‘These are not fighters,’ Kevin observed, a sting to his tone despite his best efforts.
Arakasi quieted him with explanation. ‘This is a clemency spectacle. All are condemned men. They will fight, and the one who lives at the end will go free.’
Trumpets sounded and the slaughter commenced. Before his capture, while soldiering for his father, he had seen many men killed. This was not warfare, not even a savagely matched contest. What took place upon the sands of Kentosani’s arena was butchery. The handful of trained men moved like cats through mice trapped in a granary, killing at will. Finally fewer than a dozen men remained standing, and these more fairly matched. Kevin had lost his stomach for watching; he stared blankly at the spectators, but found no relief from his disgust. The Tsurani seemed to enjoy the blood, not the sport. They cheered each painful death and compared the agonies of one disembowelled man with those of another. Wagers were made on how long the wretch who tried to stuff his spilled entrails back into his abdomen would last, and how many screams he would utter before he died. No one seemed interested in the skill of the handful of fighters still living.
Kevin felt his gorge rise and swallowed hard. He controlled his loathing by force until the debacle ended, a man with a sword and knife taking the last of the condemned with a thrust under the shield. From the imperial box the vaunted Tsurani Emperor observed the proceedings impassively, while the Warlord at his side murmured to an adviser as if carnage were a daily event.
Burning now, with a fury fuelled by outrage, Kevin looked to see how the Great One who had once been a Kingdom man was handling this atrocity. Even at this distance, Milamber’s countenance appeared stony; but to Kevin’s dismay, the fat magician by his side had broken off his discussion and appeared to be studying the Acoma box.
Kevin averted his gaze in sudden fear. Could a Great One hear thoughts? He bent without considering to ask Mara, but stopped, recalled to his place by the sight of her. The Lady of the Acoma endured the bloodletting with proper Tsurani restraint, her only sign of discomfort a slight stiffness in her shoulders. The former son of Zun felt his stomach burn. He knew Mara. Intimate with her throughout five years, he knew she could perceive the difference between the slaughter below and the battle campaign experienced in the desert. Yet she never so much as flinched when the victor swaggered among the fallen bodies, his gory weapon brandished aloft.
Kevin checked surreptitiously to see whether the Great One was still watching; this time, he could see plainly that the bearded one, Milamber, bore an expression of distaste; even his eyes seemed ablaze. Kevin was not the only one to notice Milamber’s disgust. Nobles in nearby boxes whispered and glanced toward the magician, and a few looked openly apprehensive.
Arakasi saw the exchange. To Kevin he whispered, ‘This doesn’t bode well. Great Ones may act on a whim, and not even the Light of Heaven dares gainsay their will. If this former countryman of yours shares your distaste for killing, there could be a scene.’
In sunlight, on hot sand, the victor finished his strutting. Slaves came and cleared away the corpses, while rakers smoothed over the rumpled, blood-soaked ground. Trumpets sounded the next round of the Imperial Games, while Kevin wished silently for a drink to wet his dry mouth.
A band of men wearing loincloths entered the stadium, taller and fairer than most Tsurani. Kevin instantly recognized countrymen from his homeworld. Their shoulders gleamed with oil and they carried an assortment of ropes, hooks, weighted nets, spears, and long knives. The festival atmosphere did not disorient them, nor did they give the crowds of showy nobles more than a desultory glance. Instead they crouched in awareness that trouble approached, from any of a dozen directions. Kevin had shared such uncertainty, upon patrol and standing the night watch on the edge of the no-man’s-land where the enemy might strike at any moment.
But these men had not long to wait for action. A pair of large doors rumbled open at the far end of the arena, and a creature out of nightmare shambled out.
All fangs and lethal claws, it stood the size of an elephant, but moved cat-fast on its six legs. At the sight of it, even Mara lost her composure and exclaimed, ‘A harulth!’
The Kelewanese predator blinked and snarled at the sudden blaze of sunlight. Scales armoured its hide, scattering chilly highlights across its neck as it quested to and fro, sniffing the air. The crowd sat charged with expectation. Then the beast spotted its foe: the tiny men who stood exposed on that cruel vista of sand. The harulth did not paw warning, as a bull or a needra might, but lowered its head in belligerence and instantly sprang to the charge.