by Joel Ohman
Charley, Grigor, Hank, and Orson were together in a cage with a few dozen other Low Scores, each of whom had done nothing but shriek in terror since seeing the arena around them turn into a killing field. A small boy with a streak of dirt across his forehead turned to Grigor and spoke between sobs. “What about us? What do we do?”
The canyons and valleys of Grigor’s rugged face twisted into a conflict of emotion: his scrupulous honesty at war with his desire to reassure the small boy. “Just … work together. We need to all work together. If you run away then they will pick you off one by one. Choose a target and work together.” Seeing the little boy’s face sag, Grigor hurriedly added, “I will try to protect you. Just … stay behind me.”
Then the cage door sprung open.
Charley was first out, screaming like a banshee.
He ducked the clumsy swing of a mace by an armored warrior abreast a thundering winged horse. Seeing the rider atop the grey-dappled hindquarters of a horse-like animal, Charley chose his first target and honed in his focus.
The bedlam of the crowd receded. Charley heard nothing but the panting of the horse and the clank of the interlocking scales of armor. He sprinted after the warrior and his steed, ducking a stray arrow with a drop and a bound.
He remained crouched, using his back legs to spring forward like a big cat on the savannah. He felt like a lanther: he was the predator, the horse and rider the prey.
The warrior rotated his head as far behind him as his armor would allow, and his eyes, visible through narrow slits in his helmet, grew wide at the spectacle of Charley’s surge from behind. The rider gigged his mount forward, and the beast crow-hopped to one side, nostrils flaring and prehensile lips peeled back at the pressure of the bit.
Charley leaped.
For the space of a moment, time slowed. The arena was frozen in place: flagons of drink remained upraised, spilling their bubbling deceits in a slosh of debauchery, while the grotesque contorted countenances of men and women, lovers of violence all, pupils like black holes of darkness, sucked in ever more cruelty. It was all in the name of entertainment, never ceasing until it consumed them all. And in that flattening of time, the entire arena focused laser-like on Charley’s extended form.
Charley landed spread-eagled across the beast’s back, his knees desperately squeezing each side of the pistoning haunches in order to keep from sliding off the croup. Clawing his way up the loins, he grabbed onto the pinions, the little wing joints that extended outward from the withers at an angle like a crooked elbow, and seated himself upright directly behind the rider.
In full armor, it was difficult enough for the rider to turn his head to see behind him, but near impossible to fight off an attacker from the rear. The mace, useless against a close-range attack, trailed ineffectually across the rider’s lap. The warrior jerked his elbow back violently, but Charley simply parried it downward, while simultaneously slipping his forearm up, around, and under the mail drape that hung from the warrior’s helmet, the same drape designed to protect from arrow points, sword tips, and dagger thrusts, but not from rear chokeholds.
Charley set the sleeper hold deep, and jerked the warrior’s head back, digging the bony part of his forearm deep into the carotid artery on his neck to cut off the blood flow to the brain. The rider struggled, clawing back at Charley’s face with furious scrabbling hands, but Charley kept his face angled away and was left with only a dark red gouge on his neck.
Within moments, the warrior slumped in Charley’s lap. He jerked off the helmet, placed it on his own head, and hefted up the brutally shaped mace before letting the dead weight of the unconscious man fall to the ground.
Seizing the reins, Charley dug his heels into the horse’s stifle and rounded on a trio of fast-approaching men with outstretched swords.
“Charley, coming to you!” Grigor rode an enormous black horoceros, barreling toward Charley from behind the three warriors.
At the sight, Charley’s eyes widened, his arms slackening so that he almost dropped his grip on the reins and mace. He had heard it said that some pets and their owners resembled each other. Grigor’s cannonball shoulders hunched over the massive thundering shoulders of the horoceros, pistoning up and down in an angry drumbeat of aggression. The protruding wrinkled brow on Grigor’s wide face, his teeth bared, and eyes glinting, made him seem like an extension of the horned wrinkly behemoth beneath him.
Charley wheeled his horse back hurriedly and was shocked to feel the quick beat of wings. His stomach leaped into his throat and he fought the urge to hug his steed’s neck. They gently lifted off the ground and rotated sideways with a flutter. It was only inches off the ground, but Charley was flying, on a horse. He scanned the arena, searching for a glimpse of Sandy, but all he could see were large, angry warriors with murder in their eyes.
The three hard-charging warriors, mistaking Charley’s retreat for cowardice rather than noticing Grigor and the horoceros behind, renewed their pursuit. A bloodthirsty scream resounded from the forerunner.
Charley pressed his knees into his horse’s withers, slowing their graceful descent. They hovered in place, like a hummingbird. Charley watched, slack-jawed, as Grigor and the horoceros bore down on the three unsuspecting warriors from behind like a great black-horned hound spewed from the bowels of hell.
Before impact, the horoceros belched out an earth-shaking bellow directly behind the three warriors. Judging by the looks on their faces, Charley thought the three warriors would die from fright alone. Before they could even turn and face the black monster bearing down, Grigor and the horoceros had crashed into them like a bowling ball into pins.
Armor crumpled inward as if it was made of tin. The big horn and the little horn of the horoceros speared viciously through the heavy armor and into the flesh beneath. The horoceros stamped down with both front hooves, trampling the warriors into metal pancakes, plumes of dust billowing up.
Grigor bellowed a challenge of his own. “Follow me! Fight or die!” Galloping ahead of Charley, he looked over, his eyes wild with excitement. “You have to follow me, because I can’t steer this thing, and I definitely can’t stop it.”
“Trust me, I’m not getting in your way.” Charley gigged his mount and they fluttered forward, half-trotting, half-flying.
Orson and Hank, each having obtained a mount, cantered up behind. Orson was riding something that looked like a unicorn, and Hank bobbed along on a very skittish red-tinged deer-like animal.
Hank struggled to control his mount. “White, black, red, and pale—we’re the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” Hank’s deer creature crow-hopped sideways, growing more skittish as it trotted behind the hulking haunches of the snorting horoceros.
Orson eyed Hank’s jittery deer creature, its eyes wide and poised to bolt. “I don’t think you’re the horseman of anything; maybe the fourth horseman of incompetence.”
“Whatever.” Hank turned to Charley. “I don’t remember gaining mounts being part of the plan, but we saw you and Grigor, so we figured we had better get something to try to keep up.”
Orson waved a broadsword. “But we do have weapons.”
Hank looked at Charley’s mace and then raised his own sword. “All of us except Grigor.”
“I think he’s riding his weapon,” Charley replied.
“Well, he’s still going to need some help. They’re releasing more animal combos.” Orson lifted a broadsword in the direction of one of the far tunnels and then spurred his mount forward.
“And more warriors.” Charley pointed to another tunnel, from where a bevy of mail-clad fighters hustled out, their armored scales clanking together and uniting as one unit like pangolin scales retracting.
“Which do we fight first?” Hank asked.
“That’s easy,” Orson said with a grin. “We follow Grigor, or rather, we follow the horoceros.” The wind blew Orson’s luxurious dark hair ba
ck in the wind and Charley couldn’t help but think that, astride the white unicorn creature, he looked like he should be a fairy-tale hero; all he needed was a linen shirt.
As if responding to Orson’s cue, the horoceros turned a blunt snout in the direction of the troop of warriors, stamped the ground twice, and then charged directly at them.
To their credit, the warriors didn’t turn and run. These men appeared well trained to work in unison; their shields slotted down and jangled into place, interlocking into a shield wall of steel. They continued to march forward.
The horoceros didn’t slow. It was possible the sunlight glinting off the shields was angering it, and it picked up speed.
Every eye in the arena was now on the impending collision.
Man versus beast.
Metal versus bone.
Hank’s eyes grew wide. “What the—”
“Quit your incessant yapping,” Orson spat. “Get ready to maneuver around the flanks of the horoceros. Grigor will need us to clean up any stragglers, especially those with spears.”
Charley couldn’t take his eyes off the soon-to-be massive pileup. “Come on, Hank. Orson’s right. We need to be ready to protect Grigor’s rear and flanks once he barrels through.”
“No, I know. I mean, I’m not talking about them. I just—” Hank jerked his neck around and then screamed out. “Look over there!”
Charley and Orson whipped their heads around to see scores upon scores of fast-moving scaly creatures pouring out of the other tunnel. Little yellow eyes sat recessed on a wide flat head. Long snouts sprouted rows of alligator teeth. Their bodies, partly scaled and ridged like an alligator, also sported the black and tan pelt of a wolverine. And the claws, Charley thought, gulping, the claws were definitely wolverine.
Orson twisted on the reins to keep his mount from bolting. “Wolverators.”
“Grigor was right,” Charley replied.
The little monsters streamed out of the tunnel like the Devil’s cockroaches, low to the ground and moving with purpose directly for Grigor.
Hank closed his gaping mouth. “At least we’re up here on—” At this, Hank’s deer creature gave a twisting lurch and promptly bucked him off, sending Hank sprawling awkwardly onto the ground. In the commotion, the deer pranced off in the opposite direction.
“What were you saying, Hank?” Orson asked, arching his eyebrow.
“Shut up.”
Hank looked up at Charley, his eyes pleading.
Charley sighed. “Hop up behind me. Just try not to spook this one, too.”
“Thank you, thank you.” Hank hopped on with Charley, and the Pegasus-like creature dipped slightly and promptly starting beating its wings even harder.
“How much of that meat did you eat last night?” Charley grumbled. “Get your blade ready. You chop anything that moves on the left side, and I’ll take care of the right.”
“Okay, got it.”
“Now it’s even more important to protect Grigor’s rear and flank. Let’s go!” Orson kicked his mount forward, Charley and Hank following close behind.
The horoceros smashed into the shield wall like a wrecking ball into a piñata. Within moments, one hand grasping the smaller horn of the horoceros as if it was a pommel on a saddle, Grigor had managed to acquire a club, his weapon of choice, and was wielding it with vicious abandon.
The movements of man and beast, Grigor and his horoceros, were a synchronicity of muscular aggression; each blow was a blunt trauma inflicted on an armored opponent that might as well have been made of papier-mâché. Stamping, kicking, and goring with every shake of its tree-trunk legs and torso, the horoceros grew more enraged the closer opponents came. How Grigor managed to stay atop the beast, Charley didn’t know, but the thick muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out in stark relief against the rivulets of sweat that glistened down his body.
“He’s tiring out,” Charley cried out. “And he still doesn’t see the wolverators coming. Let’s see if we can form a wall to keep them occupied for a while.”
Chest up, Orson pranced forward astride his unicorn mount, directly at the wolverators, his dashing good looks showing grim determination. But the idyllic storybook scene came to a jarring halt. His countenance changed from a picture of courage to something like uncertainty and then to outright revulsion. Furiously trying to high-step backward, a desperate whinny squeaked out of his mount.
“They’re climbing up!” Orson jabbed his blade directly into the gaping, teeth-filled mouth of a wolverator that had fastened itself onto the side of his mount and was scaling methodically higher. Leveraging against the rows of teeth, Orson tried to use his sword like a spatula, flipping the attacker off his mount’s flank without hurting his transportation.
Charley suddenly became grateful for the functionality of his horse’s wings. Even with the added weight of Hank, they were already a few feet off the ground, and out of reach of the snapping jaws below.
“Oh, forget this!” Orson hopped off his mount with a final stroke of its glossy mane. “Sorry, girl.” Free to maneuver, Orson now darted in and out of the snapping jaws like a salsa dancer, but with a deadly flashing weapon. Staking, kicking, and slicing, Orson made short work of the first three wolverators.
If Orson was learning to dance the salsa, Charley was learning to swing the mace like a medieval warrior. His flying horse kept him and Hank safe from the gnashing teeth below, and his mace was more than long enough to wallop the top of the spiny skulls below. Every swing of his mace was accompanied by a satisfying crunch barely drowned out by the roar of the crowd.
“Charley!” Hank screamed just moments before Charley felt a searing slash along his hip. Pain lanced down his leg like a million fire ants darting through his veins and tingling through his capillaries. Their flying mount veered wildly and crumpled them onto the ground, landing Charley and Hank in a tangled mess of limbs.
Charley cursed. “What was—”
Hank tried to scramble free of Charley, his knee crushing Charley’s hip, and causing Charley to yell out in pain. “We’ve been hit!”
“I know that, you idiot!” Grimacing, Charley tried to heft himself to one knee, but his ankle was pinned beneath the trappings of a discarded chariot and other battle detritus littering the arena floor. “What happened?”
Hank pointed to a cadre of warriors that had managed to slip around Grigor and Orson. “They happened!”
Charley winced as one of the men brutally kicked his flying horse and sent it hobbling away. The largest, a big-bellied man with a bristly black beard, carried a twisted club with nails and other pieces of metal stuck into the knotted end. He eyed Charley with a sneer and slowly walked toward him.
“Quick, get this thing off me!” Charley cried out. “I can’t move!”
Hank bent down quickly, eyes trained on the men fast approaching, and heaved until a vein popped on his forehead. “It’s wedged into the sand against something. I’m trying.”
“Well, try harder!”
“I—I can’t.” Hank’s eyes widened in panic. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to distract them and then get Orson or Grigor.”
Charley looked over his shoulder frantically. “Just hurry! They’re releasing even more animal combos, too!”
“I’m on it.”
Hank picked up his blade and ran, screaming, directly at the group of men, exhibiting a touch of his old psychopathy. At the last moment, Hank veered off wildly to one side, swiping across the exposed shoulder of one of the warriors.
With a bevy of shouted curses, the men clanked after Hank.
All except one.
The man with the nail-studded bat continued his steady walk toward Charley. A coarse laugh burbled up from lips stained purple.
Charley wrenched his knee, straining backward against the weight of the chariot, but he simply wasn’t strong enough. If this was
how he was going to die, then so be it, but he wasn’t going to die bowing his head. He jutted his chin forward and looked up.
The warrior walked up to Charley and stopped, his burly figure casting an immense shadow that engulfed Charley. “You’re as stuck as a taped ape,” he said matter-of-factly, spitting a dark purple stream of viscous liquid into the dirt.
Charley looked down.
The inky fluid pooled in the sand, billowing outward and transmogrifying into a Rorschach test of sputum that only came up death.
Charley looked up. This time the warrior’s profile eclipsed all remaining sunrays; he held his nail-studded bat with two hands straight above his head.
“Pathetic little Low Score.”
Charley was shocked, and for a brief moment, he didn’t understand that the warrior meant him. But it came back to him: the sad realization of his plight. He had become a Low Score and now he was to die like one. An image of his brother appeared in Charley’s mind. Was this how Alec had died? Thrust out of the gates of Meritropolis at the hands of armed men who had mocked and jeered his low Score? A wave of icy calm spread throughout his body.
The warrior spat again, but Charley didn’t look down this time.
“Go on then,” Charley said, his lip curling. Despite the dryness of his mouth, he hocked the biggest, wettest globule of phlegm he could and spat it directly onto the warrior’s dusty boot.
The warrior bent the twisted bat straight back with a snarl. “Well, at least you’ve got spiri—”
A high keening prehistoric scream ripped through the cacophony of the arena like the sound of an ancient pterodactyl on the warpath. With a whoosh and a chomp, an enormous llamabill swooped down from above, and bit the warrior’s head clean off with a sickening crunch.
The now headless warrior, bat still raised, remained upright for the space of a second. Absurdly, Charley had an image that the headless body would continue to fight, moving like a chicken with its head cut off. But, before the thought was even fully formed, it was gone, and the warrior’s decapitated body slumped sideways and then fell into the dirt, a plume of smoke puffing up and enveloping the still form.