For the same reason that the gladiators were locked below ground, they were left very much on their own. Food, equipment, medical supplies, and prostitutes for their amusement were lowered down a shaft on ropes. Their water came from two springs in the rocks, and their wastes and dead bodies were dropped down another shaft leading to the Great River. They cared for their own sick and wounded, kept their own discipline, punished their own criminals, and generally behaved more like a small town or a ship's crew than a band of cutthroats. Guards seldom entered the barracks, and when they did they came down forty strong.
«Makes sense, the way everybody sees it,» said the man who explained the situation to Blade. He was a one-eyed, bald, and horribly scarred veteran called Old Skroga. He'd been the chief of one of the tribes on the far eastern frontier of Kylan, captured in a border skirmish and sent here to Gerhaa because he was too likely to escape from anywhere on the other side of the ocean. He'd won more than two hundred fights, killed twelve opponents, and been wounded fifteen times himself. There was obviously very little he didn't know about the Games of Hapanu or the men who fought in them. Just as obviously, he wasn't telling Blade everything he knew.
«They try to keep soldiers down here, they'd lose five a week at least,» he went on. «We'd lose more, so many we'd give them no fun upstairs before long. So they leave us be and we give them no reason not to.»
«What about matching men against each other in the Games?» asked Blade. «Can they afford to leave that to you?»
Skroga looked sharply at Blade. «You see enough, but maybe say too much about what you see. But you see true now. We fight how they say and who, but they don't say 'Fight to the death!' much. When they do, they don't see what they want, and then they change. Why you think so many of us still live and fight after ten years?»
Blade returned Skroga's look. «That's exactly why I thought there must be some agreement about how you fight. I do see enough, most of the time. That's why I'm still alive and fighting.» He didn't make his tone an open challenge to Skroga, only a firm reminder that he should be taken seriously.
In fact, Blade didn't have much trouble being taken seriously from the first, and even treated with some respect. His size, build, and scars hinted that he was a fighting man. His first few practice bouts with the gladiators chosen to break in new men proved it. They used wooden swords and untipped spears, but in spite of this and in spite of pulling his blows, Blade put two of his four opponents out of action with broken bones.
That attracted a good deal of notice. His fight with Skroga attracted even more. The old man was slowing down a bit, but his experience more than made up for it. Blade found himself having to use all his strength, speed, and skill to hold his own against Skroga. The fight lasted more than half an hour, without either man collecting more than a few bruises, and eventually it was Skroga who called a halt to it.
That fight was enough to mark Blade among the gladiators as a man to watch. They began to stand him drinks, invite him to join them for meals, advise him on the tricks of possible opponents and how to have his weapons custom-built for him when he could afford it.
They were also intrigued by his story. A man who was neither of Kylan nor of the Forest People, but an Englishman from beyond the known world, was hard to understand. It was even harder to understand how he'd come to be such a skilled fighter and so iron-nerved that he faced the prospect of the Games with no visible fear. Some said he must be mad, but Blade used his fists on one or two who said this too loudly or too often. After that, most said he must have been not only a warrior but a chief among the English.
Many of the gladiators from the Forest People had heard of Swebon, and they were particularly ready to think well of Blade. As one man put it:
«In all the Forest and among all the People, Swebon is known as a man who thinks each thought three times before he acts. If this Blade is indeed a sworn friend of Swebon, a good man has come to us.»
The speaker was a lean, undersized Banum named Kuka, with the middle finger of his left hand missing and a ghastly scar down his right leg. Blade learned that he came from a village the Fak'si once raided under Swebon's leadership.
«It was then that I lost the finger,» he added. «I wish I could say that I lost it to Swebon, but I did not. I was running to join the battle when I tripped over a root and fell. The finger was broken, then began to rot, so the priests cut it off.» He seemed more amused at his own clumsiness than anything else.
There was another attitude Blade found among the gladiators after he'd been accepted among them. They were all one band. It did not matter what a fighter had been before he came to Gerhaa, whether Forest People or Kylanan. It didn't matter what tribe of the Forest People he'd belonged to. It didn't even matter what crime he'd committed, if he was a criminal. He was accepted or rejected for what he did as a fighter in the Games of Hapanu, and for nothing else.
To be sure, the Ten Brothers, the informal committee for governing the barracks, had more Kylanans than Forest People on it. That was inevitable, as Kuka himself said.
«Many of those who come to us from the Forest think only that they will die. They do not think how they may live. So they do die, and many of them soon.» Kuka gave Blade a sharp, appraising stare. «I think you will live to become one of the Ten Brothers, unless the Forest Spirit is unjust.»
«I will rely more on my strength and good steel than on the Forest Spirit,» said Blade.
«As you should,» said Kuka, and patted Blade's hair.
Once more the notion of the gladiators of Hapanu as the crew of a ship occurred to Blade. They were men apart, cut off from the outside world, able to depend only on each other, living or dying without anyone's caring as long as they put on a good show. They were a good crew, proud, skilled, and tough in spite of the inevitable handful of bad apples.
They were also a crew without a captain, apart from the Ten Brothers and Skroga. There was no one who could lead them in one particular direction. If such a leader emerged, what might happen with a thousand tough fighters all ready to march?
Quite a lot, Blade suspected. However, before he could hope to offer himself as that leader, he would have to gain a name for himself. That meant not just surviving but winning in the Games of Hapanu.
Chapter 17
The day of Blade's first appearance in the Games dawned bright, warm, and windy. From his bench in the waiting room at the outer end of the tunnel, Blade could see the steady march of white clouds across a blue sky and feel the breeze on his skin. It carried the sea-smell of the brackish water at the mouth of the Great River.
The sunlight and the sea-smell were things about Gerhaa Blade could enjoy. He hadn't realized until he left the Forest how tired he'd become of the greenish tinge to the sunlight, the windless heat under the trees, the odors of vegetation, decay, and sluggish streams. Gerhaa was a welcome contrast. It would have been positively lovely, if he hadn't been about to fight for his life to amuse its decadent people and worse-than-decadent ruler.
The waiting room was long and low. On benches along either side sat fifty-odd gladiators. All wore open-faced helmets, leather loinguards, ankle-high boots, and leather wrist braces. The weapons were more varied. Blade saw broadswords, short swords, clubs and maces, daggers, throwing and thrusting spears, weighted nets and ropes, things like pitchforks with barbed points and heavy crossbars, and things like golf clubs with oversized heads and spikes on both ends of the shaft. A few of the men carried shields of bronze-sheathed wood, with razor-sharp edges and spikes jutting out of the heavy iron bosses in the middle. Blade had seldom seen such an impressive collection of weaponry in the hands of men who looked so fit and ready to use it.