The Hunter on Arena (12 page)

The sounds of battle were all around him, steel ringing against steel, the thunder of small explosions, the screams of men
dying. Marin’s eyes were shuttered against the rising suns. His blue-black lips were drawn back in a mirthless grin that exposed
his filed, pointed teeth. He was crouching low, his trident jabbing forward like the tongue of a striking snake. In his other
hand the net swirled slowly, the weights sighing through the air with a low moan. If he heard Braldt’s words, he gave no sign,
but advanced steadily, his small, dark eyes never leaving Braldt’s face.

“He means to fight,” Randi said tensely. “I’ll throw a jolt into him, knock him out until we can talk some reason into him.”
She pointed the stubby weapon at
Marin who did not even spare her a glance, but Allo pressed his huge, shaggy hand down upon her wrist gently.

“No,” he said softly. “If it does not happen now, it will merely postpone the inevitable. Marin is determined to fight Braldt.
He has been seeking such a confrontation. We cannot stop it.”

“But what if he wins,” Randi said in dismay, turning to look at the large, shaggy creature. “Would you follow him? Look at
his eyes—he’s crazy!”

“When we entered this place we gave up the right to reason. Such standards do not exist here,” Allo said sadly. “At least
not for us.”

Septua joined the argument, his shrill, high-pitched voice adding to the confusion, but Braldt had ceased to listen to their
words, realizing that the time for words had long since passed, if it had ever existed. He had met such men as Marin before.
Confrontation, action, death—these were what mattered. Logic, reason, and words stood for nothing. The mistake was in thinking
that such men were stupid. It was a mistake that could be fatal. While the heads of such men were empty of higher thoughts,
they
were
filled with strategy and technique and their bodies were often trained to perfection. They made the best of allies and the
very worst of enemies.

Braldt drew his sword and fell into the same shuffling sidestep employed by Marin. Matching each other stride for stride,
they began to circle. Randi and Septua fell silent and pressed up against Allo’s shaggy hide, watching the duel with fearful
eyes.

The arena echoed with the sounds of combat, angry grunts, choked exhalations of effort, shrieks of agony,
and the sobs of frightened men about to die. Braldt closed his mind to the noise and movement around him, focusing only on
Marin’s shiny body, studying the way he moved, taking note of the manner in which he held his trident, the rise and fall of
the weighted net.

The weights increased the measure of their speed, whup, whup, whup, as they swiftly sped through the air, describing an even
larger circle. Marin’s eyes squinted more tightly and Braldt saw his fingers tighten on the haft of the trident. Stepping
forward, Braldt broke through the circle and stepped directly inside Marin’s guard, too close for him to use either trident
or net and unable to reach for the short dagger in his belt without dropping one of his weapons. Without pausing, seeing Marin’s
eyes open wide with shock, seeing the small mind trying to decide what to do, Braldt reversed his sword and struck with all
the power he possessed, striking Marin square between the eyes with the heavy, sheathed butt. Marin stopped cold as though
he had run into a solid wall of stone. His tongue came out of his mouth and flicked back and forth as he tried to speak, but
no words emerged. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, revealing hideous, gray-black corneas mottled with flecks of crimson,
and he fell back without a sound, landing flat on the ground where he lay without moving.

“Is he dead?” cried Randi.

“No, just stunned, I think, although his brains, what few there are, will be addled for some time to come,” Braldt said with
satisfaction as he sheathed his sword and knelt at Marin’s side, gathering up the big man’s weapons just to be safe.

Before he could rise, two of the imperious blond men appeared beside him, although he had not sensed their advance. Four hard
ones, armed with slender, metal staffs, stood behind them, flanking them on either side, their smooth faces impassive, devoid
of any expression.

One of the men poked Marin with his toe. The big man did not move. The man raised his eyes to Braldt’s— incredible eyes, eyes
the color of the bluest of skies, eyes without guile or pretense or evil, the eyes of a child.

“Kill him,” the man said gently, his eyes locked on Braldt’s.

Braldt stared at him in shock, wondering if he had heard correctly. It seemed impossible that such words could have come from
the man’s lips. It was an abomination, an obscenity!

“Kill him,” the man repeated, speaking slowly and clearly as though Braldt were incapable of understanding the words. Braldt
shook his head dumbly.

The man sighed and shook his head sadly, then nodded to one of the hard ones. The metallic man raised his rod and positioned
it delicately in the center of Marin’s flanged ear. Braldt watched in disbelief, waiting for the man to counteract his command.
But he did not speak; his eyes resting on Braldt, a small smile played at the corner of his mouth.

“No,” cried Braldt as he flung himself at the hard one, striking it full in the chest as he tried to wrestle the rod from
his grasp. The hard one swayed slightly as it balanced on its single wheel, but its grip on the metal rod never loosened,
and even as Braldt seized it in his hands
and pulled with all his strength, the metallic man drove the rod into the fallen team member’s skull. The black man jerked
spasmodically, his eyes came into focus, filled with agony and rage and fixed on the horrorstruck Braldt who clung helplessly
to the cause of the man’s death.

Black blood, thick and viscous, spewed from Marin’s ear, drenching Braldt’s feet and spattering his legs hotly as intelligence
and life faded from the hate-filled eyes. Marin’s arms and legs continued to thrash, long minutes after his brain had died,
but the body remained firmly pinned to the ground by the thin, metal shaft.

Randi had uttered a shrill cry when the hard one drove the rod into Marin, a cry that had ended abruptly in a choked sob;
Septua had doubled over and emptied his stomach of its content. Only Allo had remained silent, enfolding his two companions
against his shaggy body, watching with saddened eyes, perhaps realizing more fully than any of the others the true nature
of their captors and accepting with his stoical nature the futility of resistance.

But stoicism had no place in Braldt’s vocabulary and he would have thrown himself at the blond man who had given the death
order had Allo not realized his intent and wrapped his long arms around Braldt, firmly pinning his arms to his sides.

The hard one reacted swiftly, pulling the rod out of Marin’s limp body and bracing the end, dripping with inky ichor, in the
center of Braldt’s chest. There was no doubt at all that it would have shoved the staff into Braldt
with as little hesitation as it had used to dispatch Marin. All it lacked was the order to do so.

The blond man studied Braldt, the smile never leaving his lips. He turned to his companion who had until this moment remained
silent.

“What think you, Jorund, will this one be more trouble than he’s worth? Perhaps we would be wise to rid ourselves of him now.”

The one called Jorund met Braldt’s eyes. Braldt’s eyes blazed with rage, his pulse beat furiously in his temples, and he struggled
to free himself from Allo’s embrace. Meeting the man’s gaze was like being plunged into an icy stream, the shock was so great.
Yet in that single, swift glance, he saw compassion and concern as well as a silent plea for caution. Braldt stiffened, wondering
if he had imagined it. He studied the man’s face, looking for confirmation, but the man known as Jorund had lowered his eyes
and stared at the ground as though the matter was of little importance to him.

“No, Kiefer, I think it would be more amusing to let him live,” he drawled. “Some of us are interested in this one.”

Braldt’s heart began to pound as he watched the man, wondering if he had been mistaken in believing that he had given a message
as well as a warning.

The man known as Kiefer hesitated, and for the first time Braldt was able to read uncertainty in his stance. Abruptly, he
dismissed the hard one who lowered his weapon and rolled off in reverse, balanced on his single wheel.

“I hope you are right, Jorund. I hope we are not
making a dreadful mistake. I—I had thought, had hoped that he would be the one to be winnowed. The black man was so much the
stronger and it would have simplified matters.”

“Strength means nothing. Strength will fail every time when pitted against a determined, superior intelligence,” said Jorund,
and this time there was no denying it—as he spoke he looked directly at Braldt and the words were most certainly intended
for him.

After Marin’s death, events moved at a rapid rate.
The long hours of training grew longer still, often stretching into the nights as the newly formed groups of four learned
to work together as a team, honing their skills and their many different techniques. They learned much they had not known
about each other and grew to appreciate each other’s strengths.

Randi, they learned, had been a flight navigator on an intergalactic, scientific expedition. Her vessel had been struck by
a cluster of meteorites which had penetrated the hull. The resulting loss of oxygen had killed everyone aboard with the exception
of Randi who had had the good fortune to be wearing a space suit which contained its own supply of oxygen. She had been outside
the hull of the ship, overseeing the repair of an instrument, and had seen the shower of boulders hurtling toward the ship
but had been powerless to do anything but shout a warning before they struck; her companions were killed outright.

By using the air tanks of her dead shipmates, she had piloted the dying craft to the nearest rescue station which unfortunately
was located on an uninhabited asteroid. She had activated the emergency distress call, hoping
against hope that someone would hear her signal in that desolate corner of the solar system and arrive before her supply of
oxygen was depleted.

Her call was heard and a rescue ship did arrive, but to Randi’s dismay it ignored the intergalactic code that governed the
treatment of shipwrecked victims and immediately plundered her ship and took her prisoner.

Allo’s story was not dissimilar. He had been the purser of a heavily loaded trading freighter that had been attacked by pirates.
Their frantic calls for assistance had been heard and answered, but the armed robots who soon appeared on the scene had disarmed
everyone and taken all of them, pirates and victims alike, prisoner.

Septua alone remained silent on the subject of his past, diverting them with bits of nonsense and clever chatter whenever
they asked a question. For all his loquaciousness and glibness, he was strangely silent about his past and how he had come
to be in his current predicament.

Their stories were told at night, bit by bit, as they came to know and trust one another, and it served to bind them more
closely. Marin’s death had changed that. After returning to their cell, Braldt had shared his thoughts with his companions
and discussed with them what he thought he had heard, the veiled promise of help. Hearing the hope in Braldt’s voice and the
excitement of the others’ responses finally broke Septua’s silence.

“I know them,” he said in a bitter voice. “They won’t ’elp you.”

“What are you talking about?” said Randi as they
turned to stare at the little man. “What do you mean, you know them?”

Septua seemed to shrink inside himself, drawing his large head down between his shoulders and twisting his hands in a manner
quite unlike anything they had come to expect from the brash, little dwarf.

“I know ’em. Lived with ’em all my life on their ’ome planet. I know that you can’t trust ’em, not none of ’em, no matter
what they says.”

They stared at him in silent disbelief, unwilling to think that he had valuable information that he had withheld from them,
information that might have spared them pain and grief and perhaps even prevented their team member’s death.

Septua felt the weight of their eyes upon him and averted his head. “You wouldn’t ’ave understood. How could I ’ave told you,
you’re all so upright and fancy. Pilots and navigators and sons of chiefs and the like. ’Ow would you ’ave understood what
it was like for me? You wouldn’t ’ave, there’s no way you could understand what it’s like to be small and ugly. I never ’ad
the chance to be nuthin’ but what I become… a thief. Would you ’ave liked me if you ’ad known? Would you ’ave let me be one
of you then? No, I’d be the one dead instead of Marin.”

Septua’s voice rose to an hysterical pitch and rang shrill in the cold darkness of the cell. The murmur of voices fell silent
and watchful as the dwellers of the dungeon held their breath and waited to see or hear what would come next, thankful that
it was not they themselves who were at the heart of the crisis.