“Move,” said one of the blue men guards, pointing toward an open door in one of the structures. I could see others milling around inside. Shadowy things that looked like bunk beds stretched three or four high. He nudged me with a baton, just a light thump to the back, and I started toward the door.
As I walked across the dusty ground toward my new home, I thought about what she’d said about my next days being difficult.
As it turned out, she was very, very right.
13.
Cyrus
Cyrus stood on the bridge in the Realm of Life after Vaste’s departure, listening to the croak of distant frogs in the night air. Eventually, perhaps, a sun was going to rise over this place, but it didn’t seem anywhere near the horizon, and the moon was still shining down its glaring silver light.
The night air chill had long since settled over him. It was not truly cold; more like an autumn day after sundown, but without a hint of breeze. It made his skin ache beneath his armor.
“That sounded like it went marvelously,” Terian said from the end of the bridge. He had someone else with him, and it took Cyrus a moment to realize it was Quinneria, hanging slightly back as though she were still in the persona of Larana, always hiding herself from sight.
“He’s done,” Cyrus said simply, unconsciously glancing toward the space Vaste had been standing in. “Doesn’t want to see me die, I guess.”
“None of us does,” Quinneria said, more assertively than Larana ever would have.
“I might have once,” Terian said, a little glibly, “but those days are past.” He advanced over the bridge at an amble, Quinneria following close behind him. “Where to, Cyrus?”
“I was considering going back to Reikonos,” Cyrus said, feeling instinctively drawn back to the old barn.
“Well, that’s dumb,” Terian said. “Don’t go live in a barn. Come stay in a dank and gloomy underground palace. We don’t have the light of the sun, but the food is better, guaranteed.”
“You sound more like an innkeeper than the Sovereign,” Cyrus said drily.
“I am many things to many people,” Terian said. “Right now, I’m your friend. And like I said before, I can’t bring my army into this, but I’m with you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be,” Cyrus said, his gauntlet scraping the stone railing as he moved his arm to lean against it. “The Sovereign of Saekaj Sovar has a lot more to lose if the gods turn against him than Vaste did.”
“I understand where Vaste is coming from,” Terian said, easing closer to Cyrus. “He’s worried you’re going to become reckless with your life and that of anyone you lead in this. He thinks you’re beyond feeling, and thus beyond reason. But we both know that’s not you right now.”
Cyrus raised an eyebrow, catching a guarded look from Quinneria. “It’s not?”
“No.” Terian shook his head. “A few hours ago, when the rage was fresh, you might have smeared yourself messily across Bellarum’s gauntlet, but now the general within is taking over, and you’re calculating your best chance for making him a smear on your gauntlet. I heard the talk about odds, and the bellow of angry defiance about how you’d show them … I know what comes after that, and it’s not a suicide charge into the jaws of death. You’re not desperate. You may not care if you live, but you’ll be damned if you’re just going to let Bellarum kill you without extracting payment in return. I can follow that.”
“To the end?” Cyrus asked.
“Wouldn’t be my first choice,” Terian said, shrugging. “But … if need be, yes. I want to extract payment from his hide as well. He shouldn’t think he can just wipe out our friends without paying a heavy price.”
“And you?” Cyrus turned to Quinneria.
“I told you I was with you,” she said quietly. “But I do not wish to see you dead in this, so I hope Terian is right about your state of mind.”
Cyrus felt a faint twitch at the corner of his eye. “I’m more interested in killing Bellarum than dying to no purpose,” he said. “A pointless death nets me nothing, so I’m willing to plan, to take care, and … no, I have no interest in seeing anyone else die, save for our enemies.” He scraped his gauntlet against the rail. “Though given what we are up against, my interest hardly seems the overriding factor. If we do this, people will most certainly die.”
“Will you do what you did in the Dragonshrine?” Terian asked. “Will you run up and try and throw yourself in front of them?”
“I was supposed to protect Arkaria,” Cyrus said. “And my guild. My people.”
“I understand that all too well,” Terian said. “But—”
“Well, it’s done now, isn’t it?” Cyrus asked. “Defending Arkaria? We don’t have enough people left to protect a mile of Reikonos’s wall against the smallest of armies. Sanctuary’s gone …” He shrugged. “There’s nothing left to protect, save for those who come with us in this, wherever that’s going to take us … and I really have no idea where it will.”
“Good enough for me,” Terian said, and he forced a smile. “Come back to Saekaj. Stay with us. It’ll be safer than living in a barn in the slums.”
Cyrus shivered, a sudden reaction to the chill coupled with a thought of something left undone. “I will. But I have to make a stop in Reikonos first.”
“Very well,” Terian said, bowing his head. “We’ll be waiting for you … and I’ll have your bed turned down, like a good innkeeper should. Might even have them build a fire in the chambers, see if we can manage that without turning it into a smokehouse.”
Cyrus looked to Quinneria. “Can you take me to Reikonos?” He took a slow breath. “I need to go to the Guildhall quarter.”
She looked at him with curious eyes and a slightly furrowed brow. “Of course, but—”
“Isabelle,” Cyrus said by way of explanation. “I need to tell her … about her sister.” He choked back the emotion that threatened to bubble out of him.
Quinneria froze then nodded once. “Certainly. We can—”
A sharp whinny caused Cyrus to turn his head to find Terrgenden there, ambling toward him atop a pure white horse. He peered into the dark, trying to examine the animal more closely as it started up the bridge. That can’t be …
Terrgenden brought the horse to a halt and slung a leg over, descending from the saddle with an easy vault. He landed with a spring, brushing himself off as though he’d acquired dust in the ride. “Your horse, sir,” he said, mocking the manner of a common servant.
“Windrider?” Cyrus ran his hands down the horse’s neck and got bumped in the helm affectionately in return for it. He looked at the God of Mischief. “How did …?”
“I didn’t,” Terrgenden said with a shrug. “It was your stableboy who freed him and ensured he was taken away with a teleport spell, though I suspect the horse himself contributed to his own rescue by raising some small amount of hell.” He clucked his tongue. “A lovely horse, a beautiful coat, a sharp mind.” The God of Mischief ran a hand down the neck and Windrider seemed to shudder, though whether in pleasure or distaste, Cyrus could not tell. “One should be careful not to leave such a valuable animal in danger.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cyrus said, taking hold of the reins. He glanced at Quinneria. “Shall we?”
She nodded. The light of a teleportation spell began to grow at her fingers, sweeping them away from the Realm of Life and carrying them back to the lands of ordinary men.
14.
Alaric
The next few days of my life in the camp outside the Coliseum were easily the worst of my life.
We awoke each day at dawn, to the voices of the blue men guards, rattling their batons hard against the walls of our buildings and shouting, “Wake up! Move out!” at us. I learned quickly that going along with whatever they wanted us to do was much easier than not. I saw Olivier get another whacking the first morning, and it convinced me.
We were fed three times per day. The meals were not terrible. It was essentially a bread subst
ance, but stickier and doughier than what we had in Luukessia. It was heartier fare than our soldiers had subsisted on in the journey north from Enrant Monge, but was much less appealing that the food I was used to. By the third day, the smell of it as we stood in the line for food was making me ill. I ate without complaint anyway, because to do otherwise would have spurred a striking with those pain-inducing batons.
In those first days, there was no communication about our role in any sort of Coliseum battle. In fact, other than mealtimes and a set bedtime where the guards yelled and corralled us into lying down, there wasn’t any communication from the blue men at all, save for when someone got out of line. There were a few fights, and someone got beaten even worse than I had, which gave me a shameful sense of comfort.
Most of my barracks was comprised of soldiers from my army, but there were some other men there who had been in the camp before we arrived. Varren had been sorted into the fighting group with us, which he didn’t seem particularly happy about. He hadn’t said much since we’d passed the gates of the camp, at least not on the occasions where I was near enough to hear him. He’d chosen a bunk across the barn-like room, and I had seen little of the man.
Stepan was close by, in the bunk below mine, but he was even less companionable. He said almost nothing, spending his hours between meals lying sullenly on his thin mattress of some sort of old cloth and straw. He’d given me a rather evil eye when we were choosing our bunks, driving me up the long ladder to the top most bunk, fourth above the ground. The bunking system seemed an obvious hierarchy, at least to me, in that the bottom bunks seemed to be entirely taken up by sullen, angry, threatening men who protected their territory jealously.
The barracks smelled about as terrible as you would imagine for harboring several hundred men. There were latrines in the rear of the building, but no place to bathe or wash. The weather was unpleasantly warm within a few days of our arrival, and the latrines began to stink enough during the days that I habitually held my nose pinched closed or else kept a finger beneath it to try and stave off the smell. It did little to help, and the stench of ripe, unwashed bodies seemed to grow worse by the day.
After the noontime meal on the third day came the first deviation from the routine, and it happened in such a way that I garnered the attention of everyone in my bunkhouse, both for better and worse. That, I realized later, was a dangerous thing, to stick out in a place of desperate, angry men.
It happened this way. I was lying on my bed, the yeasty taste of the lunch bread lingering in my mouth as I dug at a piece stuck between my teeth. The mattress was of pitiable quality, the sort of thing you might find in a barn. I hadn’t yet had a good night of sleep upon it, though worry might have been a contributing factor as well. A hubbub came from the entry, and like groundhogs rising to see what was going on, those of us lying on our bunks rose almost as one, heads popping up at the sound.
There was a blue man guard weaving his way through the beds. Another was posted at the door; I noticed early on that they didn’t come into our sleeping quarters singly. Presumably, that was a precaution of some sort, though of what kind I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t as though any of us could hurt them in any way I’d seen. Even with weapons, we’d been plainly overmatched, and now none of us were armed.
The blue man making his way through the beds was staring at faces as he passed through. He went all the way to the center of the room, which was essentially just a crossroads of paths between the bunks, and shouted, “All-aric!”
I stared at him, not sure I’d him right. He called the name again, and this time it jarred it loose for me. “That’s me,” I said, and the guard craned his neck to pick me out of the crowd in the bunkroom. Was it possible someone had finally realized how important I was? That I did not belong here among these wretches, chosen to fight in some spectacle like dogs?
“You idiot,” Stepan hissed from beneath me.
I ignored him, though his words did send a peculiar shudder through me as I started to climb out of my bunk. I could hear guffaws around me, either at my name’s mispronunciation or at the assumption that something terrible was coming to me. My feet hit the floor and I made my way slowly toward the blue man standing in the center of the room. “I’m Ulric.”
“Al-aric,” he said, staring at me with piercing eyes, clearly trying to decide something. I realized then that his armor was different than the other blue men. It was darker, more angular, like it had been built differently. Under his arm he carried a helm, though I couldn’t see it well in the dimly lit barracks. “Come with me,” he said, and turned to walk out without a word of explanation.
I cast a look up at Stepan, who was watching me, but did not linger. I didn’t know whether my father’s servant was right, and that I’d gotten myself into some trouble here, but it wasn’t as though I could have simply hid. I doubted my father’s soldiers would have been sanguine about allowing me to keep my head down when the guards started threatening. I had little doubt they would have thrown me to the wolves without remorse.
I followed the blue man in the different armor out of the barracks door where the guard gave me a look up and down like he was seeking to know what the hell was so special about me. At the time it caused me to puff out my chest a little more, thinking that finally my title and position were to be acknowledged.
That lasted about halfway across the yard, at which point the blue man in the armor who’d fetched me turned around. He had the fiercest eyes I’d ever seen, with red irises that watched me intently. I strode forward with exaggerated confidence, and when I stopped ten feet away from him, it was with my chin held out.
I gave him a good look in the light of day. The blue man had a strong chin of his own, and his eyes were alight with amusement. He had dark, but not quite black, hair, short-cropped and parted down the middle, and a wide chin. He regarded me carefully for all of five seconds, his helm held in the crook of his elbow.
Then he brought the helm up, slid it onto his head, and drew a baton.
He was on me before I could marshal myself and move, and his first strike deadened my leg, eliminating any possibility of flight. I hit the ground with one knee, and he drove the baton into my kidney. These bastards had clearly learned that was a vulnerable point for us. My back spasmed as I rocked back, snapping my neck hard enough that I hit my head painfully on the ground. The blue man grabbed me around the neck and hauled me over his knee, putting me into a fine position to break me in two. From there he stared at me, still looking quite amused, his expression hidden but his intense eyes still twinkling through the slits in his helm.
“So,” he said, with the same accent I’d heard from all of them, “you are Al-aric?”
“Yes,” I managed to get out around the pressure on my throat. I didn’t have had the presence of mind to lie, because once again I’d found myself overwhelmed and in a terrifying situation, helpless.
“You are sure?” he asked.
“I’m … Ulric … Garrick … prince of … Luukessia …” I got out, trying to tell him exactly what I knew in hopes that the bastard would stop squeezing me. I didn’t realize at the time that he wasn’t choking me, but just pressing on my neck in a way that hurt like the blazes.
“Very well, then.” He dropped and I thumped to the ground, landing on my shoulder blades with enough jarring force to knock the breath out of me for a moment. “My name is Rin, and I am your sabushon—your instructor.”
The blood was rushing in my ears, my face red from his squeezing of my neck, and my back ached because he’d just let me fall to the dusty, pebble-clad empty dirt in the yard. “Beg … pardon?” I asked, defaulting to my courtly manners in spite of the flagrant assault I’d just taken.
“I’ve been sent to teach you how to fight,” he said, still not removing his helm. I could see faint purple hues streaking through the red in his irises, something that seemed a bit shocking to someone used to dealing with browns, blues, and perhaps the occasional green. The helm was a monst
rous thing, with jagged lines that reminded me of horns.
“Sent?” I asked, turning my head to look back at the entry to the barracks. No one else had come out, and the same bored guard was standing there, dividing his attention between his charges inside and what was going on between this fellow and I out here in the yard. “To train … all of us?”
“Just you,” he said, and placed a pointed boot right on my sternum. He gave me a slow, pushing nudge that found its place right below my breastbone and hurt quite a bit before he removed his foot and stepped back. “On your feet.” His voice did not suggest that he would brook any disobedience.
I pulled myself to sitting, and then to one knee, and then, awkwardly, back to my feet, and stood across from the blue man. He’d given me his name, hadn’t he? Rin, he’d called himself, and I’d nearly missed it in my pain. “Rin,” I said experimentally.
“Yes,” he said simply. “You will obey my orders exactly—”
“Who sent you?” I asked, and was answered with a baton right betwixt the eyes.
When I opened my eyes again, my head hurting from where I had landed, once more, upon my back, I found Rin standing in the same place he had been before, very casually clutching his baton at his side, relaxed. “On your feet,” he said again, and I rushed to comply, feeling a new bevy of aches and pains.
When I was standing again, he spoke, giving no suggestion he’d even heard my question, let alone that he was answering it, even as he proceeded to do so. “As I said before we experienced that moment of presumption on your part, I am your instructor, and I have been sent to see to your training in the art of fighting.” He waited, watching me, plainly wanting to see if I would be foolish enough to ask my question again. When I did not, he said, “I am a guard at the—” here he said words that I could not have easily pronounced, even had my ears not been slightly ringing, “—which is a mining colony south of here.” He smacked his lips together behind the mask. “I believe you met the daughter of the camp’s … commander, you would call it in your filthy language. She felt pity for you, apparently, much as someone might feel for an animal, and so now I will be spending my afternoons teaching you to survive.” He looked unreservedly sour at this turn of events.
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