Thump, and the second body came.
“Have you had enough? Have you basked in the glory of the Arena to your fill? Or do. You. Want. MORE?”
The roar of approval drowned out the sound of the third and fourth bodies hitting the dirt, but they rolled into view just the same. Beside him. Raz felt Rhen tense, watching the dead pile at their feet.
“We thought not! We have prepared for you the most savage battle any man has ever witnessed within these great walls! We have designed a crucible, a match of such proportions, none has ever seen the like!”
Thump, thump. Two more came tumbling down the hill. The Doctore was positively shaking now as Raz continued to listen.
“You know what is to come, my lords and ladies! You can feel it in your bones, can taste it in the air! You have need of a champion to lead you in this fight, to hold your colors in the battle that is to come. Call on him, citizens of Azbar. LET US HEAR HIS NAME!”
As the seventh body made trails in the dust on the way down the ramp, the chant began. At first it was muddled, offbeat and unsure. Quickly, though, it built, gaining rhythm and tone and volume with every second. Before long it seemed the word would shake loose the stones of the Arena itself.
“MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER!”
Raz looked to the looming shape of light that was the open gate to the pit above them. Then he looked down at the pile of corpses at his feet.
A melee. He had heard it, had made out that word. An all-out, no-holds-barred melee. Eight went in, and only one was left standing. It explained the wounded and the dead scattered about the underworks around them, some groaning as they clutched at injuries, others not likely to ever make a sound again.
And he thought he could curb Tern’s thirst for violence…
The prick of fear returned.
“Doctore,” Raz said quietly, not taking his eyes off the bloody mass of bodies before him. “I have a favor to ask.”
Rhen didn’t turn towards him.
“A-a favor?” she asked.
He could hear the shake in her voice.
Raz nodded once. “The Koyts. Get them out of the city. If something should happen, get them out and as far away from here as you can. They have the papers. It shouldn’t be hard, at least not if you move fast.”
“If I… if I move fast, yes…” Rhen said unsteadily.
Raz turned to look at her then. The Doctore’s eyes were fixed, wide and empty, on the dead. Even as the attendants swarmed down from the pit, pairing up to grab limp wrists and ankles, she couldn’t seem to look away.
The woman had been bred and baptized in the blood of the pit, but even to one such as she this level of needless slaughter seemed almost too much to bear witness to…
“Alyssa!” Raz snapped. “Listen to me!”
At that, Rhen jumped. Blinking, she looked around at him.
“The Koyts,” he said again, hating the hint of desperation he heard in his own voice. “I owe them. They are my responsibility. If I fall, they have no one and nothing to look forward to except hoping Tern forgets they ever existed. Get. Them. Out.”
For a long moment Rhen stared at him. He steeled himself to argue with her, to contend with whatever resolve she might have that he wasn’t going to die today, that Tern placed too much value on his life.
Instead, though, she nodded. Only once, and only briefly.
But she nodded.
Raz felt something like relief mix with the torrent of all the other feelings he was experiencing. The fear was true now. Raz wasn’t afraid to die. Hell, a few months ago he’d have shrugged the concept off without much concern. He lived a violent life, full of violent people with violent tendencies. Any day could have been his last, and he’d grown comfortable with the concept.
Now, though, there were things he wasn’t ready to leave behind just yet…
“MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER! MONSTER!”
When the last of the fallen had been hauled away, Raz started up the ramp, holding the dviassegai tight by his side.
Let’s see what the bastard’s cooked up for us, then, Ahna.
XXXV
RAZ BLINKED in the dim gray light of the stormy afternoon. The pit, he realized with some relief, had been cleared at least once that day, though the still-falling snow was claiming back the ground around him in rapid fashion. A thin layer of white hung weakly over the churned red and brown of spilled blood and wet earth, but it was nothing compared to the heavy slush that piled everywhere in the stands that had not needed to be swept clean. Across from him, standing on the other side of the ring, was a lone woman. On one arm Helena, the final victor, carried a wide buckler, her other hand wrapped around the hilt of a plain longsword, whose tip rested against the ground. A white bandage was wrapped around her forehead where someone had managed to get a strike in, and she looked exhausted, her heavy breathing misting in the air.
Raz didn’t for a second allow himself to think this was the extent of his trial.
Instead, he looked up above the woman’s head, into the Chairman’s box. The herald stood front and center, a tall man in heavy robes of white and gold that reminded him a little of those Brahnt, Yu’ri, and al’Dor had sometimes worn. The man was waving about him for quiet, trying to control the ten thousand voices that had exploded into cheers the minute Raz had stepped under the grounding tips of the portcullis. He was alone, though.
Quin Tern was nowhere to be found.
The prick came yet again, and Raz felt the crest along the back of his neck flick instinctively, as though in warning. Though he knew it was pointless, he couldn’t stop himself scanning the crowd around the box, looking for a rotund figure with long blond hair.
“Where are you, you fat fuck?” he grumbled to himself.
The herald, meanwhile, seemed to have finally gained some control over the noise.
“Your champion, citizens of Azbar!” he called out with infectious enthusiasm. “You called for him, and he has come to deliver on you the entertainment you so desire! The Monster of Karth is here to fight for you, my lords and ladies! The Scourge of the South is here to kill for YOU!”
The crowd roared in response. Giving up on his search for the Chairman, Raz turned his eyes back to the herald, figuring he might as well pay attention and see what it was he could glean about the mess he was in.
“But where are his foes, my friends? Where are the vile men and women come to take him from you? Is Helena, the Shield Bearer of the Seven Cities, to stand against the Monster alone? I think not! Citizens of Azbar, allow me to reintroduce you to your day’s other victors, the vicious fighters who will have to set aside all the rivalries of today’s melees and work together now to take on your champion. From the West Isles I give you… SURY ATHEUS!”
Footsteps behind him made Raz step away from the gate and turn around. From the shade of the underworks, a narrow figure with tanned skin and long jet-black hair appeared. He had the thin, slanting eyes of the Islers, and the same wiry build. Despite his slimness, though, he walked with a confident bearing, hands resting on the slender handles of the long, narrow blades on either hip, strapped over thick leather armor padded with fur for warmth.
As Atheus walked carefully by, Raz heard other steps crunching on the gangway after him.
“From the port city of Acrosia,” the herald continued. “PIRATE KING KEHNT!”
The next man was a Southerner in truth, but unlike any Raz had ever seen. He’d forgone the skins and furs in favor of layers on layers of colorful silks and shirts, all tucked beneath a leather tunic and wide, baggy pants of very odd fashion. He had a wide-brimmed hat dipped lazily to one side, and a curved saber he held by the sheath in one hand.
“From the great lands of Perce… AJANA ZEKO!”
Zeko was a black behemoth, lumbering from the darkness of the underworks, the two-handed warhammer clenched in one fist looking like it might have matched Ahna for weight. After him the herald called out four others, but Raz didn’t bother listening for
their names. A spearwoman, another shield bearer, a large mountain man with a two-handed claymore over one shoulder, and a mace-wielder with a long-handled morning star in one hand and a flail in the other.
It was all he needed to know, watching each step out onto the pit and move to ring him. Their names were irrelevant compared to their number.
Four. Four was a number he could face—a number he had faced—and win. He’d taken on more in the past, of course, but rarely by choice and never of a caliber of the men and women that surrounded him now. Four he could handle and put on a show. Four had been the maximum, as agreed on when Tern had made his Chairman’s Tourney.
Eight was a completely different story.
Raz didn’t give away the thought, though. He met the eyes of each of the fighters evenly as they appeared, but didn’t turn to study each one like some trapped animal frantically looking for a weak link. No. Such desperation would be apparent, firing up his opponents, and as much as Raz’s every instinct was yelling at him to run, he knew there was nowhere to go.
“But there is one final surprise for you today, patrons of our wondrous Arena! There is one more for me to introduce to you, one more who will brave the pit, putting himself in arm’s reach of your Monster at his own great risk. Good people, I bid you join me in applause of him, as you know him well! Please welcome the last member of today’s final event, gambling his life for your entertainment! I give you, from our own city… YOUR COUNCIL CHAIRMAN HIMSELF! QUIN ETURIUS TERN!”
At first, Raz was utterly convinced he had misheard, had not understood what the herald had said. He blamed it on the voice in his head that had practically been screaming in panic at the thought that yet another would be added to the list, bringing the total to nine. His mind had gone straight to Azzeki Koro, a promising duel on his own, or perhaps the Doctore herself, forced into the pit after him against her wishes.
So when he heard Tern’s name, he didn’t believe it until the man himself waddled into the light.
At once it became apparent that the Chairman had no intention whatsoever of actually fighting. Apart from the fact that Raz would have bet Ahna the man had hardly lifted a sword in his life, Tern hadn’t changed out of the luxurious furs and jewels he always wore on fight days. In fact, two attendants were flanking him, each bent on on keeping the edges of his sleek silver mantle clear of the mud and snow. The only thing Tern himself was carrying was what seemed to be some sort of box wrapped in dark-red cloth.
Raz’s gaze lingered only a moment on this oddity, though, before moving up to search the Chairman’s face. Tern was grinning with almost boyish delight, raising his free hand to acknowledge the cheering of the stands at his appearance. If the man had some trick up his sleeve, some plan to get Raz through this all in one piece, he wasn’t about to show it.
For now, Raz was on his own…
“Thank you!” Tern’s voice boomed out, echoing upwards as it bounced off the walls of the stadium. “Thank you all! It has always been a dream of mine to stand here, in the same place where each member of the Hall of Heroes once stood, and ten thousand more between them whose names have sadly been lost to memory. Today, on this first true day of the freeze, it was my desire to offer you something special, something heartwarming the likes of which will supply you with stories aplenty through the winter. Today I offer you a chance to witness more than just a battle for glory and freedom. I offer you a chance to witness a fight for true survival, an opportunity to see what happens when the world’s most dangerous animal is cornered and given no place to run!”
The fear tugging at Raz’s mind was suddenly withdrawn and replaced by a rush of anger. Animal? he thought. It was one thing to make such comments as asides and remarks, but to insult him so openly, before thousands of witnesses, was a fool’s mistake.
If Tern was looking to get a rise out of him, he was well on his way.
“Can you imagine it, friends, compatriots? Can you imagine a beast greater still that anything you have yet seen, more dangerous even than your beloved Monster of Karth? DO YOU WISH TO WITNESS THAT?”
The rolling screams of agreement were answer enough. Tern grinned even wider.
“Then your desire is my duty, and I shall pull the beast forth, drag it from the bowels of whatever hell it hides, and force it to rear its head.”
At this, Quin paused to say something quiet to one of his attendants. Then he held out the cloth-covered box.
The boy—for he couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen—abruptly looked exceedingly nervous, but took it dutifully, handing his corner of Tern’s mantle off to the other servant. As the Chairman returned to his speech, the attendant started walking towards Raz, passing between Zeko and the spearwoman to get to him. Raz gave the boy his full attention, wary of a trick, and not the least bit bothered by the Chairman’s continued windbaggery. What did bother him, though, was the fact that the fighters around him seemed to be shifting, giving up their advantage of surrounding him in favor of lining up directly between him and Quin Tern. By the time the boy had reached him, the eight of them had formed a sort of pack, Zeko at its head, watching Raz warily.
Suddenly, the box in the attendant’s arms was more frightening than anything the Arena could have ever thrown at him.
“M-My Lord Chairman bids you take this, and his message,” the attendant stuttered, swallowing nervously and not meeting Raz’s eye. “He says, ‘Maybe next time you’ll remember to tell the Lifegiver not to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.’”
The boy held it out then, the thing quivering in his shaking hands.
Raz was frozen, all will struck down by Tern’s words. He didn’t want to know what was in that box. He had tasted madness before. It seemed a lifetime ago, though the years had been short and brutal. If whatever was hiding beneath the cloth and wood in the attendant’s hands was truly something Tern thought might bring back some of that darkness, Raz wanted nothing less than to open the box, than to know its contents.
Few things were left to him, after all, that could pull him back to that place.
But time is a tricky bastard, and as much as Raz would have liked the moment to extend into infinity, allowing him the eternal bliss of not knowing, there was no such power invented by man or god. He tried, though. Raz found himself, as though guided by some unseen hand, stepping away from the boy and his box, keeping as much space between the two of them as he could. The attendant, in turn, looked back over his shoulder, unsure of what to do.
Raz saw Tern’s grin widen even as he continued to address the crowds, and the man nodded before raising a hand in signal.
As the boy stepped forward, egged on by his master, there was a clunk. Behind him, feet from his back, Raz heard the whirl of loose chains, and the portcullis fell shut with a crash that shook snow loose from the wall around and above it.
It didn’t stop him from backing up, though, right up until he ran into the very wood itself.
And the boy kept coming.
Raz could hear the blood rushing through his ears, could feel his heart, feel it pounding in his chest so hard he feared the thing might tear itself free of his body. There was nothing he could do, nowhere to go. Ahna hung loose by his side, all but forgotten as Raz watched the attendant follow him hesitantly, the wrapped box still held before him like some unholy relic.
When he got within reach, and with nowhere else to go, Raz did the only thing that made sense in the moment.
He struck the box right out of the boy’s hands.
Even if Raz had thought to, he would not have had the willpower to look away. As the covering cloth untangled itself from the wood, it was pulled away almost at once by the wind, carried off until it caught on one of the iron torch brackets hammered into the wall of the pit. It clung there, a red flapping streak against the gray of the stone.
The box itself, though, fell hard to the ground, bounced, broke open, and allowed the nightmare within to roll out onto the snow.
XXXVI
A
RRUN’S FACE looked up at Raz from the ground, only it wasn’t his face anymore. His features had been mangled, his flesh ripped and cut. The lids of his eyes had been removed, leaving behind staring orbs that never looked away. His ears had been sawed off, matching the gore of where his nose had been. His lips were sewn shut, the holes through which the twine snuck ragged and ripped as skin had stretched and protested.
And blood. There was blood everywhere.
It was this fact that punched though Raz’s walls, a realization that wrapped like rope about his throat, making it hard to breathe. The invisible weight of it pulled him to his knees, Ahna falling from this numb hand.
Blood… blood only flowed when the heart was beating…
Winter was suddenly welcome, the wind and snow nothing more than a companion in its unrelenting fury. The cold flowed through Raz’s arms like an icy stream. He couldn’t look away even though he wanted to. He took in the boy’s disfigured head for every bit it was worth, unable to see anything else. The world dissolved around him.
“And so, my dearest friends,” Quin Tern’s voice shouted from the other side of the veil, “prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves to meet the creature tucked away for too long! Welcome the true Raz i’Syul Arro! Welcome him! Welcome the beast!”
But there was no beast, Raz thought, looking within himself. There is only cold in this place, emptiness.
There is nothing.
As though Arrun’s staring blue eyes had drained him of his very existence, Raz felt no more. He forgot time and place and purpose. He forgot name and body and soul. There was nothing left to do, nothing left to be. He was devoid of meaning, sucked empty. Sucked empty by that horror, by that abomination still on the ground barely a pace away. Flecks of snow were already catching in Arrun’s blond hair, thatched with blood.
Then the word came.
Tern.
At first it was only a spark. From the bleakness in which Raz found himself falling, a tiny flame rose, barely a flash in the dark. It grew, though, as the word clung to his mind like some rabid animal, latched on and unwilling to let go, shifting into a name.
The Warring Son (The Wings of War Book 2) Page 31