At the end of the first week of the trials, she was ladling out water to the candidates after a long day when a boy her own age accepted a cup from her. Frederick was glistening with sweat. It ran in thick lines down his face and dripped from the tips of his black hair, disappearing into the dampness of his filthy shirt. He’d made small talk with her for several minutes, never discovering that she was the king’s daughter. Tanya smiled at herself in the mirror as she remembered meeting the handsome young candidate.
They became friends during breaks in the action and she’d made a point of watching his tryouts, viewing the sword matches through her fingers as he fought against other candidates. The final trial was against her father’s friend, Nicholas, recently named Captain of the Traxx Guard. Afterwards, the announcer called out the names of the men and women who were to be the inaugural members of the Guard. To her delight, Frederick was one of the names called.
He’d sought her out after the ceremony and excitedly asked her to a date along the lake to celebrate. She’d accepted, but almost immediately, someone called her “Princess Tanya” and Frederick became embarrassed to discover that the water girl he’d been talking to was actually the princess. He apologized profusely for his ignorance, so she’d told him the only way he could make it right was to take her on the date he’d promised her.
They’d begun dating exclusively and not long afterwards, they became lovers. She often thought they were ready for the next step in their relationship, a formal proposal of marriage from Frederick, but those thoughts stalled when they met with his staunch commitment to the Guard.
It wasn’t forbidden for members of the Traxx Guard to be married, but Frederick professed to her that he refused marriage while he was an active member of the Guard. He feared that others would think he received special favors from the king as his son-in-law. Instead, he chose to live a simple life in the barracks on The Keep’s first floor so he and Tanya could be close together.
She pulled at the area of the dress that seemed to cut into her midsection. Tanya remembered the seamstress telling her that a flattering look was one that clung tightly around her stomach, but she certainly didn’t think that the woman would make it so tight.
Her pants sat across the back of the chair where she’d left them the night before and she looked longingly at them. She’d had that particular pair for years, receiving them as a gift for her sixteenth birthday, long after her teenage growth spurt. The last several weeks, though, she’d noticed them getting tight around her waist—like the cursed dress—and wondered if the seamstress could remove a few stitches or add little more fabric around the beltline.
Part of her mind told her to just have a new pair made, but she couldn’t justify wasting the fabric that was still good, even after all this time. She wondered why she seemed to be getting thicker. Her diet was the same and she’d been conducting drills with the Guard for almost as long as they’d been an organization, so she should have remained the same size, not getting big—
“Wait a minute,” she muttered to her reflection.
Tanya hurried away from the mirror to her desk and pulled out the little handwritten calendar that she had in the desk. She glanced at the top of the calendar where the words, “111th Year Since The Reset,” were written darkly. She found today, her father’s coronation day, marked with a flower that she’d drawn weeks ago. She began searching each entry for the last day of her menstrual cycle.
She hadn’t thought anything was out of the ordinary. She certainly didn’t feel any different; she’d just been busy with her weapons drills and helping to oversee the coronation. Her finger trailed along the neat little boxes that she’d drawn and was surprised when she had to flip past two pages. It had been more than two months since the end of her last cycle.
“Oh shit…”
FOUR
A metal cup banged against Varan’s cell door. He raised his head off the straw mat to see who it was and felt the pressure of last night’s woman on his shoulder.
“Get up, Vengeance. Lucas wants to see you.”
He recognized the cell keeper’s voice as the offender. “What does he want, Cooper?”
The cup banged harshly against the vertical bars. “He wants you to fucking get up, you worthless slave!”
Varan sat up as the nude woman beside him stared wide-eyed at the jailer. “I will kill you if the opportunity arises. You know that, don’t you Coop?”
Cooper laughed. “I’m not worried.” He grabbed his dirty crotch and thrust his chin toward the girl in Varan’s cell. “When you go, I’m going to have a piece of that.”
“Touch her and I don’t care what Lucas says, you will die.”
“You don’t care what Lucas says?” Cooper asked loudly, raising his hands to shoulder level, encouraging an audience. “Do you all hear that? This slave doesn’t care what his owner says.”
He dropped his arms and leaned in close to the bars. “Just because you’re the champion and get your pick of the house women doesn’t mean that you’re above the master’s law, Varan.”
The gladiator stood in anger. No one except his brother and Lucas were allowed to call him by his true name, not even the women who shared his cell with him. It was a reminder of his past that he’d just as soon stayed there.
“What did you call me, Coop?”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?” he asked, taking a step back, even though the impenetrable steel bars separated them.
“You know the rules. Lucas doesn’t allow anyone to call me that. You know what happened to the last dickless asshole who tried…” he trailed off, letting Cooper’s imagination finish the rest. Several years ago, another gladiator had dared to utter his given name as a curse while they cleaned themselves after a fight. He’d torn the man’s testicle off with his bare hands.
He wore the crisscross scars from the jailer’s whip on his back with pride and as a reminder to his fellow slaves that he wasn’t to be taunted. It wasn’t lost on either him or Caleb that the scars looked like the metal tracks that cut through countryside near some of the towns that they traveled through when they went to the various places that the Contest took them. Even though they’d abandoned him to his fate, the Traxx couldn’t leave him in peace.
Cooper cleared his throat, “Well… Um, you know, Vengeance, the boss wants to see you.”
Varan smiled, Good, the jailer can be taught. “Leave her alone, Cooper,” he said as he indicated the woman. “She’s done nothing. Don’t try to take out your anger at me on her.”
The man’s eyes searched up and down her body, “Eh… She’s too skinny anyways. My giant cock would stab straight through her bony back.” He clapped his hands and then rubbed them together. “Put your clothes on, champ. You know the drill.”
The jailer watched him intently as he dressed, making sure that he didn’t stow a weapon in his pockets. Once he was finished, he stuck both hands through an open section in the bars and Cooper placed a rusty pair of old world handcuffs on him before opening the cell door.
Cooper stepped back rapidly, hand on his knife, as Varan walked out of the cage. He locked the woman inside the cell behind them and directed the gladiator to lead the way toward Lucas’ office. He’d been there many times, so he knew the way without needing to be prodded along by the jailer. As the Primus, he enjoyed certain freedoms that the others did not, which included regular visits with his owner to verify that he was properly fed and cared for.
Varan trudged wearily across a corner of the practice field and through the gates of the gladiators’ compound. He needed to piss and wanted to spend more time with the woman before beginning his day of training. What is this early meeting about? he wondered.
The House of Miller’s gladiatorial compound sat in the old world town of Trinity, in the area known as California. The compound itself was a large, odd-shaped field, completely encircled by ten-foot high stone walls. Rusted barbed wire topped the wall, more likely to cause a deadly infection than inflict any dam
age upon someone attempting to scale them. Secured behind the walls was the open training ground, large enough for the gladiators to practice every skill except for horsemanship.
Also within the compound was the gladiators’ home. A large building with several roll-up doors—more than half of which no longer worked—held the cells of the slaves. The men and women that Lucas owned were lucky since there were enough of the small rooms for everyone to have their own space with cinder block walls separating the cells. Varan had been stacked six men deep in rooms the same size with only bars separating them when they traveled to other Contest locations.
Immediately outside of the compound was a two-story building. At one time, it had been the jail, which is where the dormitory’s bars came from. Lucas and his family lived on the old jail’s second floor and Varan had seen the family’s living quarters twice. Normally, it was reserved for the Miller family and their house slaves, but he’d visited Lucas there when the man was bedridden with sickness. The various couches, pillows and blankets seemed odd to Varan, who lived his life either fighting, fucking or sleeping. He couldn’t fathom the uses for the different pieces of furniture since it was just Lucas, his wife and their two children.
The first floor, which Varan had visited several times over the years, held the offices of Lucas’ various business ventures. Aside from owning the small local stadium and providing his own gladiators for the matches all over the region, he also owned several inns and taverns throughout the town of Trinity. He was easily the most influential man in the city.
“Is that animal secure, Cooper?” one of the guards asked as they passed through the compound’s gate and waited for the external gate to be opened. Varan’s nose wrinkled at the man’s fetid breath. He’d been taught from an early age that a man’s teeth were extremely important. They provided him with a way to chew food, aiding in the digestion and absorption of nutrients locked away inside, and the vacant holes left where rotten teeth were pulled or broken away were prone to deadly infections. Most importantly, though, a healthy set of teeth worked well as a last-ditch weapon, born of desperation. He’d seen a man rip out another’s throat with his teeth before; a glorious example of humanity’s resolve to survive at all costs.
“As much as someone like him can be,” Cooper replied. “The boss trains these beasts to kill someone with every conceivable method, though, so I wouldn’t get too close.”
The guard took a step back and Varan snarled at him for effect, causing him to trip over his own feet. He fell away to the guffaws of the other guards at the gate.
“Goddammit, I’ll kill you, you sonofabitch!” he yelled as he drew his sword.
Varan stared defiantly at the guard. Is this how it ends? Some piss ant nothing runs me through and it’s all over? So be it. He stepped back with one foot, raising to the balls of his feet in a fighting stance, totally relaxed and ready to kill the guard if he charged him. He’d been unarmed against an opponent more times than he could remember. He was not afraid. If this was his day to return to Fólkvangr, then he was ready. But he would go out fighting. Týr would banish him to Niflhel to suffer the underworld’s torments forever if he died as a coward.
“You put that away, Greg,” another of the guards, a sergeant Varan realized, told him. “Lucas will torture you for days if you injure the Primus. That man right there—and the rest of the gladiators—are what pay your wages; you’d do best to let him pass. Old Cooper has him locked up tight, no need to worry.”
Varan dropped his handcuffed hands and fell back onto his heels. Today would not be the day to send these men to their deaths. That day was approaching, but their sergeant had earned them a stay of execution. For now.
The outer gate opened and he went through first, Cooper followed, ever watchful that the man would try something to escape. They followed the crumbling sidewalk around to the Miller home, passing through a newer wooden fence, constructed of timbers from the trees in the area. They passed through this barrier unmolested and entered the building.
Two women, sitting at chipped wooden desks, looked up at them when they came through the door. Varan had seen them sitting in the exact spots each time that he’d been summoned to speak with Lucas. He didn’t think the women were slaves—they certainly didn’t report to the slave cells in the compound each night. They must have been workers, hired like the guards, who went home to their families each night.
He tried to determine what it was that they did. They had stacks and stacks of thin rectangular paper that they scribbled notes and tally marks on furiously. It looked like they copied one page to another, not really creating anything, just making work for themselves. The sheets they copied to the clean paper were crumpled or folded and looked as if they’d been out on the road. Maybe they’re Contest announcements, he thought.
Varan remembered his letters from when he was a child, but he’d never been good at them, and hadn’t tried practicing them since the night he was abducted and sold into slavery. He tried to get either of their attention as he marched past, but neither of them paid any attention after the initial reaction to see who’d come into their busy office.
Lucas Miller’s office was beyond the desks, down a hallway protected by two more guards. Cooper talked them through and within seconds they were standing outside of the spacious office, easily the size of four or five cells put together.
“Come in, Vengeance, come in,” his owner called, beckoning him through the doorway. He pushed his chair away from the desk, where he’d been studying those same strange papers that the women out front were preparing and came around to pat him affectionately on the shoulder.
“Are you well, my Primus?”
“Yes, sir,” Varan replied, careful to keep his tone even and bland. Regardless of the fact that Lucas had never beat him, the men who worked for him had, so he was just as guilty as the others in Varan’s eyes.
“Old Cooper here hasn’t been busting your balls too much has he?”
“No, sir. We’re well taken care of in the compound. Thank you for your generosity.”
Lucas nodded his head and Varan became fixated on the rolls of skin around his neck. He unconsciously tensed his abdominal muscles; a man shouldn’t have so much to eat that he becomes fat, as his owner had become.
“Alright. You’re sure there are no concerns?”
Varan thought a moment and then answered, “If I may have the woman who stayed in my cell last night returned to me, I liked her very much.”
“Done. Cooper, make sure that she is locked in Vengeance’s cell each night until he tires of her.” Lucas sat down at his desk and as an afterthought said, “Oh, and Cooper?”
“Yes, sir?”
“None of your people—or you—are allowed to touch the girl. She belongs to Vengeance until I say otherwise. Got it?”
Cooper nodded his head slowly. Varan could tell that the man’s plans to rape the girl just outside of his cell while he watched had been dashed. “Yes, sir. I’ll make sure no one lays a finger on her.”
“Good. We need to keep our champion happy and virile.”
He looked away from the jailer to Varan. “Have a seat, Vengeance. We have a matter of business to discuss.”
“Yes, sir,” the gladiator replied woodenly. This can’t be good.
“I’ve received a letter, signed by the members of the Commerce Guild. It’s also been signed by most of the House owners from the coastal remains.”
Varan clucked his tongue in suspense. The Commerce Guild was the organization that oversaw the fair distribution of supplies to all the remaining towns. They were not opposed to individual wealth–as the opulence of the Miller home indicated–but they did believe in a sense of fairness and ensuring that no town went without having enough food for their residents. He didn’t know how far their influence spread, but he had to assume that everywhere he’d fought had been under the Guild’s purview.
“They have decided that Contest co-champions are not to be allowed,” Lucas stated.<
br />
The floor seemed to drop out from under Varan’s feet. “What does that mean?” he asked, quickly reeling his thoughts back in.
“It means that you’re going to have to fight Chaos. To the death.”
Emotions warred within him. There was no way he could fight his brother in a death match. They’d been through too much together in the past fifteen years to have their world turned upside down. If either of them died in battle protecting each other, then he could accept that fate. To kill one’s own kin was surely a sin that would banish him to Niflhel for eternity.
“Sir, I can’t fight my brother.”
“You will, or I’ll make you!” Lucas bellowed. “You are a slave, Vengeance. I own you…” Miller patted both hands softly on the desk to calm himself before speaking again quietly. “You will do as I tell you.”
Varan didn’t take his eyes off of his owner, but the scrape of boots in the hallway told him that the guards had shifted in the doorway in case there was trouble. “Everything is fine. Leave us,” Lucas ordered.
“I understand your frustration, Vengeance, I do, but—”
“You understand nothing,” Varan shouted back. “My brother is all I have left.”
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and tried to avoid Cooper’s swing, but the chair he sat in was too plush and caught him. The wooden club hit him across the bridge of his nose, causing an explosion of white light in front of his eyes.
“Hold!” Lucas yelled at the jailer, who had the weapon drawn back for another strike.
Varan twisted in his seat to stare daggers into Cooper, imagining the man’s murder in a million ways. Blood poured freely from his nostrils, quickly covering the arm of the chair with the thick fluid.
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