The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,97

cheered. The man stepped forward as if he hadn’t even been hit, his short sword held out vertically before him, but he danced back when the woman flicked the whip toward him again. He leaned in and back, in and back, while she popped at his arms and legs with the lash. A few people booed him for his caution, but the man bided his time, learning the woman’s rhythm. Then, in the middle of another motion just like all the others, he sliced out with his sword instead of backing off, and a three-foot piece of whip flew end-over-end over his shoulder.

The woman tried to change her rhythm to match the shorter whip, but it took her a few tries, and by the time she got it right the man had leaped toward her and thrown his club directly at her stomach. She staggered back, stunned, and the man swept in and stabbed her cleanly below her left breast before she could even raise her own sword to guard herself. When he pulled his sword free, bright red blood flooded out over her white belly, running down her leg and dripping to the sand. She looked up at him with wide eyes, then she folded over like a closed book and toppled to the ground.

While the crowd cheered, the gladiator bowed to the king and the templars, then to the stands on both sides of the arena. Then, almost tenderly, he picked up the woman’s body and bore it out of the stadium. The way her arms and legs and head dangled limply from his cradling hands haunted Jedra for minutes after—right up until the next bloody execution of an elf who had been given a spear to defend himself against an armored dwarven gladiator with a double-bladed axe. The elf definitely had the reach on the dwarf, but the result was nearly the same. The moment the dwarf disarmed him, the fight was as good as over. Of course the crowd wasn’t satisfied until the dwarf had hacked the elf’s head completely free of his body, even though it took three swings to do it.

What will they do to me if I throw up? Jedra asked Kayan.

I don’t know, but it probably wouldn’t be good, she replied. Here. She put her hand over his stomach, and his inner turmoil receded somewhat. The horror he felt at the slaughter still remained, but at least now he wouldn’t adorn the spectators around him with his lunch.

Thank you, he said.

Now that he wasn’t so focused on his discomfort from the gore, he realized how hot he was. That was easy enough to fix; he used the same talent he had learned to keep Kitarak’s cold-box frozen and created a layer of cool air around himself and Kayan. He noticed the old man still sweating freely in the sun and guiltily lowered the temperature a degree or two around him as well. The excess heat had to go somewhere, so he found a particularly unruly fan a few rows below and dumped it on him. The man gasped and fanned himself with a fold of his robe, and sure enough, after a few minutes he quieted down.

There were two more executions, and then the real games started. Professional gladiators entered the arena in pairs and hacked and sliced at each other on the sand below while the people in the stands leaped to their feet and cheered loud enough to drown out the clash of weapons and even the screams when one gladiator wounded another. Each match featured minor variations in sex or species or number of combatants, but they were all essentially the same mindless spectacle. Jedra let his thoughts drift off to run one more time through their plans to break Kitarak free, but his attention snapped back to the crier again the moment he heard the tohr-kreen’s name announced.

Straining for the words over the restless crowd, he heard, “…accused of practicing sorcery within the boundaries of the city… sold at auction to the House of Rokur… now does battle with his native weapons, the gythka and the kyorkcha, against the defending champion, the half-giant Dochak of the House of Bran.”

The crowd—including the old man—booed when Kitarak stepped out from beneath the ziggurat into the arena. He carried his expanding polearm in his upper left hand and the curved throwing weapon in his upper right, plus two small shields held in his lower hands. He bowed even though he was