Before the ringing faded away, the Houndmaster dropped one sickle and pulled up a yellowed horn that had hung against his chest. It looked like a ram’s horn, and Urzaia had assumed it was another decoration to go along with the man’s wolf cloak.
Why draw the sickle at all, if he meant to drop it? Urzaia wondered. Did he want me to believe he’d close with me? Urzaia was forced to conclude the man was merely foolish.
He did stand back and let the Houndmaster blow his horn. The man was an experienced fighter, so he would certainly have a way to counter a straightforward strike. Besides, Urzaia wanted to see what the horn would do.
The sand shimmered with heat, and seconds after the cry of the Houndmaster’s horn echoed through the arena, the sand began to swirl. It gathered into four densely packed shapes, each the detailed outline of a hound. Urzaia spotted individual teeth and snarls of unruly fur, all sculpted on bodies of packed sand. The sand-hounds bared their teeth at Urzaia and snapped their jaws open in a bark, but they made no sound. Still, they looked so realistic that Urzaia practically heard their growls and cries in his head.
He whistled, impressed. This Houndmaster was a Soulbound, obviously, and his Vessel must be the horn from some Kameira that controlled sand. Sloppy of him, to reveal his Vessel so clearly, but at least the man had a flair for the dramatic.
The Houndmaster snapped a command, and all four dogs sprinted toward Urzaia. He leveled his axes, still smiling.
If this was to be his last fight, he wanted to give the crowd a good show. Just because this was a death sentence didn’t mean he couldn’t milk a little joy out of it while he lasted.
Eventually, the arena killed everyone.
Calder and Jerri sat in the highest, cheapest seats of the arena where they wouldn’t be recognized. Not that they had many acquaintances in Axciss, nor enemies for that matter, there was still one man whose notice he’d rather avoid. Until he could fulfill his promise.
He wouldn’t raise Urzaia’s hopes before he could break the man free.
Pushing the three-cornered hat lower on his head, where it would conceal the bright flame of his hair, Calder turned his attention from the fight to the stack of papers in front of him. “Six exits from the arena floor.”
“Covered in iron bars while any match is in progress,” Jerri said. “And leading straight into the dungeons.” She leaned forward, gripping her braid in both hands, dark eyes gleaming.
Calder looked at the outer edge of the arena. The whole building was constructed like a yellow stone bowl, with seats up the edges of the bowl and a flat plane on top. Guards sat in the shade of stubby towers, muskets in hand. “Gunners on the walls,” he said, scribbling the information down. “They’re here for the crowd’s protection, but they’ll be in the way if anything happens during a match.”
Urzaia smashed one dog into a spray of sand, which splashed into the Houndmaster’s eyes. Jerri and the rest of the crowd erupted in cheers.
“The Patrons, arena administrators, and Imperial guests stay in the private box,” Calder said, looking to one end of the arena. Two fat men, one woman with tall hair, and a robed Magister were sitting within, along with a handful of standing attendants. “Do they have their own exit, do you think?”
Jerri screamed for Urzaia once more and then turned to him. “They’d have to. I can’t imagine a little Heartlander lady squeezing her silk skirts through the common crowds. Can we get him up there?”
“We might be able to get ourselves up there,” Calder said. The crest of a Guild member opened doors, very often in a literal sense. “I doubt we could take a gladiator straight from the arena, up through the common seats, into the box, and past the arena’s guards.”
Still, he wrote it down as a possibility.
Jerri turned to the side of the arena opposite the box, where perhaps fifty seats had been removed and the slope of the walls leveled. It was a flat square of stone like a miniature arena. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know. Executions?”
“I think they like to save executions for the main floor,” Jerri said, wincing as Urzaia took a slice to the face from the Houndmaster’s sickle. The crowd groaned along with her.
Could it be for announcements? No, most announcements were made from the arena floor or the Imperial box seats. Why, then, were they keeping that clear platform in the middle of the seats?
He needed a closer look.
The crowd of an arena was a totally different species from the audience in an opera house or theater. Pushing down a row was more like forcing his way through a mob; no one was seated, most people were shouting and waving their arms around as though to imitate the fighters. One woman smacked Calder so hard with her elbow that his head rang, and she followed it up by screaming in his ear and shoving him farther down the row.
At this rate, he would be beaten to death by the spectators before he reached the end of the arena. Calder shot a glance at the guards in their towers overhead, hoping they wouldn’t react, and pulled his pistol from his jacket. He held it overhead like a banner as he advanced.
The crowd glared at him, and a few even spat at his feet, but at least no one pushed him anymore. Finally clear of the press of bodies, he took a deep breath, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The air was hot and thick with salt, and sweat, and blood, and almost ten thousand unwashed bodies.
“A man shows his weakness when he casts shame on his ancestors.” A contemporary of Sadesthenes had written those words, though his name escaped Calder at the moment. He supposed he was showing his weakness right now, because he was suddenly ashamed of his Izyrian ancestors who had built this arena and those like it. It celebrated the opposite of civilization: the brutal, unfettered rule of blood and steel. Writhing in the seats, crying for blood, these looked like Elders rather than men.
Then again, he’d been raised in the Capital. The people here would probably say that keeping bloodshed confined to the arena was the very definition of civilized, keeping aggression out of the streets.
His philosophical musing kept him occupied as he slid past the grubby Izyrians filling the seats, his pistol still outstretched. At last, he reached the square platform.
It was exactly as it seemed: a section of seats flattened and raised to create an even surface that could be viewed from anywhere in the arena. Since the platform interrupted what would normally be a flight of stairs, there were exits built underneath. He peeked through one wooden door, which opened onto a spiral staircase that seemed to lead outside.
Calder tucked his pistol back into his jacket and unfolded his piece of paper and a stub of paper-wrapped charcoal. He made a quick, crude note of the exit positions. If they could get Urzaia up to this platform, they would have a straight run out of the arena.
A voiceless roar slammed into his ears like a crashing wave, and his head jerked of its own accord to the heart of the arena. There, a bloody Urzaia stood with one black hatchet lifted to the sky. The other was embedded in the center of the Houndmaster’s chest, splitting his horn Vessel in two. The man’s body sagged around the hatchet blade, which was the only thing keeping the corpse aloft.
Urzaia didn’t seem to care that he was holding the weight of a man with one hand. He smiled broadly at the crowd, the blood running down his face highlighting each of his teeth in red. The audience went wild, shouting for the Woodsman.