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I still have on my coat and hoodie, so my human arms are covered up. I feel inside the coat. The na’at is still there. So’s the knife, Lucifer’s stone, the plastic rabbit, and Muninn’s crystal. I check my leg. The pistol is still taped to my ankle. The posse must have just tossed me into the flatbed. Good. That means they’re drunk or just plain stupid. I like stupid. There are lots of possibilities in stupid.
Instead of hiding in the back, when the guards come back looking for someone else to toss to the wolves, I move up by the gates. The two
The talker walks over to me. He has a sickly green complexion and a smashed cheekbone. In one hand he’s holding a long truncheon. A piece of flexible metal covered in leather. When we’re close together he reaches between the gates and pops me in the face with the truncheon’s butt. The guards just about bust a gut at me holding my bruised nose. He takes a step forward, presses his face into the space between the gates, and spits at me. I pivot and swing, catching him under the chin with my fist. His body goes limp. I reach between the gates, get a hand behind his head and the other around his throat, and pull. The gates bow in and he starts slipping through. The other guards pounce on him, pulling him out. The gates bulge in as I get his head and the tops of his shoulders through, like he’s being born out of twisted wire and steel. It’s a fun tug-o’-war we’ve got going. I wonder if this is how giraffes were invented.
The guards get together and do a nicely coordinated group pull. I’ve got my death grip and dig in my heels, but they’re dragging both of us toward the gate. I can’t hold the guard, but I don’t want to let him go. When I’m sure they’re going to get him away from me, I lean down, get a good grip with my teeth, and let go. The guard shoots out of the gates like they’re a solid metal slingshot and lands with his hands over his face, screaming and coughing up blood. I wait for the rest of the guards to look at me before I spit his nose on the ground in front of them. I expect them to rush me, but they go into a huddle. Their buddy is on the ground screaming, but they’ve already forgotten about him.
The huddle doesn’t last long. One of the guards takes charge and beckons over a couple of other guards to take away the idiot who lost his nose. The head guard comes close to the gate, but out of biting range. He’s wearing a faux military/law enforcement uniform, the kind you see bounty hunters wear. It gives them an air of authority, but isn’t close enough to any specific uniform to get them busted for impersonating an officer. It’s sad the assholes they’ll sell uniforms to these days.
“Come here,” he says.
I stand pat.
“Come here.”
“I can’t hear you clear over here, Audie Murphy. Get a little closer.”
He signals to the other guards. They pull their pistols and shotguns and point them at me.
“I’m going to open the gate and you’re going to come with me.”
“What if you forget to say ‘Simon says’ and I don’t?”
“My men will shoot everyone else in the pen.”
So much for honor among thieves. I try to look like it’s a hard choice, but all>
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll come.”
Audie gestures a couple of other guards over to open the gates. Everyone keeps their guns on me as we walk past the pens and RVs to the killing floor.
The place reeks of dust, sweat, and blood. When I step onto the floor, the crowd shrieks like banshees at spring break. The scene is twisted and familiar and, in a terrible way, comforting.
The guards lay out weapons on the ground. I start to reach for the na’at in my coat, but decide that no one around here needs to know anything about me other than that I don’t like getting spit on.
The gear on the ground looks like it was pulled out of a garbage dump. Rusting swords and battle-axes. Spears with broken shafts repaired with duct tape. I stroll around the weapons like a window shopper at Christmas, taking my time. I find a battered old na’at and pick it up. It’s stiff, and the first time I try to open it, it jams. I get down on one knee and whack it against the steel toes on one of my boots. It springs out to full length and holds. I notice guards haven’t hauled out any other prisoners for me to fight. That means they’re going to throw guards at me to fight. I wonder how many.
Turns out it’s just one.
When my opponent comes out, I’m not sure if it’s a Hellion or someone is backing a moving van into the arena. The guy is big the way a sonic boom is loud. Just a big knot of muscles with a head on top, like a cherry balanced on a fist. He’s holding a shield the size of a car hood in one hand and has a Vernalis over his other. A Vernalis is like a metal crab claw that extends up to the fighter’s elbow and is as long as an average person is tall. When it snaps shut, it can cut a tree in half. Maybe I should have stayed in the back of the pen with the other scaredy-cats. I’m giving serious consideration to cutting and running, but the guards are still holding guns on me. And I can’t do any hoodoo here, can’t even click my heels three times and say there’s no place like home.
No one gives a signal, blows a whistle, or drops a hanky. Crab Man just howls and charges me. I get out of his way, but not too far or too fast. I stay put and try to look confused long enough to spring the na’at’s blade and slice the Crab Man’s Vernalis arm. I leave a nice gash but don’t do any real damage.
He howls, some in pain and some because he didn’t get to draw first blood. He swings the Vernalis at me like a club, but it’s a feint. When I move in to stick him, he brings the shield around like a battering ram. I throw myself on the ground just before the shield splatters me like a dump truck. I roll to my feet and Crab Man and I circle each other. I try to extend the na’at again, but the mechanism jams when it’s just halfway out.
I can’t fight him like this. The Vernalis gives himscais give too much reach. I need to get in close.
I attack this time, feinting left and right. Getting the shield and claw swinging at me just a little too late. I duck forward, closing the distance between us. Crab Man is used to fighters not wanting to get near him, so he doesn’t have a lot of inside defense. I spear him in the side, but he’s fast for a guy his size. He catches me in the back with a big elbow and I fall against him. He snaps his knee up hard enough to toss me on my back ten feet away. The Vernalis crashes into the ground near my head. I roll out of the way just as Crab Man spits a ball of fire at me. I reflexively block it with a kind of shield hex that bounces the attack back at the opponent. Goddamn. They left a hole in the cloak for the fighters. We can throw hoodoo out here. If the Andes Mountains weren’t trying to beat me to death, I could probably get right out of here.
I throw a blinding hex at Crab Man’s eyes. Part of it hits his arm, so I only get one eye. He howls like I pissed on his Batman #1 and a bolt of lightning hits the ground a few feet behind me. He has some big bad hoodoo under that claw, but I have an angel in my head and it can see the flash of power when he throws the big stuff.
I move around him, trying to stay on his blind side and draw him in closer. The magic he tosses at me is like the rest of him. Big and powerful, but not all that fast or creative. Being in the arena with him is like playing tennis in a meteor shower, but one where I can see the meteors a second before they hit. I keep tossing sharp little barbs of hoodoo at him. Waves of white-hot razors at his legs. Blasts of arctic cold at his eyes and balls. Muscle disruptors that have him shaking and spasming like an epileptic. But I can’t pull out the big stuff. I could air-burst this place and turn the air into a blowtorch, but Crab Man is too close and the arena’s too small and burning myself up with him isn’t part of what little strategy I have.
Crab Man keeps on with the blockbuster spells, raining fire and brimstone. If he keeps on tossing the big stuff this fast, all I have to do is keep out of his way and he’ll wear himself out.
I toss a starburst into his face. It starts as a fist-size ball of plasma that explodes into a thousand burning pieces of shrapnel. Crab Man raises his shield to block the hex and I slide in underneath, thrusting the na’at at his gut, going for a kill shot.
The fireballs chew up his face, but he protects his one working eye and brings his shield down at me like a guillotine. I get the na’at into his gut a few inches, but not far enough to finish him. He swings the shield at my head, but I duck it. He raises it high and brings it straight down on the na’at, snapping it in half. That’s not supposed to happen. When a na’at is hit like that, it goes limp and bends in the middle like rubber. Mine shatters like glass. The break is clean and bright like someone’s taken a hacksaw to the thing and cut partway through it. I look at Crab Man. The na’at was rigged and he knew it. In the second it takes me to understand that, he gets my left arm in the Vernalis and closes the pincers. There’s a single white convulsion of pain as he crushes my arm and snaps it off a few inches below my shoulder. It’s a race between the arm and me to see who can hit the ground first. I win.
