The guards took position and the crowds stilled. Into an avid silence a senior herald shouted in a voice that carried to the most distant tier of seats, ‘Almecho, Warlord!’
The crowd surged to its feet, crying out welcome for the mightiest warrior in the Empire.
Quiet in her place, and sipping at her fruit drink, Mara watched but did not cheer as the Warlord made his entry. Wide bands of gold adorned the neck and armholes of his breastplate; additional goldwork patterned his helm, which was surmounted by a crimson plume. Behind Almecho trailed two black-robed magicians, named the ‘Warlord’s pets’ by the masses. Kevin had heard how, in the years before his capture, one of those distant Great Ones had cast the spell that proved Mara’s claim of treachery by the Minwanabi, an action that compelled Desio’s predecessor to ritual suicide to expiate the shame to his family.
Then, unexpectedly, the herald announced a second presence. ‘Ichindar! Ninety-one times Emperor!’
The ovation became a deafening roar. The young Light of Heaven made his entrance. Even Lady Mara threw restraint to the winds. She cheered as loudly as any commoner, her face alight with admiration and awe: this was a man held in near-religious devotion by his nation.
The Light of Heaven made his unprecedented appearance in armour covered entirely in gold. He seemed no more than three years over twenty. His expression could not be interpreted over distance, but his bearing was erect and confident, and red-brown hair flowed from under his high gilt helm, to lie in trimmed curls on his shoulders.
Behind the Emperor filed twenty priests, from each of the twenty major temples. As the Light of Heaven made his way to stand beside the Warlord, the crowd thundered. The cheering seemed inexhaustible.
Through the unnerving din, Kevin shouted to Lujan, ‘Why is everyone so carried away?’
Since decorum had been totally forsaken, Lujan freely called back, ‘The Light of Heaven is our spiritual guardian, who through prayer and exemplary living intercedes on our behalf to the gods. He is Tsuranuanni!’
Never in living memory had an Emperor blessed his nation by coming among the people. That Ichindar chose to do so now was inspirational, a cause for unrestrained joy. Yet, alone in a crowd of thousands, Arakasi was not cheering. He went through all the motions, but Kevin saw that he scanned the surrounding throng for any hint of danger to his mistress. With Tsurani impassivity abandoned to wild pandemonium, this moment offered the perfect opportunity for an enemy to slip close without notice. Kevin edged closer to Mara’s back, prepared to leap to her defence if need be.
The tumultuous ovation rolled on with no sign of waning. At length the Emperor took his seat, and the Warlord raised outstretched arms. His demand took several minutes to be noticed. When the crowd reluctantly quietened, Almecho shouted, ‘The gods smile upon Tsuranuanni! I bring news of a great victory over the otherworld barbarians! We have crushed their greatest army, and our warriors celebrate! Soon all the lands called the Kingdom will be laid at the Light of Heaven’s feet.’ The Warlord ended with a deferential bow to the Light of Heaven, and the masses roared out in approval.
Kevin stood as if stunned. The pit of his stomach felt like ice. Then, aware through his shock and the howl of the crowd that Arakasi studied him intently, the Midkemian glared back. ‘Your Warlord means Brucal and Borric’s forces were routed, the Armies of the West.’ Desperate to bridle an anger that could only endanger his life, Kevin qualified. ‘My own home lies in peril, for now the way lies open for Tsuranuanni to march on Zun!’
Arakasi looked away first; and Kevin remembered: the Spy Master had lost a master and home to the Minwanabi before he swore service to the Acoma. Then Mara’s fingers stole into Kevin’s hand and returned a squeeze of understanding. The Midkemian battled a rush of emotion as his conflicts of loyalty, love, and upbringing tore him a thousand different ways. Fate had taken him from his family and forced him away to a distant world. He had chosen life and love as a man may, rather than miserable captivity; but the cost was only now becoming apparent: who was he – Kevin of Zun or Kevin of the Acoma?
Before the imperial box, the Warlord held up his hands. As the noise subsided, he shouted, ‘To the glory of Tsuranuanni and as a sign of our devotion to the Light of Heaven, we dedicate these games to his honour!’
The cheering swelled afresh, grating on ears and nerves. Somehow Kevin endured it. Though Lujan and Arakasi might tolerate a breach of manners, any Tsurani warriors who guarded neighbouring boxes would cut him down and ask questions later should they suspect him of impudence toward a Lady of Mara’s rank.
Numbly Kevin watched the doors open at the arena’s far end. Roughly a hundred men shambled onto the sunlit sand. Naked but for loincloths, they were of all ages and states of health; some stood with weapons and shields that were familiar to them, but they were few. Most seemed confused by their circumstances, their grip on their swords uncertain.
‘These are not fighters,’ Kevin observed, a sting to his tone despite his best efforts.
Arakasi quieted him with explanation. ‘This is a clemency spectacle. All are condemned men. They will fight, and the one who lives at the end will go free.’
Trumpets sounded and the slaughter commenced. Before his capture, while soldiering for his father, he had seen many men killed. This was not warfare, not even a savagely matched contest. What took place upon the sands of Kentosani’s arena was butchery. The handful of trained men moved like cats through mice trapped in a granary, killing at will. Finally fewer than a dozen men remained standing, and these more fairly matched. Kevin had lost his stomach for watching; he stared blankly at the spectators, but found no relief from his disgust. The Tsurani seemed to enjoy the blood, not the sport. They cheered each painful death and compared the agonies of one disembowelled man with those of another. Wagers were made on how long the wretch who tried to stuff his spilled entrails back into his abdomen would last, and how many screams he would utter before he died. No one seemed interested in the skill of the handful of fighters still living.
Kevin felt his gorge rise and swallowed hard. He controlled his loathing by force until the debacle ended, a man with a sword and knife taking the last of the condemned with a thrust under the shield. From the imperial box the vaunted Tsurani Emperor observed the proceedings impassively, while the Warlord at his side murmured to an adviser as if carnage were a daily event.
Burning now, with a fury fuelled by outrage, Kevin looked to see how the Great One who had once been a Kingdom man was handling this atrocity. Even at this distance, Milamber’s countenance appeared stony; but to Kevin’s dismay, the fat magician by his side had broken off his discussion and appeared to be studying the Acoma box.
Kevin averted his gaze in sudden fear. Could a Great One hear thoughts? He bent without considering to ask Mara, but stopped, recalled to his place by the sight of her. The Lady of the Acoma endured the bloodletting with proper Tsurani restraint, her only sign of discomfort a slight stiffness in her shoulders. The former son of Zun felt his stomach burn. He knew Mara. Intimate with her throughout five years, he knew she could perceive the difference between the slaughter below and the battle campaign experienced in the desert. Yet she never so much as flinched when the victor swaggered among the fallen bodies, his gory weapon brandished aloft.
Kevin checked surreptitiously to see whether the Great One was still watching; this time, he could see plainly that the bearded one, Milamber, bore an expression of distaste; even his eyes seemed ablaze. Kevin was not the only one to notice Milamber’s disgust. Nobles in nearby boxes whispered and glanced toward the magician, and a few looked openly apprehensive.
Arakasi saw the exchange. To Kevin he whispered, ‘This doesn’t bode well. Great Ones may act on a whim, and not even the Light of Heaven dares gainsay their will. If this former countryman of yours shares your distaste for killing, there could be a scene.’
In sunlight, on hot sand, the victor finished his strutting. Slaves came and cleared away the corpses, while rakers smo
othed over the rumpled, blood-soaked ground. Trumpets sounded the next round of the Imperial Games, while Kevin wished silently for a drink to wet his dry mouth.
A band of men wearing loincloths entered the stadium, taller and fairer than most Tsurani. Kevin instantly recognized countrymen from his homeworld. Their shoulders gleamed with oil and they carried an assortment of ropes, hooks, weighted nets, spears, and long knives. The festival atmosphere did not disorient them, nor did they give the crowds of showy nobles more than a desultory glance. Instead they crouched in awareness that trouble approached, from any of a dozen directions. Kevin had shared such uncertainty, upon patrol and standing the night watch on the edge of the no-man’s-land where the enemy might strike at any moment.
But these men had not long to wait for action. A pair of large doors rumbled open at the far end of the arena, and a creature out of nightmare shambled out.
All fangs and lethal claws, it stood the size of an elephant, but moved cat-fast on its six legs. At the sight of it, even Mara lost her composure and exclaimed, ‘A harulth!’
The Kelewanese predator blinked and snarled at the sudden blaze of sunlight. Scales armoured its hide, scattering chilly highlights across its neck as it quested to and fro, sniffing the air. The crowd sat charged with expectation. Then the beast spotted its foe: the tiny men who stood exposed on that cruel vista of sand. The harulth did not paw warning, as a bull or a needra might, but lowered its head in belligerence and instantly sprang to the charge.
It moved with terrible swiftness.
The warriors scattered, not in panic, but in a desperate attempt to confuse. The beast made no sound, but its fury was apparent as it focused upon one unfortunate fellow and gave chase. The end came in a flash of claws and a spinning stop that ground the human underfoot. Unmindful of sand or weapons, the harulth devoured the remains in two bites.
Saddened, revolted, and frozen in sympathy for his countrymen, Kevin could not look away. While the harulth dispatched its meal, the survivors regrouped behind the animal and quickly deployed their nets. Faster than Kevin could imagine possible, the creature spun and charged. The men stood their ground until the last instant, then threw the nets as they scattered. The hooks grappled and caught in thick hide and the creature was entangled.
Kevin watched in admiration and fear as spearmen rushed in to strike. The weapons they had been issued were heavy, but the creature’s scales were very tough. It took all of a man’s strength just to penetrate, and the wounds were like stings to the monster. Its vitals stayed totally unharmed. The men saw the futility of further attack. Two of them conferred briefly, then ran to the rear, where the creature’s huge tail thrashed and flailed up sand. Kevin’s breath stopped as, against all rational thought, his countrymen leaped upon the harulth and climbed in an attempt to drive their long knives into the monster’s spine. The sheer bravery of the act brought tears to his Midkemian eyes.
Even Lujan was impressed. ‘These men show courage.’
Kevin answered in bitter pride, ‘My countrymen know how to look death in the eye.’
The harulth felt the prick at his back. It heaved and snapped, and nets unravelled, whirled away like torn string. The tail hammered down into sand, and the blow shook one man off. He sailed through the air and crashed, too stunned to run. The harulth snapped him in half. The remaining man clung grimly. To jump down was to be trampled; to stay, an art of sheer folly. The scales made treacherous handholds, and the harulth was maddened to fury. It spun and snapped and slashed, missing its mark by scant inches; for the man had resumed his climb.
The crowds murmured their appreciation. Higher the man climbed, though tossed on his perch like a monkey on a storm-shaken branch. He reached the juncture above the stamping hind legs and drove his blade to the hilt into the creature’s back.
The hindmost pair of legs violently collapsed, all but throwing the man. He slipped, clawed a hold, and clung as the harulth shuddered and writhed in rage and pain. It whipped its neck, trying to bite at its tormentor; but its thick body lacked the suppleness to bend enough to snatch its tiny foe.
The man flexed a blood-spattered wrist and jerked his blade. The weapon cleared bone and hide with difficulty. The harulth bellowed and slashed, and the drag of useless limbs gouged up furrows in the sand. The man hung on, inching torturously forward to the next joint of the spine. Again he drove his blade between the knobs of vertebrae and successfully severed the spine. The middle segment of legs went limp.
Quickly the men on the ground raced in to blind and distract the paralysed monster until their companion could jump clear. Once he reached the sand safely, they all gave the stricken predator a wide berth until its struggles slowed, and it perished.
The crowd yelled their approval, and Lujan made free with admiration. As if he momentarily forgot that he addressed a slave, he said, ‘No harulth has been felled by warriors without five times more losses. Your countrymen do themselves honour.’
Kevin wept unabashedly. Though all of these men were strangers to him, he felt he knew each one in his heart. He understood that they took no pleasure or pride from what they had achieved; what the Tsurani counted pride was to these men merely survival.
Tears also streamed down the cheeks of Kevin’s countrymen. Exhausted, alone, and aware they might never see their home again, the Midkemians left the arena, while needra teams were rushed in to haul away the harulth’s carcass, and rakers and slaves with drags scraped the marks of conflict from the sand.
Abruptly aware that he had drawn Mara’s scrutiny, Kevin made an effort to mend his glaring disregard for proper behaviour. Though she must show no flicker of sympathy in her pose as Ruling Lady, she handed her empty drink cup to Arakasi and exchanged a surreptitious whisper. ‘Have we remained long enough to satisfy the needs of our status in the council?’
Arakasi glanced pointedly at Kevin, warning the barbarian not to show reaction to the possibility that the Lady might not care for blood sports. ‘I wish I could say yes, my Lady, but if you were to leave now, before your enemies move to depart …’
Mara returned a slight nod and faced dutifully forward. And the fact that she must endure strictly for the sake of appearances sparked a wild anger in Kevin. Under his breath, in reckless reaction, he hissed, ‘I will never understand your people and your game –’
The trumpets drowned out his protest. The grounds crew left the arena at a run, as yet another door boomed open. A dozen fighting men in outlandish battle harnesses strutted onto the sand. Each wore leather wristbands set with studs, and headdresses of varicoloured plumes. They advanced in total disregard of the audience for whom they were imported to amuse, and halted finally at the arena centre, their swords and shields held in relaxed confidence.
Kevin had heard of the proud mountain men who inhabited the far eastern highlands. Alone among the people to defeat the Empire, they had forced a truce between nations some years before the Tsurani invasion of Midkemia.
The trumpets blew again and the herald cried an introduction. ‘As these soldiers of the Thuril Confederation have violated the treaty between their own nations and the Empire, by making war upon the soldiers of the Emperor, they have been cast out by their own people, who have named them outlaws and bound them over for punishment. They will fight the captives from the world of Midkemia. All will strive until one is left standing.’
Trumpets called for the event to begin. As the large doors at the end of the arena swung ponderously open, Lujan volunteered an observation. ‘What is the games director thinking of? Thuril will not fight one another if they defeat the Midkemians. They’ll die cursing the Emperor first.’
‘My Lady, be ready to leave quickly,’ Arakasi broke in. ‘If the fight is a disappointment, the mob will likely turn ugly …’
Since Tsurani custom seated commoners on the levels above the nobility, in the event of violence the higher classes of the Empire would need to fight their way up through a riot to reach the available exits. Kevin wondered at
the much vaunted Tsurani discipline, but as if sensing his thought, Arakasi contradicted.
‘These games sometimes awaken a bloodlust in the common folk. There have been riots before, and nobles have died in them.’
The seemingly endless contradictions of these people baffled Kevin only briefly, for that moment a dozen Midkemians marched from the opened archway opposite the Warlord’s dais. Their original metal armour was far too costly an extravagance to be used for arena entertainment; in place of good chain mail and armoured helms and shields, these captives wore garishly painted facsimiles fashioned of Tsurani materials. One shield bore the wolf’s head of LaMut, and another, in too bright, splashy colours, the horse blazon of Zun.
Kevin bit his lip to keep from voicing his anguish. He could not help his countrymen! He would only get himself uselessly killed and leave his beloved Lady an inheritance of shame. But the outrage and the pain he felt would never answer to logic. Smouldering with pent-up emotions, Kevin closed his eyes and lowered his head. These Imperial Games were a barbarity, and he was unwilling to watch good men wasted for the perverse sake of a spectacle.
But instead of the clash of combat, a murmuring arose from the crowd. Kevin risked a look. The warriors of Thuril and Midkemia were not fighting but speaking. Catcalls and whistles drifted down from the highest rim of the stadium as the two combatants faced one another with something less than a bellicose posture. Now one of the Thuril pointed at the crowd. While his words were too distant to hear, his expression reflected contempt.
One of the Midkemians stepped forward and a Thuril came on guard, but a shout from his companion caused him to retreat a step. The Midkemian removed his leather helm and glared about the arena. Then, unthinkably insolent, he cast both armour and sword upon the sand. His shield followed, the thump of its impact clearly audible in the absolute silence. He spoke something to his companions and folded his arms.
The Complete Empire Trilogy Page 90