“It’s possible, but it’s mostly lords and rulers and castles that need stable masters, and they usually have a line of people to train on their own. It’s not likely they’ll take on a stranger.” Putt felt his heart sink. Some doors seemed so closed and locked tight like they were only painted and no real doors at all. He was only eleven, and yet it felt like he was born in the wrong place. To be working with animals you had to be born to someone already working for a lord. And to be a farmer you had to be born to a farmer. Never had he seen anyone coming with a child asking someone in the village to train the kid as a farmer. He guessed those who wanted to be farmers and were born to stable masters were pretty frustrated too.
They arrived at the city of Posita two days later. The largest collection of houses Putt had seen so far was Kaid Pah up in the mountains where they had started the unfortunate mission. Posita made Kaid Pah appear like a small village and his beloved Peragri to only a group of houses. When they looked down on the city from the hillside as they were zigzagging downward, he saw a regularity he had never seen anywhere before. Two wide, straight roads crossed the city, meeting in what seemed to be a circular area, which wagons did not pass but drove around. There appeared to be more buildings of stones closer to the center, and some of them were at least three floors high. This gave the city an obvious center not only by the roads but also in height. Further away from the circular square the buildings were lower, and by its ridges, it was nothing but small wooden cottages.
“A ruler of the area, a long time ago, decided to create a great center, a hub for all human interest and planned this city” his grandmother explained. “Those two roads and the square came first. He invited people who were excellent in their profession to join.”
“Did it work?” Putt asked.
“Sort of. It did not turn out to be the palace of human goodness as I think he intended, but you can find almost anyone or anything there. Or information that will lead you further. Aside from very dedicated and excellent masters, you can also get in touch with the most distinguished assassins, thieves, and spies.” One area broke the symmetry. The buildings there were high, large and circular.
“What’s over there?” he asked and pointed.
“They are the fighting arenas.” They continued downhill. The places for paid combat. The place where he could lose his grandmother.
“Are your sure Oon and the others are behind us?” Putt asked anxiously.
“They passed us two days ago when we were still at the camp. They took no note of us. How could they? The camp could not be seen from the path. Don’t worry, son, they’re no longer part of our lives.” The stone of fear felt a little easier in Putt’s stomach. Not only because of the non-existing threat in Posita, at least not a specific known one, but also because he heard the sympathetic tone in Avia’s that he wanted to hear. The one who cared for him as a grandson, not the apprentice. The one who had the patience to explain the apparent. He felt more than ever he did not want to leave her. How could things be so urgent when he was only eleven years old? What was there in life that was so impossible to learn later?
“Can’t we just find a house and stay in?” he asked.
“We’ll stay at an inn. Why?” She had misunderstood him completely.
“I meant for us to live in” he tried to explain.
“I see” his grandmother answered and Putt wondered if she really did, but soon he became aware that she had more than a clue. “How do you want me to pay for the house?”
“Those fights…” He did not like it but if she was going to battle to pay for an apprenticeship, why not for a home?
“And food? Clothes? You want me to fight every week for us to get fed? Or shall we go out on the streets and beg?” Putt shook his head. She had won.
There would be no house in the city for them. No house for them anywhere. They would not live together, ever. Just travel together on an endless journey. He tried to think of her as too old and that she would settle down soon, but the image contradicted everything he knew about his grandmother. She would not quit. She was a warrior and would die as one. Never the less he longed for a different world. When he had still lived in Peragri with his parents, he had looked up to Avia with an enormous amount of admiration. Then he had home and stability, and she was the flavor of mystery in his life. He had not realized then, that he needed the safe spot in his life more than the adventure because he had taken the boredom of everyday life for granted.
When the city limits came close, he wished he had not said anything about living here. The houses seemed bigger than other homes he had seen. More people moved about than in Kaid Pah. It felt like his privacy disappeared in an instance. It felt like just the sheer presence of so many at once drained him of energy. His eyes darted around for something, anything, that did not move. Apart from the houses of course. But even those almost seemed to move, with their shops at the bottom floor, and curtains and people in the windows above. He stopped by a sorcerer’s wagon and watched her colorful clothes and the enchanting smokes she shaped out of her hands. At least it was something more relaxing than the rest of the anthill around him. When she spotted his attention, she formed a puff of pink smoke to a curvy girl for a second or two before it was back as a cloud between her hands. His cheeks became red hot, and the sorcerer smirked. Granny pulled him away from there.
Avia yearned for solitude. Here among so many people, it felt hard to breathe, not because of dust but because of lack of energy in her body. It was a significant amount of time since she was alone by now. She remembered her last night before what she then thought would be meeting her daughter and her family, how she enjoyed being a hermit. With a pang of guilt, she asked herself if she would have continued to Peragri if she had known it meant she would lose her dear solitary days. Of course she had, because she had loved her daughter and Putt was her darling grandson and she did care about him and his future. Yet, when she got grained among all these people, she felt a desperate need to just leave it all and run. She did stand people, it was the amount of them she could not handle. It was like most of the people around her gained their energy from those like her. Most humans seemed the thrive the more people they were together with, like they produced their own kind of energy just by being near each other. She had never understood it.
Lack of internal energy made her grumpy like a bitter old man. All because of Putt. She was fully aware she was unjust, and none of all this was Putt’s fault. Unasked for, the thoughts came to her. Not only did she feel drained, but she also felt framed like a bird being lured into a cage. This was all a big trap, and she was caught in it, with nowhere to run. She fought panic. Putt pulled her sleeve like he tried to yank it off her.
“Look” he begged with a harsh whisper and pointed. They had reached the execution area and from the gallows hung a body. The dress and the hair… Though it had hanged there for a couple of days at least, she knew who it was just as well as Putt. It was Hockheba. Avia hissed between her teeth. This was not what was supposed to happen! Why had they hanged her? It was no use to do that kind of transportation for an execution. It was a waste of time and money. And future confidence. You made the transport for safety and fair treatment, not for this. Why? She clenched her teeth.
“Don’t watch” she told Putt, but it was useless. He had been the first to see the body and looking away now would make no difference. She pulled him along, eager to get the gallows out of sight. She turned into the crossing’s main road when they came to the center square and forced her way down with Putt by her hand. Putt pointed at a sign for an Inn, but she shook her head. Those along the main roads were far too expensive. Besides, she wanted something closer to the fighting arenas. She turned again and into one of the alleys leading from the posh areas. Finally, she found an inn which appeared just right for their needs. They had barely come to their room before Putt burst into crying.
“Why?!” he yelled with a fit of anger that surprised Avia.
“I don’t know
” she admitted. “This was not supposed to happen. I don’t know what went wrong.” She felt fooled, for some reason she did not quite understand. Though Hockheba had been her responsibility for only a short period of time and her past and future was no business of hers, she felt like she had led her prisoner to death, which was not part of the agreement.
“Was it my fault?”
“I don’t know” Avia repeated, uncomfortable with her lack of proper answers. Though what would she have said if it was Putt’s actions that led to Hockheba’s death? Would she have told him the truth? Putt would likely cry and blame himself no matter what, but knowing others blamed you as well, was something different completely.
“No. It can’t have been your fault” she assured him. As it were, she had no idea what had happened, and she thought she did not care either but found she did. Oon Barsate had been her employer, and though she knew Oon would never hire her again, other Oon might hire other warriors. It was her responsibility to protect her clan, her profession. She needed to know if something was going on.
But as it were, Putt’s future was her first priority, and she had to secure money before investigating in her former prisoner’s fate. She sat down beside Putt and hugged him. It felt good to be able to do so without the need to question if it was the right thing to do for a master. Never before had she considered that title as a limitation. She, who did not want to be caught up in other’s expectations. She had been so blind.
“Let’s go downstairs and eat some supper” she suggested. Her grandson nodded and rose.
CHAPTER TEN
The deal
Putt stood with his grandmother at the free spectator areas at one of the fighting rings. The sun was high, and the smell of sand and blood and sweat made him want to stop breathing. What he saw was even worse. Two persons entered the arena from opposite sides and fought until one of them gave up. With real weapons, aiming to take the other’s life. The fight going on was the third since he and his granny had come to watch. The previous battle left one dead, and in the one before that, both contestants became severely wounded. This was the place his granny planned to earn them some money. His grandmother, an old woman, intended to win over the young and faster contestants. He could not comprehend what she was thinking about. He had always considered Avia a wise person and respected her tremendously, but in this case, there was not even common sense; it was pure madness. His eyes wandered from the two women challenging each other in the ring to his grandmother. Her face was in deep concentration watching the fight. He turned his back to it and when he did not get a reaction from Avia he left.
He walked outside and sat down in the shadows, leaning his back against the wall of a building. He still had to listen to the battle though. Not that he wanted to, but he did not find it wise to walk further away since granny did not know where he was. Did he stay nearby she would see him when she exited. He closed his eyes with the hope of dreaming himself away, forgetting to listen.
“Are you dead?” asked a high-pitched voice beside him. He looked up. A girl of about six, maybe seven stood beside him.
“No” he answered, though the answer ought to be obvious already.
“Are you pretending to be?” What a peculiar thing to ask he thought.
“No.” He searched her young face for a reason for such question. “Why would I be?”
“You can’t fight if you’re dead.”
“I ain’t dead, and I ain’t going to fight.” He thought he ended the conversation but the girl remained by his side.
“Sometimes they drag boys inside there.” she pointed to the fighting areas. “They don’t want to fight either. But they always do. And you speak funny. Where are you from?” Would the name of his tiny village mean anything to her? Probably not. He shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“I know where I’m from” he blurted, annoyed and embarrassed now. “But you don’t know where it is even if I told you, and even if you do know where the village is, what does it matter where I’m from?” The girl shrugged. No one said anything for a while, and the girl walked away. Unexpectedly, Putt felt worried. She had said something about children being forced in there.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll take you?” he called out to her. She shook her head.
“No. My dad runs the fights.” Oh, well that would make her safe indeed. To his horror she did not return to him to talk some more but disappeared inside the arena building, leaving him alone to whatever danger there was sitting by himself. He rose and thought he should return to his grandmother when he realized he was being watched, and not by the child this time, but by two grown men. To hurry back to granny meant to move towards them. Would that be a good or a bad thing? He wanted his grandmother, and she was found straight ahead. If he turned and ran, he would be on his own. If he could not find his way back to the inn, he would be in huge trouble. He did not like to feel like a coward. Even if he had nothing to prove anymore as he had as a warrior’s apprentice.
“Where are you going?” one of the men asked when he was so close he could touch them if he had tried. A smell of leather and wet earth reached his nose.
“To my grandma.” A reply that caused the men to laugh.
“Does the old hag enjoy the show?” the other man inquired though he apparently found it hilarious that a woman of old age would like the spectacle of human killing.
“She’s no hag” Putt protested with his arms across the chest in a firm pose. “She’s a warrior. And she’ll fight here tomorrow.” Putt almost thought the two men would fold themselves double in their laughing. He saw his chance to pass them, but then they sobered and grabbed his shirt.
“Who do you think we are, brat? No warriors live long enough to become grandmothers.”
“Let go of me!” They did not heed his command and dragged him away.
Avia watched the fights with a mixture of distaste and relief. Relief because the techniques she saw were nothing new, they were all moves and tactics she could handle and do so with bravado. She had never felt attracted to the idea of killing for fun, neither as fighter nor audience. It was a waste of skill and human lives, but she also considered what was needed to please an audience used to death and gore. When something extra was needed, what would they do then? Give the fighters blunt weapons? Kill children?
She had noted that Putt did not want to watch and it pleased her. He was a cute boy with a sweet heart, and he should not learn to enjoy these fights. When a few animals were let loose to fight, she left the arena. It was time to find the manager and agree on the terms for her participation. As she walked down the stairs to the ground level, she did not see Putt anywhere. She searched outside, but he was not there. Irresolute she could not make up her mind if she should search for him at the inn or if she should take care of her business here first. She decided to find the manager and walked inside the lower regions and got directions to the owner of the arena.
Raborast was a man of size. Not in the way some just had size around their waist when they grew older. Raborast was impressive in both length and strength. Together with not a small amount of wealth earned over the years it made him a man people listened to and obeyed. He was not a man of rash decisions nor a man in favor of mercy. If he had been the forgiving kind, he would not have owned a fighting arena where he watched people die on a daily basis. His business thrived, better than his competitors. People knew who the tall man with the long raven, oily hair was.
Most people who came to him to fight were scraps. Desperate human left-overs who felt they had no other choice. They seldom left the arena alive. He had quite a few fighters of a high standard which he regularly used to entertain his audience while they slaughtered these newcomers. Some of them were so skilled they could elude their opponent that they were about to win and then when the enemy got hubris, turned the fellow to a loser. The audience loved it. The aspirant standing before him today did not look like a scrap. She was dressed as a warrior and seemed confident, not
someone to mess with. She was also of age.
“You must be joking with me” he snorted at her. People like her did not turn up at his arena. Young warriors did from time to time, but not experienced ones like this. And she must be excellent since she survived to high age.
“No. I don’t” she replied and gave him an irritated face. Was there something else in that look? He had seen a lot of eyes in his years with every kind of expression. People came to him for a reason. She needed money, and she was somewhat humiliated to be in the situation she was.
“Now, look, those people out there they want entertainment, not nobility. Besides, you look old enough to be my mother. Why don’t you just go and die with dignity somewhere instead.” The elderly woman in front of him frowned. Raborast wondered who desperate she was. If she would beg. He hoped not. He gave people a chance in the area if he thought it was profitable, not out of charity. And seeing an old warrior beg would be more than he could stand. Then came a scream. Someone called for his granny. He knew at once it must be one of the stray kids they picked up and he let out a quiet curse because those brats were part of a less respectable side of his fights and he did not wish to advertise it. In the next second, he had a knife under his chin.
“What have you done to my grandson?” the warrior hissed with such frenzy he thought she would cut his throat right away. Raborast was not unprotected. Four bodyguards surrounded them with their blades drawn, aiming at the attacker. The knife moved away from his skin, but she remained ready to attack. He noted the bodyguards were her targets now. Would she be able to take down all four of them? He had seen it on rare occasions. It was tempting to see her try but he put a high value on his bodyguards, who had proved themselves loyal more than once. The warrior in his room had become interesting.
“Bring me the yelling boy” he commanded to one of the bodyguards. The man left and soon returned with a boy.
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