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.
The crowd is going completely apeshit. For a second, the mad screaming and stomping sounds like I’m back in the real arena. I relax. I don’t want to croak in a backwater Hooverville soccer-mom park, but being back in the real arena, I can die happy.
Crab Man is bowing all the way around the stadium. Me, I just lie there and bleed. I’m done and he knows it. I want to go to sleep and stay that way. The angel in my head starts shouting. He reminds me that if I go out, I’ll die and so will Alice.
I let my mind float away and the pain takes me over completely. The agony of crushed muscles and bones revs my engines nicely. I bark a Hellion combat spell to slow the bleeding and another to suck the blood into the dirt so no one will notice it’s human.
Crab Man is soaking up the love. A few more bows and he’ll come back and finish me.
John Wayne wouldn’t shoot a man in the back, but that’s my favorite target.
I manifest the Gladius and drag myself up. I’m not what you’d call steady on my feet, but I’m close enough that I don’t have to be. I raise the Gladius as high as I can and slice off Crab Man’s Vernalis arm. The crowd goes silent. Crab Man stares at his stump. I take off one of his legs next. He falls on his face, balancing on one arm and one leg. He’s trying to move around to face me so he can attack. He swings his shield blindly, hoping I get too close and he can crush me. I let him close the distance before taking that arm, too. I keep waiting for the armed guards to open up with the shotguns, but they’re watching, as stunned as the drunks in the stands. I stagger around in front of Crab Man. I want him to see this.
He’s got one leg left and I slice that off at the knee. I want him to look in my eyes. I want the crowd to soak up every minute of this. I’m killing all of them. Every portion of pain I bring on Crab Man I’m bringing down on them. Genocide is evil and evil tastes good right now.
I slash Crab Man from right to left, through his chest. Before he comes apart, I swing the Gladius up and over, slicing him neatly from skull to ass. He falls apart in four big cauterized chunks of honey-baked ham.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call showmanship, with love from Sandman Slim.
The stadium is still quiet, like all the air has been sucked out of the place. But all it takes is for someone to drop a bottle and the sound sets everyone off at once. You didn’t see that coming, did you? Some ugly half-dead Hellion foot soldier that could pull out a Gladius. Sleep tight wondering what other secret things us infantry grunts can do.
My left arm has stopped bleeding, but it’s still a big open wound. I bark a pain spell, hold the Gladius to my arm, and burn the wound closed. Then I fall over and drift into a comforting blackness.
I feel a couple of guards drag me back to the holding pens. I don’t go back into the pen with the other prisoners. They toss me incoly toss to one of the blacked-out RVs alone. Even through the half-dead haze I can see they’re scared shitless. Maybe I’m a spy or an officer from Pandemonium come to check up on them and they just tossed me into a death pit with a roid-rage moron. The smell of my burned skin is making me nauseous. Damn I could go for a cigarette right now.
I feel around for the Maledictions. This really is Hell. One cigarette left and it was crushed beyond all recognition in the fight. I toss the pack into the dark. The angel is trying to remind me of something. I reach back into the pocket and find Muninn’s hoodoo healing egg. I bite into it and something soothing and sweet flows down my throat. In a few seconds my head is clear. I’m still weak, but the pain is gone and the world feels firm under my ass.
I let the angel loose. I need to think through this, because unless my new stump has a 007 plan to get us out of here, I’m going to have to call leaving my arm back in the arena a major setback.
I wonder if there’s a way to turn off the antihoodoo cloak around this place. I’m not too proud to crawl into a shadow and whimper in the Room for an eternity or two. Mason’s already putting up wanted posters. He knows I’m here. What do I care if one of his pet magicians detects me using the key? But I’m back in the holding area and the cloak is on, so I can’t throw any hoodoo. And there’s no way I’m fighting my way through all those guards with a wing clipped.