Under the Crimson Sun

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Somehow, it just figured that Calbit would return from his trip at some ridiculous hour.

  The corridor emptied out into the large carriage bay, where Calbit had steered the four crodlus who pulled the stone carriage. His daughter Tirana was instructing the guards on where to take the slaves.

  Most of them were the usual collection of ne’er-do-wells, weaklings, and idiots that Calbit always collected on these long trips. On one of those trips, twenty-five years earlier, he had brought back a mul infant whose mother had died in childbirth. The orphan’s father, a rapist dwarf with a wandering eye, had been killed in a street fight, never aware his forced coupling would sired a bastard.

  It had taken Calbit five years to finally tell Gorbin the truth of his lineage. It was after one of the times he had tried to escape, claiming he wanted to find his birth parents, and ask them why they sold him to Calbit. Calbit had explained that the one who sold him was his mother’s sister, who had no interest in raising the result of her sister’s rape and plenty of interest in the gold coins Calbit had given her in exchange.

  Looking over the new arrivals, there were two who stood out to Gorbin.

  First off, they weren’t standing slouched and hunched over. They were shackled, just like everyone else, but they held their heads up high.

  They were also looking around at everything, noticing things—even though one of them had only one eye, the other covered in a patch. Gorbin had never been good at noticing things, but he noticed when other people noticed things. Sorvag had taught him that much.

  What Gorbin really saw in those two was that they knew how to fight. Only the best fighters Gorbin had faced in the arena moved with the grace and ease and awareness that those two did—the types who would almost last long enough for Gorbin to work up a sweat.

  He pointed. “Those two.”

  Jago stared at him. “What?”

  “I want to fight those two.”

  Calbit walked over to where the pair of them were watching Tirana guide the guards. “Did he actually point at someone?” Calbit asked Jago.

  Nodding, Jago said, “The two tall ones, there.”

  That caused Calbit to grin. He was missing several teeth, and Gorbin found the sight disgusting, but never said anything. “Those two were a find, lemme tell ya. Took out most of a group of Black Sands Raiders, and took down an anakore.”

  Jago grinned as well. “Nice. Let’s put ’em in the undercard for a bit, get them warmed up so—”

  “No,” Gorbin said. “I want to fight them.”

  Pointing at the one with the patch, Jago said, “That one only has one eye.”

  “Yeah,” Calbit put in, “and I saw him take down four raiders all by his lonesome, without no help from the other two.”

  “Other two?” Gorbin frowned. “I only see two.”

  “The raiders killed one of ’em. Probably wasn’t even a real fighter, truth be told. Maybe he owned ’em, I don’t know. Point is, these two can hold their own, maybe even against Gorbin.”

  Folding his arms over his wide chest, Jago said, “I don’t know. Newbies always go on the undercard.”

  Gorbin moved to stand right in front of Jago, emphasizing how big and strong he was. Sometimes he thought that Jago and Calbit forgot that. “You always ask me if I want to fight someone. I want to fight them. Let me fight them.”

  Calbit looked at Jago. “I’m telling you, these two will be wasted on the undercard. They’ll bring people in—might be the first challenge Gorbin’s seen in years.”

  Gorbin didn’t bother to point out that the next challenge would be his first.

  Jago shook his head. “Not right away. If we just throw them in with Gorbin, no one will show up, because they’ll think it’s just the latest failed challenger. We need to build interest—and, besides, the last person you thought would be a challenge was that half-elf that Barglin beat in half a second.”

  For a moment, Calbit stared angrily at Jago, then he looked away and nodded.

  Jago called over to Tirana. “Send those two to cubicle four.”

  The one with the eye patch started yelling then. “Where the frip are you taking us?”

  Calbit snarled. “Where d’you think?”

  Struggling against his restraints, the one with the patch cried, “We don’t want to fight. We’re free men, dammit.”

  “Not no more,” Calbit said quietly.

  Gorbin spit at the floor. “Another coward.”

  That got the eye patch’s attention. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, mul—you put me in the arena, and I’ll fight, and I’ll win. So will my friend Rol here. See, we do this for a living.”

  Indicating Gorbin with his head, Jago said, “So does he.”

  The eye patch turned on Jago. “No, he does it because you guys tell him to. I see the brand there. He’s your slave. Me and Rol, though, we do this in the real world—there aren’t any rules when we fight.”

  “No rules here, neither,” Calbit said.

  “Please.” The man with the patch snorted. “Your fights are all in an enclosed arena with the fighters right in front of one another. That’s nothing. I swear to you, right here, right now—we will fight in your stupid arena and we will win and we will eventually be rid of this place. When Rol and I kill someone, it’s either because we’re being paid to or because we or someone we care about’s life is in danger, but I’m telling you right now, Calbit, that one of us is going to kill you, and it won’t be for either of those reasons. It’ll be because you fripping deserve to die a very slow, very painful death.”

  The other one, Rol, finally spoke, doing so in a very quiet, even tone. “Gan, shut up.”

  “You should listen to your friend,” Calbit said. “Take them away.”

  One of the guards grabbed Rol by the wrist, then immediately pulled his hand back, a look of disgust on his face. Looking at Rol’s arm, he shouted, “What is that?”

  Gorbin noticed that the guard’s palm was slicked with some kind of red ooze—it wasn’t blood, Gorbin had fought enough humans to know exactly what their blood looked like.

  Following the guard’s look to Rol’s wrist, he saw some kind of bump on his skin. It was smeared with the same red ooze that was on the guard’s hand.

  Calbit looked at Tirana. “Get the healer over here to give him a once-over. That’s just what we need, some kind of disease.”

  “It’s nothing,” Rol said. “You want me to fight, I’ll fight. And I’ll win. And, like Gan said, eventually—I’ll kill you.”

  A bit more gingerly, the guards led Rol and Gan off, Tirana following. Gorbin watched them, thinking about what Gan had said. “What did he mean?”

  “About what?” Jago asked.

  “That stuff about rules and enclosed arenas and stuff.”

  “Nothing, don’t worry about it. C’mon, let’s get you back to your cubicle.”

  As Jago led him back down the corridor, Gorbin thought about what Gan had said. He’d always fought in the arena or under the very watchful eyes of Sorvag.

  He wondered what fighting in the real world, the way Gan and Rol did it, was like.

  Gan had been to many arenas in his time, and he’d been to Urik many times, but he’d never been to the Pit of Black Death.

  He would, honestly, have been happy to keep that streak alive.

  For a long time, the site had been an obsidian mine, and a tremendous source of income for the city-state’s treasury. But once it was tapped out, King Hamanu had no more use for the land and sold it to the highest bidder—who, Gan assumed, was Calbit and his partner.

  Like most mines, the center of it was a giant round well in the ground, which had been converted to an arena, with wooden scaffolding along the obsidian-scored walls. The catacombs beneath the well, which had linked up the various smaller veins of obsidian, had been converted to offices for the staff and cubicles to house the fighters. The smaller ones fit one or two people, and were reserved for the best fighters who fought during the main event
of each evening’s entertainment.

  Last time they were in Urik, Gan had expressed confusion over why anyone would even bother to show up for the earlier fights. Fehrd had pointed out that you could attend the early fights for a cheaper admission price, and get good seats that were generally reserved for the wealthiest of the wealthy for the main event.

  Gan really missed Fehrd.

  Fighters were led at combat time up a spiral staircase to the holding area located under the scaffolding that served as seats. Armed guards stood at every exit, and—according to the grumblings of some of the other fighters—there was some kind of magical protection. The other fighters were sufficiently vague on the subject that Gan suspected there was no magic, just a rumor that Calbit and his partner started to scare the fighters into submission.

  Every time Gan tried to ask Rol what was wrong, Rol dismissed it. “Just a lesion. Nothing to worry about.”

  That had been the same thing that the healer—a gaunt, elderly elf who looked like he wanted to be anywhere other than at the arena—had said after examining all three of the so-called lesions that had appeared on Rol’s skin. In addition to the one on his left wrist, there was also one on his right leg, with a third on his neck.

  Rol added: “Probably a bad reaction to something in that fripping concrete cart. Wasn’t exactly clean in there, and who knows where those other people came from.”

  “I guess.” Gan sighed. “Still, you’ve been a bit—well, odd since we hooked up with that caravan.”

  Rol just glared at him.

  Gan held up his hands. “Right, right, Fehrd’s been killed, we got kidnapped by slavers, and we’re stuck in Urik as gladiators. I can see how that might make you a bit off your game, but we’ve got to start thinking about escaping.”

  “Only thing I’m thinking about right now is removing Calbit and Tirana’s heads from their necks with my bare hands.”

  Rol didn’t speak the words in his usual matter-of-fact tone.

  “Okay, now I’m really worried.”

  “Why?” Rol asked.

  “Because this isn’t like you. C’mon, Rol, we’ve been in worse situations than this.”

  “With Fehrd,” Rol added. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ll get through this. For now, though, we fight.”

  “That’s what worries me—you know who that mul was, right? It was Gorbin. He’s been—”

  “I know who he is. I saw him fight last time we were in Urik. His fights never last longer than a few minutes.”

  “Which is why we need to get out of here before we have to fight him.”

  “I’ll beat him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Do I have a choice? Besides, we don’t know the lay of the land well enough to escape. We’ll need at least a week.”

  Sighing, Gan leaned back on the cubicle’s hard bunk. Rol was, as usual, right. They needed a plan, and in order to plan, they needed information.

  Gan wasn’t sure when it was, exactly, that the guards led them out of their cubicle and up the spiral staircase. Between being drugged—by Tirana’s draft meant to keep them “awake”—and kidnapped, and being stuck in either a stone carriage or an underground dungeon, he had lost all sense of time.

  But when they reached the holding area, he could see that the outdoor arena was lit solely by torchlight, so it had to be nighttime. There were dozens of torches all around the perimeter of the arena, and they barely kept the place visible against the stygian backdrop of the former obsidian mine.

  Six fighters joined Gan and Rol, but they mostly shied away from them. The only one who didn’t was a goliath who looked right at Gan and Rol and said, “You two? Dead. Neither one’a ya’s gonna last more’n three seconds in the arena with me. An’ yeah, I saw whatcha did ‘gainst the anakore, but anakores ain’t nothin’ away from their packs. You two? Goin’ down.”

  Ignoring the goliath, Gan walked over to the gate—which, to his surprise, was made from metal. It was old metal, rusted in spots, probably dating back to the earliest days of the king’s reign. No doubt, it was prohibitively expensive to replace, and Gan suspected that a sharp kick to the right spot would snap some of the metal spurs in twain.

  Filing that away for future reference, Gan looked out at the arena floor as Calbit’s partner came out and held up his hands, causing the crowd noise—which had been so constant in the background that Gan hadn’t really noticed it up until then—to die down.

  “Good evening. I’m Fal Jago, and on behalf of my partner Helsno Calbit, I welcome you all to the Pit … of Black Death.”

  Gan wondered what the dramatic pause and overemphasis of the arena’s name was supposed to accomplish. Did anybody not know the name of the place?

  However, several people cheered, if raggedly, at the mention of the name, so Gan supposed it served some sort of rile-up-the-crowd function.

  “Tonight is a very special night here at the Pit, as we present a new crop of fighters that we have brought here from arenas all across Athas. The finest warriors in the land, and all of them come here, because they know that this is where true battles are waged, where glory is gained, where victory is won.”

  More cheers, even though Gan mostly wanted to wretch. He’d heard better oratory from drunks in taverns.

  “The first battle of the evening will be between two of our finest newcomers. First, from the wastes to the west, fresh off of several dozen kills in the iron mines of Tyr—the grand goliath, Krackis.”

  With a grinding sound that Gan felt all up and down his spine, the metal gate rose slowly upward, providing easy access to the arena floor. The goliath who’d been trash-talking Gan a moment earlier ran forward. He jogged out into the arena with his arms raised in the air.

  Whatever response he was hoping to engender with that gesture failed, as the crowd sounded unimpressed. At best, he got a smattering of applause.

  “Facing him in the finest arena in the land will be a challenger from the far-off land of Nibenay, a man who singlehandedly defeated a team of bandits in the Alluvial Sand Wastes—the one-eyed wonder, Gan.”

  Gan shook his head in annoyance. “I’ve been to Nibenay all of once in my life.”

  One of the other fighters, a stocky dwarf, barked a laugh. “Seriously? You actually critiquing Jago’s nonsense? He’s a fripping barker, you moron, he’s tryin’ to rile up the crowd. Accordin’ to him, I wiped out an entire elf caravan with my teeth last year.”

  Gan regarded the dwarf, who was bald with a thick mustache. “I take it you used actual weapons to wipe out the elf caravan?”

  That resulted in another barked laugh. “Never even met an elf in my life, till I came to this benighted place. Nah, I was arrested for fightin’, an’ they put me here instead’a jail. I live, I’m out in a year—go to jail, it’s ten, and probably get killed inside within a year.”

  His eye widening, Gan asked, “Ten? For a fight?”

  The dwarf grinned. “Well, when the guy you beat up is the king’s nephew, they take a dimmer view of it. Kid wasn’t supposed to be in that tavern, so they didn’t put me to death or nothin’, since I didn’t know he was a nobleman. Course, I woulda beat the little twerp up anyway, he was a real fripping piece of—”

  One of the guards pushed the dwarf aside and then shoved Gan toward the gate. He sauntered out into the arena, seeing no reason to rush or to play to the crowd.

  To his amusement, he got precisely the same applause that Krackis received, with a fraction of the effort.

  “Let the fighting begin,” was the last thing Jago said before he left the floor, leaving Gan and Krackis to circle each other.

  Gan stood with his elbows in and angled slightly so that he presented his left bicep to his opponent. For his part, Krackis just stood facing Gan directly, holding his fists over his head. Gan sighed silently; Krackis’s pose probably looked impressive to the crowd, but holding his arms up like that was an unnecessary effort and left his middle exposed.

  Krackis, predictably, made
the first move, throwing an overhand right toward Gan, which he easily deflected with his left arm, though pain shot through his forearm with the parry. That told Gan a lot; his foe was very strong and had probably never been in a fight with anyone who knew what he was doing.

  The goliath peppered Gan with a few more punches, and one of them inevitably was strong enough that Gan couldn’t properly parry it—Krackis’s sheer strength was enough that Gan fell to the arena floor in a heap.

  Proud of himself, Krackis raised his arms and looked to the crowd, who obliged him with cheers that echoed off the obsidian walls.

  Seeing his opportunity, Gan thrust his right leg upward with a sharp kick to Krackis’s solar plexus.

  The cheers modulated almost instantly into gasps as the goliath doubled over, struggling to breathe. Gan followed it up with a punch to his oversized head, knocking Krackis to the floor.

  With the crowd goading him to get up, Krackis managed to struggle to his feet. Gan waited until he was standing, then kicked downward at his knee. The impact of his foot on bone broke it, the crack echoing throughout the arena, followed quickly by Krackis’s screams as he fell to the floor again.

  Suddenly the crowd was cheering more enthusiastically, chanting Gan’s name. However, Gan paid no attention, focusing entirely on Krackis.

  But the goliath was still screaming in pain, and did not get up.

  Jago stepped out then, holding up both arms. “The match is ended. The winner is Gan.”

  Two guards came out as the crowd celebrated Gan’s victory. They helped the now-hobbled Krackis out. Gan walked behind them under his own power.

  “You cheated,” Krackis said through clenched teeth.

  “I was under the impression there weren’t any rules.”

  “There aren’t,” one of the guards said before Krackis could respond. “The only rule is that one person wins, and the other loses.”

  Gan smiled. “Looks like rule number two applies to you, Krackis. Hope your leg heals soon.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  We’re getting closer,” Feena said without prompting, startling Komir next to her as he held the crodlu reins.