Battleslave Read online

  Talitha watched him go. Good thing she had no intentions of causing trouble.

  Talitha squatted in the communal privies and wandered back to the line before the other battleslaves were let out.

  She stood with her spine straight and her feet shoulder width apart. Her head still ached and there was a dull soreness and stiffness that permeated her whole body, but whatever was coming, she could meet it standing.

  “Line up!” Juba ordered. “Line up!”

  As one, the gaggle of battleslaves came running. They rushed in a mad swarm and then settled calmly in a neat row. Talitha shifted to join the line, several dozen paces from where she had stopped at first. She took a place at the end of the column and waited.

  “Listen up, you rabid animals,” Juba shouted. “We’re putting on games for the Ilian ensaak tomorrow.”

  Talitha’s head snapped to him.

  “Eyes front!” he bellowed, fist whipping across her cheek in an instant.

  Talitha schooled her face straight ahead, not daring to so much as blink. Naram was coming.

  Mila was there, her milky eye wandering lazily over the battleslaves. She had a sword strapped to one hip and a bull whip coiled in the other.

  Besides herself, Talitha had not seen anyone give trouble in the past three days. Perhaps it was only the stupid new recruits that did that. The ones who still thought they had rights.

  “Ensaak Prothero has pledged thirteen fighters.”

  Ensaak?

  “Thirteen?” exclaimed one of the fighters. “We’re already short ten!”

  “I know.” Juba paused. If Talitha had to guess, he’d had this very conversation with Prothero not too long ago. “Some of you will have to take extra fights. The other Headmen are pledging twelve each. The ensaak chose to contribute the same plus one.”

  Talitha listened carefully, picking apart the words, matching it against what she knew of borderland politics. Prothero was ensaak, but in a town like this, he might rule with the oversight of a council. Especially in mixed towns with dozens of tribes and clans squished together for survival, it wasn’t unheard of for the different peoples to demand their own representative.

  “Come,” Juba ordered. “We’re going through basic maneuvers for the morning, but then we’re resting until it’s time for the selected fighters and I to head to the city arena. Mila will be in command while I am gone.”

  Talitha followed Juba out of the corner of her eye. When he spoke, he didn’t look directly at the line of fighters in front of him. He was keeping back something.

  “I’ve seen you all fight,” he said. “You’re all stronger and fiercer than anything in the barracks of Joquim or Bohsa. You’ll slaughter them all and be back here.” Juba sounded confident at first, but there was a stiffness to his back that had not been there before. “I’m taking the new Ilian, Vek, Kiri…”

  Talitha lost track of the ten other names that followed. She had a feeling she had been the only easy choice.

  When she was called first, a scattering of heads looked in her direction. Talitha continued looking straight ahead.

  For the first time, her plan was clear. After days of praying for revenge, her chance was coming.

  Naram would be at the edge of the arena, in the best seating. Her chance to spear him was close. He would be guarded and there would be precautions to protect him, but—

  “Ilian!” Juba yelled. He must have been trying to catch her attention for some time. “You come this way!”

  Talitha stepped out of the line and marched to where the other warriors he’d called stood in a separate group.

  Juba caught her and rammed a fist into her gut. “Heed me when I call you!”

  Talitha doubled over. She clenched her eyes shut and didn’t make so much as a squeak.

  “Now get over there.” Juba flicked his hand whip in her direction.

  One of the other battleslaves, a slim girl with tribal tattoos splashed over her shoulders and neck, leaned over. “Ready to die for your ensaak’s entertainment, Ilian?”

  “No different from what I was supposed to do in the army.” Talitha kept her chin up.

  “I’m Kiri,” the girl said, holding out a hand. “That’s Vek.” She gestured to a narrowly built young man with sandy red hair and a long scar across his naked chest. “You should probably start making friends, if you plan to get out of that arena alive.”

  Talitha took the girl’s hand. “We’re all supposed to die in this game, you know,” she said. “Juba knows.”

  “He’s never sent us to a no-win scenario before,” Kiri scoffed. “So what if it’s harder than some of our previous games? We’ll get through it.”

  Talitha wasn’t so sure about that, but she was sure she would find a way to crack in Naram’s skull no matter what. It was like that proverb—if he wanted to see blood so badly, she would bathe him in his own.

  Chapter Four

  “What city is this?” Talitha asked, one hand gripping the bars of the locked wagon.

  What she had assumed was a town was fast proving to be anything but. It was a small suburb linked to a larger collection of houses, streets, shops, squares, and temples.

  The people outside were all fairly the same in appearance—same coloring, same style of dress, and that same hard, fierceness Talitha had seen in Prothero.

  Foreigners were either slaves or merchants, riding atop sirrushes bedecked in ornaments and hawking their wares to any who would stop long enough to listen.

  “Radir,” Kiri answered. “As close as you can get to the old oceans and not live under raining ash.”

  Since the drying of the oceans, the great calderas and empty spaces that had once held water had turned into burning lava fields. The underwater volcanoes had been exposed and continued to smoke and burn.

  That must explain the dark cloud Talitha could make out to the far horizon from here. It wasn’t a storm, it was the volancoes.

  The wagon was ringed by low slats of wood that served at benches. Talitha sat beside Kiri, leaning against the bars.

  She’d been stripped of her tattered Ilian clothes and slapped into an undyed tunic that belted at her waist. Scrubbed in sand and given fresh clothes last night, Talitha oddly felt better than she had in days. Even though they were all meant to die.

  “You never told us your name,” said Vek, Kiri’s lover.

  “Pudmea,” Talitha answered. She’d constantly reminded herself for days.

  “Never heard that one before,” Vek scoffed.

  Talitha shrugged. “Family name.”

  Kiri nuzzled Vek’s neck and he slipped an arm around her. How tragic that Juba intended for them to die together. She wasn’t sure if that was cruel or kind.

  The dark man himself rode at the front of the wagon. Guards flanked all around them. Prothero seemed more merchant than warlord. As they had left the estate, Talitha had seen an entire market place within his palace.

  Up ahead, the roads diverged. A crowd was pressing in from the right and the barred wagon turned to the left. A group of armored warriors on sirrushes, worn from the desert flooded into the street, one of them swatting at an urchin clinging to his leg.

  Their animals were lean and wirier than usual and for a moment, Talitha thought they were Dunedrifters. Her treacherous heart gave a leap of excitement, but a moment latter she spotted the golden sun of Ilios and her heart turned hard and cold as the hoarfrost of the northern sands.

  Naram rode with a cluster of riders around him. He fit awkwardly and sideways in his bronze armor. A boy who had stolen a warrior’s clothes.

  Every muscle in Talitha’s body went tight. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

  A vision flashed across her eyes of stabbing a knife into the fleshy part of his belly, just to the side of his hip. She’d drag the knife up to his opposite shoulder, spilling his guts like a sacrificial bullock.

  The wagon hit a rut in the road and Talitha jolted off the seat. She hit the bottom of the wagon, bruising her knee
, but out of sight.

  “You alright, Ilian?” Kiri leaned forward.

  The rest of the battleslaves had caught themselves. Sniggers rippled through the rows of warriors.

  She climbed stiffly back onto the seat. That numbness took over her body again, the same helpless apathy that had claimed her when she saw Esreth’s head.

  Naram was calling himself ensaak. Why would he be forging alliances with warlords so far from Ilios? Surely, he couldn’t mean to conquer out this far? It would take months of conquest, even if everything went well.

  Talitha clenched her eyes shut. “How did you find me?”

  “What?” Kiri squinted at her. Vek remained silent.

  “Nothing.” Talitha hadn’t realized she spoke out loud. “Nothing.”

  Their cart trundled to a large set of gates. Words passed between Juba and the guards. Their exchange was drowned out by the pulsing crowd around them.

  Talitha looked up to find high walls in every direction. It appeared to be an amphitheater—larger than even the one in Ilios. Bannerets waved from its pillars and columns in an impressive motley of color. Hawkers passed selling everything from mice roasted on sticks to bits of ribbon to potions.

  Kiri pointed to a woman hawking glass bottles. “The sweat of the favored champions,” she said. “Vek’s was hawked after he won the Descent Feast Festivals.”

  Talitha’s nose wrinkled. Perhaps she was just a pretentious Ilian.

  Trumpets blared and Talitha turned in time to spot Prothero’s litter—austere and practical in comparison to Naram’s entourage—making its way to a different entrance into the amphitheater.

  The games must be starting soon.

  Talitha clenched her hands together. She wanted to ask the Lonely God for help, but how could she? The Lonely God was a god of justice, but also mercy and peace. He would not hear pleas for the bloody revenge she wanted.

  “You’re performing in an hour,” Juba said, as if they were jugglers or acrobats.

  “What will we be fighting?” asked one of the burlier men near the front.

  “I don’t know.” Juba’s gaze flickered to Talitha.

  He was lying. Couldn’t any of them see that?

  The grated gates clanged shut and the locks rattled behind their cart. They stopped, then the oxen were urged onward through a second gate into the amphitheater’s backmost workings.

  The bull pen was walled off by towering limestone. Guards stood at every entrance and exit, but none of the dozens of battleslaves showed the slightest interest in fleeing.

  A leopard fighter with a pelt capes and a trident, upper body bare save for pauldrons strapped to her shoulder, said something to the wrinkled man before her. The man laughed and she added something to the nearest guard, who joined in.

  They trundled to a stop and Juba stepped down off the cart. Keys jangling in his fist, he unlocked the back. “Come on, then, you wastes of space.”

  The warriors nearest the back were the first to get out, then those next to them, and so on. When it came Talitha’s turn, seated in the middle of the cart, she didn’t move.

  Kiri nudged her shoulder.

  Talitha shook her head and sat back.

  Kiri bit her lip. “You shouldn’t cause trouble, you—”

  Vek laid a hand on the girl’s arm and shook his head, urging her on. Kiri took a deep breath and slipped past Talitha.

  Juba watched with a stormy glare as the rest of the cart emptied out. Talitha waited until the thickset bruiser in the back squeezed past, then rose to her feet. The other man stepped down, but Talitha paused at the edge of the cart, standing so she was above Juba.

  The quartermaster quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t start any trouble here, Ilian.”

  Talitha looked up. From her perch standing in the cart, she could just make out the inside of the amphitheater from over the rows of the armory, infirmary, and warm-up rings that comprised the bull pen.

  There was a good crowd today, though the roar had been enough for her to guess that.

  She couldn’t see much of the interior, but it appeared there were covered boxes near the edge of the ring scattered here and there. Gold and silver glittered from figures in white—wealthy, if she had to guess.

  There appeared to be a large pavilion build to the left of the bull pen entrance. That was probably the ensaak’s box. Sure enough, there he was, visible even from this distance—awkward and graceless and yet still revered for the stolen power he wielded.

  Talitha’s fist clenched.

  “Alright, get on with it,” Juba ordered.

  Talitha was about to obey when she caught sight of the armored figure at Naram’s left.

  Even from this distance, Ashek was unmistakable. His broad shoulders made Naram seem lithe and weak. His bared upper arms rippled as he turned to lower his head and whisper something to the new ensaak.

  Talitha’s heart pounded. Her vision blurred. For a moment, she swayed.

  Not him. No, it couldn’t be him. He—

  “Get down!” Juba shoved her shin and Talitha grabbed the corner of the wagon’s bars to keep from falling. “Get to the gearing stations, all of you!”

  Talitha kept her head down, biding her time. Juba led the way and two of Prothero’s guards flanked close behind. It wouldn’t have been a fair match if the dozen battleslaves decided to revolt. Talitha doubted they were here for all dozen, probably just her, the new one. The troublemaker. The one who would be used and spent and disposed of like she had been everywhere else—in the court, her family, and whatever had been between her and Ashek.

  “Let’s go!”

  Talitha slipped back into a numb daze.

  Inside the stone corridors and rows of weapons that made up the armory, the roar of the crowd could be heard over the bustle of the battleslaves below. The armory was poorly lit and dark, all the more like a dream or a nightmare.

  Talitha scanned the weaponry lining the racks. Spears, pikes, javelins, short swords, long swords, cutlasses, gladiuses, tridents, chakrams—it was a motley of tools for death.

  Any one of them would do nicely, stabbed squarely into Naram’s face.

  Hands crammed a helmet onto her head. Looking down, she realized it was her own hands.

  Seeing Ashek had fractured her world. She should have know better than to be expect loyalty from a Dunedrifter, but some part of her had.

  “Hey, Ilian, you here?” Kiri’s voice snapped her attention to the left.

  Talitha’s vision took a moment to focus. “What?”

  “I asked if you were ready and you just stared.” Kiri was already securely buckled into a set of light leather armor, stitched together in overlapping strips.

  “Yes.” Talitha flicked her gaze over the weapons before her and snatched up a round shield, reinforced with copper studs. She examined the interior of the shield carefully, running her fingers over the nicks and scratches left behind by previous owners. She wondered how many of them had walked out of the arena alive.

  Mechanically, Talitha selected her armor. She buckled on sturdy bracers and greaves. An awkwardly fitting breast plate strapped across her chest.

  Juba came up behind her and tightened the straps across her back. “Let’s see if your gods keep favoring you through the day, Ilian.”

  Favor? The man thought this was favor?

  Talitha thought of the bruise worn around her ankle from the days spent chained in the kitchens. “Favor” was a strange word to use.

  A great clanging sounded from the front of the armory, the portion leading to the arena itself. Kiri and Vek hastily snatched up the last of their weaponry as did the rest of the right press of warriors around them.

  Talitha picked a spear without looking. She fell in beside Prothero’s other battleslaves, making her way along with some thirty others to the massive grated entrance to the arena. Talitha should have been nervous, afraid, or excited…something. Instead, she looked to the rows of helmeted heads around her and wondered how many would be roll
ing free of their bodies soon.

  Like Esreth.

  The tight press of battleslaves pushed against the front of the grates. One of them hooted, a few more joined in, and soon the chute shook with whooping and bellowing and howling in a handful of languages.

  “You’re all excited!” Talitha shouted to Kiri.

  “It’s a good life!” the girl shouted back, a fanatical grin on her face. “How many slaves get to fight to live?”

  “You fight for freedom?” Talitha had heard of such things in other cities.

  Kiri’s scoff was lost in the cacophony, but Talitha caught the motion. “What more freedom could we want? We choose how we die!”

  Talitha didn’t consider that a fitting substitute. She cast a final glance over her shoulder to Juba. The dark man watched her with his wiry arms locked across his chest. He nodded once.

  The gates to the armory shut, locking the throng of battleslaves in the chute like cattle. Talitha’s jaw clenched and she gripped her spear tighter.

  The hooting and howling grew louder as the battleslaves pounded on the gates in front of them, so loud, it was like being caught in a thunderstorm. The tunnel reverberated with the chanting of some thirty souls just dying to die.

  Talitha winced as the vibration thudded through her chest.

  Then the gates opened.

  Chapter Five

  The noise was the first thing that hit her.

  The noise, noise, noise.

  People, screamed, cheered, and cast their bets in the packed stands.

  The arena was more than a hundred paces long and fifty wide. It should have felt enormous, but Talitha had never felt so boxed in.

  The warriors around her surged outward, forcing her along in their tight formation. Beside her, Kiri was screaming with an upraised sword and Vek clanged his shield.

  Alarm shuddered through Talitha as the cramped cluster carried them forward in a wave. They should be more strategic. They should think. What was outside the gates? It could be anything.