“Only thing I’m thinking about right now is removing Calbit and Tirana’s heads from their necks with my bare hands.”
Rol didn’t speak the words in his usual matter-of-fact tone.
“Okay, now I’m really worried.”
“Why?” Rol asked.
“Because this isn’t like you. C’mon, Rol, we’ve been in worse situations than this.”
“With Fehrd,” Rol added. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ll get through this. For now, though, we fight.”
“That’s what worries me-you know who that mul was, right? It was Gorbin. He’s been-”
“I know who he is. I saw him fight last time we were in Urik. His fights never last longer than a few minutes.”
“Which is why we need to get out of here before we have to fight him.”
“I’ll beat him.”
“You sure?”
“Do I have a choice? Besides, we don’t know the lay of the land well enough to escape. We’ll need at least a week.”
Sighing, Gan leaned back on the cubicle’s hard bunk. Rol was, as usual, right. They needed a plan, and in order to plan, they needed information.
Gan wasn’t sure when it was, exactly, that the guards led them out of their cubicle and up the spiral staircase. Between being drugged-by Tirana’s draft meant to keep them “awake”-and kidnapped, and being stuck in either a stone carriage or an underground dungeon, he had lost all sense of time.
But when they reached the holding area, he could see that the outdoor arena was lit solely by torchlight, so it had to be nighttime. There were dozens of torches all around the perimeter of the arena, and they barely kept the place visible against the stygian backdrop of the former obsidian mine.
Six fighters joined Gan and Rol, but they mostly shied away from them. The only one who didn’t was a goliath who looked right at Gan and Rol and said, “You two? Dead. Neither one’a ya’s gonna last more’n three seconds in the arena with me. An’ yeah, I saw whatcha did ‘gainst the anakore, but anakores ain’t nothin’ away from their packs. You two? Goin’ down.”
Ignoring the goliath, Gan walked over to the gate-which, to his surprise, was made from metal. It was old metal, rusted in spots, probably dating back to the earliest days of the king’s reign. No doubt, it was prohibitively expensive to replace, and Gan suspected that a sharp kick to the right spot would snap some of the metal spurs in twain.
Filing that away for future reference, Gan looked out at the arena floor as Calbit’s partner came out and held up his hands, causing the crowd noise-which had been so constant in the background that Gan hadn’t really noticed it up until then-to die down.
“Good evening. I’m Fal Jago, and on behalf of my partner Helsno Calbit, I welcome you all to the Pit … of Black Death.”
Gan wondered what the dramatic pause and overemphasis of the arena’s name was supposed to accomplish. Did anybody not know the name of the place?
However, several people cheered, if raggedly, at the mention of the name, so Gan supposed it served some sort of rile-up-the-crowd function.
“Tonight is a very special night here at the Pit, as we present a new crop of fighters that we have brought here from arenas all across Athas. The finest warriors in the land, and all of them come here, because they know that this is where true battles are waged, where glory is gained, where victory is won.”
More cheers, even though Gan mostly wanted to wretch. He’d heard better oratory from drunks in taverns.
“The first battle of the evening will be between two of our finest newcomers. First, from the wastes to the west, fresh off of several dozen kills in the iron mines of Tyr-the grand goliath, Krackis.”
With a grinding sound that Gan felt all up and down his spine, the metal gate rose slowly upward, providing easy access to the arena floor. The goliath who’d been trash-talking Gan a moment earlier ran forward. He jogged out into the arena with his arms raised in the air.
Whatever response he was hoping to engender with that gesture failed, as the crowd sounded unimpressed. At best, he got a smattering of applause.
“Facing him in the finest arena in the land will be a challenger from the far-off land of Nibenay, a man who singlehandedly defeated a team of bandits in the Alluvial Sand Wastes-the one-eyed wonder, Gan.”
Gan shook his head in annoyance. “I’ve been to Nibenay all of once in my life.”
One of the other fighters, a stocky dwarf, barked a laugh. “Seriously? You actually critiquing Jago’s nonsense? He’s a fripping barker, you moron, he’s tryin’ to rile up the crowd. Accordin’ to him, I wiped out an entire elf caravan with my teeth last year.”
Gan regarded the dwarf, who was bald with a thick mustache. “I take it you used actual weapons to wipe out the elf caravan?”
That resulted in another barked laugh. “Never even met an elf in my life, till I came to this benighted place. Nah, I was arrested for fightin’, an’ they put me here instead’a jail. I live, I’m out in a year-go to jail, it’s ten, and probably get killed inside within a year.”
His eye widening, Gan asked, “Ten? For a fight?”
The dwarf grinned. “Well, when the guy you beat up is the king’s nephew, they take a dimmer view of it. Kid wasn’t supposed to be in that tavern, so they didn’t put me to death or nothin’, since I didn’t know he was a nobleman. Course, I woulda beat the little twerp up anyway, he was a real fripping piece of-”
One of the guards pushed the dwarf aside and then shoved Gan toward the gate. He sauntered out into the arena, seeing no reason to rush or to play to the crowd.
To his amusement, he got precisely the same applause that Krackis received, with a fraction of the effort.
“Let the fighting begin,” was the last thing Jago said before he left the floor, leaving Gan and Krackis to circle each other.
Gan stood with his elbows in and angled slightly so that he presented his left bicep to his opponent. For his part, Krackis just stood facing Gan directly, holding his fists over his head. Gan sighed silently; Krackis’s pose probably looked impressive to the crowd, but holding his arms up like that was an unnecessary effort and left his middle exposed.
Krackis, predictably, made the first move, throwing an overhand right toward Gan, which he easily deflected with his left arm, though pain shot through his forearm with the parry. That told Gan a lot; his foe was very strong and had probably never been in a fight with anyone who knew what he was doing.
The goliath peppered Gan with a few more punches, and one of them inevitably was strong enough that Gan couldn’t properly parry it-Krackis’s sheer strength was enough that Gan fell to the arena floor in a heap.
Proud of himself, Krackis raised his arms and looked to the crowd, who obliged him with cheers that echoed off the obsidian walls.
Seeing his opportunity, Gan thrust his right leg upward with a sharp kick to Krackis’s solar plexus.
The cheers modulated almost instantly into gasps as the goliath doubled over, struggling to breathe. Gan followed it up with a punch to his oversized head, knocking Krackis to the floor.
With the crowd goading him to get up, Krackis managed to struggle to his feet. Gan waited until he was standing, then kicked downward at his knee. The impact of his foot on bone broke it, the crack echoing throughout the arena, followed quickly by Krackis’s screams as he fell to the floor again.
Suddenly the crowd was cheering more enthusiastically, chanting Gan’s name. However, Gan paid no attention, focusing entirely on Krackis.
But the goliath was still screaming in pain, and did not get up.
Jago stepped out then, holding up both arms. “The match is ended. The winner is Gan.”