“Yes,” Rikus said. “This isn’t their fight. We have no wish to see them harmed.”
“You’ll understand if I’m reluctant to believe you,” Maetan said.
“It should surprise no one that the freed men of Tyr place a higher value on justice than a nobleman of Urik,” Rikus countered. One of the bodyguards tightened the choking loop around the mul’s neck; Maetan himself showed no reaction to the insult. Rikus continued, “If we intended to attack, we would have done it by now.” He was forced to gasp by the rope constricting his throat.
“I’m sure you intend to tell me what I stand to gain by accepting your surrender. Why shouldn’t I stay here and let your legion die of thirst?” The mindbender motioned for the guard to ease the tension on the mul’s throat.
“Two things,” Rikus said, swallowing hard. “First, you’d do well to return home with two thousand slaves. That’s all you’re going to bring back from Tyr.”
Maetan’s thin lips twitched in anger, but he gave no other indication of his feelings. “And the second?”
Rikus pointed his chin toward his warriors surrounding the village. “Even a Tyrian’s concern for justice goes only so far.”
Maetan shocked Rikus with a quick answer. “I accept.” The mindbender pointed at the tall dwarf with the rust-colored eyes and motioned for him to come forward. As the defiant-looking man obeyed, Maetan said, “Caelum speaks Tyrian. He’ll relay your words to the gladiators.”
The dwarf’s mouth fell open. “How did you-”
“That’s not for you to know,” a bodyguard snapped, pushing the dwarf toward Rikus.
“The courage of you and your men is admirable, but not very wise,” Caelum said, looking into the mul’s eyes. His jawbone, chin, and cheeks were well-defined and pronounced, but not as massive as those of most dwarves. There was even a certain symmetry and grace of proportion between his nose and the rest of his face, with uncharacteristic laugh lines around the corners of his mouth and eyes. “If you do this, there’s nothing to stop the Urikites from killing us all.”
“The choice is ours,” Rikus said, deliberately avoiding the dwarf’s red eyes. If Maetan was capable of reading Caelum’s mind, the mul did not want to plant any suggestion of what he had planned. Instead, he pointed to the sandstone arch on the hillside above. “Just deliver the message to the people up there.”
Once the dwarf was out of sight, Maetan sneered at Rikus. “Your men will be sold into slavery as you asked,” he said. “You, however, shall die a slow and bitter death for the pleasure of King Hamanu.”
Confident that he would have his revenge later, Rikus remained silent while Caelum climbed up to the arch. The mul found Maetan’s quick acceptance of their surrender unsettling. He had expected the Urikite to react more suspiciously, pondering the proposal for a few moments. His immediate agreement suggested that the mindbender was already well aware of the dangers of accepting the Tyrian surrender. Still, Rikus did not consider calling off his plan. Whether Maetan had anticipated it or not, it was still the only way to save both his legion and the dwarven village.
A few minutes after Caelum’s departure, the first Tyrians marched into the village. Unlike Rikus, they remained unbound, for tying them would have taken more rope than could be found in all of Kled. As the plaza began to grow more crowded, Maetan moved himself and Rikus to the far side, then ordered the dwarves to return to their homes and stay inside under penalty of death.
Soon the square was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with unarmed Tyrians, all clamoring for water and struggling to reach the cistern at its center-as the mul’s generals had instructed them to do. The Urikites previously standing guard at Kled’s wall now ringed the square, their shields and spears pointed toward Rikus’s warriors.
As the last Tyrians were escorted into the plaza, Jaseela and Neeva were brought to Rikus’s side, along with Caelum. Only the templars and K’kriq, gathered in a small group beneath the arch, remained outside the village.
Ignoring their absence for the moment, Maetan peered at Neeva from between two burly bodyguards. “An excellent girl,” he said, catching Rikus’s gaze with his pearly gray eyes. “Did she also come from my father’s pens? Or doesn’t your mul-brain allow you to remember that much?”
As the mindbender asked the question, a hated memory flashed into Rikus’s mind. In a dark corner of the Lubar pits, a young mul, his body already knotted with muscles and covered with scars, stood alone before a man-sized block of white pumice carved into the semblance of a gladiator.
“Hit it,” growled a familiar voice.
The boy, Rikus at ten years, looked over his shoulder. Neeva stood at his back, a six-stranded whip in her hand. He started to ask her what she was doing in his memory, at a time where she did not belong, but, before his eyes, she changed from an attractive woman to a fat, sweating swine of a trainer.
Rikus shook his head, trying to free himself of the memory. Once before, a mindbender had slipped into his head by hiding behind a memory. Thanks to Neeva’s inappropriate appearance, the mul had no doubt that Maetan was using a similar attack against him now.
The trainer cuffed the side of young Rikus’s head, snarling, “Do as you’re told, boy.”
Rikus tried to ignore the trainer and focus his thoughts on the present, but the memory had a life of its own. The gladiator found himself, as a young mul, facing the punching dummy and tapping it with his fist. The rough surface grated the soft skin of his hand, opening a line of tiny cuts across his knuckles.
The six-strands of the trainer’s whip snapped across Rikus’s bare back, opening a line of cuts that burned like viper bites. The boy clenched his teeth and did not cry out. He had already learned that to show pain was to invite more of it.
“Harder!” the trainer spat. “I swear I’ll strip the hide off your scrawny little bones.”
Rikus punched the statue again, this time with as much force as he could. The blow tore the skin off his knuckles and sent a sharp pain shooting from his hand clear to his elbow.
“Again!” the trainer sneered. His whip cracked and ripped another strip of flesh off the boy’s back.
The young mul hit the dummy again, this time imagining it was the trainer that he was attacking. He struck again and again, throwing his weight behind each blow. Soon he had reduced his hands to unfeeling masses of raw meat and painted the pumice statue red with his blood.
Rikus’s awareness of the present returned, and Maetan looked away. Unfortunately, the mindbender’s probing remained strong enough that the mul could not shut out the painful images inside his mind.
Maetan looked to Neeva and Jaseela, then motioned to the arch where Styan and his black-robed men waited. “Aren’t your templars thirsty?”
“They refuse to come down until they see how you treat us,” Jaseela offered.
“Everyone else is here,” Neeva added, glancing at Rikus.
The mul knew what his fighting partner was hinting at: the Tyrians were ready to attack. Rikus opened his mouth to give the order, but Maetan’s head snapped around and the mindbender fixed his gray eyes on those of the mul.
Inside Rikus’s mind, the fat trainer clamped a pudgy, begrimed hand over the young mul’s mouth. Rikus grasped at the arm and tried to pull it away, but he was still young and far from a match for the older man’s bearish strength. The trainer opened his lips to speak, revealing a mouthful of rotten and broken teeth.
“Forget about the plan,” the trainer said. “We’re really surrendering.”
To Rikus’s surprise, he heard himself repeating the words. Neeva scowled in anger, and Jaseela’s jaw dropped open.
“What?” they demanded.
Caelum looked from the mul to the two women, rubbing a hand over the bony crest of thickened skull atop his head.
Hoping to alert the two women to his plight, Rikus tried to shake his head-and found himself unable to move. In his mind, the fat trainer’s powerful hand was locked over the boy’s chin, keeping it held firmly in place.