Hero Grown

by Andy Livingstone

  Carcydon ignored the insults, but merely turned to the crowd. ‘We have a match. Only the placing of your wagers delays the start of the entertainment.’

  A flurry of activity broke out as bets were placed either with neighbours on the terraces or with men who moved among the crowd, accepting them on behalf of some agency. In a remarkably short time, the business had been concluded.

  The two Pitmasters faced each other across the pit. From beside Carcydon, Brann saw the wild man straining at his chain like a dog eager to run. A hooded figure, robed all in black, stepped to the lip of the pit midway between the waiting combatants and, to the roar of the crowd, tossed two long knives high into the air to land randomly on the sand floor below.

  ‘Your turn, boy,’ said Carcydon, and pushed him from the edge.

  The large man on the other side let go of the chain and his man leapt with flailing arms and legs and bounded for a knife. Brann leapt for the other and both rose at the same time. Brann readied himself as the other cavorted manically, now on all fours, now upright, the chain flailing from his neck like a misplaced tail. Entertainment meant nothing to him. He must make this quick, if he could. He slid his left foot forward and held up his left hand ready to ward off an attack. His right held the knife back, poised to strike.

  The man launched himself at Brann, his blade flashing one way then back the other in an instant. Brann swayed out of reach. Cassian’s words were ingrained in his mind, the repetition of his training rendering conscious thought unnecessary. Watch the eyes and the arm. The weapon will move too fast for sight. The eyes and the arm betray the weapon’s path.

  When the man thrust at him he stepped to the left of the attack. The point of his own knife jabbed into the back of the wrist and the fingers spasmed wide, sending the weapon arcing away. In the same instant Brann’s left leg swept hard at the back of both the legs before him and his left forearm smashed into the throat. The man flipped hard onto his back and, as he landed, Brann’s knee was on his chest and the edge of his blade drew a thin line on the man’s throat as, vanquished and utterly surprised, he coughed in rasps and fought to regain his breath.

  Brann stood and walked away, looking for the rope that would be dropped to let him exit. ‘I win,’ he said flatly, tossing his weapon to one side as he moved back towards the spot where Carcydon waited.

  There should have been something in the noise of the crowd that would have alerted him, but everything was so strange to him in this place that nothing seemed unusual enough to catch his attention. It was instead the heavy links of the chain smashing into the side of his head that caught his attention, and dulled his reactions as his vision swam and his skull rang. He forced his legs into a stagger to one side and he hit the wall, grabbing it with two hands as the man sprang to his back. A face appeared over the edge of the pit, fleshy and pampered and contorted with rage. ‘Finish him, you fool. If I lose my wager now I’ll come in there and kill you myself. Finish him.’

  Streaks of pain were dragged down his back as fingernails scrabbled at him, trying to gain purchase on sweat-soaked skin. Then he was on him and Brann shouted in agony as teeth sank into the top of his shoulder. Growling and snarling, the man worried at him. He felt for a moment that a mouthful of flesh and muscle was going to be torn from him but the bite released as the man went instead for his neck. In panic he thrust his head down to the side and nose or mouth or both mashed into the hard bone of his head. By chance his defensive movement had caused the grip to loosen slightly and desperation drove him around hard to crash the man on his back sideways into the rock wall.

  The impact knocked them both to the ground, but separately, to Brann’s relief. Gasping, he dragged warm damp air into his chest. Get up, his head told him. Always get up. Too late, though, he realised that the other was quicker of thought than he and was scrambling to start towards the nearest knife. Brann grabbed at the end of the chain but it was slippery with blood and he had to keep grasping at it hand over hand. The man was stronger than he looked, though, and all Brann could do was slow his progress. Inexorably the snarling man dragged himself forwards. Brann knew the other was faster. Should he let go and turn it into a race, it would be one he would lose along with his life.

  He forced stiff fingers to hook through links in the chain and yanked back, the sudden movement catching the man by surprise and halting his progress for the moment Brann needed to launch himself. This time he was the one on the other’s back, knocking the man flat. The chain fell before them and he grasped it, wound it around the man’s neck, pulled it. The man resumed his crawl, dragging himself forwards, eyes fixed on the waiting knife.

  After a few meagre feet, though, his movements slowed. His hands stopped grabbing at the sand and instead grabbed at the chain. His movements became more frantic as his eyes bulged and his head darkened to a deep angry red. Brann wriggled and shifted a knee to between the shoulder blades beneath him, bracing himself and, snarling, dragging the chain tighter. The man’s back arched and his feet drummed on the ground.

  Then he was limp.

  Brann stood, chest heaving and legs barely able to support him. His head spun and he was oblivious to all around but for the rope that lowered and the hands that reached to grab his wrists.

  When he woke that night, the hard floor of his cell beneath his curled body, he stayed awake. It was not the howls of the crowd that kept his eyes wide, staring into the darkness, nor was it the hiss from the man as his life had slipped out of him. It was the sound of the snarl that had escaped his own gritted teeth as he had dragged the chain tight.

  ‘You did well, lovely boy.’

  Three days he had barely slept, and now the voice slithered around into his cell once more.

  ‘I did what I had to do.’

  ‘That may be so, but you did well. Every time you are carried back breathing, you do fine. Every time you walk back here, you do well.’

  ‘They never told me it was a death match.’

  The cackle cracked against the rock walls. ‘Oh, lovely lovely boy, you do delight me.’ A melodramatic sigh. ‘This is the Rat Runs. You now belong to the pits. There are no matches or death matches. There is no glorious triumph or valiant defeat. If you see a man in the pit before you, he is either there for the first time or has won every single fight. And sooner or later, we all lose. The trick is to not be the one who dies for as long as you can. You choose: live or die. If your choice is to live, you do anything, anything to make that so.’

  Brann shrugged. ‘For what, Savyar? To entertain them? Those who would faint if you faced them with a fruit knife?’

  The voice went soft for once. ‘For you. All you have left is yourself. Guard it with your life.’

  Before his second fight, he sobbed into the stone of his cell wall, but they took him nonetheless.

  The man before him was a common criminal, but not without some skill, and Brann had to concentrate to prolong the fight. They both had swords, and the familiarity of the weapon made it easy to let the man look good, but still he could not chance a lucky strike slipping past his guard. If he could make it last long enough, maybe the crowd would react as they had done when he fought Grakk. He watched the man closely, and fought with style to win them over.

  The longer the fight lasted, though, the more the crowd grew restless. And the more they grew restless, the more his opponent grew restless. The danger he posed increased with his desperation, as his attacks became more frenzied.

  Brann had no option.

  He sidestepped one wild attack and slammed the pommel of his sword onto the man’s wrist with a sharp crack, his opponent’s weapon falling from numb fingers. As the man tried to readjust his balance, it was easy to kick his legs from under him. Brann dropped to one knee with his right foot on the man’s left wrist, the broken right posing no further danger, and his reversed grip on his sword let the point rest on the man’s heaving chest.

  The crowd howled.

  If he thought the man had been desperate befo
re, it had been nothing to what filled his eyes now. Except that this time, it was born not of a desire to win but of despair. Of misery. Of terror.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t.’

  Brann looked at him. The crowd fell silent. He couldn’t.

  Then he heard the bow strings drawn.

  He looked around the lip of the pit. At least a dozen archers stood at all sides, arrows trained not on the man beneath him, but on him. Carcydon stood with one hand raised. He looked at Brann, and a single eyebrow lifted in question.

  Brann knew the choice. One dead or both. He placed his left hand on the top of the pommel.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  He tried to make it quick.

  That night, he again sobbed into the stone of his cell wall.

  Several fights later, he began to lose count of their number. And he began to forget how to sob. The world became his cell, the pit and the passages between. He ate, he slept, he entered the pit, he stayed alive.

  The fights merged into a haze of actions, a mix of weapons, a crowd of opponents. The metal gauntlets with the wicked spikes. The huge twin men from the East. The even bigger twin women from the South. The axes. The chains. The bare hands. The wild mountain cat, as long as he was tall. The neck he broke, the leg he shattered, the chest he opened.

  With every one of them, a little more of his humanity leaked away. But he lived.

  Every night, he whispered to himself, ‘I live.’ Every time he woke and breathed, he whispered, ‘Still, I live.’

  The voice crept through from the next cell, like tendrils of noxious fumes. ‘You are building quite the reputation for yourself, lovely boy.’

  It meant nothing. He knew a response was expected, so he grunted.

  The voice continued, but the words were irrelevant. They washed over him like fog over rocks. They spoke of another world, but there was no other world. There was only what there was. He stopped listening.

  The voice had stopped talking some time back. He heard it no more, other than when the food men came, talking to them.

  He ate eagerly. He always did. It was the good part of life. That and the people who cheered when he lived.

  A bald man in bright colours stood on the other side of the bars that marked the edge of his home, regarding him. The man spoke the same words several times until some meaning entered them. ‘What is your name? Do you know where you are?’

  He replied, ‘I still live.’

  What else was there?

  The large man pushed the tray under the bars then backed off in a hurry as the boy moved to pick up his meal.

  He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to smear away the remnants of the blood from the man’s throat he had ripped in the pit, and fell to eating. It was good.

  Finished, he settled down in his home, waiting for whatever came next.

  A different man crouched on the other side of the bars.

  A long plain cloak, hood thrown back to reveal a bald head, designs covering the scalp. And eyes that knew things. Such eyes were dangerous.

  The remains of the boy’s dinner lay beside him. He grabbed the plate, picking intently at the gnawed bones. Maybe the man was just there to look at him; it was not unusual. Maybe if he took long enough over his food, when he looked up the man would have gone. Without rising he shuffled across the few feet of his shallow cell, pressing his cheek against the wall as his fingers worried at the left-overs on the plate. The cool dampness of the rock felt good, felt familiar, felt reassuring.

  The man spoke. ‘My poor boy, what have you endured?’

  The boy looked at him warily. ‘I still live.’

  ‘That you do, that you do. Which is the only scrap of a saving grace in this whole repugnant affair.’ He produced a pair of slender rods and bent to the lock at the bars. A soft click sounded just like the noise the key made when the others came, so the man must be official. The gate swung wide as the man walked slowly in. Where were the others? Always when the gate opened there were three of them. Recently, five or more.

  The boy eyed the man from his crouch as he walked calmly towards him, hands open to show he carried no weapon ready to use. That was no guarantee of a lack of danger, though, and he remained on his guard, a wary tension filling his limbs.

  The man squatted before him, then sat cross-legged. His face was sad, and had a look of kindness. But dropping your guard leads to death. And I still live.

  The man dipped a hand into a bag at this side. The boy tensed, and gripped the metal plate. The edge, if striking in the right place, would serve as an effective weapon. The free hand came up, open and palm-forward, in a placatory gesture and the other hand inched slowly from the bag, bringing with it a round object of bright colour. A word stirred in the boy’s head. ‘Orange,’ he said.

  ‘Orange,’ the man confirmed, a slight smile creasing one corner of his mouth. He offered the fruit to the boy, who snatched it eagerly and tore at the skin with his teeth and nails, discarding the peel in the space of a few short breaths. In a similar space of time, the fruit itself was gone, the only remnant being juice running down his chin. He grabbed the neck of his tunic to wipe his face clean.

  ‘Good?’ the man asked.

  He nodded. ‘Good.’

  The man smiled. ‘More where that came from.’ The boy looked up eagerly and reached out a hand. ‘Easy, young fellow. That’s for later. Just now, we have to go.’

  He rose and held out a hand. The boy took it and let himself be pulled up. He had to go, the man had told him to. It was good to obey. If he obeyed, he was given food. If he obeyed, they let him fight and the crowd would cheer. He followed the man out of the cell. The man with the thin face in the next cell roused from his sleep as they passed, blinking at them in confusion.

  They started along the passage but, at the sound of voices ahead of them, the man halted and pulled the boy back the way they had come. The man in the cell hissed as they passed.

  ‘The one after his chamber is empty. In there.’

  The bald man nodded and grasped the boy’s wrist, pulling him on. The boy tried to walk into his own cell but the man dragged him into the next one.

  ‘No.’ This was wrong. He tried to pull back, but the man smiled and put a finger to his lips.

  ‘It is a game,’ he whispered, pushing the gate shut and pulling him into the shadows.

  As the voices drew nearer, however, the man in the other cell started shouting. ‘Hey! Here, quick! The boy has escaped! He has gone!’

  The boy felt the bald man tense and one hand stole under his cloak. The boy tensed also, but the man patted his shoulder reassuringly and squeezed the two of them tight into the corner.

  Footsteps thundered along the passage and stopped in front of his cell.

  ‘It’s true, it’s empty.’

  ‘How did he get it open?’

  ‘You can’t have locked it properly. Carcydon will put you in the pit for that.’

  ‘Not if we catch him first.’

  The thin man in the cell cut in. ‘He ran there. Down that way.’ Three men hurtled past their cell, not one of them looking in. ‘Remember me to Carcydon when you find him. Tell him how I helped.’

  As soon as they were out of sight, the bald man rose and led the boy out. Pausing in front of the man with the pinched face, he drew out the thin rods he had used on the boy’s lock and raised his eyebrows.

  The man in the cell shook his head. ‘I have nowhere to go. I have… urges that offend. My life expectancy is longer here than up there.’ He looked sadly at the boy, and then at the man. ‘I loathe you for taking the sweet thing from me before I could have a taste, but I love you for giving back his life.’ His eyes turned to the boy and he wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘Stay safe, my lovely. Take this gift and treasure it for many years. I will think of you.’

  The boy looked at him. ‘I still live.’

  The man smiled, his lips forming a thin line. ‘You do, and may that thought
be my gift to you. Now go, before those dolts realise their mistake.’

  The bald man nodded. ‘Come,’ he said to the boy. The boy obeyed.

  It was strange moving with just one man rather than five, and this one man moved differently. The five would hold him tight and march him along the passageways. This man moved in a strange way, sliding along walls and peering around corners, waiting and darting, crouching and creeping. But then, in the pit people moved in many different ways. It was just what people did. He followed.

  They followed a different path from the one he knew. Occasionally he would be taken to a different pit. This must be one of those times. He could feel the fighting joy start to build in his chest, and his fingers flexed.

  But when they approached a wide ramp that rose sharply, he paused.

  ‘Up?’ He was not used to up. Or down. It was always flat in his world.

  The man nodded. ‘Up it must be, young friend.’

  He looked around. The area, wide and long, was empty. ‘People?’

  The man smiled. ‘It is daytime. When the City wakes, the City Beneath sleeps. Let us go, my young friend.’

  He obeyed. Even up.

  But when they reached stairs, he paused. This did not happen. The man ushered him up, though, and he obeyed. At the top, the man pushed open a door.

  Daylight stopped him dead. He shrank back, covering his eyes and the man moved quickly, an arm around him, soothing words murmured. He pulled out a cloak and draped it around the boy’s shoulders, pulling the deep hood far enough over his head to shield his eyes. Hunched against the brightness, he allowed the arm around his shoulders to lead him out.

  They walked and turned and walked and turned. Eventually, they stopped before a door and the man rapped on it in a deliberate rhythm.

  They entered and noise erupted. Bodies pressed around him and smiles and laughter swept over him. He lurched backwards, eyes wide, striking a wall and sliding fast along it until he met the corner. He dropped into a crouch, pulling the hood down over his face.