“We fled the captured imperial vessel, the Alaria, in an escape capsule. It brought us here. The capsule is lost to us. It was by the river.”
“Who took your vessel?”
“The fleet of Ortog, who is an Ortung.”
“Ortog is a prince of the Drisriaks,” said the man. He spat to the side.
“His house is secessionist,” said the gladiator.
“Who, then, will come for the tributes?”
“Will any come?”
“They have.”
“Who?”
“Ortog, for the Drisriaks,” said the man.
“Perhaps there is an end now, to such things,” said the gladiator.
“There is never an end to such things,” said the man.
“But you are concealed in the forests.”
“They will come,” said the man.
“Then you must fight.”
“They can destroy the forests,” said the man.
“They have such power?”
“Yes.”
They were then silent for a time.
“You are not Drisriak?” said the man, finally.
“No,” said the gladiator.
“Give us the woman,” said the man. “You can then go.”
“No,” said the gladiator.
Janina crept more closely to him.
“You would give your life for a woman?” he asked.
The gladiator did not respond.
“She is a slave, is she not?” asked the man.
“Yes,” said the gladiator.
“She can be bought and sold, like a pig,” said the man.
“Yes,” said the gladiator.
“You would give your life for her?”
Again then was the gladiator silent.
“We can take her,” said the man. “We are many. You are one.”
“I gather that honor does not exist in the forests,” said the gladiator.
“It is only in the secrecy of the forests, hidden away, that honor can exist in these times!” said the man, angrily, rising to his feet.
The gladiator, too, then, rose to his feet.
“We will buy her,” said the man. “Two pelts of the black wolf!”
“She is not for sale.”
“Three,” said the man.
“No,” said the gladiator.
“But you might, in honor, give her away,” said the man.
“True,” said the gladiator.
Janina crept even more closely to the gladiator.
“Give her to us,” said the man.
“No,” said the gladiator.
“Give us the pistol, the rifle,” said the man.
“No,” said the gladiator.
“But you claim they are without ammunition.”
“That is true.”
“Give them to us.”
“No.”
The man then removed the ax from his back. The gladiator, not taking his eyes from him, reached down and picked up the staff he had cut.
At the same tune, from the forest, emerging into the clearing, came some seventy to eighty men. Behind them, now detectable among the trees, were others.
“There are so many, Master!” said Janina.
“Yes,” he said.
The men continued to emerge from the forest.
“Master,” moaned Janina.
Then the gladiator and the kneeling slave were muchly enclosed, on three sides.
Altogether there may have been some three hundred to three hundred and fifty men. They carried a variety of weapons, most spears, some bows, some swords, some axes.
“Give me to them, Master!” said Janina.
“No,” said the gladiator.
“Master!” protested Janina.
Angrily he lashed back with the back of his left hand, striking her from her knees, flinging her back to the rock behind them, where she turned, and then half-knelt, half lay, bleeding, a chastised property.
“Clear a place,” said the man with the headband, stepping back a few feet.
Men parted.
“You would match an ax to a staff?” asked the gladiator.
“Cut a staff,” said the man.
A fellow left, to go into the woods. In a few moments he returned, with a stout, trimmed branch.
“Your staff,” said the man with the headband, “is too long, too thick, too unwieldy.”
But he did not know the strength of the gladiator, that he could wield such a thing as a lesser man might have a stick.
His ax handed to another, the man in the headband hefted the staff just cut for him. It was springy, and green. It would have something of the resiliency of a whip, with something of the lash of such an object. It would not be likely to break, unless struck with incredible force.
A wide circle was traced in the dirt, there in the clearing. The men from the forest lined the circle. Janina, the rope unwound from her neck, it then again serving as a leash, was pulled to the edge of the circle, where she was knelt down. The leash was shortened, by looping, so that, as she knelt, the fist of her leash holder was but a foot from her neck.
The staves were crossed.
“Begin!” called a man, striking upward with the butt of his spear, with a sharp crack separating the staves.
The gladiator stood in the center of the circle, his staff not lifted, in no defensive posture.
The man with the headband moved about him, and the gladiator turned, to follow him.
The man with the headband feinted, and then again, but the gladiator made no move to counter a possible blow, nor to initiate one of his own.
Then the butt of the man’s staff thrust at him.
It was a tentative, exploratory touch. But it left its mark. “He fears to fight,” said a man at the side. The man with the headband then struck the gladiator a round blow. Men cried out. Such a blow might have felled a lesser man.
“He is strong,” marveled a man.
The man with the headband then, perhaps as astonished as the others, struck the gladiator again, this time even harder.
“Are you weak, Astubux?” jeered a man.
In fury then the man with the headband again struck the gladiator, but it was as though he might be smiting an inert, natural thing, the rock, a tree.
“Aiii,” marveled a man.
Then the man with the headband, whose name was Astubux, again struck the gladiator, as hard as he might.
But, again, the gladiator did not lose his footing. He hardly flinched. But the stripes on his body, the rising of the dark welts, evidenced the authenticity of the blows.
“Fight! Fight!” screamed Astubux. “Are you a coward?” he asked.
The gladiator’s eyes, for a moment, were frightening to read. In them, but scarcely detectable, there was suddenly suggested something terrible. It was like a movement in a dark forest, one perhaps of some dreadful beast, one best left unaroused.
Astubux stepped back.
The gladiator eyed him.
Then the strange thing, fleeting, terrible, in the eyes was gone. It was as though the beast had turned away.
Astubux rushed forward, striking down with the staff, but this time the blow was simply blocked, smartly, as was the next, and the next. This the gladiator had decided. Then the staves were braced against one another and the gladiator, step by step, forced Astubux toward the edge of the circle, where men, in awe, drew back. But he did not force him from the circle. He forced him three times to its perimeter, and each time let him return to the center. Astubux was now wide-eyed, and sweating. Then the gladiator pressed down on Astubux’s staff and Astubux, in the center of the circle, was forced to his knees. Then the gladiator drew back the great staff and smote down, breaking the staff of Astubux. Astubux tried to move backward but was forced by the butt of the gladiator’s staff to his back. Then, for a moment, the beast appeared once more in the gladiator’s eyes, as he lifted his staff, like a spear. Then, again, it was gone. He drove the staff downward. It sank six inches into the soil beside Astubux’s head.
“Be pleased I did not choose to fight,” said the gladiator. He then turned about, and left the circle.