onto her back on the bed, her nudity casually open to see for anyone who cared to look. ‘Take the bruising of the violation.’ The hilt of his knife thumped into the inside of her thighs, raising angry marks that promised imminent darkening. He hauled her back to her feet, the marks of his rough grip left on her upper arm. ‘Take the result of her initial resistance.’ The back of his hand struck her face hard enough to send her spinning and flying back onto the bed. She picked herself up, her cheek and eye already starting to swell and a trickle of blood drew a line from her burst lip and down her chin.

  Her expression had not flickered throughout.

  Loku examined his handiwork. ‘The evidence, as I said, is compelling.’ His tone was satisfied. ‘Anyone could easily determine what has transpired here.’

  Drawing the torn gown around her, Myrana picked up Brann’s tunic. She turned it inside out to hide the family crest and tossed it to a soldier. ‘Clothe him. His nakedness is an affront to me.’ It was pulled over his head then one arm at a time was pulled through. She waited until he was fully restrained before she came to stand before him. ‘Tell who you will, what you will. There are lunatics and taletellers beyond number out there who have fanciful stories aplenty of scandal at the palace. What matter one more? What matter when the truth has already been proclaimed and,’ she touched her fingertips to her swollen cheekbone, ‘displayed.’

  He stared at her, shock still pounding inside his skull. ‘Why?’ he whispered.

  That drew a puzzled look. ‘Why, you ask? Why?’ She laughed harshly. ‘A princess in the palace or a former princess in the city? And you ask why?’ She snorted. ‘What else would you expect?’

  ‘Nothing.’ It was a hoarse whisper. ‘When would I ever expect any more from this life?’

  She turned and walked to her wine decanter on the other side of the room. ‘I have no time for his self-pity. You may take him.’

  One of the men who had held a shield bore a sergeant’s insignia on his tunic. He looked at Loku. ‘To the dungeons, Lord?’

  The head shook. ‘He must disappear from the palace. There must be no reminder to the princess of this horrific incident.’

  ‘Where shall we leave the body? In the wasteland for the animals? Or floating in the docks?’

  Loku spoke too immediately for it to be anything but a premeditated decision. It was as if he had waited too long for this moment and could wait no longer. ‘Death is too quick and forgiving for this dog. He should be left to rue his actions every minute of every day he has left.’ He smiled, cold but triumphant. ‘Sell him to the first pitmaster you can find. No name, no explanation.’

  ‘Very good, Lord.’ The sergeant nodded and one man on either side started to drag Brann from the room.


  ‘Wait.’ Loku’s voice stopped them at the door. ‘Do not sell him. He is worthless. Give him to a pitmaster. Now go, the sight of him is sickening me.’

  He flung a last glance at Myrana. Her eyes blinked. Did he imagine the fleeting burst of anguish in her look? The coldness had settled over her by the time he looked again. He would never know.

  Reason began to return to Brann as he was bounced against the doorway on the way out. How had Loku known? Who had told him? As he was being led down the corridor movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention. Persione watched his passage from the shadows. And those questions were answered.

  Brann huddled in the cell carved from rock, thick bars separating his space from the corridor. The cells were all on one side of the passage, affording from each a view only of the bare rock wall opposite, glistening in the torchlight as it wept subterranean moisture.

  His wrists and ankles had been shackled in heavy manacles before he had left the royal quarters and been led shuffling deep below the keep, past the dungeons with their screams and shouting and silent stares and along a passage lit only by the torches borne by those who dragged him.

  The only words spoken to him had been in that passage. ‘He is a clever man, that lord,’ the sergeant had said. Brann barely looked at him but the man took the slight head movement as an indication that he was interested in the reason for his opinion of the lord’s intelligence. ‘The giving, not selling. Should the pitmaster have exchanged coin for you, he would have wanted to keep you well enough to earn back at least his investment. Now you are nothing to him. If you die of disease or in your first seconds in the pit, what matter? He has lost nothing. Should you prove yourself in the pit, you may have a chance of him caring about the remainder of your life – although life can be short down here.’

  Brann did look at him this time. ‘You saw what happened up there. How can you live with that knowledge?’

  The man looked at him. ‘Waken up to the real world, boy. I can live. Your hope died the moment the lord knew he had his chance. I take his truth forward, and my life is still my life.’

  Much like Myrana. He just stared again at the ground and his shuffling feet.

  His shackles remained as they emerged into the city by way of a door into a storm drain, and a grating unlocked by the sergeant at its exit cut into a small bluff just inside the city wall, a couple of hundred paces outside the citadel. The city was at the start of its waking and soldiers with a prisoner attracted little interest from citizens still to fully shake off the sleep of the night before. Brann lost count of the number of alleys and backstreets they passed through until they arrived at a derelict building, its door half hanging off its hinges. In a back room, a large opening in the floor revealed a broad stairway that switched back on itself over and over until he had lost all concept of the depth they had descended.

  Lanterns numerous enough to rival the star-filled sky revealed a new society in the tunnels and caverns beneath the city, one that was moving towards sleep as the world above wakened. Stalls that had sold meat and wine had covers drawn over their fronts as the merchants packed away their wares and the few people they passed headed in subdued silence in the opposite direction to them. The man he had been handed over to was clothed in a ridiculous exaggeration of opulence, his gaunt bald head protruding from voluminous robes of green and yellow as his small eyes regarded his new possession. He looked for all the world like a giant upright tortoise and it would have been hilarious had Brann been in the mood for laughter. Instead he regarded him dispassionately, a sour resentment the closest he felt to any emotion. As the man moved, he sparkled in the flickering torchlight and Brann noticed that gold and gems, real or imitation it was impossible to tell, adorned him in every way possible – dangling from, piercing or entangled in almost every part of him.

  The man had shrugged and indicated to a companion, equally bald but twice as large in every dimension and only a fraction as extravagantly presented. The soldiers had turned quietly back upon their path as the bald pair set off down a passage leading to a heavy studded door, the larger one dragging Brann with them. The door had opened on their approach to allow them entry to a private area of several passages, one of which led to his current location.

  The big man, his job done once Brann had been deposited in the empty cell and had his manacles removed by reaching his limbs through the locked bars, had left. The colourful man remained, staring without sound or expression at the boy. Brann stared at the floor. When he eventually raised his eyes, the man had left. Brann had never caught his new owner’s name. He found he didn’t care.

  He was just starting to doze when he heard the voice. ‘Boy. Boy?’ It sounded close enough to be coming from the cell beside him. A whining oily voice that slithered round the rocky wall between them. ‘Hey, boy. You hear me?’

  Why not answer? What other pressing matters were calling on him? ‘What?’

  ‘Welcome to the eighth hell.’ A cackle of a laugh.

  Brann grunted, remembering the tales of the men on the ship. ‘Some believe in just one hell. Some in none. Some in two or four or whatever. No one believes in more than seven hells.’

  The cackle again. ‘You’ve just found what doesn’t exist, then. Welcome to the secret hell.’

  ‘If you are trying to scare me, I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Oh, poor boy. If you ever can find your way to my little home here, I’ll comfort you. I’ll comfort you so nice.’

  Brann ignored him. The silence was broken only by the sound of dripping water.

  Then: ‘Boy? Know you where you are, boy? Know you your purpose?’

  He may as well find out. ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘You are in the Rat Runs.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Rat Runs. The city under the city. Some choose to live here, some have no choice. And some visit, attracted by the pleasures on offer.’

  ‘The pleasures?’

  ‘There are no laws here. No power other than what one man carves from others with his strength or his wits. What a man wants, he will find here. What a woman seeks, she will find here. If they have a trade. Coin, services, secrets, possessions, people. If two have what each other wants, they have a trade. But the biggest pleasure is us. The pit wretches.’

  ‘Us? The what? What do we do?’

  There was a scrabbling, and a rattling as the man grabbed at his bars. His breathing sounded so close he could only be at the closest point to the wall between them; so close that Brann involuntarily shrank back. ‘You jest, no? No? Really? You know nothing of the Pits?’ The cackle scratched at Brann’s ears again. ‘The city is the shining heart of the Empire, but the Pits are the diseased beating heart of the city. They all come to see them, to see us. The poor come with what they can save to feed on the thrill; the rich come more easily, but with the same desires.’

  Despite himself, Brann was curious. He felt a sick foreboding, but his interest was sparked. ‘So what happens in the Pits?’

  ‘You have seen the fighting circles above? You have heard of the Arena?’

  ‘I know something of them.’

  A snort of derision. His tone hardened. ‘Pale imitations.’

  Brann shrugged to himself. If that was all it was, at least it was familiar activity.

  A deeper voice, a rough voice, rasped from further away. ‘Savyar, you degenerate, leave the boy alone.’

  ‘Oh, you care for the young one yourself, do you?’ The voice slithered like a snake of sound once more. ‘Starting to find a taste for the softness, are you?’

  ‘I don’t give a whore’s arse for the boy. I want to sleep. If I hear one more word I swear I’ll find a way into your cell myself.’

  ‘You flatterer. Well, if you do your hair nice, I may welcome you.’

  The voice became impossibly deeper and the bars shook in fury. ‘I’m warning you…’

  If Savyar had a further smart answer, he had reached the point where he considered it better kept t
o himself.

  Brann was wakened by the harsh clang of the door in the cell bars being flung open.

  The large bald man stood outside while two unkempt men with the brawny build of grapplers gripped his arms and cut his tunic from him. A loincloth that wound around his waist and under his crotch was dragged on and he was hauled into the passage.

  Savyar’s voice slipped from his cell. ‘So someone else desires you, not just I.’

  The harder Brann tried not to look on the way past, the more it was inevitable. A pinched face and feverish eyes looked back. And a moist smile that spoke of a disquieting hunger.

  He was led through passages within the private complex to reach another door that opened directly onto a cavernous hall teeming with life. Concentric circles cut from the rock rose to the ceiling and supported row upon row of people, crammed into every space and filling the hall with noise as much as with their bodies. The smell of so many people in a confined, hot place mingled with that of hot food as vendors wriggled their way through the crowds. The atmosphere had at the same time a palpable feel of excitement and a primal hunger that he couldn’t quite place.

  He was dragged towards the centre of the area, where the flamboyant bald man waited at the side of a pit carved into a rough circle. He held his hands high at the sight of Brann and slowly spun in a circle. The crowd fell quiet. His voice rang out. ‘The final entertainment of the night is upon us. I, Carcydon, Pitmaster of the City beneath the City, bring you new flesh. Will he fail quickly, or will he surprise us and last long enough to delay our journeys home by a few extra breaths? Or will he astound us and triumph? We can only know if he has one to oppose. We will only know if a Pitmaster is present and willing to offer flesh of his own. Is there such within this chamber?’

  A voice roared out from the other side of the pit. ‘You know there is, you hairless bastard!’ The man who stepped forward was huge and, by contrast, had a mass of hair on head and body that was covered only by a simple tunic. One hand gripped a chain that ended at the neck of a capering wild-eyed man, similar in general appearance to Grakk but as far as could be from the demeanour of Brann’s friend. ‘You know well I love a chance to humiliate your worthless self.’