Blade nearly hit his head on the roof. “Lydda! Lydda, what are you doing here?”

“Ssh!” The man by the cage was stirring. Lydda waited until he had settled down again and then stuck her beak between the bars. It was an advantage griffins had over humans. They could direct a whisper with their beaks so that only one person could hear it. “I’ve been following you for hours,” Lydda whispered. “I smelled you in there.”

Lydda had always had the most acute sense of smell of all the griffins. What luck she was near! “But what are you doing here?” Blade whispered. “This is the road to Costamaret. I heard them say.”

“Flying about. Having fun,” Lydda replied. “I’d never been on my own before. I like it. Making campfires, cooking things I caught. Fun. But how do I get you out? There’s a spell on this padlock.”

“Try. It’s a bit like a stasis spell,” Blade whispered. “You could undo the ones in the kitchen.”

“Usually. Elda’s better at that than me. But I’ll have a go.” Lydda, by the faint sounds, sat back on her haunches and took a look at the padlock. At last, Blade heard a tiny scratching as Lydda put out one cautious talon and plucked at the spell. He felt the spell yielding.

And Barnabas exploded out of the carriage, shouting, in sheets of wizard fire.

Lydda screamed. Her wings whupped. And whupped again. Then she was gone, but whether she was safe or badly burned Blade had no idea. He touched the roof of the cage, and his fingers fizzled. He snatched them away. Oh, damn. Poor Lydda. Poorer me.

“What was that? What was that creature?” the man in the cart was demanding.

“I didn’t see. A small dragon, I think,” Barnabas said. “I just felt it fiddling with the lock spell. While you snored. Get up on top of the cage and sleep there.”

“No fear,” the man said earnestly.

“Do it, or I’ll burn you, too,” Barnabas said. “You’ve got a gun, haven’t you? Then get up there. Shoot the thing if it comes back.”

Blade listened to the man spreading coats on the hot roof and then climbing up there himself. There was no chance of anyone undoing the padlock now. He almost cried. He wished he knew where Lydda had gone, but there was no sign of her. Perhaps she had been very badly burned. He waited, hoping she would come back all the same, and fell asleep in the end, out of sheer misery.

At dawn the vehicle started off again. The men were complaining they were hungry and saying they could get breakfast in Costamaret. Barnabas said, “You could have been back in the mine by now,” as he checked to see if Blade was still crouched inside the cage. He did not speak to Blade. Just cargo, Blade thought.

The juddering and jolting were worse this time. The driver was going fast, causing the cart to slew about sick-makingly. Blade went back to just living again, with his chained arm wrapped around his head. It seemed to go on for hours.

Then suddenly there were houses whipping past outside and people getting out of the way. None of them seemed troubled at the sight of Blade rumbling by inside his cage. He got the idea that this was something they were quite used to seeing. But this part did not go on for long. The vehicle surged into a huge chilly shed, where a crane of some kind swung the cage off the cart and clanged it down on a stone floor.

“… so he can’t translocate,” Blade heard Barnabas saying breathily, not far away. “And I want this one dead as soon as possible. Understood?”

“Perfectly, Lord Wizard,” someone answered oilily. “We have the very thing.”

Barnabas left then. Blade was hauled out of the cage by cheerful brown men in loincloths. He was so jolted and cold and cramped that he could hardly walk. But they supported him expertly and rushed him to a small cubicle with a high bed in it, where one of them snapped the end of the chain into a fastening on the wall, and they left Blade alone there.

But not for long enough. Blade was still trying to get either his hand out of the cuff or the chain out of its lock when he was interrupted by another cheerful man in a loincloth. This one was twice the size of the first two.

“Oh, no, you won’t get loose like that!” this one told him jovially. “Stop wasting your strength, boyo, and turn over on your front.”

“Why?” Blade asked suspiciously.

“Because I’ve got to massage you to get you combat-fit. You go in the arena this afternoon,” the man told him. “This is Costamaret here, where we love to watch a proper fight. And we love the Pilgrim Parties for bringing us the idea. Of course we’ve improved on it. Got contests you’d never dream of. You’re booked for one of those. So lie flat, boyo, because I’ve only got four hours, and by the look of you, I’m going to need every minute.”

Blade looked at the man’s size. He sighed and wriggled flat on the high bed. “I’ve not done anything wrong,” he said. “I was kidnapped.”

“They all say that,” the large man said cheerfully. “Makes no difference to us. They all go in the arena, just the same.”

He set to work spreading Blade with oils until Blade felt like a salad—which made him think yearningly of Lydda again—and then pummeling and squeezing and bending Blade. It was not unpleasant. Blade could feel every single one of his muscles being made to work without using any energy. A bit later it was punishing. Then it got pleasant again. But the worst part was the way the man talked.

“Only two ways for you to get out of here, boyo,” he said, swatting at Blade’s stomach with the edges of his hands—bang, bang, bangbangbangbang. “Get carried out in a bucket or get the other man carried out. Kill enough of your opponents and they let you go free.” Bang, bang, bangbangbang.

“How many?”

Blade managed to ask.

“They keep putting the number up. Not sure what it is this week. Fifty?” Bang, bang, bangbangbang.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Derkholm Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net