Dark Lord of Derkholm (Derkholm 1)

I am dead, Blade thought. He felt strange, as if he were not really present in the body the big man was so carefully kneading into shape.

“Starting your growth spurt, aren’t you?” the man remarked as he pulled and bent at Blade’s legs. “Lucky we got you at this stage. Much more impressive if you’re small in front of someone big. Much better show. Do well at it and we put a plaque up on your grave.”

At long last, the kneading and pummeling were finished. “There,” said the man. “Now you get a good meal. It’s up to you whether you eat it or not, but I advise you to try. More strength, better show.”

Blade was, in a remote, indifferent way, extremely hungry. When they brought the food, he propped it on his knees and ate it all. Then, rather to his own surprise, he fell asleep.

“Well done, boyo,” the large man said, waking him up. “Done everything right. Time to go. Get into these clothes.”

The clothes were of shoddy cloth, but very bright, scarlet breeches and crimson vest. Blade put them on, with the large man holding the chain and threading it through the vest for him, and then he was taken by other people down a corridor smelling of illness to a huge iron door. Just beside the door was a long coil of very thin chain attached to a sturdy staple. Blade watched, feeling depressed, while his own chain was fastened to the end of the thin chain. Beyond the door he could hear the noise of a large crowd of people chattering cheerfully. The audience, he thought. If I kill fifty opponents, he thought. No.

Another man came up with a list. “You’re down as expendable. You don’t get a weapon,” he told Blade. “But you’re allowed to use the chain. And remember. You fight, or you get a squirt of the fire hose. Ready?”

Blade shrugged. The list man took that as an answer and opened the iron door. When Blade did not move, two people took him by the shoulders and pushed him through.

There was quite a big oval space beyond, floored with sand. Benches went up all around, full of happy, chatting people. When they saw Blade stagger through the iron door, unreeling chain behind him, they cheered and clapped and gave catcalls. There were much louder howls for Blade’s opponent, who was being pushed through the door opposite on the end of six pitchforks. Blade’s stomach sank as he saw what he was supposed to fight with just a chain. It was a huge black griffin. One of its wings trailed, and it limped from a fire hose burn on one flank, but it was utterly formidable all the same.

I shall just walk to the middle and let it kill me, Blade thought. Then he recognized the griffin. It was Kit. But Kit so ragged, red-eyed, and shamed that Blade still hardly knew him.

Blade raced across the sand, dragging chain as he ran. The crowd got very excited, thinking Blade was going for a head-on attack. “Kit! Kit, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, gods!” said Kit. “How do we work this?”

“But—” Blade could see Kit was not chained the way he was himself. “But why don’t you just fly away?”

“One broken wing, both clipped,” Kit snapped, more thoroughly shamed than Blade had ever seen him. “Shut up, Blade. They burn you for not fighting. I’m supposed to kill you. What do we do?”

“False fight?” Blade suggested. “The way we used to frighten Mum?”

Kit brightened. “That might work. All right. One, two, and three!”

They jumped toward one another. False fighting, as they had perfected it when Kit was eleven and Blade ten, involved a lot of yelling, even more quick movement that meant nothing, and a great deal of rolling around. The crowd loved it. But it took Blade only half a minute to see it was not really working. He kept getting tripped by his own chain. Kit was even more hampered by his broken wing. When they tried the rapid roll over and over, Kit screamed and actually slashed at Blade in his pain. The crowd thumped feet on the wooden benches and roared. Blade rolled hurriedly away, as far as he could for the chain, which had somehow got wrapped around Kit’s right hind leg, and found that his crimson vest was split diagonally down the front to show a long, bleeding gash. He and Kit lay panting on the sand, staring at one another.

“Sorry,” Kit gasped. “I was going to let the next person kill me. Get the chain around my neck next time.”

“No,” said Blade. “Get this handcuff off me somehow. Then I can translocate us.”

“I’m too big.”

“I’ll do it somehow. I did Elda easily.”

“But I’d have to bite your hand off.”

The slash down Blade’s chest began to hurt fierily. He clenched his teeth. “If that’s what it takes, then bite it off.”

The crowd began a slow handclap. At the sides of the sandy arena, men in loincloths took the clips off the ends of hoses fastened to barrels and others stood up ready with tapers to light the gas that came out. Kit rolled an eye at them.

“We have to keep moving or they’ll burn us.”

“Let’s do the savage chase then,” Blade said. “Ready, steady, go!”

He got up and ran, sprinkling blood on the sand to the crowd’s great pleasure. Kit kicked his back leg free of chain and came after Blade with his neck stretched out, one wing spread and the other raised as far as it would go, moving his legs very fast almost on the spot. It looked spectacular. Shona always used to scream when they did it. This crowd screamed, too, and clapped, while Blade ran in an arc at the full stretch of his chain and the men with the fire hoses relaxed.

“Going to spring,” Kit warned Blade. “Now!”

He leaped, high and mightily. Blade plowed to a stop, fell on his back underneath Kit as Kit jumped, and ended up clinging to the underside of Kit’s body with his legs and arms. Kit yelled. Blade hastily moved so as not to hurt the broken wing any more than he had to. Kit began running back and forth in short charges, pretending to worry at Blade, with his head down between his own forelegs.

“What now?” he asked, looking upside down into Blade’s face. “I really don’t want to bite your hand off. The man I did that to—he bled to death.”