The Darkness Before the Dawn

Chapter Ten

The fire had been put out by the time the soldiers dragged Jedra and Kayan back into the compound. The woman who had captured them had made Jedra walk until he collapsed from the pain shooting through his leg, then she had slung his arms over her shoulders and carried him the rest of the way, his toes dragging in the dirt behind her. She dumped him on the ground in front of the demolished gladiators' quarters and directed the soldiers who had been carrying Kayan to drop her there, too.

Two of the psionicists were still there, one of the women and one of the older men, and Jedra immediately felt their minds invading his own. He tried to fight them off, but without Kayan he was no match for them. They crushed his shield without pausing and swept through his unguarded psyche like an invading army. Jedra saw and felt images from his life flashing past as they triggered his memories, searching for his identity and his purpose in attacking them. Finally, when they were satisfied that they'd learned enough, they retreated, putting him to sleep on their way out much the way someone might blow out a candle upon leaving a room.

He woke again to a kick in the ribs. Rough hands hauled him erect before he could react, and he stood blinking in the sudden daylight, balancing on his one good leg while he tried to ignore the pain lancing through his right. It was a little better than he'd remembered it; evidently someone had done some healing work on it during the night, but they hadn't finished the job. When his eyes focused, he saw a well-dressed nobleman of about fifty years standing before him, his gray hair still wet from his morning bath. He was flanked by two soldiers and a psionicist on either side of him. The psionicists were different ones from the four Jedra had fought last night; these were both middle-aged women. They hadn't made any hostile moves yet, but Jedra could feel their presence hovering near him, ready in case he tried anything. His danger sense also warned him of a threat from behind, but the soldier holding him had one hand around his neck so he couldn't turn his head to see who or what it was.

The noble spoke in a nasal, but still haughty, voice. "I suppose congratulations are in order. Kitarak did manage to escape in all the confusion. Fortunately, you didn't make it away yourselves, so we'll consider it a fair trade." He didn't wait for a response, but went right on to say, "My first impulse when we caught you was to have you beheaded a quarter inch at a time, but I've decided against that. You do seem somewhat resourceful, and I hate to waste anything valuable. I certainly hope you make good gladiators, though, because you just robbed me of a champion, and you're going to replace him whether you can fight or not."

"Gladiators?" Jedra croaked, his mouth dry.

"Yes, gladiators. Your training will begin immediately, and this will be your master." The noble nodded to someone behind Jedra, and the soldiers holding him and Kayan loosened their grip so they could turn around to see who it was.

Jedra recognized the swarthy, musclebound elf the moment he saw him. "Sahalik!" he exclaimed, his voice rising to a squeak.

Kayan's eyes were wide with shock or terror or both.

"Oh, you already know each other?" the noble asked. "Wonderful. That will make things move along even faster, I'm sure. Sahalik, I leave them in your hands." He turned away and walked toward the soot-blackened mansion, his soldiers following him.

The psionicists stayed behind, as did the two soldiers holding Kayan and Jedra. And of course, Sahalik. The big elf grinned his gap-toothed grin and clapped his meaty hands on his new gladiators' shoulders. "We might as well get started," he said gleefully. "If you're going to replace Kitarak, you've got a battle to fight in six days."

The first "practice" session was every bit as brutal as Jedra had expected it to be. There was no pretense of instruction; while the psionicists kept him from using any of his mental powers against his trainer, Sahalik merely beat Jedra senseless, pummeling the young half-elf with his fists until he could no longer stand, then kicking him in the ribs, back, head, and groin until Jedra had curled into a tight ball of pain. The elf warrior was an expert; he didn't break any bones, but he left no muscle unbruised. Even so, as soldiers dragged Jedra from the practice field, he found strength enough to say with his bloody tongue and lips, "If you touch Kayan, I'll rip your heart out with my bare hands."

Sahalik laughed. "She is mine to do with as I please, half-breed. But I'm not interested in your woman. I've got better ways to spend my time now." He waved an arm toward the two other gladiators who had been locked up with Kitarak, who were now helping rebuild their quarters, and Jedra saw the elf woman stop work and wave back at him. She was tall, with light skin, long blond hair, and slender arms and legs. She was no doubt the model of beauty among elves, but Jedra thought she looked like a sun-bleached stick.

Sahalik called out to her, "Shani, come here." While she laid down her tools and trotted over to the practice field, Sahalik said to Jedra, "You need not worry about me. Shani will train Kayan."

Sure enough, as the soldiers dragged Jedra off the field and the psionicists began to heal his wounds for the next session, he watched the elf woman batter Kayan the same way Sahalik had beaten him. Kayan got in a few good licks of her own, bloodying Shani's nose with one lucky punch, but Shani soon got the better of her. It wasn't long before the soldiers dragged Kayan over to the edge of the field and laid her on her back beside Jedra.

He was just on the edge of blacking out from the pain. The noble's psionicists were experts at healing the damage to his body without dulling his senses first, so he felt the agony of every injury again as they repaired it, but they were also expert at keeping him from escaping into unconsciousness. He wondered if they would allow him to mindspeak with Kayan. Maybe if he tried they would knock him out.

Are you all right? he sent.

Fine, she sent back, the sarcasm dripping from the single word. But I'd be a lot better if you hadn't bungled our escape.

Me? he said, nearly forgetting his pain in his surprise. I didn't bungle our escape. You wouldn't let me try until it was too late. Oh, so it's my fault we were captured?

The psionicists chose that moment to clamp down on their exchange. Jedra felt their shield fill his mind like water filling a glass, forcing out any other contact. "Let me speak," he said aloud.

One of the psionicists, the older of the two women, said, "You can talk all you want to out loud, but you'll limit your use of psionics to the battlefield. We won't have you plotting an escape right under our noses."

So, they hadn't heard his and Kayan's exchange; they had only sensed that they were mindspeaking. Kitarak's training had evidently paid off in that respect, at least; they weren't broadcasting for all to hear anymore. That was something to remember for later, if they ever did find a chance to plan an escape.

Kayan mumbled between puffed, bleeding lips, "You mean I could have used psionics against that elf bitch?"

The woman laughed. "No, we wouldn't have let you do that, not in practice. But use everything you've got when you fight in the arena. There's only one prize for second place in the games."

She looked like a kindly mother giving her daughter a good piece of advice, and her cheery tone of voice added to the illusion, but she was talking about death. And Jedra and Kayan were both still in pain-pain the psionicists could have masked with a thought.

"How can you do this to people?" he gasped. "You've been in our minds. You know what it feels like."

"Yes, we do," the younger psionicist said. "And now so do you. You know how much pain you can take and still function. That's the most important lesson any gladiator can learn. It will keep you from giving up when you could still fight on."

"Great," Jedra said. "Now I know, so could you please make it go away?"

The younger one shook her head. "No. You need to know how long you can stand it."

That, it turned out, would be for the rest of his life, or so it seemed. For the next three days Jedra was in constant pain, from his partially healed leg to the bruises that Sahalik kept fresh during each practice session.

There were three sessions per day, some with weapons and some with bare hands, and during each one the burly elf did everything he could to humiliate Jedra as well as beat him senseless. When they fought with blunted wooden swords Sahalik slid around behind him and spanked him with the flat of his blade, and when they fought with spears Sahalik tripped him up and poked at him like a curious boy pokes with a stick at a dead animal.

"You're pathetic," the elf told him during one practice when they were using clubs. "You couldn't fight a one-legged blind man with one arm tied behind his back."

"I don't want to fight a one-legged blind man," Jedra gasped, his breath having momentarily fled from an attack to the solar plexus. "I don't want to fight anybody!"

"No, I don't suppose you do," Sahalik said, swinging his club almost casually at Jedra's head. Jedra ducked, but not soon enough to keep Sahalik's blow from grazing his scalp and leaving another bruise. "You are a coward. That's too bad, because you're going to have to fight anyway, and it's always easier when you enjoy it."

A few yards away, Kayan shouted in pain as the elf woman, Shani, hit her just as badly.

"Enjoy it?" Jedra demanded angrily. "How can anybody enjoy causing someone else pain?" Sweat ran into his eyes, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"Oh, that's easy. The same way you enjoyed making a fool out of me in front of my tribe," Sahalik said. He swung his club at Jedra again, and though Jedra blocked the blow-no, parried it, he reminded himself-the vibration in the wood made his hand go suddenly numb.

"I didn't enjoy making a fool of you," Jedra said. "I was trying to keep you from killing me, that's all."

"By humiliating me instead," Sahalik said, knocking Jedra's club from his hand. "You and your woman. You must have gotten quite a laugh when I fled from my own tent."

Jedra remembered the tension of that night, and the tribe's fear and anger when Sahalik didn't return the next morning. Nobody had laughed. And if Sahalik didn't know that...

"You didn't go back," Jedra said incredulously, not even reaching for his club. "You were afraid they'd laugh at you, so you just left the whole tribe to fend for themselves."

Sahalik didn't answer him. He swung his club at Jedra's legs, but Jedra saw it coming and jumped back.

"You idiot!" he shouted. "They needed you. You were going to be their next chief! And you abandoned them because you were afraid they'd laugh at you? Do you know what happened after you left?"

"They were attacked by a cloud ray." Jedra didn't mention who had called it down on them. He danced around admitting that just as he'd danced away from Sahalik's club. "Kayan and I fought it off," he said, "but one of your warriors was nearly killed and practically everything the tribe owned was destroyed. When we left them, they looked worse than that caravan you sacked." "You lie," Sahalik said, swinging for Jedra's head again, but this time Jedra ducked fast enough. He picked up his own club while he was down and brought it up between Sahalik's legs. The elf howled and jumped back, and Jedra swung again, hitting him a solid blow in his left side.

Jedra didn't know what had happened to him, only that the elf had made him angrier than he'd been in months. Physical pain hadn't driven him to fight back, but Sahalik's hypocrisy and arrogance had finally done the trick. He flailed away on his tormentor with his club, beating him on his legs and chest and even his back as the elf twisted away from his blows, and all the while he shouted, "You call me a coward? You're the coward. You're afraid of laughter." He brought his club down against the elf's left leg with his last shout, and he heard the sharp crack of the leg bone breaking.

Instantly, Jedra felt himself gripped by invisible hands. His club flew away, tumbling end over end across the practice field, and the dark presence of the psionic guards filled his mind. Sahalik sat down heavily and clutched at his leg, then he tilted his head back and screamed in rage and pain. Jedra expected the elf to get back up and batter his head to a pulp now that the psionicists held him immobile, but instead the elf motioned for them to let Jedra go. He looked up at Jedra while he waited for them to come heal his injury, and he said through clenched teeth, "I think there may be some fight in you after all. Good. If you remember what that felt like when you fight your first real battle, you may even survive it."

"I don't want to fight," Jedra told him again.

"Too bad," Sahalik said, "because you're going to in three days."

That night, Kayan whispered to him from her bunk in their newly rebuilt quarters, "That was stupid. Now he'll just beat you even harder." It was the first time she had spoken to him on her own initiative since they'd been captured. They practiced separately by day, and on their previous nights, when she and Jedra might have at least taken some comfort from snuggling close to each other, she had preferred to sulk alone on her bunk, ignoring him.

Now he wasn't sure which was worse, but he said, "It doesn't matter. We'll be dead soon enough anyway."

"Not if I have anything to do with it we won't," she answered. "If we can use psionics in the arena, we'll win against anything they throw at us."

"Unless we have to fight other psionicists," Jedra said.

"We'll win against them, too."

"Yeah, that's what you said when we went up against these guys." Jedra nodded toward the psionicists who guarded them-just two, rather than the four that had been required to hold Kitarak. It didn't take all four to suppress their partially trained abilities; as long as they kept Jedra and Kayan from merging, two could handle them easily. It was a clear lesson to the would-be escapees: Sheer power didn't matter nearly as much as the ability to control it.

The psionicists had changed shifts again. The two old men hardly seemed to be paying attention-they were playing dice and laughing at jokes-but Jedra could feel their presence hovering over him, and he knew they would respond instantly if he and Kayan even mindspoke to one another.

Kayan glared at him. "You keep trying to make it my fault."

"No, I don't!" Jedra glared back at her. "I'm just tired of hearing about how invincible we are when we're not."

"All right, all right, we're weaklings and we're going to die in our very first battle, is that what you want to hear?

Does that make you happy?"

"Of course not." Jedra rattled the chains that bound him by his left leg to the wall. "But it's closer to the truth."

Shani never slept in the gladiators' quarters-she evidently spent her nights with Sahalik-but the human, a man in his thirties with just a touch of gray in his hair, did. He'd ignored Jedra and Kayan completely until now, practicing separately with Sahalik and sleeping whenever he wasn't training or eating, but now he lifted his head up from his bunk and said, "You two are going to make a great team in the arena. I pity your opponents; they're going to get argued to death." Then he rolled over and began to snore. Jedra was in the bunk between him and Kayan. He looked over at her, ready to share a good laugh, but his grin died when he saw the angry look on her face. Maybe the antisocial slave was right.

Sahalik, at least, seemed to think that they had a chance. The next day he and Shani took Kayan and Jedra out onto the practice field together and taught them fighting strategy.

"You'll be up against a dwarf named Lothar," he told them. "He fights with a curved sword, sharpened on both sides. Given your little display yesterday, Jedra, I think we'll give you a club, and Kayan, you'll have a spear." He tossed their weapons to them. Jedra's club was presumably the very one he would use in the arena, but Kayan's spear was only a shaft of wood with a rag tied around the end.

Shani carried the curved sword, also made of wood. "Pretend she's shorter and slower," Sahalik said, laughing. "You will fight and I will watch, and when I shout 'stop' I want you to freeze, and we'll examine what you're doing right or wrong. The basic idea is for Kayan to keep Lothar busy with the spear while Jedra beats him to death with the club, and if he gets too close, Jedra drives him back until Kayan can use the spear on him. Neither of you are to throw your weapon, and no fair spearing him in a vital spot until the crowd gets enough blood to be satisfied. Clear?"

"Whose blood?" Jedra asked.

Sahalik laughed again. "Anybody's blood," he said. "They're not choosy." He stepped back and shouted, "Go!"

Shani immediately leaped at Jedra and slashed at him with her curved sword. He jumped back, but not far enough, and the blunted edge caught him on the forearm as he raised his club to ward off the blow.

"Stop!" Sahalik shouted, and Shani froze. Jedra and Kayan froze a moment later, Jedra with his club still upraised, Kayan with the spear aimed somewhere between Shani and Jedra.

"You've just lost your right arm," Sahalik said. "And

ayan, you're about to spear your own companion in the side when he jumps back from the blade. All right, try it again."

They ran through the mock battle dozens of times, but never got beyond the first few seconds before Sahalik stopped them and pointed out another flaw in their strategy. By the end of the session, Jedra had a score of new bruises from the blunt sword, and his head felt overstuffed with all the advice he'd received.

They just had time to eat and catch their breath before they were at it again. This time Sahalik concentrated on their attacks, showing them how to harry Shani from two sides and disarm her.

"What about psionics?" Kayan asked at one point. "If we can use that in the battle, then why don't I just stop her heart-well, the dwarf's heart," she said with a wicked grin at Shani, "and be done with it?"

"Two reasons," Sahalik said. "One, that way isn't bloody enough for the crowd, and two, you won't be allowed to. You'll be handicapped by the temple psionicists to whatever level they decide is fair. We won't know what they'll allow you until you get into the arena, but don't count on much. Maybe the ability to dull your own pain, or boost your stamina if you start to fade too soon, but with two against one they're not going to let you have psionic weapons, too."

"But-" Kayan turned around, looking across the field at their psionic guards. "I thought we could use whatever we wanted on the battlefield."

Shani said in a soft, sinister voice, "Oh, that could be arranged. Of course, then you'd be fighting even more capable opponents on both the physical and the psionic level. Is that what you want?"

Kayan shuddered. "No," she said. She seemed to shrink a little, her former bravado completely gone now.

"Cheer up," Sahalik said, slapping her on the back with enough force to make her stagger. "Lothar's about as psionic as a rock. If you can give him a hangnail with your mental powers, it's better than he can do to you."

Kayan nodded. "That's a relief," she said, but she didn't sound sincere.

The next two days they practiced with thick leather armor that Sahalik said would stop all but the hardest sword blow, though the scores of cuts in it and the dark bloodstains around them didn't lend Jedra a whole lot of confidence. It did at least soften the blows from Shani's mock sword, even when she gave it all her strength. Sahalik also gave Jedra a small round shield to defend himself with while he bludgeoned her with his club. He gradually lost his fear of her weapon, and began to fight back like a true gladiator.

Kayan jabbed and swung her spear as directed, but the fire had gone out of her eyes after Sahalik's unwelcome news about their limitations. She hardly spoke to Jedra, on the practice field or in the evenings.

The day of the games dawned like any other on Athas: hot and sunny. Jedra was awake long before dawn, though, going over everything Sahalik had taught him time and time again. He didn't feel ready to face a hur-rum beetle-the harmless humming pet of the rich- much less an armed, intelligent dwarf.

He didn't know. Sahalik seemed genuinely interested in having his charges win their first battle, but that could all be an act. He could be laughing uproariously inside at the thought of sending them into the arena unprepared.

No. Jedra was being paranoid. Wasn't he?

He hoped the dwarf, Lothar, was psyching himself out the same way, but Jedra doubted if he was. The few dwarves he had seen before weren't imaginative enough to worry about something ahead of time. Even so, how could Jedra bring himself to kill another intelligent being? He didn't know if he could do it.

Shortly after dawn he and Kayan and the two other gladiators were given a hearty steak breakfast, then marched down the hill to the stadium. People cheered as they passed and shouted encouraging things like, "Tear their guts out!" or "Die with glory!" Jedra tried not to throw up on anybody, but it was hard without Kayan's help.

As participants, they went in through their own gate on the city side of the ziggurat, through a torch-lit corridor beneath the immense stone mass to the cool subterranean pens beneath its arena-facing edge. As the holding area filled with people, though, it soon heated up even there, and the stink of the sweaty, unwashed gladiators, at least half of them afraid for their lives, soon became nauseating.

It seemed like they waited forever for the stands to fill and the games to start, but when the king stepped to his balcony and the crier took his cue to announce the first contestants, Jedra suddenly wished it had taken longer. As a new and unpredictable team, he and Kayan were up fifth, right after the executions.

They couldn't see the battles from their holding pens. The voluntary gladiators could, but not the slaves. They could only wait in the pit and listen to the clash of weapons and the roar of the crowd. Jedra grew more nervous by the minute as one execution after another sped past, and when he took Kayan's hand in his she didn't pull away.

"We'll survive this," he told her.

"Why?" she asked him. "Just to fight again next week?"

"We're buying time," Jedra said. "We'll eventually find a way out of here. Maybe Kitarak will come back for us."

"Hah. He's too smart to put himself in this situation twice."

Jedra was about to protest, but the crowd cheered as the final execution drew to its inevitable close, and Sahalik stuck his head over the railing and said, "All right, you two. You're on."

Guards led them up the stairs to the packed sand floor just inside the arena entrance. Bright sun streamed in from beyond. Lothar the dwarf stood there in stark silhouette, wearing a few plates of kank-chitin armor over his chest, legs, and forearms. He looked them over appraisingly as they approached him, taking in their worn leather armor over every vital part of their bodies- armor that did nothing to mask their terror-then he smiled. He had only one tooth sticking down from the top.

"Give me a good fight," he said. "Make me look good, and I'll kill you quick and clean."

Jedra's mouth was too dry to answer. He clutched at his lucky crystal. He should have bought a real luck charm from a mage in the market when he had the chance, but it was too late now. Sahalik handed him his club and shield, gave Kayan her spear, and shoved them out into the arena. His last words to them were, "Remember to bow to the king when you win."

"Right," Jedra said. They hadn't received any instructions for what to do if they lost-Lothar would no doubt take care of all that needed to be done.

The sand was hot even through his sandals. He squinted to see against the glare from the ziggurat and the stadium. The stands were full of people, but they all blended into a single seething mass of bodies. The only recognizable figures were the crier in the middle of the arena and the guards, both military and psionic, who stood at regular intervals all around the edge. Jedra felt the psionicists' presence hovering over him, ready to smother any attempt he made to escape or to use his own power to win the battle.

The noise of the crowd seemed to weigh down on him almost as hard as the psionicists did. The hot, red sun also beat down on him, and the odor of blood from the previous battles filled his nostrils. He was aware of Kayan walking out into the middle of the arena beside him, but at the same time he seemed completely alone, facing the entire world aligned against him.

Then Lothar stepped out of the gate, and the crowd cheered twice as loud as before. He walked up to within a few paces of Jedra and Kayan, his sword held casually in his right hand. The crier moved off a few yards, then shouted, "Begin!" Lothar jumped forward, his sword suddenly a blur, and swung the blade toward Kayan's left side. It chunked into her leather armor and stuck for a moment, but he pulled it free and swung at her again. She brought the shaft of her spear down on his head, and Jedra swung at his exposed back with his club, and both weapons struck just as his sword hit her in the same side again. That was where the laces were tied; his second cut sliced the seam wide open and exposed her entire left side.

"I am looking out," Kayan said. "You're supposed to hit him!"

"I'm trying." Jedra swung again at Lothar, but at the same moment he saw the dwarf's blade slice toward his head. He got his shield up in time and blocked the blow, and even managed to connect with his club against Lothar's armor, but it did no harm.

The dwarf was fast with his sword. Jedra barely had time to leap back before a sudden onslaught, and if it weren't for his shield and armor he would have been cut to ribbons within seconds. He dodged to the side, but Lothar was already there.

He tried pushing the dwarf aside psionically, or at least slowing his sword arm, but he felt the arena's judges smother his power before he even had a chance to ruffle Lothar's hair. He tried blinding him with amplified light, then tried to heat the dwarf's sword hilt until Lothar had to drop it, but none of his abilities could reach through the shields the judges kept around him. He and Kayan were going to have to win this fight with club and spear.

"Don't just stand there, jab him!" he yelled at her.

"I would if you'd stay out of the way!" she shouted back as she jabbed at the dwarf. "Quit jumping around so much!"

"He's got a sword! I'm not letting him slice me with it just so you can get a clear shot. Spear him!"

The crowd had grown quiet, waiting for a bloody wound to cheer, but Jedra's and Kayan's words brought laughter from a few people close enough to hear them.

"Fight!" the dwarf hissed. "They laugh at you!"

"What do you think we're trying to do?" Jedra demanded, swinging his club at Lothar's legs. He connected that time, and knocked the surprised dwarf's feet out from under him.

Kayan stabbed at him with her spear, but the point stuck in his belly armor and did no damage. Jedra leaped forward and clubbed him on the head, but Lothar swung back with the inner curve of his sword and sliced deep into Jedra's right leg.

Jedra flinched backward, bleeding heavily from the wound, and the crowd cheered at the sight of blood.

Lothar tried to get up, but Kayan held him pinned to the ground. "Hit him!" she screamed. "Hit him!"

Jedra tried, but Lothar kept waving the sword faster than he could dodge, all the while struggling to throw off Kayan's weight at the end of the spear and get up again. Jedra stuck his shield into the blur of metal, but Lothar managed to curve the blade around the edge of it and slice his arm.

Bleeding from two places now, Jedra flailed away with his club in a blind panic. Lothar seemed to be able to parry every blow, though, and now he was winning his shoving match with Kayan as well.

If he got up, they were dead. Jedra was already losing strength, and if the dwarf got past him, Kayan had no defense. She couldn't fight in close with a spear, and her entire left side was bare where he had sliced open her armor. Frantic, Jedra did the only thing he could think of: he kicked sand in Lothar's face. It didn't go anywhere near the dwarf's eyes, not until he kicked a second time and helped it along psionically. It was such a sudden impulse that the psionicists stationed around the perimeter had no chance to react. Either that or they had decided it was fair use; either way, Lothar cursed as the sand momentarily blinded him, and Jedra took the opportunity to slip past the dwarf's guard and knock the sword from his hand. It flew end over end out of reach, and Jedra struck again, this time hitting his opponent squarely in his right side. The dwarf's brittle chitin armor shattered, and Jedra hit him again on the same spot.

Lothar groaned and tried to kick himself away, but Jedra swung at his leg, breaking it the same way he had broken Sahalik's. He swung at the dwarf's head, but missed and knocked the spear loose, where it gouged a deep wound across Lothar's chest before sticking against a rib.

The crowd was on its feet now, cheering and shouting, "Kill, kill, kill!" but now that the dwarf was disarmed and crippled, Jedra backed away. He looked up at the stands, then over at the arena entrance where Sahalik stood watching. The elf drew a finger across his throat in an unmistakable gesture, but Jedra couldn't do it.

He looked up again at the stands and at the rows of balconies where the king and his templars sat. He couldn't see the king in the glare, so he held his hand out to block the sun. A sudden hush spread across the crowd. Jedra heard the creak as every person there turned to look at the balconies.

"I don't know," she whispered back.

"You've asked for mercy," Lothar said through clenched teeth. "Very sporting of you, but if I'd wanted it I'd have asked for it myself."

"You don't want mercy?" Jedra asked, stunned.

"Do I look like a weakling?" the dwarf spat.

There was movement on the balcony. Jedra squinted, and saw a single figure in a golden robe hold out a fist, thumb down.

The crowd roared its approval. People shouted "Kill him!" and within seconds it had become a chant.

Lothar may not have been a weakling, but he didn't want to die, either. He scrabbled toward his sword, kicking with his good leg and pulling himself along with his arms. Jedra reluctantly hit him again in the shoulder, crippling him further.

Tears were streaming from Jedra's eyes now. "I can't do this!" he cried, backing away.

The crowd began to boo, and pieces of rotted fruit and even hunks of spoiled meat began pelting the sand around them. Kayan looked up just in time to dodge a melon, then she snatched the club from Jedra's hand, stepped up to Lothar, and swung it at his head. The crack of club on bone echoed all the way across the arena, and Lothar jerked once, then lay still.

Jedra turned away and threw up. In the sudden silence that greeted his ungladiatorlike action, Kayan whispered, "Bow to the king, damn it!"

Thankful that he'd at least managed to turn away from the king to throw up, Jedra managed to stand and turn around, then bow. He looked at the fallen dwarf, then at Kayan.

"How could you do that?" he asked, suddenly disgusted at the sight of her.

"Don't get all haughty on me," she said, then she lowered her voice and whispered, "I hit him just hard enough to knock him out, and I amplified the noise so it sounded like I'd killed him."

"Oh!" Suddenly mollified, he retrieved his club from her, and they began to walk back toward the slave pens at the base of the ziggurat, relieved to think that they had survived their first battle without having to kill anyone. The cleanup team-two slaves, one with a shovel-passed them on their way out to retrieve the body.

"Sorry about the mess," Jedra said, embarrassed now at having lost his breakfast in front of thousands of people.

" 'Appens all the time, chum," the slave with the shovel said. "Excitement, y'know."

Jedra and Kayan walked on to the arena entrance, where Sahalik congratulated them and pounded them on their backs. Some of the other gladiators crowded around to offer congratulations or advice of their own, but suddenly the noise stopped and everyone looked back out into the arena, where one of the slaves in the cleanup crew held back the dwarf's head while the other slit his throat from ear to ear with a short dagger.

"Hah," Sahalik grunted. "The coward must've been faking it. Don't worry, it won't affect your standing."

As if to belie his words, Jedra's wounded leg buckled beneath him, and he fell to his knees. "Whoa," Sahalik said, grabbing his shoulder in one powerful hand and raising him back up. "You must've lost more blood than I thought. Healer! Get a healer over here."

Jedra hardly heard him. He barely felt it when two of the arena's psionicists took him aside and stopped his wounds from bleeding, or even when they dulled his pain. His mind was a million miles away, in an imaginary world where people didn't fight for amusement and didn't kill each other for sport.

The gladiators' quarters felt empty that night. Shani was off with Sahalik, celebrating her victory against an elf woman from another noble's house, but the bunk between hers and Jedra's was also empty. The middle-aged man had lost his match. He had never been a friend; they had spoken maybe a dozen words to each other the whole time they'd been housed together, but now his absence left an emptiness. Maybe it was because Jedra knew that somewhere else, in some other gladiator's house, someone was celebrating this man's death.

Kayan was quiet, too. Jedra had tried to talk with her, but she had greeted his overtures with monosyllables until it was clear she just wanted to be left alone. Jedra didn't blame her; his squeamishness had forced her hand, made her try a desperate gamble to save them while keeping her own conscience free of guilt, but it had backfired on her. The psionicists guarding them were playing dice again, relying on their sense of danger to alert them to any escape attempt. Jedra considered mindlinking with Kayan and trying to surprise them, but she and he were both exhausted; they wouldn't get anything but punishment for their effort. No, they would have to bide their time. An opportunity would come. It had to.

Sahalik was all smiles in the morning. His former animosity toward his newest gladiators seemed completely forgotten. "People are calling you the squabblers, or the crabby couple," he told them when they assembled for morning practice. "They were much amused by the way you bickered out there. That'll be a real draw if you keep it up, so of course I want you to."

Kayan laughed for the first time since they'd been captured. "That shouldn't be a problem."

"I thought not. So, I will leave that aspect of your performance to you, and we will concentrate on your use of weapons. Today you will learn how to use swords."

He and Shani proceeded to show them how to wield a blade, how to hold it en garde, how to attack, parry, feint, and execute dozens of other techniques that every good gladiator could perform in his sleep. By the end of the day their heads were buzzing with the unfamiliar terms and their muscles ached in brand new places. All the same, Jedra was surprised to realize that he had a natural aptitude for the sword. Some instinct seemed to guide his hand when he most needed it, until by the end of the day he could spar with Sahalik for up to a minute before the elf wore down his guard.

When they finished their last session of the day, both of them panting and slick with sweat, Sahalik pointed at the knife scars all over Jedra's body and said, "I wouldn't have believed it, seeing how many blades you've let through your guard since I last saw you, but I think we've found your weapon." He took a long drink from the waterskin they kept beside the practice field, then handed it to Shani. "How did you survive all those, anyway? Some of them look serious."

"I didn't," Jedra said, then he realized how strange that sounded. "I almost didn't, anyway. Kayan found me where I lay dying, and she healed me." He smiled at Kayan, who turned away and took the waterskin from Shani.

Sahalik grunted appreciatively. "You must've had a hard time of it after I... left."

"We did." Jedra waited for the waterskin, took a long swallow of warm water, then said, "We, uh, we got kicked out of the tribe the next day. We spent quite a while in the desert before we found Kitarak, and then..." He shrugged. "And then more stuff happened, and here we are."

Sahalik laughed. " 'And then more stuff happened.' Yes, a fitting end to any tale." His laughter died, though, and he asked, "What you told me earlier about the Jura-Dai. That was true? They were in trouble when you left them? They wanted me back?"

Jedra nodded. "They would welcome you with open arms."

"Hmm," the elf said. "Well, they will have to do without me for a while longer, at least. I have my own battles to fight here." He laughed wickedly and walked off toward his own quarters.

"What did he mean by that?" Jedra asked Shani. "Does he fight in the games too?"

"Of course he does," she said. "He's Rokur's champion."

Even if Sahalik had come straight to Tyr after leaving the Jura-Dai, he couldn't have been there over a fortnight. Champions must come and go awfully fast, Jedra thought. But of course they did, since someone had to die in nearly every battle.

"I hope he's as good as he thinks he is," Jedra said, surprised that he should care.

Sahalik and Shani worked their new team mercilessly day after day, but after their first taste of what awaited them in the arena, Jedra and Kayan soaked up every bit of knowledge as eagerly as they could. Jedra did, at any rate; Kayan fought her battles with precision and skill, but she showed no enthusiasm when she succeeded in penetrating Shani or Kitarak's guard, and she retired to their quarters immediately after each battle.

When Jedra tried to talk with her, she responded like a zombie until he gave up and left her alone. He was afraid for her mind, afraid that the cruelties they'd endured since their first enslavement had finally broken her spirit, but he could think of nothing to bring her out of it. Escape seemed extremely unlikely, yet so did their chances of surviving long as gladiators.

However, if survival as gladiators was their only option, then Jedra intended to do just that. He still didn't like the idea of killing other people for sport, but his experience with Lothar had changed his attitude a little. Lothar had wanted to be there, and he had willingly fought a couple of slaves who didn't. Jedra and Kayan had tried to spare his life, but even killing him would have been self-defense under any moral code Jedra had ever heard of. Sahalik assured him that now that he and Kayan had won a battle, anyone else they fought would also be professionals, so they didn't have to worry about killing other slaves. Anyone they faced would be someone who wanted to be there, someone who had chosen their dangerous career and chosen them as opponents in the hopes of winning higher status by beating a winning team. That didn't necessarily make it all right to kill them, but the only other option amounted to suicide, which Jedra didn't think should be required of him either. So he would fight in the arena. He would hate it, and he would escape at the first opportunity, but in the meantime he would fight.

But today he fought a human, a woman both taller and stockier than Kayan, and who also fought with swords. She carried one in either hand, a short, stabbing knife in her left and a longer, double-edged rapier in her right.

The crier announced the fight, saying, "Last week you watched one of these combatants cut off a wild tigone's paws one at a time before taking its head for a trophy. The other team you watched argue over tactics and dispute the honor of dealing the final blow. Today, who knows what amusement awaits when... Braxa of the House of Gnorr fights... Jedra and Kayan of House Rokur."

Since Braxa had been named first, she stepped into the arena first. She spun her knife and sword in circles before her, scattering reflections off the glistening blades and drawing an enthusiastic cheer from the audience.

Her jewel-encrusted brass brassiere and equally sparkling chain-link loincloth-revealing an alarming amount of bare skin for a gladiator, woman or not-no doubt added to their excitement.

As Jedra and Kayan followed her, Kayan looked disdainfully at her own saber, a slightly curved, single-edged blade about as long as her arm, and said almost casually, "Maybe if I distract her with my neck you'll have a chance to stab her in the back."

"What?" Jedra said, shocked. "Kayan, don't talk like that. We'll win this one easy."

"Sure we will." She spun her own sword around in a circle, but she didn't flex her arm right and the blade flew out of her grasp on the upswing, to land point-first in the sand a few feet away. The crowd roared with laughter while she bent to retrieve it.

"That's good," Jedra said. "Make her think we're clumsy." And maybe make the psionicists think we need our psionic talent to help make a fair fight, he thought, but he couldn't risk saying that. He promptly fumbled his own blade, though, wincing as if he'd just cut himself with it.

The woman, Braxa of House Gnorr, sneered. "Make your jests while you can," she said, "but the final laugh will be mine."

"And a good day to you, too," Jedra said, bowing slightly. He was afraid his voice would crack and reveal his real terror at facing her experienced blade, but he had to hold on for Kayan's sake. If he could convince her that he was confident, maybe she would grow more so herself.

The crier, standing a few paces away, spread his arms out, then raised them high. "Begin!" he shouted.

This time Jedra leaped first. He stabbed straight for Braxa's bare bosom, and his sword hit home, but instead of piercing her ribs and sliding into her heart, the point lodged in a link of the chain holding her brassiere cups together, barely scratching the tender skin beneath.

She flipped her long sword up, inside Jedra's guard.

He felt the edge bite into the soft underside of his upper arm, but before she could shove the point into his chest he twisted away, pulling his sword free and disengaging.

Kayan hadn't moved. "Come on, give me a hand here!" Jedra yelled at her, and she belatedly swung at Braxa, but the experienced gladiator parried her blow without effort and only Jedra's sudden lunge toward her exposed side kept her from replying with a deadly attack of her own.

"Fight, damn it!" he shouted at Kayan. "Don't give up before the battle's even begun!"

Braxa swung at him while he was distracted, and metal clanged against metal as he blocked her and then let his blade slide down to slice at her legs. She danced out of the way easily and struck again, raining blows down on him faster and faster until the arena echoed with the clang of blade upon blade.

Jedra could feel himself tiring. The cut in his arm bled and stung furiously, but he didn't want to change hands. He wasn't good enough with his left to last ten seconds against this demonic woman. He tried using psionics on her, tried pushing her blade aside telekinetically, tried throwing sand in her eyes the way he had done with Lothar, but neither attempt got through the psionicist guards' restricting shields. Only when he tried blasting her with amplified light and sound did he get a flash and a boom around her head, but she fought on as if nothing had happened.

She wasn't mad enough, Jedra realized. She was terrified, and defending herself, but to come out of this alive they needed to win, and to win they both needed to attack. And as Sahalik had taught him during that first week of practice, to get someone to attack when they didn't want to, you had to make them mad.

Braxa stepped back, also growing tired from swinging her sword continuously, and in the momentary lull in battle, Jedra slapped Kayan on the butt with the flat of his sword. "Go after her!" he shouted. "Come on, have you forgotten everything we learned? Don't let her rest. We can wear her out if we work together, but I can't do this all by myself."

She shot him a look of such hatred that Jedra was afraid she would turn on him, but instead she mindsent, I'm doing all I can!

Try psionics, then, he sent back, but do something.

He felt the psionicists' shield descend on him, blanketing his mind from further contact. He didn't know if she'd heard him or not, so he repeated aloud, "Do something!"

With that, he raised his sword and advanced on Braxa again, circling around to put her between him and Kayan. She knew better than to allow that, though; she sidestepped ahead of him until he tried to duck around the other side, but she dodged around him that way, too.

"Shall we dance?" she asked, laughing. "Perhaps that would amuse the crowd more than your pitiful showing so far."

"We're just getting started," Jedra said. "Right, Kayan? Kayan!" Braxa had lunged at him, and he nearly tripped over Kayan's feet when he backpedaled to get clear. She had been right behind him.

"Damn it, fight with me or get out of the way!" he shouted.

The crowd had been unusually quiet, listening to them bicker, but they laughed long and loud at that. That seemed to humiliate Kayan into action; she jumped out of the way to the side and kept going in the same direction, trying to circle around Braxa just as Jedra had. Braxa pressed the attack against her, but Kayan's sword became a blur every bit as fast as Braxa's, and the arena echoed again with the clash of metal on metal.

While her sword arm was held high, Jedra took the opportunity to spring in behind Braxa and slash at her exposed right side, cutting deep into the soft flesh just below her ribs, and when she whirled around to defend herself he swung in under her guard and raked his blade across her neck. Blood spilled down her chest and over her brass brassiere. She staggered back a step, her eyes wide and frightened, then she sank to her knees.

There was no need for a final blow; Jedra had hit a major artery, and within seconds the formidable amazon lay face down in the sand.

He looked up at Kayan. "Thanks," he said, sighing heavily.

"Thanks?" she screamed. "Thanks? You treat me like dirt, and when I save our lives again all you can say is thanks?"

Jedra couldn't believe his ears. "You didn't save our lives. I saved our lives."

"Oh, you think so? Then why were you whining for me to do it for you?"

"Because you weren't doing anything! You were-"

"Silencer The voice echoed around the arena. It was far too loud for a normal throat to have produced; it was either magically or psionically enhanced.

The voice spoke again, and they realized it came from the balconies on the palace side of the stadium. In fact, from the sorcerer-king himself, who stood resplendent in his golden robe with his arms outstretched. He said, "Your petty debate provides us some little amusement, but we quickly grow tired of your domestic squabbles. This is a gladiatorial arena, where battles are fought with blades and missiles, not with words." He laughed, a wicked, low chuckle that shook stones loose from the unfinished ziggurat. "And so shall you fight. If you wish to quarrel in public, so be it. One week hence, you shall return to this arena, weapons in hand, and battle one another-to the death!"