Capitas. He came out of his waking dream just enough to recollect the destination he had reached. I am in Capitas, the heart of the Empire – and with a drawn blade.
They next set him against deserters, as a special treat for the crowd. Before releasing him into the the arena they had brought in eight men, and manacled them by the leg to a ring at the centre of the sand, giving them a generous length of chain to let them move. The master of the games had put up wooden barricades and walls to make a fake ruin that was low enough for the raised audience to see over, but high enough so that the deserters, or their opponent, could hide behind it. The condemned men had no idea what was coming against them. They had no armour and carried knives rather than swords, but they still had their stings. They had been promised their freedom if they survived the contest.
Tisamon came into the arena so subtly that most of the watchers did not see him. Slowly he stalked the chained men, letting only the spectators notice him, moving from cover to cover. The deserters looked about for him, aware from the reaction of the crowd that something was now loose in there along with them, but something they could not see.
Tisamon showed the onlookers something new: how the Mantis-kinden hunt. His first rush was without warning, accelerating from stealthy pace to a full-scale charge within an instant. He was through the centre of the arena and away again in three steps and a leap, blade dancing on all sides. Four men died. The others loosed their stings but he was gone. They scorched only the wooden stage-scenery, and came close to burning each other.
Then they began to argue. They shouted at each other. They had completely forgotten the crowd. They only knew that they were alone in a hostile place, and hunted.
One of them started trying to smash at his chain with a stone. The others kept their hands outspread, searching for their enemy. The crowd was completely rapt. They could see that Tisamon was right there with the surviving men, almost amongst them. He slowly picked up a knife in his left hand, a blade dropped by one of his victims. With a flick of the wrist he sent it flying into the throat of the one furthest from him. The others, slaves to instinct, turned to look.
And it was done.
He let himself be taken back to his cell, in the holding pens beneath the arena. A strange and nightmarish place, it was a maze of iron bars with no walls and no privacy. Its designer had made it infinitely movable, so that a small cell for a man could be opened into a larger cell for a beast, or for a group of wretches destined to spend their last hours together, and then die in one another’s company. A low light was provided by bowls of burning oil hung from the ceiling. This warren of cells predated much of the Empire’s technological development, and was almost the oldest section of Capitas still standing. The Wasps had maintained certain priorities.
Tisamon’s eyes were better than most in such gloom. When he came out of his killing trance, in the long hours when he could not avoid thinking about what he was reduced to, he wished they were not. These chambers beneath the arena were a reeking, smoky hell. Some of the cells contained other successful gladiators, who sat and waited there to be taken for exercise or training, or simply to be fed. They were not Wasps, however. Unlike the deserters or those of lesser race, the true Wasp gladiators were heroes and lived as free men. They were adored by the people of Capitas, but Tisamon had killed several of them, so now they did not pit him against them. The bulk of Tisamon’s fighting companions belonged to a dozen other subject races: Ants, halfbreeds, a Mole Cricket, a Thorn Bug. They were the outstandingly skilled ones who had lived through enough fights to become a commodity – as he was.
Other cells held another kind of commodity: a disposable, consumable one. The arena was like a meat-grinder, and the Capitas crowds loved to see their share of blood. If it was not quality, with men like Tisamon or the Wasp professionals meting out skilled slaughter, then it was quantity they craved. The arena had an inexhaustible hunger for slaves, foreigners and prisoners of war. These were forced to hack clumsily at each other as an amusing warm-up, or else they were roped to each other and made to fight against giant beasts. Some were pitched against terrible automotives and machines. There were forty or fifty of them within Tisamon’s view at all times, but the individual prisoners varied from day to day, sometimes hour to hour. There were men and women of all kinden included amongst them, and children also.
There were beasts, too, but they were further back. Tisamon saw little of them, heard only the occasional scuttle and hiss. They were cared for better than the men, with expert handlers and trainers. In this society of the violently doomed they were a kind of aristocracy. Compound eyes glittering in the smoky light, they watched their keepers constantly, looking for a chance to escape. It seemed to Tisamon that captivity had brought them closer towards the human condition, even as it had degraded the morose and silent gladiators towards the level of the beast.
After a while, a handful of slaves passed between the cells, mostly Fly-kinden whose eyes could cut through the gloom as keenly as Tisamon’s own. Behind them came an old Wasp man, almost bald with a sour and leathery face. He limped, though he disdained a stick, and at his belt were hung a studded club and a whip. His name was Ult, he had informed Tisamon. He had been Slave Corps once, before becoming a trainer of gladiators. Now he was their keeper.
He had stopped by Tisamon’s cell two days before, and sat there regarding the Mantis doubtfully for a long while, neither of them saying anything. The next day he had stopped again, and again the Fly-kinden boy he kept as a slave had put down the little three-legged stool, and Ult had sat there thoughtfully. Eventually he had spoken: ‘You know why I’m interested in you?’
Tisamon had merely stared at him, feeling like one of the animals caged beyond, just waiting for its moment.
‘I get men like you all the time: the older ones, who’ve had their share of fights and gotten used to it,’ Ult had said. ‘They sit and they brood. Look, you can see a dozen of them from here, men whose card’s marked for death. They just don’t know when and don’t much care. But still they fight. At least they’re not prisoners when they fight, eh? This down here, it’s not real to them. Only the fighting is. You’re like that, too.’
No, I’m a beast, caged, Tisamon had thought, on hearing that, but failed to convince himself. Ult had smiled, which caused a scar to stand out white across his left cheekbone.
‘You want out?’ He had given Tisamon enough time to respond. ‘You don’t want out,’ he had concluded. ‘But you caught my eye, you did. Not ’cos you’re a Mantis. I’ve had your kind down here before. No, it’s ’cos you’re already dead inside, even before you got here. It usually takes them a few tendays at least, to get to where you are.’
‘I know,’ Tisamon had replied. It was all he had said, but they both knew it was a concession.
Now Ult came along yet again, after the slaves had doled out the evening slops. The boy put the stool down, and the old gladiator-trainer perched on it, close enough to the bars for Tisamon to grab at him. In just two days he had taken the Mantis’ measure, and the Mantis had taken his.
‘Mantis-man,’ Ult began. ‘I saw your fight again today. Very good. Very entertaining. I even had two colonels and a general tell me how much they enjoyed the show.’
Tisamon grunted, a shrug showing how little he cared about that.
‘Too good, almost. They’d rather the last man had got you instead.’
‘The last man?’
‘Oh, yes, they want their blood, after all,’ Ult said. ‘They want the last blood to be a foreigner’s, though. You cut them boys down too easily. Deserters, sure, but Wasps still.’