One of them decided to make his revulsion verbal, and he expressed his dislike at a very loud volume.
So Gorbin hit him as hard as he could.
The boy stopped talking after that. And the revulsion went away too. Or at least happened out of his hearing, which was good enough for Gorbin.
As Gorbin got older, he got bigger and stronger, and he also learned more and more about how to fight. Dozens of men came to Sorvag’s house to show Gorbin this technique or that hold or this block or that punch.
Gorbin wasn’t the only child that Sorvag trained, though he was the only one who lived with Sorvag. He was also the only mul-children of elves, dwarves, goliaths, and even the occasional thri-kreen spawn would be brought by to Sorvag’s house in order to learn how to fight. Some of them only stayed to train for a week or two, some for months on end, some would come once a week. Gorbin worked with a few of them sometimes, but mostly Sorvag kept Gorbin’s lessons separate.
When Gorbin turned fifteen, Sorvag said he had a surprise for him. At that point, Gorbin had done everything Sorvag told him to do. It seemed reasonable-Sorvag fed him, clothed him, housed him, and let him beat people up pretty much any time he wanted. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for Sorvag.
Gorbin came into the kitchen of Sorvag’s house, and a skinny old man stood there. “This is Calbit,” Sorvag said to Gorbin. “He and his partner run the Pit of Black Death.”
“Really?” Gorbin’s eyes went wide. He knew all about the Pit, of course. Sorvag had taken Gorbin to a few of the matches, and Gorbin had always said he wanted to fight there. “I can take any of those guys,” he’d said many times.
Sorvag had always been cagey in response to Gorbin’s pleas, never confirming that the mul was destined to someday fight in the arena.
But Gorbin could feel it in his bones-that day was the day. Why else would he have been training for a decade and a half?
“Do I get to fight there?”
Calbit snorted, a noise that sounded like a crodlu when it was unhappy. “Ain’t like you’re gonna have a choice, boy.”
“You see,” Sorvag said, “the Pit owns you.”
Gorbin blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand.” Calbit then turned to Sorvag. “I thought you explained it to him.”
“Not in so many words,” Sorvag said weakly.
Gorbin walked up to face the man who’d been everything to him. “You’re selling me into slavery?”
“You were always a slave from the beginning,” Sorvag said. “I didn’t find you in the wastes, you were purchased by Calbit here and brought to me to train. You’re a mul-there’s nothing for you but the arena.”
“You lied to me?” Gorbin asked the question in a whisper.
For fifteen years, Sorvag always told him what to do. He had earned the authority he had over Gorbin. So to find out that he’d lied to him all that time was devastating.
Sorvag suddenly looked sad and pathetic-just like the people Gorbin hit shortly after he hit them-and muttered, “I’m-I’m sorry.”
Gorbin beat him to death right there.
When he was done, Calbit was just standing there calmly, unconcerned by the pulpy mess that Gorbin had made of Sorvag’s head, or by the blood mixed with brain and bone that was all over the kitchen.
No, Calbit was just looking at him. “Guess this means we’ll have to find someone else to train the kids. Ah, well, least I don’t have to pay his rates anymore. Damn thief, is what he is.” Calbit looked at Gorbin and smiled. “And a liar too. Idiot.”
It never really occurred to Gorbin to turn and beat Calbit to death, even though the old man couldn’t have done anything to stop it. But with Sorvag dead, Gorbin had no idea what to do next. He had spent all fifteen years of his life on Athas doing what Sorvag told him to do.
So he simply gravitated to the next available authority figure. Besides, Calbit would have simply called in the soldiers if he disobeyed, and while Gorbin had every confidence in his ability to win any one-on-one fight put before him, he didn’t think he’d be able to take on a cadre of soldiers.
So they branded his left bicep with a distinctive mark that said he was their gladiator-an action that only hurt for a few hours-and for the next ten years, Calbit and his partner Jago put Gorbin in the arena.
In many senses, his life improved. Sorvag’s home was a decent, if ramshackle, house in the Old District. With the Pit, Gorbin had a comfortable cubicle that was larger than any of the rooms in Sorvag’s house.
True, it was a cage by a nicer name, but it was still luxurious by the standards he was used to. Calbit also fed Gorbin better food than Sorvag ever did. “I don’t hold with all of Sorvag’s nonsense about nutrition,” Jago had said once. “People should eat what they want to eat.”
In his first fight for the Pit, Gorbin went against a malnourished troll Calbit had found in an alley. Gorbin hated how hot it got, with the sun bearing down into the arena, the obsidian walls holding the heat so that the fighters were sweltering.
Gorbin beat down the troll in less than a minute.
Then he fought a succession of opponents in bouts that were of even shorter duration.
After that, Jago insisted on putting him in the main-event fights. On any given night at the Pit, there were up to four fights. Up to that point, Gorbin’s bouts had all been opening matches-the undercards. The main event, though, was reserved for the real fighters.
Jago was fairly certain that Gorbin was that. So was Gorbin, if anyone asked him-which they didn’t.
Calbit wasn’t sure, but he decided to go ahead and let Gorbin face Mochri the Half-Giant. Mochri wasn’t the best fighter, but he was pretty good. Calbit liked to use him to test the newbies, see if they could handle the main event.
Gorbin took Mochri down in five minutes. Mochri never fought again after that day, falling into screaming fits any time they tried to bring him near the arena. Jago finally had him beaten to death as punishment.
Meanwhile, Gorbin worked his way up to the top of the main stage. Dwarves, elves, humans, half-giants, thri-kreens, goliaths, even one dray.
And Gorbin beat them all.
The dray was a tough one, but Gorbin was pretty sure he was lame. That still made him more formidable than anyone Gorbin had faced.
As a youth, Gorbin had gained some notoriety in the Old District where Sorvag lived, mainly from the other kids-the ones who tried to make fun of him when he was smaller and later the other ones who trained with Sorvag, who spread rumors about Sorvag’s prize pupil.
But that was nothing compared to the fame fighting for the Pit granted him. Everyone in Urik knew who Gorbin was. He found that he liked that, at first.
For the better part of a year, Gorbin fought regularly against Szanka. Those matches were almost interesting. Szanka was fast and smart, which almost made up for the fact that he was nowhere near as big and strong as Gorbin. He was able to avoid many of Gorbin’s blows, and therefore actually had some staying power.
But then one night, Szanka went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Nobody knew why, though one of the other fighters-a slave who’d been captured in one of Urik’s wars-said it probably had something to do with Gorbin hitting him in the head so often.
Ultimately, Gorbin was the biggest and the strongest and, thanks to Sorvag’s tutelage, the best trained. Which meant that he always won. And everyone knew him, and he was cheered every time he came into the arena. It was wonderful.
A decade later, it grew much less wonderful. Sure, everyone knew him, but mostly as the person nobody could beat-the person who made the Pit boring.
It got to where few people wanted to fight him. His fights were either against people who were so scared from his reputation that they folded in an instant, or idiots who thought they’d be the ones to unseat Gorbin from the top spot. The latter were invariably incompetents who folded in two instants.
He kept fighting because he didn’t have a choice. Oh, escape was
a possibility, but he tried that a few times and found that he had nowhere to go. Everyone in Urik knew who he was, so he couldn’t hide from the soldiers. As a slave, he had no resources he could truly call his own. And the only skill he had was fighting. True, there were other arenas in Urik, and they would kill to have an attraction as popular as Gorbin, but as soon as he fought for one of them, Calbit and Jago would send the soldiers.
Gorbin had never been outside Urik. He had no idea how to survive in the wastes, didn’t know what direction to go once he departed the city-state’s borders.
He was trapped.
So he fought. No matter how bored he was.
Every morning, he woke up on the floor of his cubicle. Over the years the cubicle had gotten bigger and better apportioned, and he had a large comfortable bed, on which he never slept. Sorvag always made him sleep on a hard floor. “So you can sleep anywhere,” he’d said at the time. And it was true, up to a point. He could sleep anywhere, as long as it was hard and unyielding. Put anything cushioned under him, though, and he’d toss and turn.
So he stuck with the floor and the bed continued to lay unused against one well-decorated wall of his lavish cubicle. He’d been told that there were nobles whose houses were less fancy than his cubicle.
But he still slept on the floor.
One morning, he woke up to Jago bellowing at him. “Gorbin! Wake up! Calbit’s back. And he’s got fresh meat.”
For some reason, Jago always wanted Gorbin to see the new slaves that came in. “You’ve earned the right to pick your opponents,” Jago would say, and then Calbit would usually add: “And which of these useless bags’a bones you don’t wanna fight.”
Gorbin trudged out of his cubicle, bleary-eyed, and walked out into the corridor to follow Jago.
The co-owner of the Pit was short and stocky while his older partner was skinny and bony. Given how big and strong Gorbin was, he could easily break Jago in two.
If only he had somewhere to go after he killed Jago. Or maybe Calbit would have the soldiers finally kill him.
The corridor went past several other cubicles, where the other slaves were allowed to continue sleeping. To Gorbin, that meant it was still early in the morning.
Somehow, it just figured that Calbit would return from his trip at some ridiculous hour.
The corridor emptied out into the large carriage bay, where Calbit had steered the four crodlus who pulled the stone carriage. His daughter Tirana was instructing the guards on where to take the slaves.
Most of them were the usual collection of ne’er-do-wells, weaklings, and idiots that Calbit always collected on these long trips. On one of those trips, twenty-five years earlier, he had brought back a mul infant whose mother had died in childbirth. The orphan’s father, a rapist dwarf with a wandering eye, had been killed in a street fight, never aware his forced coupling would sired a bastard.
It had taken Calbit five years to finally tell Gorbin the truth of his lineage. It was after one of the times he had tried to escape, claiming he wanted to find his birth parents, and ask them why they sold him to Calbit. Calbit had explained that the one who sold him was his mother’s sister, who had no interest in raising the result of her sister’s rape and plenty of interest in the gold coins Calbit had given her in exchange.
Looking over the new arrivals, there were two who stood out to Gorbin.
First off, they weren’t standing slouched and hunched over. They were shackled, just like everyone else, but they held their heads up high.
They were also looking around at everything, noticing things-even though one of them had only one eye, the other covered in a patch. Gorbin had never been good at noticing things, but he noticed when other people noticed things. Sorvag had taught him that much.
What Gorbin really saw in those two was that they knew how to fight. Only the best fighters Gorbin had faced in the arena moved with the grace and ease and awareness that those two did-the types who would almost last long enough for Gorbin to work up a sweat.
He pointed. “Those two.”
Jago stared at him. “What?”
“I want to fight those two.”
Calbit walked over to where the pair of them were watching Tirana guide the guards. “Did he actually point at someone?” Calbit asked Jago.
Nodding, Jago said, “The two tall ones, there.”
That caused Calbit to grin. He was missing several teeth, and Gorbin found the sight disgusting, but never said anything. “Those two were a find, lemme tell ya. Took out most of a group of Black Sands Raiders, and took down an anakore.”
Jago grinned as well. “Nice. Let’s put ’em in the undercard for a bit, get them warmed up so-”
“No,” Gorbin said. “I want to fight them.”
Pointing at the one with the patch, Jago said, “That one only has one eye.”
“Yeah,” Calbit put in, “and I saw him take down four raiders all by his lonesome, without no help from the other two.”
“Other two?” Gorbin frowned. “I only see two.”
“The raiders killed one of ’em. Probably wasn’t even a real fighter, truth be told. Maybe he owned ’em, I don’t know. Point is, these two can hold their own, maybe even against Gorbin.”
Folding his arms over his wide chest, Jago said, “I don’t know. Newbies always go on the undercard.”
Gorbin moved to stand right in front of Jago, emphasizing how big and strong he was. Sometimes he thought that Jago and Calbit forgot that. “You always ask me if I want to fight someone. I want to fight them. Let me fight them.”
Calbit looked at Jago. “I’m telling you, these two will be wasted on the undercard. They’ll bring people in-might be the first challenge Gorbin’s seen in years.”
Gorbin didn’t bother to point out that the next challenge would be his first.
Jago shook his head. “Not right away. If we just throw them in with Gorbin, no one will show up, because they’ll think it’s just the latest failed challenger. We need to build interest-and, besides, the last person you thought would be a challenge was that half-elf that Barglin beat in half a second.”
For a moment, Calbit stared angrily at Jago, then he looked away and nodded.
Jago called over to Tirana. “Send those two to cubicle four.”
The one with the eye patch started yelling then. “Where the frip are you taking us?”
Calbit snarled. “Where d’you think?”
Struggling against his restraints, the one with the patch cried, “We don’t want to fight. We’re free men, dammit.”
“Not no more,” Calbit said quietly.
Gorbin spit at the floor. “Another coward.”
That got the eye patch’s attention. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, mul-you put me in the arena, and I’ll fight, and I’ll win. So will my friend Rol here. See, we do this for a living.”
Indicating Gorbin with his head, Jago said, “So does he.”
The eye patch turned on Jago. “No, he does it because you guys tell him to. I see the brand there. He’s your slave. Me and Rol, though, we do this in the real world-there aren’t any rules when we fight.”
“No rules here, neither,” Calbit said.
“Please.” The man with the patch snorted. “Your fights are all in an enclosed arena with the fighters right in front of one another. That’s nothing. I swear to you, right here, right now-we will fight in your stupid arena and we will win and we will eventually be rid of this place. When Rol and I kill someone, it’s either because we’re being paid to or because we or someone we care about’s life is in danger, but I’m telling you right now, Calbit, that one of us is going to kill you, and it won’t be for either of those reasons. It’ll be because you fripping deserve to die a very slow, very painful death.”
The other one, Rol, finally spoke, doing so in a very quiet, even tone. “Gan, shut up.”
“You should listen to your friend,” Calbit said. “Take them away.”
One of the guards grabbed Rol by the wrist,
then immediately pulled his hand back, a look of disgust on his face. Looking at Rol’s arm, he shouted, “What is that?”
Gorbin noticed that the guard’s palm was slicked with some kind of red ooze-it wasn’t blood, Gorbin had fought enough humans to know exactly what their blood looked like.
Following the guard’s look to Rol’s wrist, he saw some kind of bump on his skin. It was smeared with the same red ooze that was on the guard’s hand.
Calbit looked at Tirana. “Get the healer over here to give him a once-over. That’s just what we need, some kind of disease.”
“It’s nothing,” Rol said. “You want me to fight, I’ll fight. And I’ll win. And, like Gan said, eventually-I’ll kill you.”
A bit more gingerly, the guards led Rol and Gan off, Tirana following. Gorbin watched them, thinking about what Gan had said. “What did he mean?”
“About what?” Jago asked.
“That stuff about rules and enclosed arenas and stuff.”
“Nothing, don’t worry about it. C’mon, let’s get you back to your cubicle.”
As Jago led him back down the corridor, Gorbin thought about what Gan had said. He’d always fought in the arena or under the very watchful eyes of Sorvag.
He wondered what fighting in the real world, the way Gan and Rol did it, was like.
Gan had been to many arenas in his time, and he’d been to Urik many times, but he’d never been to the Pit of Black Death.
He would, honestly, have been happy to keep that streak alive.
For a long time, the site had been an obsidian mine, and a tremendous source of income for the city-state’s treasury. But once it was tapped out, King Hamanu had no more use for the land and sold it to the highest bidder-who, Gan assumed, was Calbit and his partner.
Like most mines, the center of it was a giant round well in the ground, which had been converted to an arena, with wooden scaffolding along the obsidian-scored walls. The catacombs beneath the well, which had linked up the various smaller veins of obsidian, had been converted to offices for the staff and cubicles to house the fighters. The smaller ones fit one or two people, and were reserved for the best fighters who fought during the main event of each evening’s entertainment.
Under the Crimson Sun (the abyssal plague) Page 9