Gan ran up to the door, peering through the barred window. “What’s going on?”
“Who cares?” Rol was behind him, sitting on his bunk, staring ahead into the air. Rol’s listlessness in the cubicle was almost as worrying as his fierceness in the arena.
“Hang tight,” the guard said. “You’re the main event tonight.”
With a sigh, Gan said, “Great.” He turned to Rol. “Maybe now we can start talking about escape plans?”
Still staring ahead blankly, Rol said, “I’m working on one.”
Gan blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I said I’m working on one.”
“Were you going to share this with me?”
“I haven’t finished it yet. I didn’t want to talk to you about it until I was sure it would work.”
“Are you sure it’ll work now?”
Rol finally looked at Gan with bloodshot eyes. “Honestly? Not really. I think it’ll fail. That’s why I didn’t mention it.”
“So why’d you mention it now?”
“Just making conversation,” Rol said with a shrug.
Gan sat down next to him on the bunk. “Something’s wrong, Rol.”
“Really? What was your first clue, the garbage on my skin?”
“This goes back to the Great Road, Rol,” Gan said intently. “You took down that anakore singlehandedly. What happened out there?”
“Nothing happened. I went to take a piss, I came back, I killed an anakore. And then I came here and am getting lesions on my skin. You now know everything I know.”
Gan snarled. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”
“Brilliant observation.” Rol threw up his hands. “Calbit and Jago have had a dozen healers in here, and they don’t know anything.”
“Yeah.” Gan leaned against the wall. “So we keep fighting?”
“Until I come up with a good plan. Or you do, but let’s face it, that’s pretty unlikely.”
That prompted a chuckle from Gan. “Well, that was nice.”
“What?”
“Verbal abuse of me-you almost sound like your old self …”
The pair of them sat alone for a while after that, until the guards came to bring them up the spiral staircase.
They were alone in the waiting area. Stepping forward toward the rusty metal gate, Gan looked out at what he could see of the crowd, which was primarily those in the front rows opposite where the holding area was. It was only about five percent of the full crowd in his line of sight, and since it was expensive front-row seats, they were the most fanatical and devoted fans of the arena.
Which meant they were holding up signs that expressed their love for Gorbin, sometimes with a simple declarative like GORBIN’S THE BEST, others simply with his name or a crude drawing of his face. Some children were in his line of sight, and many were carrying small dolls that bore Gorbin’s likeness.
Jago was standing in the center of the arena again. “Tonight is a very special night here at the Pit, as Gorbin will once again take the arena-but against two new foes. These are vicious killers from beyond the wastes. You’ve seen them in the early fights, and they’ve won each and every single time. Now they’ll take on the greatest fighter in the Pit’s history-Gorbin.”
Boos for that. Nobody wanted to see Gorbin defeated. But the boos were surprisingly subdued.
And that’s when it finally hit Gan what was wrong with the crowd noise. There wasn’t enough of it. Last time he was in Urik, the seats shook from the din.
He turned to Rol. “The crowd sounds quiet.”
“It’s what they usually sound like,” Rol said with a shrug.
“Yeah, when we’re out there-but we’re the undercard. This is the main event of the Pit of Black Death, and I’d swear to you there’s not even a hundred people out there.”
Rol shrugged again. “Maybe people are tired of the arena.”
Gan scratched his chin. “Or maybe they’re tired of watching Gorbin win all the time.”
“Presenting Gorbin’s first challenger of the evening: Rol Mandred.”
Rol shrugged a third time. It seemed to be all he did anymore. “Guess I’ll have to take him down, then.”
The guards guided Rol toward the gate, which obligingly rose with its usual metallic squeal. Rol stepped into the arena.
The boos intensified, but they were still fairly subdued.
Rol and Gorbin circled each other. Gorbin looked kind of bored, which Gan suspected had something to do with the crowd’s reaction. The last time he was there, the hairless mul had stared intently at his opponent from underneath the bone ridge on his forehead. He had looked fierce and intimidating. The crowd fed off that.
With nothing to feed off of, though, they were listless.
Then Rol did something Gan had never seen his friend do in all the years they’d known each other.
He grinned.
Rol didn’t grin. He smirked, he smiled-especially if he was chatting a woman up-and he laughed sometimes, if the mood struck him.
But he never grinned.
In the arena, the two opponents circled each other. Neither took his eyes off the other, waiting for the other to make the first move.
The mul still looked bored, and Rol was still grinning that damned grin, but otherwise they were focused.
Finally, Gorbin made the first move, swinging a massive fist at Rol.
Rol caught it in his left hand.
A gasp rippled through the amphitheater-and the holding area as well. Muls were quite strong, and Rol, for all his might, was only a human. There was simply no way that Rol should have been able to just catch a mul’s punch without any ill effects.
Yet Rol looked as if he’d just caught a lightly tossed ball.
Gorbin looked stunned, staring at his fist in Rol’s hand as if he’d never seen anything like it. And indeed, he probably hadn’t.
Rol then punched the mul right in the nose while letting go of Gorbin’s fist. Rol’s fist struck Gorbin’s nose with a meaty thud, blood flying from his nostrils, and he fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
The crowd went completely quiet.
Walking over to the fallen mul, Rol looked down at him. “That the best you can do?”
Snarling, Gorbin wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, then leaped to his feet and started throwing dozens of punches. Rol was able to counter some of them, and some struck full on. Rol didn’t fight back, just let Gorbin hit his arms, keeping his elbows in so that Gorbin didn’t strike his stomach or chest.
Then Rol grinned again.
Gan’s heart skipped a beat. “What the hell is wrong with you, Rol?”
Rol let loose with a quick kick that slammed into Gorbin’s stomach, causing the mul to blow out a big breath and stumble backward. Not letting up, Rol kicked him again and punched him in the face a few more times.
Gorbin’s face was caked with blood from his nose and mouth, and he was breathing very heavily, spitting blood onto the stone floor. Rol was still grinning.
Then Rol grabbed Gorbin’s arms and lifted the mul-who had to weigh twice what Rol had ever been able to pick up before-and threw him across the arena floor. Gorbin hit the stone ground and skidded along to the obsidian wall.
Still the crowd was silent.
Gan looked at what he could see of the audience from the holding area. The signs had been lowered; the dolls of Gorbin’s likeness were being clutched for dear life, as if to ward off the mul’s apparent defeat.
Rol ran over to Gorbin’s prone, broken form, and stepped on one of his arms. The snap of bone echoed throughout the subdued amphitheater. Then he picked Gorbin up by that arm-causing the mul to scream in pain-and threw him toward the holding area.
Backing up instinctively, Gan watched as Gorbin slammed into the metal cage with a clang.
Struggling to get to his feet, Gorbin said, “I don’t understand-I’m the biggest and the strongest. I should be winning.”
Walking over to stand over Gorbin, Rol spoke in a quiet tone that Gan could barely hear. “There is no ‘biggest.’ There is no ‘strongest.’ Because there’s always someone who’s stronger and bigger. And sooner or later that person finds you.” Rol then kneeled down on the mul, his knees pinning Gorbin’s chest. Despite just wiping the floor with the greatest fighter in Urik, Rol didn’t even sound winded. “When that person does find you, it’s your time to die.”