“I’ll tell you about it, but first you tell me why they were fighting you three to one this morning. You didn’t have a chance.”
“It’s kind of a test thought up by that trainer, Myricus. We all take it in turn. He wants everyone wounded at least once. After that, he says, you’re — well, sort of baptized. Mainly it’s to show what’ll happen if you refuse to fight in the arena. If you just run to save yourself, after ten minutes they’ll send in another opponent, and five minutes later a third if you go on trying not to fight. So the more you chicken out, the less your chance of surviving. Get it?”
“I get it. And apart from that, what’s this Myricus like?”
“Myricus? Three times stronger than you and me put together. But he’s no fool either. Guesses everything you’re thinking. For instance, the other day he says to me, ‘Listen here, Rusticus —’”
“Is that what you’re called here, Rusticus?”
“Yeah, they gave me the name — I dunno why. Don’t even know what it means. Do you know, then?”
“No,” lied Milos, suppressing a wish to laugh.
“Well, he takes me to one side, says, ‘Listen here, Rusticus. You know why you’re not scared?’ I say no. And it’s true: I’m not scared. ‘You’re not scared because you believe you won’t really fight,’ he says. ‘You think something will happen, you don’t know what, but that’s what you think, and you think no one can make you fight, isn’t that so, Rusticus?’ I don’t know what to say because he was dead right, and I don’t want to admit it. So he explains how it’s the same when everyone comes here; they all reckon they’ll escape fighting. ‘But they’re wrong,’ he says, ‘and that’s the best way to lose a fight. No, you want to know for sure you’ll be fighting.’ Follow me?”
Milos followed him only too well. During the hours alone in this room, he had worked out his own secret conviction that he wasn’t going to fight. Discovering that he was thinking exactly like the others was extremely annoying.
“There’s some of ’em feel sure right up to the last moment they won’t go into the arena,” Rusticus went on, “and them, they’re dead already. Listen, Ferenzy, this is what I’ve learned since I’ve been here: first, it’s no use thinking you won’t fight; second, it’s no use chickening out when you do.”
“I see,” murmured Milos, although he couldn’t bring himself to admit that this line of reasoning had also been his own. He wondered whether it was simply a question of time — after all, he’d only just arrived — or whether his own intrinsic nature would rebel to the very end against the terrible idea of entering the arena with intent to kill.
Basil had closed his eyes and seemed to be dropping off to sleep.
“Can I ask you one last question?” said Milos softly.
“Go ahead.”
“You talked to Myricus about the best way to survive, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“But did the two of you talk about how to live with yourself afterward? I mean, once you’ve killed a man. Or two men, or three?”
“Yes, he talked about that. He said . . . Oh, I can’t remember just what. . . . You mustn’t worry about that.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, meaning if your opponent dies, it’s because his time had come.”
“His destiny?”
“That’s it, his destiny. And if you think you’re here for some good reason, you’re fooling yourself. You’re just a tool, see? And then you have to . . . Oh, and he said if you ask too many questions like that, you’re finished.”
They remained silent for a while. Milos thought Basil had fallen asleep when his friend muttered, in a thick voice, “Hey, I’m glad I found you here, Ferenzy. Really glad.”
Milos and Basil left the infirmary together the next day. They had made a kind of pact without needing to put it into words, and no doubt to compensate for their youth compared to the others: they would stay together and help each other through whatever trials they faced. They’d support each other to the last.
The other fighters were all between twenty-five and forty, and none of them seemed inclined to make friends with anyone. During training in the arena, Milos found none of the lively, cheerful atmosphere he had known in the wrestling ring. The cruel fate they all shared might have been expected to create a bond between these men, but no. Everyone here seemed solely preoccupied with becoming strong and implacable enough to survive.
Caius, only just recovered from his injuries, proved to be the most formidable of all. The rules forbade the inflicting of any serious injury on a training partner, but the definition of “serious” was very vague, and Caius was constantly trying to see how far he could go. He always had to cut or bruise his opponents, make blood flow. Myricus never told him not to. Knowing that Caius didn’t like him, Milos took care to avoid him and did his utmost not to face him in the arena. He still had no idea why Caius didn’t fancy his company until the night when Basil told him. The two of them often spent hours whispering from bed to bed in the dormitory that they shared with about ten others.
“Seems that the more you win, the more you get to be super — suterspi —” he began.
“Superstitious,” Milos helped him out.
“That’s it. For instance, if a man’s won twice with the same driver taking him to the arena in the van, he’ll never agree to set off for his third fight with a different driver. Or if someone sees a mouse in the arena cell while he’s waiting for his fight, you can bet he’ll look for that mouse second time around, and if there’s no mouse, he’ll be trembling like a leaf when he goes into the arena, get it?”
“Yes,” said Milos. “And you think Caius dislikes me because of something like that? I mean, I never did anything to hurt him.”
“Could be that. All I know is he hates cats. And I know why. When he was little, he shut himself up in a cage with a cat, just in play. Then he couldn’t get out, and they stayed there together quite a while. That cat went crazy and made for him. There was no one to stop it, understand? It clawed half the face off Caius. Seen those scars he has? The cat done it. Since then he can’t stand cats. But hey, you’re not a cat.”
“No,” smiled Milos, beginning to understand. “I’m not a cat, but it seems I must have been in a previous incarnation.”
“In a what?”
“A life. Someone said I must have lived before this one, and I was a cat in it.”
“You a cat? Where’d you pick up that daft idea? Who said so?”
Milos felt a pang. Where was Helen now? Did she even know he was still alive? He would so much have liked to reassure her and hold her in his arms. Did she often think of him? The idea that he might have to kill three men before he could be reunited with her made his stomach contract painfully.
“She . . . she’s a friend. My girlfriend. She told me one day I was just like a cat. She’d seen me climb a roof. So I expect Caius senses that, he’s scared of me, he panics, and he hates me because of it.”
“A girlfriend? You got a girlfriend?” asked Basil dreamily.
“Yes.”
“You’re in luck. Me, I got no one.”
“Can we get some sleep, right?” snapped an irritated voice from the back of the dormitory.
They fell silent for several minutes, but there was still something Basil wanted to know. “Hey, Ferenzy, what kind of animal d’you think I was in my — my earlier life?”
“I don’t know, Basil.”
“I do. I was a draft horse, a big strong horse pulling a cart and doing what its master says. A cart-horse, that’s what.”
On the next night they had an impassioned discussion with two of the other novices on their chances of survival.
“One in six,” said Flavius, a taciturn, shorttempered man who, so rumor said, had murdered his two wives in turn. “Three fights at odds of one in two, that makes it one chance in six.”