131 Days [Book 1]

by Keith C. Blackmore

  Grey Beard stood up, a storm cloud rising amongst thick hills. Halm smirked. He knew bare bones when he fastened onto them, and he had riled these men but good.

  “You have a problem,” Grey Beard said, suppressed anger in his voice. “I know you. I watched you fight just yesterday. I know you very well. And with that gut and that ugly mouth, it won’t be much trouble for me to find out your name. And when I do—”

  “Halm of Zhiberia,” Halm blurted with a genuine chuckle. “And here I am.”

  He threw his arms wide.

  Goll suddenly appeared on his right and edged around him, a dark look on his features, yet curious as to what was going on.

  “Halm of Zhiberia.” Grey Beard cackled, throwing back his head. “That’s right, now I remember. You’re Zhiberian. You Zhiberians know all about tonguing asses. And here I was almost getting annoyed with you. You there, cripple. Why don’t you place your animal on a leash? Eh? And drag him back to the forest you found him in.”

  Goll said nothing, but his scowl was a step away from what Halm thought was something very dangerous.

  “Nothing to say? Your boy speaks for you?”

  Goll kept silent, releasing his pent-up air in a huff. With it, his expression relaxed.

  “Ah, the intelligent one,” Grey Beard nodded. “I’ll be watching for you. It’ll cost you more than a gold coin to avert my eye elsewhere. I’m not as easy to persuade as that one you paid just a moment ago.”

  Ignoring him, Goll limped to a nearby bench and sat on it. Once comfortable, he gazed at Grey Beard and then back to Halm as if wondering how far this exchange was going to go.

  Halm wondered the same thing. Then he noticed the officials standing in their respective doorways with their pensive expressions. Grey Beard abruptly saw them as well and shook his head. He wagged a finger at Goll, quietly appreciating the man’s tact and understanding him for the first time.

  “You are the smart one,” Grey Beard said in a sly tone and looked back and forth between the two. “I’ll keep an eye on you both. Especially you, Zhiberian.”

  “I’ll guard my ass.” Halm smiled back with a flick of his chin. With that, he showed them his broad back and stepped in front of Goll. Confident he couldn’t be seen, Halm lapsed into an expression of amazement and rolled his eyes.

  Goll showed no indication of having noticed.

  And together, they waited in the simmering silence of the room, broken once and again by the soft murmurs and giggling of Grey Beard and his men.

  “Well?” Halm asked Goll softly.

  “We wait.” The Kree stared off at a copper wall.

  Halm paused for more, and when it didn’t come, he sat on a bench with his back to the others and resigned himself to getting comfortable. Grey Beard and his boys continued muttering, deep mewlings that Halm found as evil sounding as axe heads being dragged over quarried stone.

  *

  Much later, an official appeared and called the four men. They rose and entered the room just ahead of them, disappearing behind a set of double doors. Broken from his trance of boredom, Halm glanced over his shoulder just as the doors were closing. As soon as the men were gone, he leaned towards Goll.

  “Those were gladiators.”

  “I saw that.”

  “A right proper unpleasant bunch at that.”

  Goll’s head dipped to one shoulder in an I suppose so reply.

  “Why didn’t you say anything back there?” Halm asked.

  “And add more wood to the fire?” Goll challenged. “Do you really want to be forever looking over your back from this day forth? These are my first games, but even I’ve heard stories of house fighters hunting down Free Trained outside of the Pit and pounding them into the dirt. I’d say you might have to be careful from here on.”

  Halm reflected on that. It was just his nature to throw back insults and give as good as he got or at least to try his damnedest to piss off the offenders. “I wasn’t about to hold my tongue and say nothing to that brazen topper. Not here. And not with him.”

  “Well, you got his attention,” Goll assured him. “I’m pretty certain I’m fine—being seen as a cripple and all. But I think you are well and truly fish hooked. I mean truly fish hooked. No sense in me being brutalized as well. Or outright killed.”

  Halm became pensive, thinking on the three brutes accompanying Grey Beard. “Well… perhaps.”

  Another head dip from Goll. Just perhaps?

  They lapsed into silence then and waited some more.

  “Why are you fighting in these games?” Goll eventually asked him, his voice respectful of the place they were in.

  Halm had been sizing up the pictures on the wall, the lines almost indistinct from where he sat. “Coin.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Well… no. Not really. Was always good with a blade. Didn’t take to anything else. Every season, I could count on fighting in one or three matches. Win some gold. Not good enough to carry on through. But I’d win enough to get me over to something else. Or win enough to get me through to the next season of fights. I’d train here and there, practice my swing and shield work on wooden posts or whatever. If I got put out early, I’d get into a bit of mercenary business but stay away from wars. I was always able to find work body-guarding merchants. That sort of thing.”

  Halm stopped then and thought.

  “Not counting on getting old is what I mean.”

  In the copper gleam of the room, Goll’s profile tightened.

  “Why did you enter?” Halm asked.

  “To win,” the Kree replied simply, yet all business. “All of it.”

  The stark truth of the answer made Halm shift uncomfortably.

  Time dragged then, until the perfumed air from the burning incense became much too sweet and made Halm clear his throat or cough every so often. Officials sometimes appeared in doorways and crossed the floor, only to vanish behind other doors. Sometimes, the balding man appeared and eyed them as if they were a nuisance. The others did not, or at least they had the sense to ignore the two fighters.

  They sat and waited. Halm continued his dreary appraisal of the pictures on the walls while Goll hardly moved at all.

  Finally, the double doors before them clicked and opened, and the four men walked out. Grey Beard looked straight at Goll and then Halm. To the Zhiberian, he lifted a finger to his eye and tapped it, smiling tightly and giving him a wink. That one gesture rankled Halm, and he scowled at the lot as they walked by him. If Halm and Goll had sat any closer to the outside of the benches, no doubt a kick or a shove would have been delivered by one or all of the four men. As it was, dirty looks flashed in their direction, and the glare of the one-eyed guard in particular needled Halm. An unspoken threat if ever the Zhiberian had seen one.

  They walked past and exited the building.

  “Pricks,” Halm said under his breath.

  “I agree,” Goll threw in.

  “That one-eyed bastard gave me the look.”

  “Did he?”

  “Aye that. Have to be on the watch for him now.”

  “Well, no surprise there. Not after the words from earlier.”

  “No. Suppose not.”

  There was nothing else to talk about from then on as Halm chewed on the inside of his mouth and saw Grey Beard’s smiling face and the one-eyed fighter in his mind’s eye. He reluctantly admitted he might have a problem there.

  “How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” Halm whispered.

  “Until they see us?”

  “Did you really slip a coin to that topper?”

  Goll nodded.

  “That might not work.”

  “I think it will.” Goll's hands strayed to his crutches. “Because if it doesn’t, we’ll find that very same man who took my money and get it back. What do you say to that?”

  It was something Halm could understand. “I can help with that.”

  “Good.”

  Halm hoped they would see the Chamber
members soon. Pressure was building in his bladder, and there were fights to make money off.

  He couldn’t ignore either for long.

  7

  Men called him Sapo, which in Sunjan, meant “hill.” He didn’t think it a good name but recognized it as readily as his real name these days. He’d grown up swinging an axe and lugging fallen timbers over his shoulder. As he grew, the bigger the tree trunks he carried and the more power he got behind his axe. Somewhere along the expanding border of Nordun, he got into a fight with a lone Nordish warrior and split open his head with one swipe of his axe. Delighted with the kill of an invader, he ran home to inform his parents, only to find they had already been killed by three other Nordish soldiers. What happened after that was something he could no longer exactly recall, but he remembered coming out of a frenzy and standing amongst the hacked and unmoving bodies of the Nords.

  He was sixteen at the time.

  He traded in his wood axe for one properly suited for battle. His frame grew and expanded, and more muscle clung to his bones. He found work as a private killer of animals and men alike for Sunja’s merchants, realizing early on that fighting the Nords, while satisfying, wouldn’t be as profitable. A mercenary captain by the name of Bassu took him under his wing for a while, training him in the basics of sword and axe fighting, until an arrow from a Dezer horseman took his life. Seeing as the wilds surrounding Sunja could be an unpredictable place at best, yet not wanting to give up the skills he was sharpening, he had decided to do something a little more controlled.

  Now twenty, he entered his first season in the games as a Free Trained. Standing before the portcullis and hearing the swelling energy of the crowd above, he was aware of the gatekeeper nearby but paid the old man little attention. Slabs of plate armor hung off his person. Heavy armor, but he wore it just as easily as a man wearing leather. His arms were bare as he couldn’t find anything to cover them other than the spiked metal gauntlets, and those only came halfway down his forearms. His biceps were also mostly bare except for leather tiles worn as short sleeves that hung off his shoulders and protected only the upper part. His breathing sounded like the gasp of bellows, and he stared out at the world through a helmet that protected his cheeks and the rest of his head but left his mouth, nose, and eyes uncovered in a T.

  He thought of his dying parents and just about any bad thing that had ever happened to him. Hate. Fear. Anger. Faces of men and women who had been stupid enough to challenge or taunt him. Sometimes, the drunkest people sought to fight him for no other reason than he was the biggest around at the time. The anger welled up inside him, bursting from a nugget deep inside, and powered his limbs until his very chest seemed to burst with it.

  He heard the Orator call his name, and the portcullis opened to a slow cadence, sunlight dappling his mighty form.

  Gripping his battle axe, the enraged Sapo rushed up the steps and outside, seeking to smash whoever was before him.

  His fingers flexed on his broadsword, and he rolled the shoulder and arm carrying his shield. Vuille Ghor took a deep, calming breath and opened his mouth as wide as possible, feeling his jaw pop. Tall and muscular, with a deep chest and meaty shoulders, he carried the armor like a second skin and didn’t feel the pot helm at all. It was his third season in the games, and he hoped to go farther than last year. Last year, he’d only made it to the second round when he was knocked out and spared by a club-wielding countryman from Northern Sunja, somewhere on the border with Marrn. A troll hunter by profession, Vuille had the opinion that his trade was becoming increasingly dangerous. There weren’t too many men who wanted to see a troll these days, let alone hunt one down and slay it. It was work for Vuille, something he’d spent four years doing in between fighting in the Pit. The money was better in the games as he could wager on himself in addition to any gold won, and he was beginning to prefer seeing who he fought on open sands instead of dark, unknown terrain of any type, where a troll’s claw might take one’s head off in one quick swipe.

  With his group of hunters, he’d killed six trolls total. He didn’t fear the beasts, but it was wise to maintain a healthy dose of respect. The monsters were huge, towering over men, and immensely powerful. In the arena, he’d run up a record of five victories and three losses. The losses didn’t bother him, but they had prevented him from advancing further in the tournament and thus earning more money. Gold was everything to him. To his family. His wife wanted him home more often, becoming increasingly worried about him risking his life in the troll-hunting trade. The games didn’t suit her tastes either, but as Vuille reasoned, at least he could plead mercy with a pit fighter. His two daughters wanted him home as well. Only four and three, they were as pretty as their mother, and Vuille adored them. All he needed was perhaps two more seasons in the games and at the hunting. He’d have enough then to purchase a parcel of farmland. Thereafter, he intended to switch from trolls to something a little more manageable. Wild boars or rabbits perhaps. If times became tough, he might be persuaded to do a little bounty hunting for the occasional escaped prisoner.

  He just needed two more seasons and the potential gold that came with it.

  As the portcullis came up, Vuille looked up and saw blue framed in a stone archway at the end of the white tunnel. The Orator cried out his name, and he inspected his shiny mail shirt and tapped his pot helm with his sword. As always, before any fight or confrontation with a troll, he took a deep breath, wiping away any fear as effectively as a rag dusting off a tabletop. After years of hunting down trolls, not much bothered him anymore.

  His thoughts on cutting down whoever opposed him on the arena sands, Vuille Ghor strode towards the light.

  The sound of the crowds raked over him like beach rocks rattled by a retreating surf. He didn’t look at the people but listened for the order to begin while sizing up the brute across the way from him. Vuille saw a man the height of himself but larger. Plate armor covered most of his body, with the exception of parts of his arms. Greaves protected his legs. The battle axe was different, however. Not many used the heavy weapon. And Vuille could see that the man’s gauntlets were spiked. He’d have to be wary of those.

  The thing that caught Vuille’s attention was the shaking of his opponent. The pit fighter quivered in place, head trembling, shoulders heaving. He was even stomping on the sands like a bull about to charge. The crowds took notice as well and cheered. They sensed blood in the air.

  Vuille sensed it too. He’d left the wilds and hunting trolls only to find one in the arena. Bright Seddon obviously had a plan, but Vuille had no idea what it might be.

  “Let the match… begin!”

  Vuille brought up his sword and shield, settling into a guard position as he moved forwards across the sands. The one called Sapo came head on, walking briskly and soon reaching the middle of the arena. Some trainers urged their fighters to take the middle ground quickly, in order to maintain a wide range of movement from the centre and to prevent their foes from trapping them against a wall.

  Sapo broke into a jog now. The crowd’s cheers grew louder. Vuille shook his head. A troll indeed. Armoured and swinging an axe. Seddon above. He got behind his shield and tensed to move, already anticipating cutting the legs out from the oncoming brute.

  The last few feet separating them, Sapo roared and charged, sweeping his axe up over his shoulder.

  But Vuille wasn’t standing in the same place.

  With practiced ease, the troll hunter stepped out of the way of the oncoming mass. With deadly intent, he sliced his sword across both knees of Sapo, feeling the clang of metal on metal. Vuille spun as he felt his blade rasp across the greaves, knowing he’d missed.

  What he didn’t expect was Sapo’s speed.

  Vuille saw the battle axe, blurred and double bladed, slicing for his head. He ducked reflexively, but Sapo’s fist slammed into his head, torqueing it to the left and bringing black motes before his eyes. Sapo bellowed and thrust with the head of his axe, punching the off-balanced Vuille
square in the chest and knocking him to the ground.

  After that, nothing really mattered.

  The one called Sapo hacked at the fallen Vuille and the crumpled metal of his helm, squashing the flesh still inside, all to the delight of the watching crowds. Grunting as if unhinged, Sapo continued hewing at the body in bloody arcs. A sword arm was taken off above the elbow. A foot jumped into the air. Then a leg. The head sprang from the man’s shoulders with one mighty chop after Sapo realized he hadn’t completed the job the first time around. Three startling strikes to the armoured torso of Vuille mashed the dead pit fighter into the sands. Only then did Sapo step back from his work and spread his arms in a V above his head. A scream of unbridled fury exploded from the man’s throat, stabbing through the noise made by the onlookers. Men and women applauded in awe of the short but blood-drenched spectacle.

  Then, realizing there was no one to fight, Sapo caught his axe mid-shaft and marched back to the opening portcullis, leaving the people marveling over the almost elemental power the man possessed. The storm that was Sapo appeared, killed his opponent, and having done that, wanted out of the Pit as soon as possible.

  It was over much too quickly. But only after Sapo disappeared did the crowds wish for more.

  High above it all, the Orator approved.

  The day had started out piss poor, but it was shaping up nicely all the same.

  8

  After winning his fight, Pig Knot went and unloaded his weapons and armor at the feet of the quartermaster, either letting items drop or stripping them off as if they were diseased. He didn’t impress the quartermaster, who took the equipment with a frown. Pig Knot knew he couldn’t have seen the match, so he just believed the man was being a dog blossom. Pig Knot wanted nothing more to do with the Pit and only wanted to be free of it. Fighting was over for him. There were better things for him to do.