The Sellsword (33 page)

“Ergoth! Ergoth!” Who could do this for a living? he wondered. It was nothing like mercenary work. It was showmanship. They applauded him but didn’t even know who he really was, and if he died there on the blood-wet clay, who would mourn his passing? A spear
carrier ran at his chariot, and he cut downward with the sword. The spear fell away in two pieces, and the man carrying it tumbled over and over, struck by the side of the chariot. The competition continued.

Eventually there were only two left—Vanderjack and one other. The arena was strewn with broken chariots, the dead, and the dying. His final foe was a grizzled veteran with a plumed helm he’d probably stolen from one of the Plumed Jaguars of Wulfgar. They raced across the arena toward each other, Vanderjack’s vision narrowed to a tunnel, rain spraying in his face, his opponent’s feathered plume sodden and plastered to his helm, a barbed lance raised and pointed in Vanderjack’s direction.

A roar split the wind and the rain and carried clear across the arena, echoing and vibrating through the stone of the arena walls and under the feet of the cheering spectators. That was when the portcullis in the seventh gate lurched upward and a maddened, winged, brass-scaled creature emerged. The dragonne was shackled to twin lengths of chain, each of which was anchored on the inside of the seventh gate. Although he could probably lift himself several feet off the ground, the dragonne’s wings would not provide him with the means to escape by flight.

Meanwhile Vanderjack was committed to his final charge, crouching slightly, the Ergothian sword raised high in a ready stance. The wheels underneath his chariot struck bodies, chunks of wood, and low basins of bloody water as he urged the horse on. His opponent’s chariot did the same.

“Ergoth! Ergoth!” screamed the crowd as one.

The two chariots swerved, skidded in the mud, and slammed into each other. Both chariots’ horses broke
free, galloping onward, tack and harnesses dragging behind them. Vanderjack had flung himself forward at the last moment, using the momentum of the chariot to send him at great force into the midsection of his opponent and taking him down with him. With a crash, both men landed several yards away in another ruined chariot, causing an explosion of earth and broken wood and metal.

Vanderjack thought his legs were broken. For a few heartbeats, he couldn’t move them at all, struggling to pull himself free of the wreckage. Then his legs began to twitch and spasm, and he pulled himself into a halfstanding position.

The gladiator with the plumed helm was dead, impaled upon the twisted metal and wood, his eyes open and staring. Vanderjack swallowed back his gorge and, with difficulty, pulled his own helm free. He tossed it aside, drew himself up to standing, and heard the deafening adulations.

“Ergoth! Ergoth!” the spectators shouted. Vanderjack wiped the blood out of his eye, forcing it open despite the swelling so he could survey the cheering masses. It was hopeless. He’d never find Cazuvel in the crowd, and Rivven Cairn would be sure to recognize the sellsword as the champion standing in the middle of her arena.

There came a roar from Star. The dragonne was straining against his chains, roaring and bellowing. The crowd was spooked by the ferocity of his roar and many ran. Some fell or collapsed and were trampled by their fellow spectators. Vanderjack noticed that Star’s eyes seemed wild and unfocused; the beast was probably under the effects of a spell.

Vanderjack cast his mind into the void in which the memory-voices of the Sword Chorus were nestled,
hoping for some insights. He couldn’t recall anything they had said in the past that might help. “Don’t dwell on the pain, the injuries. You can always die tomorrow,” said the Cavalier’s voice in his mind, a familiar reproach. “Die tomorrow.”

“Rather not die at all,” he muttered to himself and hobbled across the arena toward the dragonne. The crowd saw that, and, eager for more entertainment, the panic began to subside. Some began to shout, “Kill the beast!” and “Ergoth! Ergoth!” At least the rain had lightened enough that the sellsword could see more than a dozen yards ahead. He had lost his sword after he threw himself off the chariot. He hoped Star remembered him.

Vanderjack raised his hands as he approached. Star was flapping his wings and leaping around, claws tearing up mud and chains rattling fiercely. “Star!” the sellsword said, shouting over the noise of both the crowd and the creature. “It’s me! It’s, uh, good old Vanderjack!”

The dragonne responded by lashing out with one huge clawed paw and raking Vanderjack across the chest. It tore through his scale mail, knocking him backward, and he landed ignominiously in the muck. He looked up to see the dragonne rearing and clawing at the air before coming down with a terrible splash inches from Vanderjack’s legs. The chains were holding the dragonne back—but only barely.

Vanderjack scuttled backward and got up again. A battered circular shield in the mud caught his eye, and he ran to pick it up, sliding it over his arm and bringing it up just in time to block another sweeping blow from the dragonne’s claws. That, too, knocked the sellsword over. He shouted out again, “Ackal’s Teeth, Star! Shake it off!”

The great dragon-cat leaped and ducked, snapping at the air with his jaws, narrowly missing Vanderjack’s head. The beast’s wings were whipping up rainwater and mud from the arena floor, making it almost impossible for the sellsword to maneuver around the dragonne. He wondered what the Conjurer or the Hunter would suggest and decided that the only way to snap Star out of his rage and frenzy was to risk delivering a blow to the creature’s head.

The crowd loved the new battle. Many, frightened of Star’s roar, had climbed up the stands to a higher vantage point. They saw a weary and bloodied man doing battle with a great beast that seemed like an amalgam of two of the most dangerous and predatory beasts they knew. From where they sat, they couldn’t tell Vanderjack was trying to reason with Star or neutralize him, not kill him.

“Sorry about this, big guy,” Vanderjack said and threw his shield with all of his might at Star’s massive skull. The shield rebounded from the beast’s head with a clang. Star barely blinked from the blow. He turned his head fully around to face Vanderjack, opened his jaws wide, and roared at the sellsword from a distance of only ten feet.

Vanderjack’s head felt as if an ogre had kicked him, and his chest shook with the unleashed rage tied up within the roar. It sent him flying backward, stunned, muscles strained to the point of exhaustion. As he lay there, the crowd shouting for him to get up and fight, everything from his concussed skull to the shredded tendons in his arms and legs screaming at him to just give up and die, he heard the one sound he knew would just make things worse.

It was the sound of the chains snapping.

Theodenes had had enough of the spectacle.

He’d watched the whole contest at Rivven Cairn’s side, under the cover of the canvas awning stretched over part of the balcony, but the rain still soaked his boots as it showered upon the balcony floor. The highmaster, meanwhile, kept dry by some minor cantrip.

Theodenes had watched it all, occasionally wincing but steadily becoming confident that the dark-skinned stranger in the scale mail shirt and helm who had fought his way to the chariots would win.

The highmaster must have recognized Vanderjack too, but she didn’t move to do anything about it. In fact, as Vanderjack and his last gladiatorial foe raced their chariots toward each other, he had decided that Rivven wasn’t going to lift a finger until Cazuvel was drawn out of hiding.

Then the arena’s big seventh gate was lifted and Star emerged, crazed, not at all the warm, intelligent creature he’d grown fond of. Theodenes was certain that they had done something to the dragonne to reduce him to that angry, almost mindless brute. Was it Rivven’s magic? Perhaps some herbal concoction prepared by the beast masters of the Horseman’s Arena to whip animals into a state of rage? Either way, Vanderjack looked in serious trouble.

Rivven continued to do nothing as Vanderjack tried pathetically to counter the berserk dragonne. She turned her head just enough to meet Theo’s gaze and smiled.

Theo had most definitely had enough.

It was a widely known fact that gnomes have a low resistance to stress. Never in his entire life, however, had Theodenes responded to stress by running into a
room, the chains on his ankles clanking and bouncing, grabbing a polearm from a guard, running back out of the room, hooking the polearm onto the canvas awning above the balcony, then leaping from the balcony into open space in a vain attempt to use the awning and polearm together as a makeshift hang glider. And yet, that is exactly what he did.

The guards were astonished, no less Rivven Cairn, but the gnome was already up and over the rail of the balcony before they could do anything but stare and gape and point.

“What in the name of—!” was all Rivven could get out before she watched Theodenes vanish from the railing.

Theo hung on to the polearm, jaw set, wind catching in the awning and lifting him swiftly up and into the air, easily putting some distance between himself and the palace. He made a mental note to add a glider function to his ultimate melee weapon device, for it was extremely useful and more than a little exciting. One end of his stolen polearm was a standard axe blade backed by a spike, the spike firmly hooked into one corner of the awning. The other end of the polearm was fortunately caught up in a loop of cord lining the other end of the awning; otherwise Theo would be dropping like a stone.

The triumphant gnome managed a sort of strangled war cry as he angled himself toward the far end of the arena, where Star and Vanderjack were circling each other. Star was busy straining against his chains, and the links stretched, groaned, and finally gave way against the dragonne’s monstrous strength. The crowd was busy flinging itself toward the edges of the stadium seating, looking down over the high walls into the arena
below, shouting and gesturing at the frightening display of bestial power.

Somebody in the crowd noticed Theo’s rapid descent and pointed upward. The cheers of “Ergoth! Ergoth!” were joined by “Kender! Kender!” As drenched and worn out as Theo was, with his luxurious white hair clinging to his scalp and his fine traveling clothes hanging awkwardly off his limbs, he looked to the idiot masses like a wet kender.

He landed in a sodden, muddy heap near Vanderjack. The awning fell forward, flapping in the wind, and, as luck would have it, flew right into Star’s face. The dragonne, finally free of his bonds, sailed right over Theo and the prone sellsword, jaws and forelimbs caught up in the canvas. Theodenes lifted the polearm out of the mud where it had landed and stood, prepared to defend himself and Vanderjack—once and no longer his enemy—against all comers.

“Star!” he shouted, watching the dragonne leap and flap crazily around the arena until he managed to claw the canvas away from his face. “Star, you are under the effects of some kind of pharmaceutical or metaphysical stimulant! Remember who we are! Theodenes and Vanderjack!”

The dragonne spun around, spraying water so hard that it splashed all the way up the nearby wall and into the faces of the throng watching from high above. There was more cheering, but the crowd’s mood had sobered somewhat. It was strange entertainment, a kender fighting a dragonne that flopped around as though it were confused.

Star tensed, his muscles bunching up, drawing himself back on his haunches. His wings spread wide and angled upward, as a bat’s might before it propels itself
forward to snare an insect from the air. Theo gulped. Star was big enough that he could swallow the gnome in one bite if he wanted to.

Theodenes felt rather than saw the stirring of the sellsword beside him in the mud. Vanderjack was trying to pull himself up into a sitting position, but he looked terrible.

“No good,” said the sellsword. “May as well say whatever prayers you gnomes have to whatever gods you have, Theo. Star’s—”

Theo finished the sentence. “Charging right at us,” he said, gritting his teeth. He thrust the butt end of the polearm into the thick clay and braced himself for the impact. He thought of closing his eyes, afraid to look, but something made them stay open. Gnome curiosity, perhaps?

The dragonne beat his wings and launched himself up and into a swift and deadly arc, claws outstretched on the way down, wings pushing him halfway across the arena in the direction of the gnome and the Ergothian, jaws opening. Then, at the moment of impending collision, the wings beat once feverishly, and Star flew past overhead.

“He missed!” said Vanderjack, seized by a coughing fit.

“No, he didn’t,” said Theo, smiling. “Look!”

Star was flying around in a lazy arc over the stands of spectators. There were screams and cries of “The beast is loose!” and “Call for the guard!” and “It’s all the kender’s fault!” Then, without any signs of wrath or madness, he landed before the gnome and breathed a warm, wet greeting in his face.

“I apologize,” said Star. “It took me this long to overcome the enchantments the bozaks placed on me.”