The two friends walked away from the ongoing confrontation. Aric didn’t want to see what she might do to a soldier who dared argue with her in front of others. “She’s been protective of me,” he told Ruhm. “But it’s true, if we keep losing people to whatever is stalking us—if that’s indeed what’s happening—we’re all in more danger every day.”
“Dune freak, I heard.”
“Really?”
Ruhm shrugged. “Could be.”
Aric tried to picture an anakore—a dune freak—erupting from underground in a burst of sand, all claws and fangs, grabbing someone and dragging him back down with it. Ferocious predators, they lived in colonies beneath the sand, and they could sense the vibrations of people moving about on the surface.
“There are so many dangers in the world, Ruhm. Ones I never even considered, living in the relative safety of Nibenay.”
Ruhm didn’t answer. The goliath might have talked himself out. But Aric still had something to say, something that had been wearing on him day and night, and this seemed his best opportunity. He looked away from Ruhm, out across the trackless waste surrounding them. “I don’t think I’ll make it back there alive. I’ve had this feeling, since before we left, that I was saying goodbye to the city for good.”
“You’ll make it,” Ruhm said. “They need you.”
“Until we’ve reached Akrankhot and found all the metal. If it’s even there. After that—what good am I? Nibenay offered to share the wealth with me, so he might want me killed before the expedition gets home. Anyway, if Akrankhot is even real—and I’m starting to have doubts, it’s taking so long to find it—who knows what sorts of creatures might be hiding in there? Something’s killing good soldiers out here along the way, but when we’re in there, confined in a city …” Aric shuddered. “I hate to think what could happen.”
Aric knew he sounded like a coward, but at the moment he didn’t feel particularly brave. He had never claimed to be any kind of hero. People noticed heroes.
“You’ll be good,” Ruhm said simply. He clapped one of those huge hands on Aric’s shoulder and gave it a crushing squeeze, then wandered off. Aric supposed it was meant to reassure him.
It didn’t work.
After dinner, around the fire, everyone determinedly avoided the subject of the deaths, or the fate of the soldier who had stood up to Kadya. No one had seen him since the confrontation. Any number of things could have befallen him, but some claimed Kadya had turned him to sand and scattered him on the breeze. Aric and Ruhm sat with Damaric and Amoni, the mul, all of them huddled under furs against the night’s bitter chill. Instead of talking about the killings or what tomorrow might bring, Amoni had delved into her past.
“I was bred to be a gladiator,” she said. “And I was a good one, too.”
“You’re still here,” Damaric said. Frost rimed his thick mustache. “That’s something.”
“Twenty-seven bouts. Not without a scratch, but without any life-threatening injuries. It was the twenty-eighth that was a bitch.” She gave them a smile and took a healthy swig of the ale that Kadya had so thoughtfully arranged to be brought on the journey, and distributed in rationed measures. “The worst part is, I was up against a brohg warrior. Nothing I hadn’t beat easily before.”
“What happened, Amoni?” Aric asked.
“After several kills, I started to accumulate somewhat of a following,” she said. Aric had noticed before that the mul tended to keep to herself—she was happy to share food, drink and conversation, but even then she sat off by herself even while others huddled for warmth. And she glanced about often, as if making sure no one was sneaking up on her. “People came just to see me, to cheer me on. It swells your head, hearing your name ringing from wall to wall. Fortunately, my fellow gladiators mostly liked me, except those I fought. Still, there were rivalries, petty feuds. Like in any group of people, I guess. There was a goliath I had been … let’s say, friendly with—a slave whose master fought him in the pit instead of working him or allowing him to be used in the military. I won’t go into the whole thing, but there was another female gladiator who was envious of me, and another male who was after her, and things got ugly.
“At any rate, there I was, battling this brohg. Ugly bastard,” she shuddered, “all those arms. You know how they love their spears. This one was using a triple attack, a spear in each of three hands and a rock in the fourth. I had suffered a few cuts, nothing terrible, and succeeded in wrenching two of the spears from its hands. I was about to run it through when that gladiator I mentioned, the male—a mul he was, too, of all things—struck. He had arranged for an accomplice, a powerful psionic, to sit in the front row, right there among my cheering fans. As I was about to deliver the killing blow, I glanced over at them, and that’s when the accomplice struck. He used the Way to cloud my head. I was there, and suddenly I didn’t know where I was, who I was, what I was doing.
“That’s all the brohg needed. He threw the other spear away, picked me up in his four hands, bent one knee, and brought me down hard, smashing my back against his knee.
“I guess it was obvious to everyone that there had been some cheating going on, although not the brohg’s doing. Anyway, because of my popularity—my fans would have torn the place down, or tried to, had the brohg been allowed to finish me off—the match was halted. My spine was broken in four places. I was out of the gladiatorial business, needless to say.”
“That must have been painful,” Aric said, aware how much his words understated what she had endured.
“Yes,” she replied, wincing at the memory. She set her mug down on the dirt and arched her back, hands on her hips. “Pain like I hope you never have to imagine. I haven’t been allowed back into the pit, but I was trained for game hunting in the Crescent Forest, and have brought down my share of wild beasts these past few years. And of course, what use am I if I can’t fight? I’m lucky they conscripted me to do manual labor. So here I am.”
“Sounds great,” Damaric said. “Not the manual labor part. Or the back. But the freedom. For the most part, you’ve been able to do what you want, whether it’s fighting or hunting.”
“Have you always been a slave, Damaric?” Aric asked. Ruhm was sitting with his back against a boulder, sipping his ration of ale and keeping quiet. But he was taking it all in. When Ruhm was quiet, it was a safe bet he was listening intently. Or sleeping, but his mouth would have been open had that been the case.
“Born and raised,” Damaric said. “My mother was carrying me when she and my father crossed into Nibenese territory. They were barbarians, you might say. Not citizens of any state, living off the land, stealing when they had to, working when they could. My father had been employed from time to time as a mercenary. But then they were caught on Nibenese land. My father mouthed off to some templar, and they were both consigned to slavery. My father didn’t take to it. He was killed on his ninth or tenth escape attempt. But my mother was tired of fighting, and she had a baby on the way. So she submitted, and I was born a slave’s child. Trained in military ways since I could walk, or so they tell me. Never known a day’s freedom.”
“You look like you’ve taken to it,” Amoni said.
“I’m hale enough, if that’s what you mean. But freedom? Some days it’s like I can almost taste it. Then others, it’s as far away as the clouds. When I heard about Tyr …” He shook his head. “I’m not educated. I hear about things like Kalak’s death, and the uprising in Tyr, and I don’t have any historical basis to understand it. But it sounds like someone just rang a bell and set thousands of people free.” He gave a low whistle. “What that must be like.”