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He looked to Jedra. "Buy me a slab of that, boy, and I'll show you and your girl the best seats in the stadium."
Jedra wasn't sure he wanted the best seats, but if Kitarak were forced to fight today, he supposed a good view would be essential to helping him. How they could do that he didn't know, but they would have to try. So he bought the old man a greasy slice off a barbecued mekillot haunch that looked big enough to feed the entire city for a week, and they proceeded into the stadium.
Pike-wielding ushers directed them up into the top section of seats. Jedra thought at first that they were getting preferential treatment until he realized that the upper section provided shade for the lower one, which was closer to the floor of the arena. That suited him fine, though. As long as he could see, he didn't care to be close enough to smell the action as well. The old man led them up into the crowd, stepping on toes and nudging people aside with his staff as he climbed, eventually choosing a section of stone bench halfway up the stands and two-thirds of the way down from the palace toward the ziggurat.
"What's so special about these seats?" Jedra asked.
The old man bit into the meat Jedra had bought him, chewed, and said around the mouthful, "I told you I'd show you the best seats. So there they are." He pointed to the rows of balconies overlooking the stadium from the eastern wall of the palace, on the side of the stadium opposite the ziggurat. Gaily dressed templars and those nobles who were currently in favor with the sorcerer-king lined the balconies, ignoring the crowds below while they dined and drank before the games began.
The old man cackled at his own joke. "These, on the other hand, are the best that were left, and that's the truth. We'll still see plenty from here." He took another bite, letting the grease and sauce drip off the end of his grizzled chin.
Cart you believe this guy? Kayan asked, resting her head against Jedra's shoulder.
I'd be afraid to, Jedra replied. He gave Kayan a hug. He could sense her unease in this crowd. The last time she had been in a city, she had been among the templars. Jedra was used to life among the rabble, but Tyr was a strange city and knowing why he and Kayan were here made him even more nervous.
The crowd grew around them until the stadium was nearly full. The noise of thousands of conversations blended into a continual roar, much like the roar of the city Jedra had discovered in the second crystal world. Occasional fights broke out among spectators who couldn't wait for the action to start below, but the ushers quickly quelled them. The threat of their pikes put a peaceful stop to most disagreements, but they had to yank one drunken brawler up to the top of the stands and toss him over the side to break up one fight. The crowd roared its approval, then roared even louder when they turned back around and saw the crier walking out into the middle of the arena.
The crier raised his hands, and a hush settled over the crowd. He spoke, welcoming everyone to the games and announcing the first combatants, but Jedra didn't recognize either name.
The other peo
ple in the crowd, however, did. They roared their approval when a swarthy, leather-clad man bearing a club and a short sword climbed up the steps from the pens below the ziggurat and paced out into the middle of the arena, and they roared again when a lithe blonde woman in a breechcloth and halter and carrying a longer sword and a whip stepped out after him. The two took up positions about twenty feet from each other, the man flexing his arms and brandishing his weapons for the audience while the woman just stood there, her whip trailing behind her, ready for action.
Jedra fought to keep himself from throwing up. He'd heard that some gladiator games started with executions, but he'd never imagined that they would throw an untrained woman in the arena against a trained gladiator and make them fight to the death.
At a shout from the crier they sprang into action, and the woman instantly made Jedra realize he'd misjudged her. She lashed out with her whip and cut a gash in the man's hairy chest with her very first blow. The crack echoed across the stands, and the crowd cheered. The man stepped forward as if he hadn't even been hit, his short sword held out vertically before him, but he danced back when the woman flicked the whip toward him again. He leaned in and back, in and back, while she popped at his arms and legs with the lash. A few people booed him for his caution, but the man bided his time, learning the woman's rhythm. Then, in the middle of another motion just like all the others, he sliced out with his sword instead of backing off, and a three-foot piece of whip flew end-over-end over his shoulder.
The woman tried to change her rhythm to match the shorter whip, but it took her a few tries, and by the time she got it right the man had leaped toward her and thrown his club directly at her stomach. She staggered back, stunned, and the man swept in and stabbed her cleanly below her left breast before she could even raise her own sword to guard herself. When he pulled his sword free, bright red blood flooded out over her white belly, running down her leg and dripping to the sand. She looked up at him with wide eyes, then she folded over like a closed book and toppled to the ground.
While the crowd cheered, the gladiator bowed to the king and the templars, then to the stands on both sides of the arena. Then, almost tenderly, he picked up the woman's body and bore it out of the stadium. The way her arms and legs and head dangled limply from his cradling hands haunted Jedra for minutes after-right up until the next bloody execution of an elf who had been given a spear to defend himself against an armored dwarven gladiator with a double-bladed axe. The elf definitely had the reach on the dwarf, but the result was nearly the same. The moment the dwarf disarmed him, the fight was as good as over. Of course the crowd wasn't satisfied until the dwarf had hacked the elf's head completely free of his body, even though it took three swings to do it.
What will they do to me if I throw up? Jedra asked Kayan.
I don't know, but it probably wouldn't be good, she replied. Here. She put her hand over his stomach, and his inner turmoil receded somewhat. The horror he felt at the slaughter still remained, but at least now he wouldn't adorn the spectators around him with his lunch.
Thank you, he said.
Now that he wasn't so focused on his discomfort from the gore, he realized how hot he was. That was easy enough to fix; he used the same talent he had learned to keep Kitarak's cold-box frozen and created a layer of cool air around himself and Kayan. He noticed the old man still sweating freely in the sun and guiltily lowered the temperature a degree or two around him as well. The excess heat had to go somewhere, so he found a particularly unruly fan a few rows below and dumped it on him. The man gasped and fanned himself with a fold of his robe, and sure enough, after a few minutes he quieted down.
There were two more executions, and then the real games started. Professional gladiators entered the arena in pairs and hacked and sliced at each other on the sand below while the people in the stands leaped to their feet and cheered loud enough to drown out the clash of weapons and even the screams when one gladiator wounded another. Each match featured minor variations in sex or species or number of combatants, but they were all essentially the same mindless spectacle. Jedra let his thoughts drift off to run one more time through their plans to break Kitarak free, but his attention snapped back to the crier again the moment he heard the tohr-kreen's name announced.
Straining for the words over the restless crowd, he heard, "... accused of practicing sorcery within the boundaries of the city... sold at auction to the House of Rokur... now does battle with his native weapons, the gythka and the kyorkcha, against the defending champion, the half-giant Dochak of the House of Bran."
The crowd-including the old man-booed when Kitarak stepped out from beneath the ziggurat into the arena. He carried his expanding polearm in his upper left hand and the curved throwing weapon in his upper right, plus two small shields held in his lower hands. He bowed even though he was being booed. The crowd cheered for Dochak, an enormous hulk of sun-darkened flesh who stood taller and outweighed even the ten-foot-high tohr-kreen. Surprisingly, instead of the usual club or spear that half-giants generally used for weapons, this one carried a dejada, a throwing weapon that used a long, scooped basket for a sling to propel a variety of projectiles called pelota. He also carried a small shield in his left hand, the projectile-holding one.
"Oh, he's quick," Jedra assured him, but he was thinking, I hope he's quick enough.
The crier shouted "Go," and the battle started. Dochak immediately flung a pelota at Kitarak, who easily raised a shield to fend it off. Kitarak flung his kyorkcha at the half-giant, who raised his own shield. He barely clipped the edge of the spinning blade with it, but that was enough to deflect it and send it flying high into the air. The crowd gasped when it looked as if the weapon would land in the stands, but it curved around and spun back to Kitarak's outstretched hand.
He's using psionics, too, Jedra said to Kayan.
It looks like he is. They must let him do a little before they come down on him.
Jedra felt himself relax. If Kitarak could use psionics, then the battle was over already. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly while the half-giant threw a wicked, spiked pelota that stuck dead-center in Kitarak's right-hand shield, and another that veered away under psionic deflection and bounced with a loud crack off the stone wall below the king and the templars.
Kitarak threw the kyorkcha again, and this time it swooped low beneath the half-giant's shield and sliced deep into his left thigh before spinning around and returning to the tohr-kreen's hand. Dochak bellowed with rage as blood began to run down his leg. Taking advantage of the wound, Kitarak leaped forward, flicking his upper left hand to slide the gythka out to full extension, and brought it down in a blow that would have taken off the half-giant's head if he hadn't managed to shield himself in time. The multibladed hacking end of the polearm thudded into the wood and stuck there. Kitarak tried to wrench it free, but the half-giant reached out and snatched the metal handle before the tohr-kreen could work it loose. With one wrench of his meaty hand the half-giant crumpled the hollow tube and snapped it off, leaving the blade embedded in his shield and leaving Kitarak holding a much-shortened gythka with only the thrusting blade left on the opposite end.
The crowd roared, and Jedra groaned, but Kitarak might have planned it that way all along for all the dismay he showed. He merely whirled the gythka around and lunged past the half-giant's outstretched arms to stab him in the belly.
