by Nathan Long
I cocked my arm back. Hesh saw what I was up to and struggled harder. I unleashed. Wham! The floor shook. I wasn’t worried. I was sure the guards were used to all kinds of noises coming out of this room.
Hesh ‘yurked’ and spasmed, his eyes rolling up in his head. I gave him one more just to make sure, then checked him for bruises. I was lucky. There was no mark where his head had cracked the base board. I felt his neck. No pulse. I got up off him. Yaj was staring at me, eyes big as silver dollars.
I put the ledger back and lifted Hesh’s body onto the bed, then turned to Yaj. “You all right? You understand me?”
She nodded, scared.
“All right. Count to sixty, then start screaming like a banshee and calling for help. They’ll think he had a heart attack. Got it?”
She nodded again. I hoped she was reading me. I was going to need a distraction to cover the noise of jumping onto the Ho House.
I slipped out the window and up to the roof. A few seconds later Yaj went off like a cheap car alarm. Good girl. Guards came running from everywhere.
I jumped the gap. No shouts. I pushed down through the roof and combed the grass back into place with nobody but the women the wiser.
They stared as I dropped to the floor. I put a finger to my lips and got in my cot, pulling the covers over me to hide the fading scratches I’d got from the thatch. “Yaj is safe. Pretend you were asleep.”
Ten minutes later the guards burst in and threw Yaj to the floor. They looked around suspiciously, particularly at me. “Did anybody leave this room tonight?”
I held my breath. The women could betray me and get off scotfree. I hadn’t thought of that.
Fae-Ah shook her head. “No one has come in or out that door.”
I almost cracked up, clever bitch. Instead I sighed with relief. That lasted until I tried to sleep. As soon as I closed my eyes the reaction hit. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like Hesh was sitting on my chest.
I’d murdered him. It wasn’t self-defense. It wasn’t in the heat of battle. It was murder. Cold-blooded, premeditated murder. Turned out vowing to kill someone wasn’t the same as actually doing it after all. Fucking idiot, thinking before that wanting to kill someone made me a murderer. Wanting to kill someone sure as hell hadn’t made me feel like this.
I’d done it now. I couldn’t go back to who I was before. I couldn’t think of myself as sweet little Jane any more. I couldn’t hold my self above the scumbags and pretend I was some kind of knight in black leather.
Sure I had an excuse. All us killers have an excuse. I’d had to protect Yaj. I’d had to protect myself. But if I hadn’t gone to save her, Yaj would have survived, Hesh would be alive, and I’d be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning. Not that the school had mirrors. At least that was a blessing.
The next day we were introduced to the new overseer—one of Hesh’s underlings—and that was that. I don’t think even the brothers were too upset. Hesh had been a little too eager to dish out punishment. The rest of the school shrugged off his death. Nobody cared. Nobody but me.
I couldn’t get those bloodshot eyes of his out of my head.
***
Things changed in the Ho House, but not that much. It wasn’t like the girls instantly became my friends or anything. They still kept to themselves. I still wasn’t part of the group. But now there were little kindnesses. They smiled when they fed me in the meal tent, and gave me choice cuts. They’d lend me hair ties and bath scrapers, and when I came back from practice my cot would be made up with fresh rushes. Little Yaj didn’t stop keeping an eye on me, but now her scared cat look was mixed with a cocked-head, curious dog look.
***
After another half moon, my big debut came at last. I was nervous, but I was almost looking forward to it too. My opponent was a pug-ugly crank named Shir-Lat, who’d given me shit since I came in the door—tripping me, “accidentally” nicking me in practice, letting me know that the only position I should be filling here was flat on my back with my legs spread, and I was too ugly even for that. I wasn’t exactly unhappy to be kicking his ass. My new fighting gear helped get me in the mood too.
Okay, yeah, I’m vain, but the armorers really did right by me. My armor and helmet were enameled steel, dark green with black trim, to play up my light skin, and glazed so it all shined like emeralds. Each overlapping plate sewn on my sword-arm sleeve was the color and shape of a jungle leaf. My loincloth bikini reversed the color scheme, butter-soft black leather with green trim.
The frosting on the cake was the sword, as long as the Aarurrh one Handsome had given me, just a finger slimmer, but with the same weight and better steel. It was balanced perfectly too. I felt like I’d been born with it in my hand. And it looked as good as it felt: an over-the-shoulder sheath that matched my outfit, a green jewel the size and shape of a chicken’s egg for a pommel and, just like the original, a slightly curved tip. I felt like a million bucks.
***
The gladiator school was connected to the arena by a tunnel under the street for security reasons. The school and the arena were one big prison. We were never outside the walls, so supposedly we were never tempted to run. I was tempted every day. Only knowing that Sai and Lhan were still my best hope of getting back to Kedac and going home kept me from jumping the walls.
On the day of the big fight, they marched us through the tunnel into the guts of the arena, all dark and twisty, and reeking with the stench of the wild animals that were killed for the kicks of the crowd. The hallways were low and narrow. They made me nervous. All of that stone on top of me. Yeesh!
Lhan put a hand on my shoulder. “Worry not, mistress. We’ll soon be out in the light where all will be speed and action and release.” Did this guy know me or what?
They stuck us in a kind of gladiator locker room, a slant-roofed hole under the stands beside the big door that led out onto the arena floor. We settled down to wait. There were a lot of other acts on before us.
I watched through the gate as frightened men in rags were pushed out into the hot sun. Right behind them came a pack of vurlaks: those van-sized pit bull things we’d steered clear of back on the prairie, all teeth and muscle. The sound from the arena was horrible. I nearly got sick. Maybe those poor guys were murderers, but Christ.
I cheered up when the fights started. Steel on steel and the roar of the crowd. Maybe it was all those berzerkers and borderers in my bloodline, but the sound pumped me up.
After each match the fighters came back, limping, bleeding, sometimes on stretchers, but nobody died, and the crowd didn’t seem disappointed. That made me feel better. I didn’t mind giving Shir-Lat a hiding. He deserved that, but I didn’t want to feel again like I had after I’d killed Hesh any time soon. I might be a killer now, but I wasn’t so hard yet that I could kill some poor slob just because somebody told me to. I hoped I never would be.
Lhan went out ahead of me and I held my breath, but he came back without a scratch on him. His opponent was limping from a gash on the leg.
Zhen slapped Lhan on the back. “Not bad, fancy boy. You got the crowd with you, and you made it look like a fight. We’ll make a gladiator out of you yet.”
Lhan shrugged. He didn’t give a damn about being a gladiator.
Then it was my turn.
***
I thought it was going to be easy. I was wrong. I almost thought it was going to be fun. I was dead wrong.
It started off great. They announced me with horns and drums, and I swaggered out, doing my best Stone Cold Steve Austin impersonation. The brothers had talked me up big-time, saying I was a Savage Demon Giantess with powers beyond the ken of mortal Tae, so the crowd was itching to see for themselves. From the nervous murmur I heard in the stands I guess I lived up to the billing.
Shir-Lat was waiting for me, the sand around him stained with blood from the earlier massacres. His eyes were wild and scary. Gossip around the practice yard said he’d been coasting for years. Now his laziness had bit hi
m in the ass. He was being forced to fight his worst nightmare, a woman he knew was better than he was. He did not want to lose.
The sound of ten thousand people all talking at once rolled over me like Malibu surf. I’d been in the arena before. Zhen had brought us in on off days for some practice fights to get us used to it, but it was different filled with people. The stands were a waterfall of color and movement, rising up to a gigantic canvas donut stretched out over long poles that stuck in from the outer walls to keep the sun out. The cheap seats were on the side where the sun angled in, the better seats were in the shade, and the best seats were at ringside: ritzy boxes, tented to keep out the sun and the nosy eyes of the poor. They were filled with expensive furniture and expensive slaves to wait on the fatcats with the big bucks.
All those eyes on me, waiting for me to amaze them. I got a little dizzy. That’s when Shir-Lat attacked.
I heard his footsteps at the last second and jumped. He nicked me, but it wasn’t much: a long scratch on the back of my leg.
The crowd gasped when they saw my ten-foot hop, but I was too busy chewing myself out for being such an idiot to pay much attention.
It was obvious pretty quick that Shir-Lat wasn’t following the script. He attacked like he was on PCP, screaming insults and trying every trick he knew to kill me and kill me quick. “Go on, slut. Let me slip it in you.”
“Fuck off, Shir. You’re blowing the gig.”
“They want blood, don’t they?”
I tried to play it the way Zhen wanted me to, putting on a good show, leaping and diving, and making wild attacks and last minute blocks, but every time we clinched, Shir tried to run me through with his dagger and I had to parry and dodge like crazy.
The hardest part was not killing him. He was taking insane risks trying to reach me, leaving openings a blind man could have got in on. I had to pull attacks left and right or I would have cut him in half. Then he laid the knuckles of my off hand open to the bone and I decided it was time to slow him down.
It’s tough doing things by halves when you’re swinging a blade that could decapitate an elephant, but Zhen’s training paid off. I took Shir apart like a boxer: piece by piece.
On our next pass he lunged. I blocked his blade and slid mine along his chest, slicing though his armor like it was a birthday cake and cutting a thin line in his pecs. He didn’t take the hint. He came in again, swinging high. I ducked and surged up under him, planting my shoulder in his gut, then shot-putted him with my bloody left hand.
He landed like a bag of bones twenty feet away, but was up and charging again before the crowd’s cheers died away. He was like that knight in the Monty Python movie, the one that wouldn’t stop fighting even with all his arms and legs cut off. He wasn’t going to submit. If I put my sword to his throat he’d walk into the point rather than say “uncle” to a girl. I had to figure out a way to take him out without killing him, and still make it look good.
First I stabbed him though the leg, hoping he’d stay down. Didn’t work. He pulled himself up with his sword, tears in his eyes, and he limped toward me again.
The crowd had mostly been on my side at first. Shir was old and boring, a mid-card palooka they’d seen a hundred times. I was new and different. They liked seeing me jump around. But the longer the fight went on, the more I looked like a cat playing with a mouse, and the more they started to side with Shir. They were cheering him now, but he couldn’t hear it. All he could think of was the shame of losing to me.
On his next attack he practically fell on my sword, flailing like a drunk swinging a beer bottle, as his wounded leg gave out. If I didn’t end it now one of us was going to die. I swung a brutal cut at his head—brain surgery if I connected with the edge—but at the last second I turned it and caught him with the flat. He dropped like an ox taking a sledgehammer between the horns.
The crowd was silent until Shir-Lat moved a little and I bowed to him the way Zhen had taught me. Then they cheered, and kept cheering. They cheered Shir for his bravery, for never backing down even though he was totally overmatched, and me for my sportsmanlike conduct and for respecting his courage.
I ate it up. I felt like Rocky at the end of a movie. I raised my arms and got more cheers. I got so carried away with my own chivalry I did the stupidest thing I could have possibly done. I decided to carry my fallen comrade out of the arena.
I didn’t realize how stupid this was until I heard laughing. The crowd were pointing and giggling. Even then I couldn’t figure it out. Then it hit me. It was one thing for Shir to be beaten by a woman, the crowd had accepted that because it was pretty obvious I wasn’t just a woman—I was a woman who could lift a wagon. Some of them probably half-believed I was a demon for real. It was another thing for him to be carried like a baby in his mother’s arms. I’d already knocked a hole in his manhood, but this—I might as well have put diapers on him and stuck a bottle in his mouth.
There was nothing I could do. It was too late. Even if I put him down the damage was done. Halfway through the walk back, Shir came to enough to figure out what was happening. He looked at me and my heart sank into my socks. “Bitch.”
The locker room felt the same way. The guys took Shir-Lat from me like I had the plague. He might have been an equal opportunity asshole, but even his worst enemies didn’t look happy with me. I could see their wheels turning, all thinking that next time I’d do the same thing to them.
Zhen shook his head at me with a “boy-did-you-fuck-up” look on his face. I looked at Lhan for support. He shrugged. He didn’t know how to fix it either.
CHAPTER TWENTY
JUMPED!
That night all us winners got a special dinner, with Texas-size slabs of meat, rich side dishes, wine and tasty treats, and then for our bonus, our “reward,” we each got to pick a whore and take her to a private room in the trainer’s house. Well, all of us except me.
I got the dinner all right, though I didn’t enjoy it much. The rest of the table kept giving me the fish eye all the way through, all except for Lhan, but somehow we found it hard to make conversation. But after dessert, when all the rest of the winners went off with their chosen hos, I wasn’t given the option. I didn’t speak up either. Somehow this didn’t feel like the time to find out how easygoing this society was about “alternative lifestyles.”
What I hoped would happen was that Lhan would think of it and ask me, but he didn’t even pick a whore. Maybe he was used to a better class of pro back in high society Ormolu. I didn’t get to ask him. When lights-out came, me, Lhan and the losers were all locked back in our separate bunkhouses just like every other night.
It was pretty empty in the Ho House. Most of the girls were working. Three girls who hadn’t been picked were chatting in their cots. Yaj, who was still a little black and blue from Hesh’s love taps, had the night off too. She stared at me like she always did.
Not exactly congenial company. I wasn’t in the mood to make new friends anyway. I was feeling miserable and wiped out from too much fighting and food and the tension of fucking up, so I just turned over and went to sleep.
***
I jerked awake with somebody’s hand on my cheek.
“Who...?”
Yaj was sitting on the edge of my cot, petting my face like a cat does in the morning when it wants you to wake up. It was after lights-out. The other whores were asleep.
I knocked her hand away, nervous. I remembered her hair-stay shiv in my back.
“Whaddaya want?”
She stood up, never taking her eyes off me, and shrugged out of her shift, revealing her tiny, bruised body. “Reward.”
Man, I almost cried. It was the first word I’d ever heard her say, to anybody. I didn’t know what to say. “I thought... I thought...”
She sat down again and put her hand on my lips, then reached her scrawny arms around the barrel of my ribs and hugged me tight, burying her head between my breasts.
Now I did cry. I got tears all over her hair. I wrapp
ed my arms around her and crushed her to me, but not too hard. I had to be delicate with Waarians, especially little ones like this.
After a bit she craned her head like a cat stretching, her lips seeking mine. I pulled her up, feeling her wiry curves slide across my body, a heat starting to build up between my legs, and—
A noise. The door. We both froze, like teenagers caught necking in the den. I looked around. A pale slant of moonlight picked out a piece of floor, the corner of a cot. Dim silhouettes crowded quietly through the door. Men with clubs and sharpened stakes. No question who they were here for. They were squinting around, trying to get their eyes used to the dark. I only had a second.
I lifted Yaj to the floor. “Hide in a corner.”
They heard me and turned. I shoved Yaj away.
They came at me like dogs after a bear, swarming around the cots and knocking them aside, swinging their makeshift weapons. Were they nuts? Didn’t they know what I could do by now? Then I saw a pattern twisting at me in the darkness. A net! The one weapon Zhen didn’t lock up at the end of practice.
It dropped over me like a heavy coat. I fell back, half on, half off my cot, as six guys held down the edges of it with all their weight. I thrashed. I just got tangled. I couldn’t get enough leverage to throw them off.
A seventh one jumped on my chest. It was Shir. He hissed in my face, raising a brass serving spoon that had been honed into a razor sharp spade. “Demon bitch! You will shame no more men in the arena!”
As he slashed down, something blurred behind him and suddenly he was screaming and trying to pull something off his neck.
Yaj! She stabbed at Shir’s head and shoulders with her hair-stay. Before he could get her off, the other three whores were tearing at his guys, breaking their concentration and their grip on the net.
It was all I needed. I got an arm free, caught a guy by the belt and slammed him into two other guys. They fell, turning a cot into kindling. I sat up, but not fast enough. Shir stabbed back over his shoulder with his spoon blade and Yaj fell back, shrieking.