Belaaz looked at Errol with hunger raging in his eyes. The ilhotep’s councilor unfolded as he rose from his couch. Tall, nearly as tall as the dark-skinned guards, he approached Errol where the guard held him upright. “Such a waste, O light of the world. Would it not be better to offer the omne a place among us and so serve you?”
The ilhotep’s eyes drooped ever farther. “Do I have need of other servants, Belaaz?”
The councilor’s face filled Errol’s vision. Belaaz’s eyes dilated, his lids drawing back to show the whites all around as he came within arm’s length. “Surrender to us, omne. Is it not better to live as one of us than to die in the arena, even as Weir died here?”
Underneath the drug’s influence, Errol’s mind screamed in revulsion. Behind the raw appetite of the councilor’s gaze lay a stark, raving terror no amount of compulsion or possession could completely disguise. Somewhere beneath the malus’s dominion, the person that had been Belaaz still lived, screaming in silent horror and trying to break free.
Despite the heavy calm induced by the drug, Errol edged back, repulsed. “I think I prefer the arena.”
Belaaz’s snarl, joined by Valon’s, ripped the air. Relief flooded through Errol so that he almost fell. Only the guard’s strength kept him on his feet. The black-skinned guard murmured something in a tongue Errol did not recognize, but the tone, deep as the ocean, sounded like approval.
“If you will not surrender, then you will die, Errol Stone—like your friends, like your women, like your kingdom.”
The palace guards, their skin dark as night, marched Errol and the rest of his company single file out of the ilhotep’s throne room. In the broad expanse of the palace hallway, Cruk walked with his guard behind Errol and snorted. “You might have pretended to join them, boy, and then worked out a plan to escape.”
Errol almost laughed. “There’s no escape for me. Not that it matters. I don’t know who Belaaz and Valon used to be, but the things speaking through them aren’t men. I’d rather die in the Merakhi arena than live imprisoned in my own mind.”
Beside him, his guard gave a curt nod of approval, his shaved head reflecting the light darkly. “Well spoken, northlander. Perhaps you will die well.”
In the air outside of the palace, Errol’s head cleared of the drug, but the Judica’s compulsion nagged at him, growing with each step away from Valon. They passed beneath the needlelike shadows of the spires as they trudged back to the arena. The guards led them through one of the arches, and they emerged into an enormous bowl lined with rows of stone blocks for seating. No noise greeted them. The stadium lay empty. Only a few servants in ragged clothing circulated, their movements slow and dispirited as they cleaned.
They descended the steps and entered the chambers beneath the stands. The air cooled as they turned down another flight of stairs and moved into a set of large rooms. The guards split and herded Luis, Martin, and Karele away from the rest of them.
Errol, along with the remainder of his company, doubled back and followed the guards down a long hallway to a cavernous room beneath the amphitheater of the arena. Men of every possible description trained under the watchful eyes of palace guards. Sweating Merakhi grunted their way through various exercises. Armed guards stood everywhere. No prisoner came within five paces of them. Among the slaves were men who could have been twin to the black-skinned guard watching over him.
Errol pointed at them. “Why are your countrymen here if you serve the ilhotep?”
“You are curious for a slave, infidel.”
Errol shrugged. “I’m dead, anyway. Why not ask?”
The huge guard nodded. “Again, well-spoken. This hall houses the ilhotep’s jabari, his stable of arena fighters.” He pointed to the dark-skinned men who stood in a group, staring back with hatred in their eyes. “Those are the captives of my country’s army—Ongolese who refused surrender and have been taken prisoner.”
“And what of you?”
The guard’s broad face grew distant. “I was born into the ilhotep’s service along with the rest of the Ongolese guards you see. Our forefathers were captives from previous battles throughout history. We are his most trusted bodyguards precisely because we are not his countrymen.”
His brows drew together beneath the naked dome of his head. “I owe the ilhotep my life. The protection of his well-being from any threat is my sole concern.”
The guard’s voice hinted, but did not reveal.
“Any threat?”
The barest nod was the only reply.
Through a pointed archway at one end of the room, men ate from piles of food stacked before them. On the opposite side, through a similar doorway, men slept on comfortable-looking bunks.
The guard must have sensed his surprise. “Those who fight in the arena are well cared for, infidel. The ilhotep desires to provide suitable entertainment for his people.”
Errol’s head cleared enough for him to be curious. “Who will we be fighting?”
The guard shrugged; a mountain shifting. “You will battle the jabari of the ilhotep’s councilors. Their stables are much as this—enemies of the river kingdom, criminals, or those who have displeased the ilhotep or council members.”
Errol met the guard’s gaze, surprised to see the man’s eyes were an olive green instead of brown. He sensed a question lay somewhere within their depths but had no idea what the guard might want of him.
The guard smiled, showing white teeth against the deep charcoal of his skin. “Rest now, infidel. They will send you to the arena tomorrow.”
“What’s your name?” Errol asked.
“You may call me Hadari, infidel, for as long as you may live.” Almost, he smiled.
“And how long will you be my guard?”
Now the smile came. “Who can say?”
Errol drew away from the hulking guards who lined the walls and drifted over to a block ledge along the wall where Rale, Cruk, Merodach, and Naaman Ru had gathered. Several paces separated them from the other slaves in the hall; they wouldn’t be heard.
Ru looked about with disgust. “This is what comes of getting involved with the church, boy. You’re a thousand miles from home, doomed to die so that you can give these howling barbarians a few moments’ pleasure.”
The caravan master’s caustic, demeaning tone grated on him. “And what makes you think I’ll die, Naaman Ru?”
Ru shook his head as he laughed. “You’re still too easy to provoke, boy. Learn to control your emotions if you want to survive. You spurned the ilhotep’s chief councilor. Do you think he’ll let you live? If you beat one man, they’ll send two, then three. You’re good, boy, good enough to beat my best student, but how many men can you defeat at once?”
Errol shrugged, lifting his hands. “It doesn’t matter whether I die here or back in the kingdom.”
Ru’s eyes widened. He turned to Rale. “What have you people done to him?”
Rale closed his eyes, sighed. “Earl Stone received some distressing news before we landed in Merakh. He’s still wrestling with it.”
“Well, wrestle faster, boy. I’ve got no intention of dying here. We need a way to escape.”
Errol turned his back. “When you figure one out, let me know.” He moved to the sleeping room. The aftereffects of the drug and the turmoil of the throne room had left him fatigued, and Ru’s need tired him all the more. They all expected him to save them. What did it matter if he died in the process? Enough was enough. If Deas or the Judica required his death to save the kingdom, they would surely have it, but Errol Stone would no longer be a willing participant.
The other slaves in the sleeping room noted his presence, but he ignored them. He sought out an empty bunk as far from the noise as possible, covered his eyes with his arm, and slept.
In his dry, dusty dreams Adora appeared again and again, her face marked by the freckles she’d garnered in the southern sun. Her dream image issued the same command over and over—“Live.”
He woke to Hadari
’s hand on his shoulder.
“But I’m so tired,” Errol said to the fading traces of his dream.
His guard laughed. “You have yet to fight, infidel. How can you be tired?”
Errol shook his head to clear the sleep and dream from it. “Am I to fight already?”
“Already?” Hadari laughed. “You have slept for a day.” He signaled another guard standing next to him, and the man moved forward with a plate of food. “You show courage, infidel. I would not have you defeated by hunger.”
Errol took that plate and ate without question. The meat tasted unusual.
“Goat,” Hadari said in response to Errol’s questioning look. “The rest is rice and dates.”
Errol wedged the mouthful aside with his tongue to ask a question. “How long before I fight?”
“A few minutes,” Hadari said. “Perhaps a bit longer.”
He set the food aside. A heavy meal would slow him down. Perhaps he would be able to eat afterward. If he lived.
“You are wise, infidel. Many of the men who come here think only of their belly and pay the price for their lack of discipline.”
The guard’s compliments might have warmed him once. Now they were just words. “Everyone must die sometime, especially me, but today I will try to live.”
Hadari considered him, his smile in place, his eyes intent with unspoken plans, but the guard let slip nothing that might give Errol insight to his thoughts. “Come, infidel. Let us see how you fare before your Deas.”
“I have no Deas, Hadari.”
Sorrow showed on Hadari’s face, etched in the lines of his charcoal-colored skin. With a gesture he invited Errol to precede him, and they moved out of the slave quarters toward the entrance of the arena. The temperature rose as they ascended the bowels of stone, and the smell of people, a lot of people, drifted to him.
Then he heard the noise of a multitude, like the distant roar of the sea. They turned into a hallway with the light of the sun showing at the far end, and the sound and smell redoubled.
Errol’s hand strayed to his hip out of reflex before he realized he had no weapon. “Do I fight with my bare hands, Hadari?”
The guard laughed. “By no means, infidel. You may arm yourself in any way you desire, save the bow. Your weapons are waiting for you up ahead.”
When they entered the light, the noise swelled into a crescendo and broke upon his hearing like a physical thing. He squinted against the glare across a circle of hard-packed earth a hundred paces across. Across that expanse stood a shirtless man armed with a sword, his muscles oiled and rippling in the sun. He waved to the crowd, pointing in Errol’s direction and laughing. The crowd above him joined in the taunting, but since most of those taunts were in a language unfamiliar to him, he paid it no mind.
Weapons were racked to the side. He searched for his staff, found it propped like an afterthought at one end. His hands caressed the smoothed wood, then caught sight of the polished wooden case Count Rula had given him. Errol rubbed his side as he turned to Hadari. “How good is he?”
The guard shrugged his massive shoulders. “He has fought before. There can be only one survivor in the arena, infidel. For you to win, he must die.”
Errol nodded. “I thought as much.” He didn’t fully understand the reckless impulse that led him to open the polished case and extract the two swords Rula had given him. Deep inside, he knew his choice was foolishness, but the rebellious indifference that had covered him since Martin’s revelation still held him.
He stepped away with Dextra and Sinistra in his hands, reminding himself not to strike for the legs.
His opponent waited for him at the center of the arena, turning circles, arms raised for the crowd. Errol approached, and the man, tall and dark-skinned, sneered at him. “Northern cur, do you think two swords will help you against me? I will give your flesh to the crows.”
Errol checked his footing. The dusty ground would demand balance. The Merakhi’s threats meant nothing to him. “When do we start?”
The man snarled, pointing his sword. “When the trumpet sounds, I will spill your blood into the sand.”
A voice, loud and brazen, shouted from one end of the stand, speaking in Merakhi to the enthusiastic roars of the crowd. He went on for some few minutes, his speech punctuated by boos, laughter, and hissing. With a final flourish, he fell silent.
The horn sounded.
40
A STAFF OF METAL
THE MAN LAUGHED as he charged, his sword falling in a fierce overhand chop. Errol slipped the blow off his front sword and riposted, spinning. His combatant leapt back, but not before Errol’s strike furrowed a deep cut in the man’s chest. Blood welled in the cut.
“Cur! I will leave you in pieces for the birds.” The Merakhi charged again, his sword coming from the side this time.
The man had to be the worst opponent Errol had ever faced. He wouldn’t have been worthy to be Ru’s fifteenth. Even Weir would have carved him up with little trouble. Errol grimaced as he parried. It somehow seemed unfair to kill the man . . . but only one could leave the arena—so he thrust with the same sword, his body gliding forward into a lunge that slipped his sword through the Merakhi’s ribs and into his heart.
The man fell backward off the sword, dead before he hit the ground. Noise intruded its way back into Errol’s awareness, the crowd hissing and booing again. He looked around, but no sign of what to do next seemed to be forthcoming. Was he supposed to wait?
The brazen-throated man remained in his perch in the stands above the arena.
At the entrance where he’d selected his weapons, a trio of guards waited. Hadari beckoned to him, then held up a hand palm out that stopped Errol while he was still twenty paces away. The other two guards held bows with arrows trained on his heart.
“Leave your weapons where you stand, infidel.” Hadari smiled. “They will be cleaned and cared for until your next fight.”
Errol dropped the swords. Dust clung to the wetness on the blades. He followed Hadari out of the light into the comparative darkness of the tunnel back toward the slave quarters.
“They did not tell me you were a warrior,” Hadari said.
“It’s not by my choice.”
Hadari’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Do you have a tale, northlander?”
Errol shook his head. “There is a tale, but there is no point to my story.”
“The people of the verdant say all tales hold import.”
They turned the corner, and the sounds and smells of the arena diminished. A question nagged at Errol, growing with each step until it forced its way into the air. “Who did I just kill?”
“Does it matter, infidel? Someone must die.”
Errol laughed at Hadari’s choice of words, his detachment threatening to break. The sound echoed against the block stone walls, bitter, harsh. “So I’ve heard, but it matters to me.”
“He was a murderer, northlander, whose name is not important.”
They entered the slave quarters where Ru, Cruk, Rale, and Merodach waited, pacing or sitting as their dispositions dictated.
Rale put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you alive, lad. You’ve barely left and you’re back. Did you not fight?”
Errol exhaled, weary with the conversation already. “It wasn’t much of a fight. If that is the best of what this kingdom offers, it’s no wonder they need the malus to fight their battles.” He snorted in disgust at the memory. “Some people shouldn’t pick up a sword.”
Surprise showed in the jerk of their postures, but he couldn’t place the cause. A discomfited silence filled the space around them, and a sudden desire to be elsewhere, to be away from them, overtook Errol. He stepped from beneath Rale’s hand and moved back. “I need to eat. And sleep.”
He woke in the middle of the night to the catarrhal sounds of soft and not-so-soft snoring around him. Torchlight cast creeping shadows along the walls. At the entrance the guards stood vigil, their skin blending with the
night so that they appeared to be shadows in linen and armor. The occasional glint of fire reflected from steel moved across his vision. How long had he slept? Errol sat up, a longing for the woods around the Sprata stabbing through him.
A vision of the falls in spring, heavy and chill with winter melt, coursed through him. But his memories of Callowford led step by inexorable step back to Antil. His father. Errol looked at his hands. He’d killed a man today. And hardly cared. Was that Antil’s legacy to him? Perhaps the time would come when he would seek others’ pain, revel in it.
He thrust that thought away, chose to think on Adora, but he found no comfort there either. The princess slept in the ilhotep’s slave quarters, taken to please him. Errol’s imagination conjured images that disturbed him. The tenor of his heartbeat increased until it pounded against his ribs.
Pushing himself away from his thoughts and his bunk, he walked toward the entrance. The guards, unfamiliar to him, paid him no mind until he came within five paces. Then they snapped weapons to the ready, and Errol found himself staring down several feet of naked steel.
“Where’s Hadari?”
The guards exchanged an inscrutable look. “What do you wish of the kayeed?”
Kayeed? Was Hadari the leader of the palace guards? Errol lifted a hand. He wasn’t really sure how to answer the question. “I wanted to talk to someone who doesn’t know me.”
One of the guards slipped away, and another took his place. Errol almost laughed. Where could he possibly run? He probably couldn’t find his way out of the maze of the arena. A few moments later, the guard returned with Hadari at his side.
The big man looked sleepy, but his tone was warm as he greeted Errol. “Do you always arise so early, infidel?”
Errol gestured at the blank, featureless walls. “There are only slits and it’s dark; I have no way of knowing the time.”
“Two hours before sunrise,” Hadari said. “Come, I will check the other guards. If you still feel the need to converse, infidel, we can do it as we walk.”
Hero's Lot, The (The Staff and the Sword Book #2) Page 39