The Yngling

15.

In the early morning sunlight the steward discreetly rang his little bell on the terrace, but Nephthys had already left. Nils looked out the door instead of calling him in. "What do you want?" Nils asked.

"I have been sent to waken you so that you may eat before you go to meet His Holiness."

Nils grinned at him. "I'm awake. Where is the food?"

Calmly, without speaking, the steward turned and left. This morning Nils's bath was cool instead of hot. When he had dressed, the quiet girl who had served him the day before brought a tray of soft-boiled eggs, sweetened porridge, berries and milk. He had hardly finished when he heard the steward's little bell again.

As they walked along the terrace and down the stairs, Nils looked out across the city. There were many orcs on foot in the street, while among the distant tent camps outside the city rose the dust clouds of thousands of mounted men. Movement was in the direction of a large stone structure, of a type unfamiliar to Nils, in an open space at the end of the city's widest street.

Just outside the courtyard a large bronze chariot waited, ornamented with gold and harnessed to four magnificent black horses. In front and behind were elite guards on comparable animals. Nils was directed to sit in the carriage, and after a few minutes Kazi appeared with his two personal guards. He was naked as before, except for jewelled harness and an immense sword and dagger, and rode standing, grim-faced and cold, a huge obscene satyr figure preceded and followed by a roar of orc voices in the street and a great surge of emotion that Nils read as an overwhelming broth of fear, adoration and hopelessness.

The large stone structure was a stadium. The open ground around it had row upon row of hitching posts, where thousands of horses stood in a haze of dust raised by hundreds more being ridden into the area by horse barbarians.

The arena itself was an oval of about forty by seventy meters, encircled by a wall five meters high. Around it rose tier upon tier of seats rapidly filling with armed men. The north-facing side, which held the royal box, was clearly reserved for orcs; the rest of it held horse barbarians. Kazi's throne was on a low pedestal. To each side, slightly ahead and a half-meter lower, were several other upholstered seats, obviously for guests. Only one was occupied, by Nils. Behind Nils and next to him stood Kazi's two personal guards. Others of the elite guard stood around the perimeter of the box.

Near one end of the field was a stone pillar eight or ten meters high, topped by an open platform.

Squatting chained on the platform was a large beast, a troll, deformed, with a great hump on its back and one arm that was only partially developed, ending in a single hooked finger. A man stood beside it.

Kazi looked at it through Nils's eyes, and his question entered Nils's mind without having been verbalized.

"It's a troll," Nils answered. "I was told it's probably a species brought from the stars by the ancients."

"Your teacher was an astute man." Kazi turned his own eyes toward the grotesque. "By nature it's a hunter, broadcasting terror vocally and psionically to confuse its prey. This one comes from inbreeding a voiceless mutant strain, and is only able to echo and amplify emotions that it senses around it. The man beside it is a psi, who directs its attention to the victims in the arena so the spectators can fully enjoy their fear and agony. It's one of the greatest emotional experiences possible to them."

"Can trolls be used as fighters?" Nils asked.

"No. Even from carefully selected breeding stock they proved too stupid, and they terrify the soldiers." Kazi turned and looked steadily at and into Nils. "None of this seems to disturb you. We'll see how you like the exhibitions; there may be hope for you yet."

The seats were nearly full now; only a trickle of men still moved in the aisles. Nils believed nearly all of the men Nephthys had mentioned must be in the stadium. Kazi stood, raising an arm and sending a psi command. Trumpeters at the parapet raised long brass horns and blew, the high, clear note belling loud even in the uppermost seats.

At one end of the arena a gate opened. Four very tall, slender man, almost black, strode onto the field, the gate closing behind them. The troll immediately picked up their emotions-uncertainty, caution, a contained fear. They were naked and unarmed. A single trumpet blew, and a gate opened at the other end of the field. Ten tiny figures trotted out, no larger than children. Each carried a stabbing spear about as long as himself, fastened to his wrist by a chain. The troll's mind turned for a moment to the pygmies and poured out their cold, implacable hatred for the tall persecutors of their race, then picked up the shock of recognition and alarm from the victims.

The pygmies consulted for a moment and then formed a row, trotting toward the tall men, who separated, two running toward each side of the oval. Instantly the pygmy line turned toward two of them. One continued running along the base of the wall. The other turned toward the closed gate, and the line followed him. His fear turned to desperation as he saw himself singled out, and his long legs flashed as he tried to run around them. The crowd experienced his dismay as he was cut off, and he stopped, spun, doubled back and stopped again. Then he took several driving steps directly toward the pygmies and hurdled high, clearing the nearest by a meter, but a broad blade stabbed upward and the flash of shock and terror almost drowned out the flame of pain in his groin and lower abdomen.

The next tall black that the pygmies singled out was a different cut of man. Cornered, he feinted, drawing a thrust from the nearest pygmy. With an explosion of savage joy he grabbed the shaft of the spear, spun, and jerked the tiny man off his feet, snapping the chain. But he was armed too late. Another spear sliced across the back of his ribs and sank into his upper arm. His surge of rage and frustration filled the stadium as he spun again, slashing and stabbing, and went down beneath a flurry of thrusts.

During the melee another of the tall blacks had rushed into the rear of the pygmies, striking with a calloused foot driven by a long sinewy thigh, killing pouring from him, and when he went down, he had broken two small necks.

The remaining tall man stood near the center of the arena, watching the five surviving pygmies trot toward him. His mind was fogged with fear, unable to function. For a moment the troll was tuned again to the hunters, and the crowd sensed that they intended to play with the last victim. He broke then and ran toward the wall. His leap upward was a prodigy of strength, but his fingers found only smooth stone. He fell to the sand and knelt with his forearms across his face, paralyzed. The pygmies killed him quickly in disgust, and the crowd roared.

A gate opened, and after a moment's hesitation they trotted out of sight, while a cart rolled across the sand and the bodies were thrown into it. Meanwhile, two men with spades dug a hole in the middle of the arena.

When the cart had left, the trumpets blew again. A horse walked into the arena dragging a post. Spiked to it and braced were two cross pieces, a large X with a man spread-eagled on it, robust and hairy. The post was hoisted, dropped into the hole and tamped into place.

"An officer of mine," Kazi commented, "with a mind given to disloyal fantasies."

The man hung there in the bright sunshine, and his amplified emotion was a roiling cloud of hate that filled the stadium. A single trumpet sounded and two men walked onto the sand, followed by two others with a small chest fitted with carrying poles. They came from the gate that the victim faced, and the crowd felt his grim recognition and the defiance and determination that followed.

The two men were artists, and defiance and hatred were quickly displaced. At informal affairs they might have made him last for hours, for he had a constitution like a bull, but now they had a schedule to keep, and their purpose was a maximum of agony and emotional degradation while time trickled in tiny white grains through the narrow waist of their glass.

When the sand was cleared again, four robed and hooded figures were led out by a soldier. Two men with megaphones followed.

"They are members of a religious sect," Kazi's mind remarked to Nils, "with very strong superstitions and taboos. This will appeal especially to my orcs."

Each man with a megaphone explained in two languages what would happen. At each recitation some part of the crowd burst into coarse laughter. The emotional pickup indicated that the women understood the last language. The crowd waited expectantly and again the single trumpet blew. Kazi leaned forward intently.

The initial flood of shock and loathing that the troll had echoed dropped to a low wash of almost unbearable fascination and dread that gripped the crowd for slow moments, swelling gradually and holding them silent. Then their minds were torn by pain and shrill terror. The guard beside Nils was staring forward, oblivious to anything but the spectacle, his sword arm bent rigidly, his knuckles tight. Nils rose, thrusting back hard with an elbow into the man's groin as he turned, grabbing the sword wrist with steel fingers. He tore the sword from the man's agony-loosened grip and thrust it into the guard on the step behind him. The disarmed guard beside him, though half-doubled and gasping with pain, wrapped burly arms around Nils's waist and lunged forward, throwing him against the throne pedestal.

In that moment Kazi became aware and turned. In a shock of surprised fear he struck wildly but powerfully with a huge fist. A metallic taste, and blackness, filled Nils's head as he fell sideways and lay still.

Nils awoke from the wetness of a pail of water thrown on him. His hands were tied behind him, and the side of his aching face lay on packed sand foul with the smell of animal urine. He heard the muffled sound of trumpets, and rough hands pulled him upright to send him stumbling through a gate into the dazzling brightness of the arena. Bars closed behind him and a voice growled in Anglic to back up to them so that his bonds could be cut. He did. A short sword was tossed between the bars and he picked it up. Glancing back, he saw three bowmen standing behind the gate with arrows nocked on sinews.

His loose pantaloons and robe were gone. Moving out of line with the gate, Nils stayed close to the wall, waiting. The troll found only a high calm to echo, and the crowd, after a moment, began to murmur in puzzlement. A single trumpet blew.

Four great wild dogs came through the opposite gate. They stood for a moment, dazzled and confused by the bright sunlight and the chaos of sounds and smells, then saw him and approached at a tentative trot.

Nils stood relaxed and waiting, and the dogs stopped a dozen meters away. They were hungry but also curious and wary, for they had never encountered a man who acted like this one. The largest sat down on the sand, facing Nils, tongue lolling, and the crowd began to grumble. The dogs looked up toward the noise and anger, forgetting for a moment the curiosity on the sand before them. Things began to land around them-iron knuckles, knives, even helmets. Suddenly the leader stood, teeth bared, hackles raised, looking up into the stands. From behind the bars arrows hummed, striking deeply, and the beasts lay jerking or dead, making bloody patches on the sand.

Then nothing. The sun burned down. Nils waited silently and at ease while the stands murmured. Somewhere someone was improvising. At length a single trumpet blew again, and a gate opened. A male lion trotted out, in his prime and unfed, and like the dogs stood dazzled for a moment. His gaze settled on the dead dogs, perhaps drawn there by the smell of blood, and then moved to the solitary man. Nils touched its mind and found hunger and anger. It stood for a moment, tail switching from side to side, then stalked slowly across the sand. Still the troll echoed no fear, and the crowd watched fascinated. Thirty meters away the lion stopped for a long moment, tail lashing now, staring at the man before it, then suddenly rushed forward with shocking speed. Nils crouched, not knowing whether it would spring or simply charge into him. At the last instant he threw himself sideways, twisting and striking as he fell away. The lion struck the wall and turned, snarling, a wound pouring blood from the side of its neck, and a cheer arose from the stands.

Nils had landed in a crouch, but had barely set himself when the lion moved toward him again, at close quarters now, boxing at him with a huge and deadly paw. It was a feint so quick that Nils did not have time to be drawn out before the animal lunged at him. Nils sprang back, striking again, the sword laying back the flesh of the lion's cheek and jaw so that for an instant it recoiled, and Nils attacked, striking again and again in an astonishing fury that stunned the stands. The lion fell to its side with a broken sword in its skull, its sinewy body and hindquarters flexing and jerking, while Nils's arm chopped twice more with a bladeless hilt.

He stood then, chest heaving and sweat dripping from the charge of energy that had surged through him, stunned by the simple fact of life, while the stands came apart with noise. He realized that he was not even scratched, and stood calmly again, the tremor fading from his hands and knees, waiting weaponless for what would come next.

He didn't wait long. When the third trumpet blew, a narrow gate opened and an orc officer entered the arena. Tall, muscular, he strode several paces out onto the sand, then stood grinning around at the stands and brandishing his sword overhead. From the orcs there rose a storm of cheers and whistles that drowned out the murmurs and scattered hoots from the seats on the other side. The troll focused its psi sense on the mind of the sinewy, sun-bronzed orc, broadcasting the sadistic anticipation it found there. Then it gave its attention to Nils, where it found only watchfulness. The orc was still fifteen meters away when a barbarian in the stands threw a long curved sword at Nils's feet. He pounced on it and, as quickly as the lion, charged at the startled officer. For a moment steel clashed against steel while the crowd roared. But only for a moment. Nils's blade sliced through neck and chest, shearing ribs like brittle sticks, the force of the blow driving the man to his knees and carrying Nils off-balance so that he staggered and caught himself on one hand in the blood-slimed sand. He looked at it and arose, grim and fearsome, above the nearly bisected corpse.

And the cheers died. Kazi stood dark and terrible in his box, holding the troll's mind with his like a club-buffeting the crowd with his rage until they huddled cold with shock and fear… orc and barbarian alike. He turned to Nils then, and in that instant Nils struck with his own mind, through the lens of the troll, a shaft of pure deadliness that he had not known he had, so that Kazi staggered back and fell, consciousness suddenly blacked out by the overload.

Men lay sprawled against each other in the stands or sat slumped, stupefied. Nils sprinted to the gate and reached a brawny forearm between two bars to grasp and turned the heavy bolt latch. He stepped across the tangle of archers while a burly orc sat slumped against a wall, staring dully at him. Nils traded sheathless sword for the orc's harness and weapons. Sensing the return of awareness in the man he ran him through, then loped across the chamber and up a ramp. The unlocked gate at its end yielded easily to his pull and he was in a concrete chute that led into the open. He loped up that and climbed a gate. A few horse barbarians were outside, none near, moving uncertainly through the rows of horses or staring up at the stands. Nils could sense the slow return of consciousness behind him. Dropping to the dusty ground, he sauntered casually in among the nervous stamping horses, careful to avoid being kicked.

Near the outer edge of the horse park he chose a powerful stallion whose great haunches would not tire quickly under his weight. Standing before it, he tuned to its simple, nervous mind, holding its bridle and stroking its velvety nose until it stood calmly, eyes on him and ears forward. Then he stepped beside it, reached for the stirrup with a foot, and hoisted himself easily into the saddle.

It guided much like a Swedish pony, but it was much more-the mount of a chief of horse barbarians-and Nils urged it into an easy trot down a broad, dusty lane separating the camps of two Turkish tribes.