Bazil Broketail (50 page)

Kesepton looked away. Thus it would be for all of them, cut to ribbons on this blood-soaked sand for the delight of the mob in Tummuz Orgmeen.

“Come on man, get up!” growled Subadar Yortch. Yortch’s angry eyes crossed Kesepton’s for a moment then moved on. Yortch would not speak to Kesepton now.

As if inspired by his subadar’s call, Trooper Jorse did manage to stagger to his feet one more time by catching a bullwhip with his hand and hauling himself up with it. He punched the imp that held it in the face and drove the others back with the whip. They were afraid to face him now.

The crowd grew quiet.

A horn sounded.

The imps drew back and the crowd noise changed to a concerted “aaah.”

At the far end of the amphitheater the great double doors had opened and a chariot had rolled out, pulled by a team of four white horses. Holding their reins was a beautiful young woman, clad in white silk pajamas with a silver helmet capping her long golden hair.

With a sharp cry she urged the four horses into a charge and thundered down on Jorse.

Jorse was past running, he could barely stagger, and besides there was nowhere to run to. He took up the clumsy axe again and awaited the onrush.

The horses ran down on him, veering to his right.

The woman had a rope twirling above her head with one hand while she guided the team with the other. As she came she let out a wild, maniacal scream.

Jorse looked into the cold killer eyes of the girl and lost concentration, then he seemed to snap out of it and moved to swing the axe, but it was already too late and his swing missed.

The blonde valkyrie in the chariot did not miss, however, and Jorse was plucked off his feet the next second as the rope settled around his shoulders and tightened across his upper arms.

The rope was turned about a pommel on the side of the chariot’s rim and the lovely Valkyrie, blond tresses flying, was able to ride on while waving with one hand to the crowd which rose to give her an ovation, while Jorse’s dying body was dragged through the sand, flayed and torn, leaving a long bloody streak behind.

After a second lap of the arena the young woman pulled her horses up and cut the rope loose. The gates at
the
far end boomed open, and she whipped up the team again and ran them toward the gate and out of sight at top speed. She did not even look back at the corpse stretched out on the sand.

Slaves, old men and women almost too weak to move, were driven out across the floor of the arena now. To these ancients was allotted the grim task of removing the dead and dying. Their decrepitude led to many bizarre incidents, a source of constant hilarity to the great crowd. To urge the fun along clowns, mostly imps but with a human or two among them, would often join in, using jokes and jests and an occasional blow with a club or whip to produce more general amusement.

But this was to be all that Kesepton’s men would contribute for that day. Doors at the end of the dugout suddenly banged open and imps with whips appeared.

The survivors of Captain Kesepton’s little force were driven down the steps and back into the labyrinth of the dungeons once more. Finally the door to their cell slammed shut behind them. Kesepton found Liepol Duxe staring at him with angry eyes.

“So Captain, pretty Captain, this is what your command has come to. A line of victims set up to be slain one by one for the pleasure of a mob of bloodthirsty fiends. And all because you were bewitched!”

Kesepton shrugged. What of it? What else could he have done? Duxe was too angry to stop now.

“You were too busy chasing that girl! You were not fit to command—I said it all along.”

Hollein felt his own anger stir, but he kept it under tight rein.

“We had orders, Sergeant, if you recall.”

Weald was watching him warily. The other man in the cell was Flader, a swordsman from Marneri. If they fought he would side with Duxe and Weald would side with Kesepton, it was understood.

Duxe’s head was nodding, his mouth was slack, the words tumbled out thickly coated with hatred.

“Always you were preferred, because of your grandfather. And because of that you were there for the witch to play her game and destroy all of us.”

Hollein balled up his fists but kept them at his sides.

“That’s a lie, Sergeant, and when this is over I’ll see you over drawn swords and we’ll settle it man to man. But until that happy moment you will remember your rank and position and you will concentrate your mind on efforts to improve our situation here and make an escape.”

“Bah.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Your mind has gone, burnt out with too many dreams of that girl the witch trailed before you. Never have I seen such calf eyes.” Duxe grinned somberly at Flader. “Our captain was like a schoolboy chasing his first piece of ass.”

Flader grinned back. Weald tensed, ready to fight if he had to. The tension rose; they stared at each other, ready to kill.

There came a sharp rap on the door and a cranking of keys in the lock. It was the imps with the evening meal, another bowl of barley gruel served with a chunk of black bread.

The tension evaporated for the moment. Grimly they took the food and moved apart to eat.

In another cell, no more than one hundred yards away from the one Kesepton shared with Duxe and Weald, Bazil Broketail from Quosh woke out of a doze when the door banged open.

The huge albino trolls were back, with Nesessitas, following her interview with the Doom. Bazil watched dully as they chained the green dragon to the wall. She seemed unusually subdued.

The trolls slammed the door behind them again.

“So?” he said in a quiet voice after a few seconds.

“So I saw the rock, it was just as you said.”

“Stupid rock.”

“No, you’re wrong there, it is not at all stupid. But I did see how it moves up and down.”

“Ah.”

“There is a gallery below on which teams of men and trolls haul the ropes that pull the chains up and down.”

“As we thought, then.”

“Very much so.”

Baz looked up at the slit window in the wall that let in the only light.

“This place is big, I have that feeling.”

“Very big, bigger than Marneri.”

“The rock is big too, eh?”

“Very big, impressive.”

“But any rock no matter how big can be broken into smaller rocks, eh?”

Nesessitas laughed lightly at that.

“True, but even dragons would need hammers and their hands free to do it.”

“Not if we cut the chains that hold rock up.”

Nesessitas chuckled. “Good idea, except we can’t even get out of our own chains.”

Bazil nodded. “That is problem. I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“Well, when you do let me know. But you’d better hurry because we’re due to be the chief entertainment tomorrow. They’re putting us into the arena to fight for our lives.”

“Just what we expected.”

The door crashed open again and a group of imps in stained and filthy white smocks pushed in a trolley laden with bowls of raw meats.

“You are to eat well, great monsters, for tomorrow you die and the Doom would have you be strong in your death throes.”

The imps dug shovels into the chopped meat and raised it to the dragons’ mouths.

“Eat, eat, eat,” they chanted in a weird, shrieking song.

“What is this meat?” said Bazil. There had been no meat in their meals before, only a pabulum of tubers and grain.

“Eat, eat, eat!” shouted the maddened imps.

Bazil looked to Nesessitas.

“It tastes like pork, but I’m too hungry to care much what it is.”

Baz looked back to the imps.

“What the hell is this?” he roared.

“Man meat, oh dragons, man meat from the arena,” shouted the imps. One imp leaned close as it screamed at him.

With a snarl Bazil snapped his jaws shut on the imp’s shoulder.

It gave a shriek of pain and horror and struck him furiously on the side of the head, desperately trying to gouge an eye, anything to dislodge the teeth sunk into its flesh.

Bazil tossed him with a sideways jerk of the neck, and the imp sailed into the nearest wall and then slid to the floor of the cell.

The imps fled, taking their unconscious leader with them.

“Do you believe them?” said Nesessitas.

“I don’t know, damn them, damn them all.”

They lapsed into a gloom-ridden silence. Could it be that the captain and all the others were dead? Had they really been innocently eating them?

It was a nauseating thought, even for creatures that in the wild would unquestioningly eat men as well as anything else they happened upon.

Time passed; Bazil saw the light fade from their narrow window and the gloom of the late afternoon begin. He wondered if he would see the sun ever again, or would he die in this dark pit, lost in this evil city?

Some time later he noticed a tiny movement at the window. It was repeated, then a round shape appeared there. After a moment a human leg was thrust through the narrow gap. After another few moments there were two legs and part of a torso as the daring fellow squeezed through the slit window into the cell. There was something oddly familiar about those legs, clad in dirty brown cloth.

“Very good, whoever you are,” said Bazil. “Now you have to get down from there without breaking neck.”

There was a drop of twenty feet beneath the window.

However, the owner of the legs did not slip down the wall, he climbed down—there were several handholds in the cracks between the stones.

Bazil gaped, so did Nesessitas, then he roared.

“Fool boy! How did you find us here?”

Relkin scrambled over to his dragon, then took a look at Nesessitas.

“I’ve been getting some things for the lady. She still lives, but she was wounded and has lost a lot of blood. We fear that she may die, but at least she is hidden in a safe place, deep beneath the city.”

“Who else is with you? Who is we?” said Nesessitas.

“Lagdalen of the Tarcho, the lady’s assistant.”

“No one else?” the green dragon was disappointed.

“No, Nessi, I do not know where Marco Veli is. I fear he was taken with the others.”

“What happened to us? What was that damned thing?” said Bazil.

Relkin went back to his dragon and hugged the huge, rough-skinned body.

“The lady called it a Hogo, that is all I know.”

“Fool boy, you should not have come here.”

“I was climbing the wall and I heard dragon voices. I knew you were here then.”

“So tell me what you know, you who have been outside. What was a Hogo?”

“A beast made by the Doom, a thing of evil.”

“It make stink, we fall over.”

“Yes.”

“How do they make these strange creatures?”

Relkin shrugged. “Some evil process.”

“What is outside?”

“A high wall—you’re on a midlevel floor of the central keep in the city. An outer wall runs around the keep, and that’s what you would see. Beyond that wall is the city— it is very large, very squalid. It is… terrible.”

“Where are the others?” hissed Nesessitas.

“I do not know, nor do I have time to search for them. I must return to the lady.”

“Well, goodbye then, boy, because tomorrow we die.”

Relkin turned a stricken face to his dragon.

“How do you know that?”

“They tell us that we fight in the arena tomorrow.”

Relkin licked his lips anxiously.

“Something will happen, don’t worry. The lady will not fail us.”

Bazil chuckled.

“Good, I’m glad you said that—it will help me to sleep tonight.”

Nesessitas gave dragon smile, without mirth in her eyes. But Relkin had stiffened.

“I mean it.” His voice grew harsh. “We will stop them, you’ll see. Be ready for the signal. I must go.”

Then he scrambled up the wall again and squeezed out of the narrow window and disappeared.

“Fool boy,” growled Bazil.

He and Nessi looked at each other somberly.

“At least he lives,” she said.

This was the third time the Princess Besita had been called to a long private audience with the Doom. Such meetings took place in an intimate interview chamber set above the hall of the Doom, on the topmost floor of the keep.

Besita was rather flattered by the attention. She liked the excitement of such proximity to power. No one had treated her like this back in Marneri, certainly not her father.

The interview room was a gem, a luxuriously appointed little box, lined with fur and equipped with ivory furniture. One end of the room was open to the Tube, a black emptiness which was filled entirely with the mass of the Doom during an audience.

For the occasion she had been dressed by five handmaidens in a beautiful suit of black silk and white silver fitments, topped off by a simple, round helmet, also in silver.

She felt like some fantastic barbarian queen when she saw herself in the mirror with the flared silk pantaloons and the glittering silver buckles and clasps.

And indeed, since her arrival in Tummuz Orgmeen she had been treated as a queen. Even Thrembode had become quite deferential to her, bowing low, offering help instead of giving orders. In fact, even taking orders from her!

Besita had found it all very enjoyable. And with her body newly honed by months of hard travel, she felt more physically alive than she had ever felt in her adult life.

Then there was Tummuz Orgmeen. This was a true metropolis. It made Marneri seem so pinched and provincial, so limited and unexciting. There were broad avenues lined with the villas of the elite, graceful squares and rotundas, and a wonderful carriageway that wound back and forth on the hillside of the Thumb. In many ways it even rivaled Kadein in size and splendor.

And then there were the soukhs and bazaars of the old city, packed with life, teeming with multitudes drawn there from all over the world. Here one met people from every faraway land, all sorts of exotics from all sorts of distant climes. And they talked of such exciting things, of trade to the Friendly Isles or to distant land and the cities of the Palasae. And best of all, they accepted her! They wanted to hear all about her adventures on the Gan.