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“He never talked to me.”

“He thought you were a, what did he say? Arsehole.”

“I suppose I am.”

“Sometimes,” she agreed.

The crowd was still cheering, though it was finally tapering off. I never did find out who or what did for the Holter. I never saw his body. But they did put his axe, dented helmet, and bloody shoulder piece back in the armory. I suppose the javelin was bollocksed. Anyway, I wouldn’t be picking any of his old gear—no sense tempting bad luck.

I checked in with my own luck, found it normal.

I would live or die, like anyone.

Half an hour later, I was thinking die.

“Left, left! Then to me!” Galva said, so I ran left.

The giant—had Verna Zan Zan been tipped off we were going to face a giant when she made us play poles and pillow with Birch?—went after me rather than Galva. It swung its weapon at me and missed, though barely. The impact made a great sound like BRONK, kicking up a lot of the black, volcanic sand they use in the arenas here. I’ll say for the record that this was the nastiest thing anybody had yet tried to kill me with, if tentacles don’t count. The weapon was the other geezer who’d been fighting side by side with us, a slave from another ludus. Hadn’t learned his name. But he had picked a big fucking pot helmet in his armory, and now the sixteen-footer who had already broken the poor kark’s back in numerous places was swinging him by both legs, that helmet full of head like the end of a ghastly flail.

I had a polearm called a gisarme, which was basically a spear, but also two short hook-shaped blades that curved backward on either side of the point. Galva had encouraged me to take it when we’d been picked and given our moment in the armory. “Should I not take my knives? I’m better with knives.”

She said, “Maybe against kynd. But I think they picked two of us because it will be a giant. Do you want to try to climb a giant with a knife?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I know. But here, nobody will slow them down for you.”

“Yah,” I said. So I had reluctantly taken my rondel dagger, Angna, off my belt, leaving Palthra, my nine inch man-skinner. It would serve as a backup. I took the gisarme, trying to use it the way Galva had taught me in the training yard at the ludus. For armor, I just wore my leather. I was quick in it, and besides being vicious when necessary, quick was all I had.

When Verna Zan Zan had seen how good Galva really was, she had made her start training the rest of us. The Spanth’s words, which I had translated for the other blacksanders, served me now.

If I have to fight a giant, I will fight them as goblins fought us, for we are much larger than the biters. The sandmaster has told us that there are rules for mixed bouts. Healthy true giants must face no fewer than three kynd. The biters fought us in wedges of three. They stood close and low, like this. They struck in a mismatched rhythm, like so. They had hooked spears, so if they missed your leg with the thrust, they would try to cut above your heel as they pulled the weapon back. Like this.

“Like THIS!” I actually said when I stabbed out at this biggun’s hairy tree of a leg, and when it moved that leg, faster than I would have given it credit for, I lashed back as I retreated and cut it. I missed cutting the tendon through, these heifers have big tendons, but I gashed its calf proper, and it howled so hard and low it made my stones rattle. I could smell its bad teeth on the hot breath that poured out of it, and also what it had for lunch.

Purple corn and sour beer, if you care.

I hate corn.

Beer’s all right, but I don’t care for it secondhand.

Now I got next to Galva again as she’d said to. I was against her on her left and half behind her shield, holding the gisarme overhead in a high guard. She held her bullnutter in a low guard right, ready to slash up.

The biggun, who was done yelling about his hurt leg and ready to start hurting us, had a nasty, long chin beard tied in several places with cord to make a sort of chain out of it, in accidental echo of the bollocksed spine of the geezer he was using as a flail. He came on, whipping the fellow at us, then stepping back, whipping, then stepping back. All the while he was looking for the axe he’d dropped. I knew where it was, but fuck if I was going to look at it and show him with my eyes that it was behind him.

“Your axe is behind you!” some wet-mouthed karker shouted in Arvisk. The harpy who’d been screaming so for blood earlier, if I had to guess. The giant shuffled back to get some distance from us and looked behind him. He now went to pick up his axe.

“Thanks, you great gargly bitch. My arse to you, and kiss it!” I shouted in the direction of my enemy’s new best friend, and I split off from Galva for an instant so I could down my breeches and show her precisely where she’d be putting her next pucker.

The crowd laughed at that, or at least the most juvenile among them. One laugh, high and gleeful and vicious, lasted longer than the rest, and some part of me, the part that senses when a donkey wants to bite or whether a cloud means to rain on me, noted that laugh as important. And so it would be.

Here came the biggun now, and me glued again to Galva as if she could save me. “Left!” she said again, and I ran left as she ducked right, just under the giant’s angled chop that would have taken her through the chest and me through the hip. As it was, it just missed my heel and rained sand on me, shaking the very ground. I turned on my next step and flicked the point of my weapon up at his eyes, one-handed, fast but not hard. As he had bent low with the force of the chop, I stuck him, not in the eye but in the cheek. He went, “Auwrggh!” and, not having time to load a swing, took a lunging step forward and tried poking that axe straight into me, which would have done me some harm, heavy as it was. But I told you I’m quick, and I darted back the other way light as a hummingbird, giving him a groove above the knuckle as I went.

He had a feeling he’d been too long not looking backward and turned a wild blind swat behind him in case Galva was lurking near. She was. But she ducked under that swing so fast and low I swear she got sand up her nose, then rose into a cut. It was a thing of beauty. Many giants wear these girdles—huge leather belts that protect their guts almost to the tits, and go bare above that. And so it was with this one. Galva managed a cut that followed the shape of the girdle, a sort of bloody frown that scraped the sternum from one under-tit to the next. Not deep enough to kill, but the bright pain of it shocked the biggun out of whatever it should have done next. Whatever that was, it wasn’t to drop its axe again and cry its misery to the sky, as if to some neglectful god. The gods don’t like being reminded of their neglect. And so it was that I took him a hard one between the ribs while Galva, with that footwork she has, opened up a new angle and stabbed the poor karker under the arm, tickling his large heart, then pulling out and away like she was never there. He looked at her, then turned around to look for me, and while I was rearing back to stab him with all my might again, he pitched forward onto that thick brow of his with a thud and went stone-dead. The crowd had held its breath, so everyone heard the rattly wheeze his ghost rode out on.

“You have any more advice for him, you fucking cow?” I yelled toward the harpy, shoving my arse toward her and shaking it, then doing a wild little dance that involved me throwing up handfuls of black sand as if juggling while dancing at a squat. Fewer laughs than the first time I mugged, and I didn’t do it to be funny anyway. I don’t know why I did it, except to release some of the awful energy that builds up in a fight. But that high laugh rose again from the stands, and this time, I looked for its source. My eyes went to a box shaded with silk canopies in dark orange, which looked handsome against the red of the Blood Chalice arena. There, amid much gold, sat a half-giant under a crown, and next to him, a little girl halfie with her blond hair lit by a stray beam of sun, which also set the gold on her neck a-twinkle.

Urkus spoke now, in the language of Erydon, which I did not know. But I was later told what he said.