Escana (39 page)

Slowly relaxing each part of his
body, he willed it into a state of sharp readiness that his mind had
already achieved. There could be no error here, he had to be
decisive, relentless, swift and unwavering. He had no desire to maim
or kill any of the occupants of the arena, that would only serve to
enrage them further. He had but one chance in this whole incessantly
heated débâcle.

This Tub was clearly
discriminating by size in order to gauge strength, the larger men had
been given their beckoning and the smaller ones swayed on their feet
a little further back. Either this was a preliminary or Hern had
entirely overestimated the man's capacity for analysis.

His brain retreated back into
pulling the reflexive strings that held his life in the balance. Tub
approached the last man between them and bowled him into the sand,
the bolts went flying into his curled up form and the shriek he let
out nearly deafened Hern.

Now it was his turn.

Tub waited, staring at him. Hern
stared back at him impassively. The sounds of reloading and the
tightening of strings by expectant hands seemed to last a long time.

As Tub finally launched at him,
Hern made as if to brace for impact then leapt low and scissored his
feet, entangling the man's strides perfectly. Tub's momentum pitched
him head first into the sand at a very painful speed. He roared for
the bolts, blood streaming from his smashed nose but Hern was no
longer there.

He kicked the first crossbow out
of the bemused guard's arms and made for the high wall with it. He
tossed it with all his might, forcing it to land a few strides from
the figures he had previously noticed observing from the stand. A
bolt whizzed past his temple and he sped forward to where it had
appeared, downing the second guard with a kick to his own temple in
retribution before hurling the second crossbow after the first. One
of the figures observing jumped to his feet. It was indeed Dyson.

A spear cut through the acrid air
to his right, he ducked underneath it and felt it gently kiss his
back.

Fortunately the last two bowmen
were working in tandem. He leapt out of the path of another bolt and
felt it clip his boot in flight, momentarily unbalancing him. He
leapt upon the two men and dashed their heads off the arena wall. He
saw another spear flash behind him from the corner of his eye and
ducked, causing it to crack against the wall. There wasn't much time
left now, he just hoped they liked the display.

A spear nearly tangled in his
legs as he approached the arena wall with the final two crossbows, he
hurled the first into the stands and levelled the last directly at
the now-smiling Dyson. He felt the guards massed behind him, sluggish
and weary in their armour.

'Halt,' Dyson finally called to
them.

Tub was not to be appeased
though. He burst through the ranks with an ugly looking blade and
rushed at Hern. A facile tactic if ever there was one. Hern wasn't
surprised at the hatred he had elicited from the emasculation of the
man. He also found he wasn't about to sacrifice his life to prevent
it from happening any further.

He dispossessed the blade with a
minimum of fuss and left the man caked in sand once more. He heard a
roar of laughter behind him from the wall and a slow clapping.

It would appear he had truly
caught Dyson's eye.

H
e heard
Yalem's clapping subside as he peered down at this newcomer with a
mixture of admiration and quiet suspicion that nobody could detect
behind his mirthful features.

If there was any doubt whatsoever
in his mind with regards to his fighting talent, the clapping had
silenced it. Yalem didn't clap at many things, the last time he had
heard it a man had just cut through eight others with a training
sword. The practically mute man had helped hand-pick his guard for
him, often promoting from within. They both knew entirely what each
guard was capable of and had seen them chase after and surround this
man only after his antics had finished. It wasn't incompetence that
had brought about this chase, they just seemed entirely outclassed.
If he hadn't met the Praetor prior to the arrival of this one he
would have killed him immediately.

He wasn't worried about the
reputation of Greyhawk as a decrepit desert hole that spawned some of
the poorest fighters in the entire land. That's precisely what
Greyhawk was and he was quite happy to have it remain that way. A
leader didn't survive very long if he surrounded himself with
dangerous and unpredictable men. Certainly the loyal soldiers in his
cause could earn their stripes, but not before any streak of defiance
had been gutted. If he had seen any opposition to his rule he would
have them executed by the guards without so much as a care. While he
had little left in life that was truly his own any more, the fort and
his position were things he clung to painfully. He didn't dare to
think that he had quashed all possibility of a coup.

'I should have you killed,' he
mused between his grin. Tub looked in a ridiculous state, all the
more eager to put things right after being humiliated in such an
infuriating fashion. He would have to keep an eye on him, no sense in
having his latest acquisition butchered by man instead of beast.

'What is your name, warrior?'

The man smiled back up at him,
his panting starting to subside. 'Hern, sir.'

Hern. Now he had a name to the
face, names were power. 'Why do you want me to let you live after
such an act of defiance, Hern?'

If the man was fazed by his life
hanging by a thread he didn't show it.

'Sir, I am willing to serve, but
I have conditions.'

Dyson felt anger swell within
him. Who the fuck was he to tell him of conditions in his desert? He
didn't betray this feeling, locking it down as swiftly as it came.
There was no need for such rage when dealing with a snake like this.

Yalem was edging his way into
position, preparing to leap if necessary. Dyson felt oddly touched
that when push came to shove the man would still sacrifice himself.

'Ordinarily I would have you
killed for such insubordinate words, though you do appear to still
have a crossbow levelled at me. This buys you a moment of my time
under duress, what conditions do you speak of?'

'If any man should put his hand
on me, I will deliver death. Since this is a place of arms and
conquest, I also request a duel with the greatest of your fighters,
with freedom being granted to the victor.'

Dyson
laughed
at
that.
Oh
but
this
is
perfect
.

The smile he gave this bold
newcomer was one of genuine happiness now. He loved when things came
together in such an orderly fashion and with the minimum of fuss and
bloodshed.

'Well, considering that you have
me at your mercy it would seem prudent to grant your request!' He
waved away the guards. 'You may carry on with your previous duties,
Hern will hand the crossbow to Tub and then be led to the assorted
weaponry.'

He turned his attention back to
Hern now. 'When you return upon selecting your weaponry, your
opponent will be ready for you.'

Dyson could barely suppress the
laughter as Hern eyed up Yalem with lethal intent.

You
poor
mistaken
fool
.

H
ern didn't
relax any further as a glowering Tub led him down a number of dusty
looking stone corridors. He could tell the man was struggling between
a mixture of fear, hatred and loyalty so he decided not to goad him
to breaking point. He needed to save his strength for the strange one
from the stands. Correction: they were both strange and dangerous.
Hern had dealt with such men in the past but he had yet to see minds
of this calibre outside of the guild. There was clearly a very
specific reason that these men had been sent into the desert. He
suspected he'd never find out, assuming he survived the fight.

While he could probably give a
good account of himself against even the best of the masters, he felt
that same trepidation from the cage at facing the unknown. From what
he had seen of the guards, luck had played as important a role as
skill in keeping him on one piece up to this point. Ironically his
biggest concern may well be that his own rambling thoughts may
over-analyse the situation to the point of rendering his decisions
unsound.

'There's your fucking weapons.'
Tub gestured sourly at the wall-mounted racks. 'I hope I get to watch
you being torn to pieces.'

Hern was too busy surveying the
weapons to pay Tub much heed. There were a variety of spears, some
notched swords, and a mace that hadn't been cleaned. A net lay limply
in the corner with an axe, a halberd here, a javelin there. The one
constant with all the weapons on display was their shoddy
maintenance. He wondered if a number of them were still sharp enough
to draw blood.

'Where is the armour located?' he
asked.

Tub grinned, his bloodied face
taking great pleasure with each word. 'Your opponent ain’t got
no fucking armour, you won't have any either. Now pick your weapons
and get back out there to the slaughter.'

Hern shrugged, armour would only
impede him. He wouldn't have minded a shield given the conditions.

Picking his weapons, he briskly
walked back into his next inevitable conflict.

Re'tak was in a foul mood. The
squalor he had been forced into had grown life-threatening over the
past length of time. The pink skins still hurled their meat down from
a safe distance as he roared at them in challenge, beckoning them to
come down and fight. Occasionally he would have the chance to take
his rage out on whatever new pinks faced him when the door opened,
yet it was but a brief taste of a larger quarantine. The arena walls
were too steep to find any purchase on and he had thrashed at the
cell walls and the door and howled until he was hoarse, nothing came
of it. He was at the mercy of his captors and it looked entirely
likely that he would die that way. Perhaps the herd was correct about
him after all. What a disgraceful way to perish, like some trapped
animal.

The familiar clicking sound
reached him once again, followed by the grinding as the light greeted
him. The time to kill had arrived.

Hern stopped short when he
realised that Tub no longer followed him. He looked back briefly and
the man laughed. 'Oh no, I'm not going out there. You are.'

The man didn't have much of a way
with words, his puckered cheeks and squinting eyes giving his face a
misshapen aspect.

Once again Hern found himself
shrugging, it made absolutely no difference to him what this fat
little man did. He couldn't even summon up enough energy to quip
something, no doubt it would have been absolutely wasted had he
tried.

He walked cautiously out into the
light, allowing himself time to adjust to the bright desert sun. He
was expecting an ambush or a knife in his back at any given moment
and was somewhat surprised that he had made it this far. Then again
this wasn't Je'dara, the men here played by different rules.

He spotted it then, its arms
clawing at the wall as if to gain purchase. No wonder Dyson had
seemed so pleased about their arrangement, this was no man he was to
face.

It was thrice the length and
girth of even the bigger soldiers, its long scaled body reeked from
faecal matter and a number of nasty abrasions that had begun to ooze.

It had no crest or mane as the
stories had described, they were however entirely accurate about the
claws. The terror that gripped Hern in that moment of recognition was
amplified as the beast sniffed the air and started to turn.

Using his nose angered him upon
realising that the foul stench was himself, but amongst that he could
pick out the lifelong scent of a fellow desert creature. It was one
yellowskin, the smell was distinctive and it clung to him. The
yellowskin had picked an unfortunate time to become his victim.

He started toward the little
creature with patience, cursing his slight limp and waiting for the
terror it felt to rise to fever pitch.

Then something entirely
unexpected happened. Re'tak felt the creature's terror diminish as he
drew closer, the thing was either highly attuned to its feelings or
had a broken mind.

It cast aside its pointed objects
as if the inevitability had finally pressed itself down upon it. He
half-expected it to run in panic like many of the others did before
the smaller, airborne points had pricked them dead. This one stood
its ground, it made no difference in the end. They could run or they
could fight, they could not hurt him and they all died the same way.

He saw the white in the thing's
eyes now. He did not see fear, nor was there any panic. Perhaps this
one sought death, a concept so alien to Re'tak that it filled him
with unease.

He could hear the steady
breathing now, the relaxed but ready stance of a fighter prepared to
give his life. It would appear that this one wasn't frozen entirely
and may offer some sport.