Meritorium (Meritropolis Book 2) (19 page)

But at that moment, there were other more important things to think about.

He began to gather rocks for the day ahead.

***

Charley screamed his rage. His hands gripped the bamboo bars of the cage. Even though he knew it was fruitless, he rattled the bars, veins bulging and teeth bared, and applied all of his strength. But the cage was well constructed; he simply wasn’t strong enough. The worst part was no one even noticed. The deafening roar of the crowd drowned out everything else in a concussive vibration of sound that could be felt deep down in your bones, reverberating and animating your body against your will.

“Just wait.” Grigor touched Charley’s shoulder gently. Even Grigor hadn’t been able to break out. But Charley couldn’t helplessly sit in the cage in the middle of the arena, just watching.

The carnage around them was grotesque. Low Scores were being massacred in front of their eyes. Heavily armed warriors took turns cutting through their running and weaponless “opponents.” What they didn’t dispose of, the roaming animal combos did. Charley caught a glimpse of Harold, the portly slave trader who had purchased two young girls from the auction block on the day of their sale to Ian, waddling behind some heavily armored thugs and shouting instructions, and Charley resolved to find him and make him pay a permanent penalty, whatever it took.

The residents of the pen had been carted into the arena for pankration in large rolling cages, the bamboo slats providing plenty of room to view out, but no hope of escape until the cage door was opened. The rolling cages were opened one at a time, the warriors in the arena playing to the crowd and relishing the unfairness of the fight.

Charley gritted his teeth, his arms trembling. It wasn’t a fight, it was a hunt; the Low Scores were the prey.

“They’ll open ours soon. They have to.” Hank’s voice had an edge to it; some of the old Hank with the psychopathic tendencies, the bloodlust for revenge, was returning.

Charley looked from Hank to Orson. Even Orson had a sickened look on his strong, aristocratic face. It could have just been a mirage of his heightened emotions, but in that moment Charley felt as if even Orson was firmly on his side.

“Choose your targets,” Grigor said in a hushed whisper. “They are growing cocky, and some of them are tiring.” He looked at Charley. “Control your emotions—just plan ahead, acquire your weapons, and then we regroup and work together.”

Charley, Grigor, Hank, and Orson were together in a cage with a few dozen other Low Scores, each of whom had done nothing but shriek in terror since seeing the arena around them turn into a killing field. A small boy with a streak of dirt across his forehead turned to Grigor and spoke between sobs. “What about us? What do we do?”

The canyons and valleys of Grigor’s rugged face twisted into a conflict of emotion: his scrupulous honesty at war with his desire to reassure the small boy. “Just … work together. We need to all work together. If you run away then they will pick you off one by one. Choose a target and work together.” Seeing the little boy’s face sag, Grigor hurriedly added, “I will try to protect you. Just … stay behind me.”

Then the cage door sprung open.

Charley was first out, screaming like a banshee.

He ducked the clumsy swing of a mace by an armored warrior abreast a thundering winged horse. Seeing the rider atop the grey-dappled hindquarters of a horse-like animal, Charley chose his first target and honed in his focus.

The bedlam of the crowd receded. Charley heard nothing but the panting of the horse and the clank of the interlocking scales of armor. He sprinted after the warrior and his steed, ducking a stray arrow with a drop and a bound.

He remained crouched, using his back legs to spring forward like a big cat on the savannah. He felt like a lanther: he was the predator, the horse and rider the prey.

The warrior rotated his head as far behind him as his armor would allow, and his eyes, visible through narrow slits in his helmet, grew wide at the spectacle of Charley’s surge from behind. The rider gigged his mount forward, and the beast crow-hopped to one side, nostrils flaring and prehensile lips peeled back at the pressure of the bit.

Charley leaped.

For the space of a moment, time slowed. The arena was frozen in place: flagons of drink remained upraised, spilling their bubbling deceits in a slosh of debauchery, while the grotesque contorted countenances of men and women, lovers of violence all, pupils like black holes of darkness, sucked in ever more cruelty. It was all in the name of entertainment, never ceasing until it consumed them all. And in that flattening of time, the entire arena focused laser-like on Charley’s extended form.

Charley landed spread-eagled across the beast’s back, his knees desperately squeezing each side of the pistoning haunches in order to keep from sliding off the croup. Clawing his way up the loins, he grabbed onto the pinions, the little wing joints that extended outward from the withers at an angle like a crooked elbow, and seated himself upright directly behind the rider.

In full armor, it was difficult enough for the rider to turn his head to see behind him, but near impossible to fight off an attacker from the rear. The mace, useless against a close-range attack, trailed ineffectually across the rider’s lap. The warrior jerked his elbow back violently, but Charley simply parried it downward, while simultaneously slipping his forearm up, around, and under the mail drape that hung from the warrior’s helmet, the same drape designed to protect from arrow points, sword tips, and dagger thrusts, but not from rear chokeholds.

Charley set the sleeper hold deep, and jerked the warrior’s head back, digging the bony part of his forearm deep into the carotid artery on his neck to cut off the blood flow to the brain. The rider struggled, clawing back at Charley’s face with furious scrabbling hands, but Charley kept his face angled away and was left with only a dark red gouge on his neck.

Within moments, the warrior slumped in Charley’s lap. He jerked off the helmet, placed it on his own head, and hefted up the brutally shaped mace before letting the dead weight of the unconscious man fall to the ground.

Seizing the reins, Charley dug his heels into the horse’s stifle and rounded on a trio of fast-approaching men with outstretched swords.

“Charley, coming to you!” Grigor rode an enormous black horoceros, barreling toward Charley from behind the three warriors.

At the sight, Charley’s eyes widened, his arms slackening so that he almost dropped his grip on the reins and mace. He had heard it said that some pets and their owners resembled each other. Grigor’s cannonball shoulders hunched over the massive thundering shoulders of the horoceros, pistoning up and down in an angry drumbeat of aggression. The protruding wrinkled brow on Grigor’s wide face, his teeth bared, and eyes glinting, made him seem like an extension of the horned wrinkly behemoth beneath him.

Charley wheeled his horse back hurriedly and was shocked to feel the quick beat of wings. His stomach leaped into his throat and he fought the urge to hug his steed’s neck. They gently lifted off the ground and rotated sideways with a flutter. It was only inches off the ground, but Charley was flying, on a horse. He scanned the arena, searching for a glimpse of Sandy, but all he could see were large, angry warriors with murder in their eyes.

The three hard-charging warriors, mistaking Charley’s retreat for cowardice rather than noticing Grigor and the horoceros behind, renewed their pursuit. A bloodthirsty scream resounded from the forerunner.

Charley pressed his knees into his horse’s withers, slowing their graceful descent. They hovered in place, like a hummingbird. Charley watched, slack-jawed, as Grigor and the horoceros bore down on the three unsuspecting warriors from behind like a great black-horned hound spewed from the bowels of hell.

Before impact, the horoceros belched out an earth-shaking bellow directly behind the three warriors. Judging by the looks on their faces, Charley thought the three warriors would die from fright alone. Before they could even turn and face the black monster bearing down, Grigor and the horoceros had crashed into them like a bowling ball into pins.

Armor crumpled inward as if it was made of tin. The big horn and the little horn of the horoceros speared viciously through the heavy armor and into the flesh beneath. The horoceros stamped down with both front hooves, trampling the warriors into metal pancakes, plumes of dust billowing up.

Grigor bellowed a challenge of his own. “Follow me! Fight or die!” Galloping ahead of Charley, he looked over, his eyes wild with excitement. “You have to follow me, because I can’t steer this thing, and I definitely can’t stop it.”

“Trust me, I’m not getting in your way.” Charley gigged his mount and they fluttered forward, half-trotting, half-flying.

Orson and Hank, each having obtained a mount, cantered up behind. Orson was riding something that looked like a unicorn, and Hank bobbed along on a very skittish red-tinged deer-like animal.

Hank struggled to control his mount. “White, black, red, and pale—we’re the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” Hank’s deer creature crow-hopped sideways, growing more skittish as it trotted behind the hulking haunches of the snorting horoceros.

Orson eyed Hank’s jittery deer creature, its eyes wide and poised to bolt. “I don’t think you’re the horseman of anything; maybe the fourth horseman of incompetence.”

“Whatever.” Hank turned to Charley. “I don’t remember gaining mounts being part of the plan, but we saw you and Grigor, so we figured we had better get something to try to keep up.”

Orson waved a broadsword. “But we do have weapons.”

Hank looked at Charley’s mace and then raised his own sword. “All of us except Grigor.”

“I think he’s riding his weapon,” Charley replied.

“Well, he’s still going to need some help. They’re releasing more animal combos.” Orson lifted a broadsword in the direction of one of the far tunnels and then spurred his mount forward.

“And more warriors.” Charley pointed to another tunnel, from where a bevy of mail-clad fighters hustled out, their armored scales clanking together and uniting as one unit like pangolin scales retracting.

“Which do we fight first?” Hank asked.

“That’s easy,” Orson said with a grin. “We follow Grigor, or rather, we follow the horoceros.” The wind blew Orson’s luxurious dark hair back in the wind and Charley couldn’t help but think that, astride the white unicorn creature, he looked like he should be a fairy-tale hero; all he needed was a linen shirt.

As if responding to Orson’s cue, the horoceros turned a blunt snout in the direction of the troop of warriors, stamped the ground twice, and then charged directly at them.

To their credit, the warriors didn’t turn and run. These men appeared well trained to work in unison; their shields slotted down and jangled into place, interlocking into a shield wall of steel. They continued to march forward.

The horoceros didn’t slow. It was possible the sunlight glinting off the shields was angering it, and it picked up speed.

Every eye in the arena was now on the impending collision.

Man versus beast.

Metal versus bone.

Hank’s eyes grew wide. “What the—”

“Quit your incessant yapping,” Orson spat. “Get ready to maneuver around the flanks of the horoceros. Grigor will need us to clean up any stragglers, especially those with spears.”

Charley couldn’t take his eyes off the soon-to-be massive pileup. “Come on, Hank. Orson’s right. We need to be ready to protect Grigor’s rear and flanks once he barrels through.”

“No, I know. I mean, I’m not talking about them. I just—” Hank jerked his neck around and then screamed out. “Look over there!”

Charley and Orson whipped their heads around to see scores upon scores of fast-moving scaly creatures pouring out of the other tunnel. Little yellow eyes sat recessed on a wide flat head. Long snouts sprouted rows of alligator teeth. Their bodies, partly scaled and ridged like an alligator, also sported the black and tan pelt of a wolverine. And the claws, Charley thought, gulping, the claws were definitely wolverine.

Orson twisted on the reins to keep his mount from bolting. “Wolverators.”

“Grigor was right,” Charley replied.

The little monsters streamed out of the tunnel like the Devil’s cockroaches, low to the ground and moving with purpose directly for Grigor.

Hank closed his gaping mouth. “At least we’re up here on—” At this, Hank’s deer creature gave a twisting lurch and promptly bucked him off, sending Hank sprawling awkwardly onto the ground. In the commotion, the deer pranced off in the opposite direction.

“What were you saying, Hank?” Orson asked, arching his eyebrow.

“Shut up.”

Hank looked up at Charley, his eyes pleading.

Charley sighed. “Hop up behind me. Just try not to spook this one, too.”

“Thank you, thank you.” Hank hopped on with Charley, and the Pegasus-like creature dipped slightly and promptly starting beating its wings even harder.

“How much of that meat did you eat last night?” Charley grumbled. “Get your blade ready. You chop anything that moves on the left side, and I’ll take care of the right.”

“Okay, got it.”

“Now it’s even more important to protect Grigor’s rear and flank. Let’s go!” Orson kicked his mount forward, Charley and Hank following close behind.

The horoceros smashed into the shield wall like a wrecking ball into a piñata. Within moments, one hand grasping the smaller horn of the horoceros as if it was a pommel on a saddle, Grigor had managed to acquire a club, his weapon of choice, and was wielding it with vicious abandon.

The movements of man and beast, Grigor and his horoceros, were a synchronicity of muscular aggression; each blow was a blunt trauma inflicted on an armored opponent that might as well have been made of papier-mâché. Stamping, kicking, and goring with every shake of its tree-trunk legs and torso, the horoceros grew more enraged the closer opponents came. How Grigor managed to stay atop the beast, Charley didn’t know, but the thick muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out in stark relief against the rivulets of sweat that glistened down his body.