"Sorry about the mess," Jedra said, embarrassed now at having lost his breakfast in front of thousands of people.
" 'Appens all the time, chum," the slave with the shovel said. "Excitement, y'know."
Jedra and Kayan walked on to the arena entrance, where Sahalik congratulated them and pounded them on their backs. Some of the other gladiators crowded around to offer congratulations or advice of their own, but suddenly the noise stopped and everyone looked back out into the arena, where one of the slaves in the cleanup crew held back the dwarf's head while the other slit his throat from ear to ear with a short dagger.
"Hah," Sahalik grunted. "The coward must've been faking it. Don't worry, it won't affect your standing."
As if to belie his words, Jedra's wounded leg buckled beneath him, and he fell to his knees. "Whoa," Sahalik said, grabbing his shoulder in one powerful hand and raising him back up. "You must've lost more blood than I thought. Healer! Get a healer over here."
Jedra hardly heard him. He barely felt it when two of the arena's psionicists took him aside and stopped his wounds from bleeding, or even when they dulled his pain. His mind was a million miles away, in an imaginary world where people didn't fight for amusement and didn't kill each other for sport.
* * *
The gladiators' quarters felt empty that night. Shani was off with Sahalik, celebrating her victory against an elf woman from another noble's house, but the bunk between hers and Jedra's was also empty. The middle-aged man had lost his match. He had never been a friend; they had spoken maybe a dozen words to each other the whole time they'd been housed together, but now his absence left an emptiness. Maybe it was because Jedra knew that somewhere else, in some other gladiator's house, someone was celebrating this man's death.
Kayan was quiet, too. Jedra had tried to talk with her, but she had greeted his overtures with monosyllables until it was clear she just wanted to be left alone. Jedra didn't blame her; his squeamishness had forced her hand, made her try a desperate gamble to save them while keeping her own conscience free of guilt, but it had backfired on her. The psionicists guarding them were playing dice again, relying on their sense of danger to alert them to any escape attempt. Jedra considered mindlinking with Kayan and trying to surprise them, but she and he were both exhausted; they wouldn't get anything but punishment for their effort. No, they would have to bide their time. An opportunity would come. It had to.
Sahalik was all smiles in the morning. His former animosity toward his newest gladiators seemed completely forgotten. "People are calling you the squabblers, or the crabby couple," he told them when they assembled for morning practice. "They were much amused by the way you bickered out there. That'll be a real draw if you keep it up, so of course I want you to."
Kayan laughed for the first time since they'd been captured. "That shouldn't be a problem."
"I thought not. So, I will leave that aspect of your performance to you, and we will concentrate on your use of weapons. Today you will learn how to use swords."
He and Shani proceeded to show them how to wield a blade, how to hold it en garde, how to attack, parry, feint, and execute dozens of other techniques that every good gladiator could perform in his sleep. By the end of the day their heads were buzzing with the unfamiliar terms and their muscles ached in brand new places. All the same, Jedra was surprised to realize that he had a natural aptitude for the sword. Some instinct seemed to guide his hand when he most needed it, until by the end of the day he could spar with Sahalik for up to a minute before the elf wore down his guard.
When they finished their last session of the day, both of them panting and slick with sweat, Sahalik pointed at the knife scars all over Jedra's body and said, "I wouldn't have believed it, seeing how many blades you've let through your guard since I last saw you, but I think we've found your weapon." He took a long drink from the waterskin they kept beside the practice field, then handed it to Shani. "How did you survive all those, anyway? Some of them look serious."
"I didn't," Jedra said, then he realized how strange that sounded. "I almost didn't, anyway. Kayan found me where I lay dying, and she healed me." He smiled at Kayan, who turned away and took the waterskin from Shani.
Sahalik grunted appreciatively. "You must've had a hard time of it after I... left."
"We did." Jedra waited for the waterskin, took a long swallow of warm water, then said, "We, uh, we got kicked out of the tribe the next day. We spent quite a while in the desert before we found Kitarak, and then..." He shrugged. "And then more stuff happened, and here we are."
Sahalik laughed. " 'And then more stuff happened.' Yes, a fitting end to any tale." His laughter died, though, and he asked, "What you told me earlier about the Jura-Dai. That was true? They were in trouble when you left them? They wanted me back?"
Jedra nodded. "They would welcome you with open arms."
"Hmm," the elf said. "Well, they will have to do without me for a while longer, at least. I have my own battles to fight here." He laughed wickedly and walked off toward his own quarters.
"What did he mean by that?" Jedra asked Shani. "Does he fight in the games too?"
"Of course he does," she said. "He's Rokur's champion."
Even if Sahalik had come straight to Tyr after leaving the Jura-Dai, he couldn't have been there over a fortnight. Champions must come and go awfully fast, Jedra thought. But of course they did, since someone had to die in nearly every battle.
"I hope he's as good as he thinks he is," Jedra said, surprised that he should care.
* * *
Sahalik and Shani worked their new team mercilessly day after day, but after their first taste of what awaited them in the arena, Jedra and Kayan soaked up every bit of knowledge as eagerly as they could. Jedra did, at any rate; Kayan fought her battles with precision and skill, but she showed no enthusiasm when she succeeded in penetrating Shani or Kitarak's guard, and she retired to their quarters immediately after each battle.
When Jedra tried to talk with her, she responded like a zombie until he gave up and left her alone. He was afraid for her mind, afraid that the cruelties they'd endured since their first enslavement had finally broken her spirit, but he could think of nothing to bring her out of it. Escape seemed extremely unlikely, yet so did their chances of surviving long as gladiators.
However, if survival as
gladiators was their only option, then Jedra intended to do just that. He still didn't like the idea of killing other people for sport, but his experience with Lothar had changed his attitude a little. Lothar had wanted to be there, and he had willingly fought a couple of slaves who didn't. Jedra and Kayan had tried to spare his life, but even killing him would have been self-defense under any moral code Jedra had ever heard of. Sahalik assured him that now that he and Kayan had won a battle, anyone else they fought would also be professionals, so they didn't have to worry about killing other slaves. Anyone they faced would be someone who wanted to be there, someone who had chosen their dangerous career and chosen them as opponents in the hopes of winning higher status by beating a winning team. That didn't necessarily make it all right to kill them, but the only other option amounted to suicide, which Jedra didn't think should be required of him either. So he would fight in the arena. He would hate it, and he would escape at the first opportunity, but in the meantime he would fight.
But today he fought a human, a woman both taller and stockier than Kayan, and who also fought with swords. She carried one in either hand, a short, stabbing knife in her left and a longer, double-edged rapier in her right.