After ten years, it had become routine for the mul. He got into the arena. His opponent stood across from him, either looking very cocky or scared to death. The elf was one of the cocky ones. Unusually bulky for his race, the elf called himself Sehmet, and claimed to be the best fistfighter in Athas.
When he showed up in Urik, he stood in the town square challenging anyone who’d come to beat him, and he always won. He also ended each fight with the following statement: “I can beat anyone-even Gorbin. Especially Gorbin!”
Finally, he got his wish, invited by the owners of the Pit of Black Death-a tapped-out obsidian quarry that had been converted into the premiere gladiatorial arena in Urik-where Gorbin had been the main event for a decade.
“You’re done today, Gorbin,” Sehmet said. “This is the day you go down.”
Gorbin said nothing. He didn’t like to talk while he fought. Sorvag always told him that it wasted energy.
They circled each other for a minute or so, the way fighters always did, waiting for the other one to show some kind of weakness. The scared ones usually just waited for something to happen, but the cocky ones like Sehmet often got bored and attacked first.
The elf didn’t disappoint-he lunged for Gorbin with a massive overhand right punch.
Gorbin caught the punch in his left hand. The impact was impressive, but nothing the mul couldn’t handle.
Sehmet looked stunned, gaping at his fist lodged in Gorbin’s hand as if he’d never seen the like before. He probably hadn’t.
Then Gorbin flexed his hand, breaking Sehmet’s arm at the wrist. The elf screamed in pain as he fell to his knees, and then Gorbin let go of the fist and just started punching.
About a minute later, Sehmet was dead. Had he been a fellow slave, Gorbin would have left him alive, but challengers like him deserved what they got.
Gorbin had yet to lose a single fight in the arena.
In fact, he was still waiting for his first real challenge.
It was really getting boring.
He was the biggest and the strongest, and he’d been training his whole life. Part of it was his being a mul, of course, but he’d known a few muls in his time, and none of them were as big and strong as he was.
When he thought about it-which wasn’t often, as thinking had never been Gorbin’s strong suit, and besides, it usually just got in the way of the fighting-he figured that he owed it to Sorvag.
Gorbin had been an infant when Sorvag found him in the wastes, apparently abandoned by his parents for reasons he would never know. Gorbin still had no idea why Sorvag hadn’t just left him there. After all, he’d been just a mewling half-breed infant. Over the years, Gorbin had seen hundreds of infants; they were small, smelly, noisy, and utterly useless in every way. Sure, they grew up to be adults eventually, but prior to that, they were just horrible. Gorbin simply could not imagine that anyone would willingly take a baby into his life the way Sorvag did.
Perhaps Gorbin should have asked Sorvag that at some point before he killed him.
It was Sorvag’s own fault. He’d trained Gorbin for longer than he could remember. Sorvag had told him that he’d found Gorbin as an infant in the wastes, abandoned, and took him in. Sorvag fed him special nutritional food, made him only drink water-never fruit juice, nor any alcohol-and had him exercise constantly.
At the age of four, Gorbin had his first fight, against a ten-year-old who made fun of his face. Gorbin looked different from the other children he met in Urik. He only met one other mul, but she was a sickly little girl who died a few days after Gorbin met her. The rest had different eyes, different ears, different teeth, and that made him reviled.
One of them decided to make his revulsion verbal, and he expressed his dislike at a very loud volume.
So Gorbin hit him as hard as he could.
The boy stopped talking after that. And the revulsion went away too. Or at least happened out of his hearing, which was good enough for Gorbin.
As Gorbin got older, he got bigger and stronger, and he also learned more and more about how to fight. Dozens of men came to Sorvag’s house to show Gorbin this technique or that hold or this block or that punch.
Gorbin wasn’t the only child that Sorvag trained, though he was the only one who lived with Sorvag. He was also the only mul-children of elves, dwarves, goliaths, and even the occasional thri-kreen spawn would be brought by to Sorvag’s house in order to learn how to fight. Some of them only stayed to train for a week or two, some for months on end, some would come once a week. Gorbin worked with a few of them sometimes, but mostly Sorvag kept Gorbin’s lessons separate.
When Gorbin turned fifteen, Sorvag said he had a surprise for him. At that point, Gorbin had done everything Sorvag told him to do. It seemed reasonable-Sorvag fed him, clothed him, housed him, and let him beat people up pretty much any time he wanted. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for Sorvag.
Gorbin came into the kitchen of Sorvag’s house, and a skinny old man stood there. “This is Calbit,” Sorvag said to Gorbin. “He and his partner run the Pit of Black Death.”
“Really?” Gorbin’s eyes went wide. He knew all about the Pit, of course. Sorvag had taken Gorbin to a few of the matches, and Gorbin had always said he wanted to fight there. “I can take any of those guys,” he’d said many times.
Sorvag had always been cagey in response to Gorbin’s pleas, never confirming that the mul was destined to someday fight in the arena.
But Gorbin could feel it in his bones-that day was the day. Why else would he have been training for a decade and a half?
“Do I get to fight there?”
Calbit snorted, a noise that sounded like a crodlu when it was unhappy. “Ain’t like you’re gonna have a choice, boy.”
“You see,” Sorvag said, “the Pit owns you.”
Gorbin blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand.” Calbit then turned to Sorvag. “I thought you explained it to him.”
“Not in so many words,” Sorvag said weakly.
Gorbin walked up to face the man who’d been everything to him. “You’re selling me into slavery?”
“You were always a slave from the beginning,” Sorvag said. “I didn’t find you in the wastes, you were purchased by Calbit here and brought to me to train. You’re a mul-there’s nothing for you but the arena.”
“You lied to me?” Gorbin asked the question in a whisper.
For fifteen years, Sorvag always told him what to do. He had earned the authority he had over Gorbin. So to find out that he’d lied to him all that time was devastating.
Sorvag suddenly looked sad and pathetic-just like the people Gorbin hit shortly after he hit them-and muttered, “I’m-I’m sorry.”
Gorbin beat him to death right there.
When he was done, Calbit was just standing there calmly, unconcerned by the pulpy mess that Gorbin had made of Sorvag’s head, or by the blood mixed with brain and bone that was all over the kitchen.
No, Calbit was just looking at him. “Guess this means we’ll have to find someone else to train the kids. Ah, well, least I don’t have to pay his rates anymore. Damn thief, is what he is.” Calbit looked at Gorbin and smiled. “And a liar too. Idiot.”
It never really occurred to Gorbin to turn and beat Calbit to death, even though the old man couldn’t have done anything to stop it. But with Sorvag dead, Gorbin had no idea what to do next. He had spent all fifteen years of his life on Athas doing what Sorvag told him to do.
So he simply gravitated to the next available authority figure. Besides, Calbit would have simply called in the soldiers if he disobeyed, and while Gorbin had every confidence in his ability to win any one-on-one fight put before him, he didn’t think he’d be able to take on a cadre of soldiers.