Arena of Antares [Dray Prescot #7]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Nath the Arm strutted in then, his gorgeous robes worn when off duty lighting up that already dazzling chamber. He looked cheerful.

  “I have had three more offers, Drak the Sword. And one from that pimply idiot, the Kov of Manchifwell."

  “You will accept, of course."

  I had to let Nath the Arm believe everything went as usual. These special wagers were a profitable source of his income. Other famous kaidurs were already beginning to measure their prowess against the strides made by Drak the Sword. Nath had promised, with tears in his eyes, that he would make me the greatest kaidur in all of Hyrklana, aye, in all of Hamal, too!

  The reds prospered, to the greater glory of the ruby drang. Naghan the Gnat still lived, and was now, at my request, not used as a kaidur in the arena but served as our armorer. His sinewy strength was more adapted to the cunning blows required in the fashioning of armor than in the different skills of parting warriors from essential portions of their anatomy. Cleitar Adria, too, still lived, and was winning a renown for himself. There were a number of kaidurs in the barracks controlled by Nath who were still regarded as greater than I; this had no power to disturb me. I merely fought that I might stay alive. Well, in that, as you who have listened to my story may guess, I am less than honest. A fight is a fight. I have given you something of my philosophy of swordsmanship already, and I admit to a fascinated interest in the chance that each fresh day, each new challenge, would bring me at last face to face with a greater swordsman than I am.[3]

  [3 See Swordships of Scorpio, Chapter Fifteen: “I give an opinion at Careless Repose."]

  “There are also fifty coys all green and dripping."

  I sighed. We needed recruits, for the reds were fighting many unequal combats on the silver sand of the arena. But I disliked the way we obtained our coys. Anyone who displeased the queen or any of her nobles was liable to be swept up to serve as fodder for the Jikhorkdun. Those people with whom I had been captured had been leaving a meeting called to discuss ways and means of bringing the queen down. She was, everyone agreed, a bitch. Her husband, the king, was a weakling, a mere cipher. She was, also, this haughty Queen Fahia, the twin sister of that Princess Lilah I had rescued from the Manhounds of Faol.

  Many a time had I seen the queen sitting enthroned in her ornate box, covered by the regal awnings, decorated with flowers and vines and many banners, sitting there, chin on fist, gazing down as men and beasts, and beast-men and men-beasts, hacked at each other and gouted blood and died—for her pleasure.

  Not once had I seen Princess Lilah. During every spare moment in the arena I had looked along the boxes and tiers of seats reserved for the aristocracy, searching for her beautiful face and golden hair among all the other faces there. I had made discreet inquiries, but no one seemed to know. More and more I was coming to the dismal conclusion that she had not made her escape astride the fluttrell, or had been taken by another slave gang of Havilfar, or, perhaps, had not even survived that mad escape attempt.

  “As to the coys, Nath,” I said. “Cannot you shield them from the demands of the arena? With a little more training—"

  He shook his head. “Alas, Drak the Sword. I would like to, Kaidun knows! But it is impossible. We reds must put on our part of the show. Already, and despite the work you among our great kaidurs are doing, the yellows claim they honor the diamond zhantil the highest among the four quarters."

  “The yellows have been doing well.” I flicked Tilly's long golden tail away from where she had been slyly tickling my side. “That riot last sennight—have the terraces been repaired? And what is the latest count of broken heads?” I was always asking for news from the outside world. To Nath the Arm, the world was here in the Jikhorkdun, and, possibly, he would allow some interest to what went on in Huringa. Apart from that, the whole wide world of Kregen might not exist as far as he was concerned.

  “Tilly!” I shouted. “Take your golden tickler away and pour wine for Nath the Arm—or, you fifi, you will be whipped."

  She slid from the couch with a soft shirring of her silken gown, her long golden-furred legs very wanton. She mocked me, her slanted eyes wide, her lips pouting. “You would never whip me, Drak my master. You are too softhearted."

  “Beware lest I chain you up at night with an iron chain."

  She brought the wine for Nath, and she pouted her lips at me. “If you chained me, Drak the Sword, it would be with a silver chain."

  Tilly, like me, was a slave, although I was a kaidur and therefore the object of considerable envy.

  How many and devious ways there are in the world, to be sure, for a man to earn a living!

  Cleitar Adria came in as Tilly was pouring again and at once he lifted a goblet and she poured for him, carefully. It was not unknown for Cleitar Adria, kaidur, to strike even a little furry fifi if she spilled his wine. Still, I was pleased to see him, for he brought news.

  He occupied a chamber constructed in the marble fashion of splendor of the Jikhorkdun builders of Hyrklana, although perhaps not as grandiose as mine. We were prisoners, but we lived in highly gilded cages. Far below us groaned the great mass of coys and apprentices and common kaidurs, pent into their barracks and cells. We, at least, could see the suns in their glory and revel in the sweet air away from the fetid breath of the arena warrens.

  “I fight twice today, Drak the Sword.” He quaffed his wine, his golden hair done up in braids, finely twisted by one of his slave wenches, his color high, his eyes fierce. He wore a corselet of gilded iron, and silver greaves, and carried a thraxter. He would have a lad—not necessarily an apim boy—to carry his massive helmet for him. The helmet would be of iron, heavily chased and carved, gilded, and with a face mask with breaths and sights let cunningly into the metal. On everything about him—as about me and the rest of us here—the red color was flaunted in feather and sash and favor.

  “My felicitations, Cleitar. I wish you success twice over."

  He was not so far drunk with his own image of himself as to forget to thank me. Then he stared at me directly. I knew he had been jealous—to put no baser construction on it—of the bestowal of the tag “Sword” to the name Drak I was using. He wanted to ask something, and his own newfound kaidur pride rebelled. At last he drank again, wiped his lips, and said, “The first is with Anko, an ord-kaidur of the greens, a Rapa. I do not trouble myself over the outcome."

  I nodded. “You are kaidur, Cleitar. One who has two more accolades to obtain before that will scarcely evade your sword."

  “Aye. But the second is a graint."

  Oho! I said to myself. Here is the rub. I said to Nath, “Has Cleitar fought a graint before?” And then, quickly so as to negate any imputations of hostility, I added, “He fights so often and so well it is difficult to keep track of his victories."

  “No, Drak the Sword."

  As you well know, I have fought graints. I have also fought them with swords that did not kill. But that was a fading dream to me, in those days as a kaidur, and the paradise of the Swinging City of Aphrasöe had never seemed so far distant.

  After some more drinking and talking I managed to give Cleitar the benefit of my experience, and hoped he would take it. I had made no good companions as a kaidur. The tragedy of that course was all too apparent. A good friend in the morning might be merely a mangled corpse, dragged by the cruel iron hooks from the blood-smeared silver sand, by the time the twin suns sank in their opaz glory.

  I scratched my beard. I had let my hair and beard grow unchecked and I was now a most hairy specimen, like a shaggy graint in truth. This was done for a set purpose.

  Cleitar left, and Nath, also, and I called young Oby to help with my armor. Oby was short for Obfaril—first beloved—and he was an engaging imp, an apim boy, with tousled fair hair, a wide cheeky smile, and fingers as dexterous in the manner of stealing palines as of buckling up armor. He was slave and was, of course, mad keen to become a kaidur.

  I, too, was fighting twice this day. A kaidur's life was not a
ll lolling on silken cushions being fed palines by delectable Fristle fifis and quaffing wine and counting golden deldys and adding up the winnings. Today I faced a notable kaidur of the greens, a Rapa like the green Cleitar was to face; but a kaidur. That is, he had passed all the destructive tests of the arena from coy and now, with a string of victories behind him (a defeat was almost impossible for sometimes the defeated were allowed to live), was looking for the supreme accolade of being dubbed great kaidur. He, like myself, would be a trifle pampered by his manager. The backers with the money, nobles in consortia, business people, great merchants, and landed gentry, would wager more and more heavily upon him. He would be sought out for combats from his peers; he would not be chanced too often in the melee. He would, in short, be a prize kaidur. Like Cleitar. Like the other kaidurs and great kaidurs of the Jikhorkdun. We fought the combats in theory as unequals, as the blood-lust and the blood-curiosity demanded; but we were arena professionals, and we met and matched our skills rather than the mere differences of weapons.

  If Cleitar was killed this day, then his ord-kaidur Rapa opponent would be one step nearer to being full kaidur.

  I had little fear for Cleitar. He was of the manner of man to whom the arena had come as the real purpose of his life.

  Between Tilly and Oby I was accoutered in a clean white linen shirt, a padded vest, a corselet of gilden iron, shoulder wings—scarcely pauldrons—golden greaves, and I buckled up two crossed lesten-hide belts over the scarlet breechclout. Often Nath the Arm would glare at that scarlet breechclout, and say: “But, Drak the Sword! By Kaidun, but the color is overly scarlet for the ruby drang!"

  And I would say: “It has brought the ruby drang fair pickings, oh Nath the Arm! Would you offend, perhaps, the ruby heart of Beng Thrax?"

  “By the glass eye and brass sword of Beng Thrax! Do you then mock me, Drak the Sword?"

  “May Kaidun forfend!"

  We went down to our assembly place where the coys shuffled away with many a long look, at once apprehensive, fearful, envious, at the kaidurs. Cleitar greeted me. So did Rafee the Render, a giant of a kaidur who had been a pirate before being captured and offered the usual alternatives. He was a huge ruffian and a great hand with his ax. With the other kaidurs of the red who were fighting this day we took our places on ponsho-fleece covered benches behind the iron bars where we might sit and quaff wine and swap stories and stare out upon the silver sand. One by one the combats took place. Cleitar disposed of his Rapa, as I disposed of mine. At this time there might be as many as fifty separate combats going on in the arena, and wherever the public might sit, strictly in the color-quarters they would support from the day of their birth to the day of their death, they would have a fine close-up view of the fighting.

  The suns crawled up the sky. The wine we drank, that raw rough red stuff the kaidurs called Beng Thrax's spit, served to slake our thirsts. It was practically nonalcoholic. But—it contained the hidden drug distilled from the sermine flower.

  The day wore on and the most important of the combats especially staged as wagers went on increasing. We lost a great kaidur, one Fakal the Sword, who slipped in a patch of sand-strewn blood and so recovered to stare at a thraxter as it plunged over the rim of his corselet into his neck. We yelled and rattled our swords across the iron bars and made the shrieks and ululations from the paid mourners, starkly dramatic in their black robes, separated in their special boxes, seem like thin chittering whistling.

  “Ornol the Chank!” yelled Nath. “We have him marked, by Kaidun!"

  Ornol the Chank was a great kaidur of the yellow, and we saw poor old Fakal the Sword's head offered up as a tribute to the diamond zhantil. Out of deference to custom we must remain mute while the observances were being made. But we all looked at Fakal's dripping head, and we all wanted to get onto the silver sand and cross thraxters with Ornol the Chank.

  I checked in horror.

  This night I had planned an escape. What then, by Zair, was I doing vowing to revenge our injured red honor by dealing with Ornol the Chank in the future? I had no future I wanted here in the Jikhorkdun. Rather, having established what position I had, I would reject it all as trivial for the realities of my life which were, as you know, Delia and—well, the rest might go hang. Delia, and little Drak and Lela were all I wanted.

  So—why shout and rave and shake my sword at the triumphant yellow benches?

  There was no denying the excitement of it all, the thrills and terror, the narrow escapes, the great shouts of triumph or of raging despair that roared up at victory or disaster. I was one of the reds. We fought for the ruby drang. Out across that sun-soaked arena of silver sand lives were staked. The huge sums of money and jewels and property were all behind the scenes. Here, in the blood and the agony, the swift clash of combat, here was where it all happened.

  Oh, yes, I was caught up in it all. I was a kaidur, and conscious of that, proud even, and I fought for the reds and as much as I joyed in my own victories I gloried in the victories of my fellow reds. I even think that a great kaidur, when at last he was beaten and so fell with his opponent's bloody weapon drinking his life blood, felt greater sorrow that his color had gone down in defeat than that he was losing his own life.

  Eerie and powerful are the ways men may be twisted by systems and customs and the hot passions of blood.

  The proud and remote land of Hyrklana gathered men from many other lands and nations and races to fight in the Jikhorkdun. The demands of the arena were insatiable. Of poor people to be used merely as fodder, to whip up the blood appetites, few might be found outside the criminal classes and the political opponents, and those betrayed by hidden enemies. But the land of Havilfar is wide, and there are very many different countries upon its surface, even if the wild lands in the central northwest are relatively barren. Slave dealers thrived. It had taken a mighty empire to support the arenas of our Earth's ancient Rome. But that empire, large as it was, could not compare with the resources open to the swift vollers of Havilfar.

  Fighting in the arena were men from Pandahem, from Murn-Chem, from Ng'groga—their seven-foot height and incredible thinness could not be mistaken—men from Walfarg and Undurkor and Xuntal. Men like my good comrade Gloag from Mehzta who was not apim. There were the wild black-haired, blue-eyed men from the valleys and mountains of Erthyrdrin. There were men from Vallia, too. And, I believe, from Zenicce.

  On a day before my plans for escape were complete, I had been engaged in the melee and the reds had been steadily wearing down our yellow opponents. The diamond zhantil remained in the ascendant over the red drang; but we were doing what we might to redress that balance. The four huge colored images on their movable staffs situated at one end of the gigantic oval of the amphitheater showed by their relative heights the state of the colors. If the reds emerged victorious we would lift the red drang another notch higher and bring the yellow zhantil a notch lower.

  So, on this day, as we fought and I dispatched my man—for this was a skilled melee, where like fought like, and we were matched—I swung about to smash away a thraxter aimed at my back and so slew that one, also. Cleitar Adria was just stepping back from his man.

  The yellow lay gasping on the sand, his face agonized. His oiled curly black hair in tight ringlets gleamed in the steaming light of Far and Havil as his helmet rolled away. Cleitar bent to finish him, as was proper, given that this was a fight-to-the-finish melee.

  I saw the man lying there turn his eyes up. His face lost its writhing reflection of the agony he felt. He watched as Cleitar's sword lifted high against the suns. And then he spoke, quick, simple words, breathy and blood-filled. Words I heard in a kind of stupefied daze.

  “I join you, my brothers, Krozairs of Zamu! I join you to sit on the right hand of Zair in the glory of Zim!"

  Shattered, I sprang forward.

  “No, Cleitar!"

  I was too late. The sword slashed down. A Krozair brother had indeed gone to join his comrades in Zair. Aye, his comrades as a Kroza
ir of Zamu—but, also, my comrades as a Krozair of Zy!

  Cleitar bent to wipe his thraxter, there in the arena of Huringa in Hyrklana, so many many dwaburs from the Eye of the World and from Sanurkazz.

  “What is it, Drak the Sword! What ails you? Are you hit?"

  “It is nothing, Cleitar Adria."

  But it was something.

  I could not find another man from the inner sea fighting in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana. I would ask, when I saw a man who looked as though he knew what a swifter was, who knew the difference between Zair and Grodno. But I never did find one, then.

  So, now, on this day I was to escape, I watched as Cleitar Adria went out to fight his graint. He won. He managed to kill the great and noble beast. When he came back he was ripped and scratched and one arm hung useless. He stared at me, and licked his lips. His beard had been torn and bloody flesh showed.

  “I did as you counseled, Drak. I took him, limb by limb.” Cleitar looked all in. “I think—I think you counseled well."

  I had to say it, for all that the words nearly stuck in my mouth. “You did well, Cleitar. Hai Jikai!"

  I had never used those great words in the arena before. I considered the place and occasion base and unworthy. But Cleitar had fought well. He deserved the “Hai Jikai.” “Jikai” is for warriors, I thought, hardly for kaidurs.

  Nath the Arm had overheard. He glanced at me curiously.

  “Now, by Kaidun, Drak the Sword! I had often wondered, but now I am sure. You have been a paktun—perhaps a Hyr-paktun."

  A Paktun, as I have said, is a great warrior of fortune, a mercenary leader, or one who has achieved some feat of great renown. It has become a little debased in usage, and is often applied to any noteworthy freelancer. But, to be a paktun is to be a leader of a free company, or a mercenary so famous as to be hired at the highest fee obtainable. Many Chuliks were paktuns—and many were Hyr-paktuns, also; “Hyr” being a word for great.