Jane Carver of Waar

by Nathan Long

  The crowd gasped. Hell, I gasped. This was not good!

  Everybody roared to their feet. The brothers screamed for the guards. Swashbuckler swung a brutal swipe at Lhan and cracked him on the head so hard his helmet spun off.

  Lhan dropped. Swashbuckler turned on me. I backed up, totally panicked.

  I screamed. “Lhan! You okay?” No answer.

  What now? Fuck! A gladiator who killed a spectator, especially a guy rich enough to get a private box, was killed on the spot—no explanations, no trial. We had to get out of here, but how? Through the stands? Not a chance. The crowd had turned into a wolf pack, howling for our blood. Through the tunnels? Nope. The big iron gate that locked us into the arena was down.

  No wait, it was going up. A squad of guards was forming up behind it, ready to march out and kill us. If I timed it right I just might be able to...

  But what about Sai?! If I left him now, how would I find him again?

  That cleared my head. I leaped over Swashbuckler’s lunge and kicked straight for Prune-Face’s box. I pulled myself up a few yards of stone work one handed, hopped the rail and landed beside Sai, sword at the ready. Prune-Face’s bodyguards stepped forward, drawing.

  “Sai! quick. My hand!”

  But Sai was moving in slow motion, still staring at Prune-Face, whose life was running in red rivulets down the shaft of the super-spear.

  The bruisers swung at me. They must not have been watching the show. I knocked their swords away with one swipe and opened them both up with the back hand.

  The crowd was tearing at the thin walls of the box. Hands ripped through like something out of a Living Dead movie. I scooped up Sai and jumped back down into the arena.

  Swashbuckler was waiting for me, sword up, but before I could even begin to parry, two feet of steel exploded from his chest. He crumpled.

  Lhan stood behind him, swaying. The back of his head was a red mess of sticky hair.

  I landed. “Lhan! Thank god! I thought he’d got you.”

  Lhan only had eyes for Sai. “Sai! Are you unhurt? Has he befouled you?”

  Sai’s head lolled.

  “I think he’s drugged. Come on.” I sheathed my sword. I was going to need both hands.

  The iron gate was just cranking all the way open as we turned. The guards poured out.

  I took Lhan by the wrist and ran right at them. They raised their spears to throw. Just as they did, I grabbed Lhan by the belt, cinched Sai tighter under my arm and leaped, carrying both of them over the guards’ spears. A guard looked up, amazed. I kicked off his face, and sprang through the gate into the darkness inside.

  There were more guards in the staging area, but they dove clear as we landed. I dropped Lhan and Sai and drew again. Lhan went on guard too, only weaving a little. The guards recovered and turned on us. The guards in the arena were tripping all over themselves trying to do an about-face.

  I looked at Lhan. “You good to fight?”

  “Good is not the first word that springs to mind.”

  If he could put together a sentence like that I wasn’t too worried. “Watch Sai then.”

  I hopped to the cable that raised and lowered the gate, and chopped through it with one blow. The gate dropped with a crash that shook mortar out of the ceiling.

  The guards in the arena screeched to a stop.

  Lhan was fending off five guards. I jumped back to his side and brushed them back with a spinning slash. A captain shouted into the gladiator locker room. “Help us, you scum!”

  But as I scooped up Sai and we started backing down the ramp into the innards of the arena, I heard Zhen. “My apologies, captain. But I can’t risk my employers’ property without their permission.”

  The captain cursed him. I looked back, amazed. I swear Zhen winked at me.

  ***

  We ran through the catacombs like blind rats, me with Sai over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes, Lhan leaking blood like a sieve until he tied a piece of his loincloth around his head like a bandana. It made him look like an eighties action hero, but it stopped the bleeding.

  I knew the way back to the school, but that was no good. We had to find a way to the street.

  Guards poured down every stairway, and we had to double back from them and from dead ends half a dozen times.

  We ran past the animal pens, a long comet-tail of guards right behind us. The animals got pretty stirred up, snorting and hollering when we crashed by, and so did the keepers. They jumped in front of us with whips and clubs, but we fanned ’em back with our swords. Then I got an idea.

  “Lhan, the cages!”

  We leaped to the cage doors, ripped the locking pins out, hauled them open and ran. The keepers screamed, terrified, and tried to close them back up, but the animals bulled their way out—the huge vurlaks, the saber-toothed shikes, the slinky, black ki-tens. Behind us, the guards ran into a seething mosh of teeth and claws. We couldn’t outrun the sound. Horrible.

  Unfortunately, there were more guards where those came from. As we started up a spiral staircase, a squad spotted us and surged after us, their spear points poking at our heels.

  I popped out onto the next floor, banging Sai’s head on the doorframe. He moaned. “Sorry, Sai.”

  Lhan was panting beside me. I wasn’t exactly fresh myself. Sai felt like he weighted a fucking ton. There were barrels stacked by the wall. I tipped one on its side and rolled it into the stairwell just as the first guard reached the top. He went down twice as fast as he’d come up, and took his buddies with him. It sounded like a whole kitchen full of Revere Ware bouncing down a hillside.

  Finally, at the end of a long hall, we saw a big loading area, with crates, barrels, cages, props and pieces of scenery, including what looked like a fully functioning warship, oars and all, stacked up along both walls, and at the far end, a huge doorway, big enough to drive a double-decker bus through, with beautiful, dazzling sunshine pouring through.

  Unfortunately, another squad of guards was waiting between us and the door, and these guys had bows.

  They let go a volley as we ran in. We hit the brakes and scrambled back into the narrow hallway. I felt a couple arrows glance off sleeve plates and then a weird tug in my side.

  We ducked around a corner where they couldn’t hit us and I looked at myself. There was a bloody trench along my ribs. An arrow had slit me open like an envelope as it passed. It wasn’t deep, but it burned like a hot tailpipe and bled like a faucet. Lhan leaned against the wall beside me.

  We were pinned down, and I mean pinned. They couldn’t get us, but we couldn’t get out. I looked at Lhan. He was bent over, pulling an arrow out of the bottom of his boot.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You alright?”

  He put his foot down gingerly and nodded. “An inconvenience only. But what of you?”

  I set Sai down and ripped strips off his toga. “Gotta bind this up and I’m good.”

  Lhan limped forward to help. His right boot left bloody footprints.

  I pointed. “You got a funny definition of inconvenient.”

  He shrugged and wrapped the strips around my ribs. “We have more pressing concerns at the moment.”

  The rags were soaked in blood instantly, but they slowed the flow. I gritted my teeth as he pulled them tight. “Yeah, we’re going to have reinforcements crawling up our ass any second now. Any ideas?”

  Lhan scanned the hallway, then pointed to a row of giant decorative ceramic vases, each as big as a phone-booth and almost entirely filling the side passage they were stored in. “Mistress, what are the limits of your strength?”

  Moving cover. Great Idea. “Well, let’s find out.”

  It took a second to worm my way behind the first vase, and my new wound complained as I twisted and stretched, but once I got in position, the thing wasn’t much harder to push than a refrigerator. The smooth stone floor helped. I almost started shoving it toward the big room when I got an idea.

  I picked up Sai, groaning. Every move felt like s
omebody putting the arrow back in the wound and twisting it around. I hoisted him to my shoulders anyway. There was just enough room between the top of the vase and hallway ceiling to lower Sai inside. Now we wouldn’t have to come back for him.

  Lhan and I pushed the big vase toward the loading area. The two of us together really got it moving. I could hear arrows chinking off its far side through my hands as we raced closer.

  We exploded into the room behind the big vase and shoved it at the guards as hard as we could.

  They scattered. Before they could reorganize I jumped up over the vase and dropped down into the middle of them, swinging my sword in a circle like a giant lawnmower blade. This was turning into my favorite tactic. Lhan stayed behind the vase and ran through anybody who came around it. We cut ’em down like weeds.

  At least at first.

  After a second, the survivors fell back, their captain screaming orders. He got his bowmen behind his spearmen. That was bad. Running straight at them wouldn’t work. Their spears would hold me off long enough for the archers to pin-cushion me. I turned to Lhan. “Stay behind the vase.”

  He nodded, tired. He looked like staying behind the vase was all he could handle right then. I felt about the same. The pain in my side had stopped jarring me every time I moved, and had settled down to a continuous dull toothache agony. I wanted to lie down.

  Instead, I leaped up onto the pile of junk against the left wall. I heard a sound like twenty guys all swinging Wiffle ball bats at the same time and rolled behind a giant papier-mâché prop head just ahead of a barrage of arrows. Shafts stuck out of the the head’s face like whiskers.

  I looked around. There was a stack of crates beside me, each about the size of your average TV. I hefted one. Heavy, but manageable. I heaved it blind over the giant head in the general direction of the archers.

  Crashes. Screams. Bingo! I sent another one flying. More screams. I heard the captain shouting orders, and then the clink and clunk of guys in boots and armor climbing the pile of junk.

  I tried to kick the giant head down on top of them. Too heavy. It must have been weighted inside. I pressed my back against the crates behind me and put both feet on the back of the head like I was on a leg press machine. I pushed. It didn’t give. Then, with a crack, it did. I landed on my butt, but the head toppled, and started an avalanche of junk that knocked the guards to the floor. A barrel exploded beside them, gushing out some kind of liquid. Lamp oil from the smell of it. The guards couldn’t stand up in it. Most of them were too hurt to try, anyway.

  Lhan charged out from behind the vase and started poking the guys I’d missed with my aerial assault, his sword flashing every which way. He kept his feet out of the lamp oil by using the bodies of the downed guards like stepping stones in a river.

  The captain was rallying the last survivors and I heard shouts echoing from the corridor. Reinforcements. Time to go.

  I jumped to the lip of the huge vase, then dropped down inside where Sai was curled up like a baby. Little punk had slept through the whole fight. I threw him over my shoulder again, and kicked my way out of the vase. It shattered into a hundred pieces.

  Lhan and I ran for daylight, hop-scotching over the downed guards, just as the reinforcements ran into the room. We could hear them skidding and crashing in the lake of oil behind us.

  The door led out to an enclosed yard: stables, a blacksmith’s forge, feed bins, and a gate that opened onto a busy street. We sprinted past a clump of cowering slaves and through the gate with the shouts of the guards following us.

  The street was a mess of wagons and porters and slaves all trying to get through the same narrow roadway at the same time, and everybody screaming and waving their arms and cracking whips. Perfect. We dove into the crowd, me playing linebacker to Lhan’s fullback, clearing a path through the surging, shouting chaos.

  The guards were close behind, but losing ground, busting heads and shoving, and getting shoved back for their pains.

  We made a corner and got out of line of sight. The street ahead was as crowded as it was behind us. Time to change directions. Up seemed like a good choice.

  We were in front of a two-story building with a flat roof. I put Sai down and laced my hands together, holding them low. “Lhan, run and jump.”

  “But... but ’tis two stories high!”

  “You better hope I don’t toss you three.”

  He laughed, nervous, but ran and planted his foot in my hands. I heaved. He flew, arms flailing, and disappeared over the lip of the roof. There was a thump and a scream.

  “Shit.”

  I got Sai on my shoulder again, leaped up, kicked off a nearby wagon, and sailed up to a balcony, then up a clay drain pipe to the rooftop. Lhan was tangled in some lady’s laundry line and she was giving him what for. She started screaming all over again when she saw me.

  I heard shouts from the street. I looked down. People were pointing up, showing the guards where we went. They charged into the building. “They’re coming up. Come on.”

  Lhan pulled free of the clothesline and we did the hand-boost trick to a higher roof, then building-hopped our way to freedom. Though maybe freedom isn’t quite the right word for it when you’re running and wounded in a hostile city you don’t know your way around in, being hunted for multiple murders with no idea how to get home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  RESCUE!

  We finally found a place to hole up a few miles from the arena. It was a half caved-in three-story building. The stairs to the second floor had collapsed, so no one was going to walk up there and find us by accident.

  I laid Sai down. Between me slinging him around like a backpack for the past hour and whatever dope he had in his system, he was as droopy as a rag doll. I made sure he had a pulse, then turned to Lhan. “Lemme look at those wounds...”

  I had to stop there. My vision was going black around the edges. I sat down, dizzy. I hadn’t realized how wiped out I was. A six-on-two fight in the arena, a running battle, bloodloss, pain, and a flat-out sprint across the city by rooftop—I was running on fumes.

  Lhan was no better. He couldn’t even get out his usual noble martyr bullshit. “Look to yourself, mistress. I... am...” He slid down the wall.

  I crawled over to him, pulled off his boot and undid the bandage on his head. He was too pooped to protest.

  His head was a mess. The helmet had saved his life, but not by much. There was a ragged gash slanting across the back of his skull where Swashbuckler’s blade had chopped through the bronze skull-bucket. It was crusted with blood and hair. He winced when I touched it. “My apologies, mistress.”

  “Hey, you patch me up. I patch you up.”

  “And I thank you for it, but I was apologizing for my precipitous actions, which began this desperate journey.”

  “Hey, we escaped, right? Now shut up and let me work.”

  The room we were in was half open to the sky. By the far wall were a few cracked clay bowls in a pile of assorted garbage. I crossed to them. Good thing we were in Doshaan where it rained all the time: the bowls had water in them. Most of them had other stuff too; rotten beans, soup bones, some black gunk I didn’t want to stir up, but one was clear all the way to the bottom.

  I carried it back to Lhan, then ripped more strips off Sai’s fancy toga. His clothes were the cleanest, and besides, I was always looking for an excuse to get that boy naked. I soaked the strips and cleaned and bound Lhan’s head wound, then had a look at the arrow wound in his foot. For once Lhan hadn’t been downplaying things. It really was nothing—a shallow but bloody puncture.

  I patched that up too, then both of us sat back and just breathed for a while.

  After about twenty minutes, Lhan raised his head. “We need food and drink. I must go out.”

  I scowled. “You? You’re the worst off of all of us. You’re lucky your head’s still on your shoulders.”

  “And yet it must be me, mistress. Sai is in no condition to move, and you... would be spot
ted in an instant.”

  I didn’t like it, but he was right. “Don’t you get tired of being right all the time?”

  He smirked. “’Tis occasionally wearisome.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Wait a minute. You got any cash? How are you gonna buy anything?”

  Lhan frowned. “Hmmm, a point, yes. We could sell our weapons and armor, but...”

  “Not on your life, pal.”

  “No. In our present situation that would not be wise.”

  I glanced at Sai. Prune-Face had loaded him down with a jewelry store’s worth of gold. He was swimming in rings, necklaces, bracelets, and ankle chains.

  “Hey, problem solved. We could buy the whole supermarket with this stuff.”

  Lhan had a look. “Yes. Unfortunately, just one of these baubles could indeed buy a market. Any attempt to buy a meat bun or a jug of wine, even with the smallest of Sai’s rings, would be met with suspicion and most likely arrest.”

  “Then what the hell are we gonna do?”

  Lhan grinned. He looked like the devil from a fifties hot-rod magazine. “I think ’tis time to leave honest commerce behind and turn to more underhanded methods.”

  “Uh, you mean steal something?”

  “Precisely.”

  ***

  It took a quarter-hour of roof hopping for me to find and liberate a long enough length of laundry line, but then we were in business.

  Lhan and I worked out a little whistle code, then I roped him down to street level and off he went—the man, bringing home the bacon, while I stayed home and took care of baby Sai. How domestic.

  Sai was still far out of it, so I had some time alone to think, but it took a little while for my brain to quiet down. The whole damn day had been fight, jump, run, hide, steal, kill. When I finally throttled down I spun back to what had started today’s craziness—Lhan screaming ‘beloved,’ and putting a spear through Sai’s pervy master.