Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 1 - The Verdent Passage (3 page)

Boaz's bloodshot eyes narrowed. “I should have known better than to reason with a stupid
mul,” he said, turning his angry gaze away from Rikus and toward the four slaves standing
atop the wall nearby. “One of your friends will pay for your disrespect. Who shall I have
flogged? Neeva?”

The trainer pointed at Rikus's fighting partner, a blond woman of full human blood, who
stared at Boaz with deep, emerald eyes. Her cape hung open in the front, revealing a husky
physique almost as knotted with muscle as that of Rikus. With a pair of full red lips, a
prominent, firm chin, and pale, smooth skin, she looked both divine and deadly.

Rikus had reason to be glad that her appearances were not deceiving. He and Neeva were a
matched pair, which meant that in addition to sleeping together, they fought in games
against similar fighting teams. In fact, the contest in which he hoped to win his freedom
was a matched game.

When the mul's only response to Boaz's query was a menacing glower, the trainer shrugged.
“How about Yarig and Anezka? They're small, so we'll have to whip both of them,” he said,
pointing at another of Tithian's matched pairs.

Yarig, the male, scowled at the trainer indignantly. Like all dwarves, he stood around
four feet tall and was completely bald from head to heel. His features were square and
angular, with the distinctive dwarven crest of thickened skull crowning his bald head.
Yarig's stocky body was even more muscular and sculpted than Rikus's. The mul had often
thought that his friend resembled a boulder more than a man.

“You're not being fair, Boaz,” Yarig said firmly. “Size makes no difference.”

“I'm not interested in being fair,” Boaz snapped, barely granting the dwarf a sidelong
glance.

Yarig would not be dismissed lightly. “Size makes no difference to flogging,” he insisted.
As was typical for a dwarf, he was so caught up in trivial details that he was oblivious
to larger issues. “When you're flogged, it hurts just as much no matter how tall you are.”

Anezka stepped to her partner's side and tried to drag the dwarf away, frowning at Rikus
all the while. She had been lashed as punishment for the mul's defiance once before, and
she made no effort to hide her resentment of him. Standing no more than three-and-a-half
feet high,

she was a halfling female from the other side of the Ringing Mountains She looked like a
scrawny child, save that her figure and face were those of a mature woman. Her hair grew
from her head in a tangled bush that had never been brushed, and her cunning brown eyes
had a deranged look to them. Her tongue had been cut out before she'd become a slave, so
no one had ever been able to determine whether she was truly unbalanced, or just seemed
that way. Most didn't debate the question for long, especially since Anezka liked to eat
her meat while it was still alive.

Yarig pulled away from the halfling and stubbornly stepped toward Boaz. “You should only
flog one of us.”

Two of the trainer's guards leveled their spears at Yarig's chest, preventing even the
single-minded dwarf from advancing farther. “Boaz isn't going to flog either one of you,”
Rikus noted.

“Then who will it be?” Boaz asked, his lips spreading into a cruel smile. “If not your
pit-mates or your fighting partner, then perhaps your lover?”

Rikus groaned inwardly. He did not hide his dalliances from Neeva, but open discussion of
his romantic liaisons never failed to upset her. At the moment, the last thing he needed
was an angry fighting partner.

Boaz pointed at the last slave on the deck, a voluptuous scullery wench named Sadira. He
motioned for her to come to him. Like the trainer, Sadira was a half-elf, with peaked
eyebrows and pale eyes, but there the resemblance ended. Where the trainer's features were
sharp and raw, the young woman's were slender and winsome. Her eyes were as clear and
unclouded as a tourmaline, and her long, amber hair tumbled over her shoulders in waves.

The wench wore a hemp smock with a wide neckline that hung off both shoulders, and a
ragged hem that barely reached the middle of her slender thighs. The smock was the same as
those worn by the all the slave girls of the compound, but
on
Sadira the simple shift seemed as provocative as any noblewoman's most revealing dress.

When the scullery slave reached Boaz's side, the trainer laid a pasty hand
on
her bare shoulder. Sadira cringed as the trainer ran his lecherous fingers over her smooth
skin, but did not dare object to his touch. “It will be a pity to blemish such beauty with
flogging scars, but if that's what you want, RikusÑ”

“It's not what I want and you know it,” Rikus said, stopping short of making another
threat. “If you're going to flog someone, flog me. I won't resist.”

Smirking at Rikus's submission, Boaz shook his head. “That won't do at all. You're much
too accustomed to physical pain,” he said. “If we are to teach you anything, your lesson
must be of a different kind. So, which one of your friends will pay for your defiance?”

A tense silence followed. “There's no need to hurry your decision,” Boaz said, pointing
toward the center
of
the fighting pit. “You can choose after you fight the gaj.”

Deciding the trainer's concession would at least give him thinking time, Rikus faced the
center of the pit. The gaj waved its antennae in the mul's direction, then opened its
mandibles and tossed Sizzkus's body aside with a flick of its head. When the nikaal landed
twenty yards away, Rikus made a mental note not to put himself in a position where the
beast would be able to throw him around the same way.

“I'll take your cloak,” offered Sadira, kneeling at the edge of the wall. “You wouldn't
want it torn if the fight moves over here.”

Rikus picked up the robe from the ground and tossed it to the slave girl. “My thanks.”

Catching the cloak, Sadira whispered, “Rikus, I don't like the way Boaz is smirking.”

The mul smiled, revealing a set 'of white teeth. “Don't worry about him. I'll tear him
apart before I let him lash, you.”

Sadira raised her peaked eyebrows in alarm. “No!” she hissed. “That's not what I meant. I
can take a flogging if I have to. I only want you to be careful.”

The beguiling half-elf's reaction surprised Rikus, for he had thought she would be
terrified of being disfigured. Before he could comment on her bravery, however Neeva
stepped to the half-elf's side. Taking Sadira by the arm and roughly pulling her to her
feet, Neeva said, “Tell me what weapon you want, Rikus. Our friend is clacking its
pincers.”

“No blades or points,” Boaz interjected, eyeing Rikus. “The gaj is a special surprise for
the ziggurat games. Tithian will sell you into the brickyards if you kill it.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the gaj. The strange beast's mandibles stopped clacking
and remained open. After studying his opponent for several moments, the mul turned back to
his trainer. “Are you a betting man, Boaz?”

“Perhaps.”

Rikus gave the trainer his most provoking smile and pointed at the gaj. “I'll fight with
nothing but my singing sticks. If I win, you flog me instead of someone else. If I lose,
you lash us all.”

“Those pincers will clip your sticks like straw!” Neeva objected.

Rikus ignored her and kept his attention fixed on Boaz.. “Do we have a bet?” When the
cruel trainer smiled and nodded, the mul looked to his fighting partner. “Get my sticks.”

Neeva refused to move. “They're too light for that thing,” she said. “I'm not helping you
get yourself killed.”

“I'm sure Rikus knows what he's doing,” Sadira said, moving away from the edge of the pit.
“I'll get the singing sticks.”

Neeva started to follow, but Boaz signaled to his guards and they stopped her with the
tips of their spears. A few moments later, Sadira returned with a pair of vermilion sticks
about an inch in diameter and two-and-a-half feet long. Made from a fibrous wood that
contracted instead of breaking, the sticks were extremely light and relied upon speed
rather than mass to generate striking power. They had been carefully carved so that the
ends were slightly larger around than the centers, and a special oil made them easy to
grip.

Sadira dropped the weapons, and Rikus caught one in each hand. The gladiator turned to
face the gaj, simultaneously twirling the sticks in a figure-eight pattern. As the weapons
sliced through the air, they emitted the distinctive whistle that gave them their name.
Although Rikus seldom used singing sticks in contests to the death, they were his favorite
sparring weapon, for their effectiveness depended upon skill and timing rather than
strength and brute force.

Deciding that his best attack was against the beast's head, Rikus started forward, his
sticks trilling as he absent-mindedly traced a variety of defensive patterns in the air.

The gaj waited, motionless, its eyes blank and unresponsive.

“Can that thing see me?” Rikus asked.

The only response was an amused chuckle from Boaz.

The gladiator stopped his advance a few yards from the gaj's head. A sweet, musky odor
hung in the air, masking the stench of the entrails that still dangled from the barbs of
the creature's mandibles.

Rikus took another step forward, waving his sticks in front of the gaj's eyes. It did not
react, so he feinted a strike to its head. When there was still no response, he slipped to
one side of its wicked mandibles. Holding one stick ready to parry an attack, he flicked
the end of the other at one of the red, multi-faceted eyes, striking it with a light tap.

The gaj jerked its head to one side, smashing the outer edge of its mandible into Rikus's
hip and sending him staggering backward. The mul paused and frowned at the beast, trying
to figure out what made it so special in Tithian's eyes. There was no doubt that the
creature was powerful, but he was far from impressed so far. Had he been carrying a bladed
or pointed weapon, the gaj would have been dead when he made his first feint.

“Something's wrong with it,” Rikus called over hit shoulder. “The hunters must have
blinded it when they captured it.”

Boaz erupted into a fit of high-pitched laughter.

Neeva called, “Just hit the damn thing and see what happens!”

Gnashing his teeth at his partner's sharp tone, Rikus turned back to the gaj. Pointedly
ignoring the beast's vacant red eyes, he strolled to one side of its head. He gave the
white sphere a sharp rap, and the stick landed with a dull throb that felt as though he
had struck a mattress filled with straw.

One of the hairy antennae lashed out and wrapped it self around the stick, then wrenched
the weapon free of Rikus's hand with an effortless flick. The astonished mul leaped away
and somersaulted backward to put more distance between himself and the gaj. As he sprang
back to his feet, the guards and Boaz roared with glee. The mul frowned, as angry with
himself for allowing the gaj to surprise him as he was with the guards for laughing at his
careless.

The gaj did not move, although it was using its bristly antenna to swing Rikus's stick
through the air. After a moment of watching the creature, Rikus realized that it was
performing an awkward imitation of a defensive figure-eight patternÑthe same pattern he
had traced through the air after Sadira tossed him the weapons.

Immediately the mul realized two important things about his opponent. First, it seemed the
antennae atop its head were more akin to tentacles, for he had never before seen an animal
use an antenna as a grasping organ. Second, the gaj was a lot smarter and more observant
than it appeared at first glance. The beast was mimicking a formal fighting pattern, and
he doubted that it was mere chance.

Rikus turned, growling, “So, you want to do a little stick fighting?”

He began whirling his remaining stick in a series of randomly changing patterns, then
advanced on the gaj behind the blurred, whistling shield he was creating with his weapon.

As the gladiator stepped within striking range, the front side of the gaj's shell rose two
feet off the ground. Rikus glimpsed a pulpy white body and a tangle of knobby-jointed
legs. Suddenly the beast withdrew its head beneath the shell, taking the singing stick
along with it. The shell dropped back to the ground. The gaj's barbed mandibles, all that
remained visible of the head, clacked once and reopened menacingly.

“Now what, Rikus?” cried a guard.

“Crawl under there and fight it!” suggested another.

His face reddening with embarrassment, Rikus looked over his shoulder. Only Neeva's face
remained serious.

Even Sadira was grinning at his predicament.

“This thing doesn't want to fight,” he called.
“
Why don't three or four of you come down here instead?”

His challenge brought a fresh round of chuckles from the spectators, but none of them
volunteered.

Rikus placed his stick between his teeth and circled around to the gaj's side, where its
pincers would not be able to seize him. He squatted down
next
to the shell and grabbed the underside of the lip, then heaved with all his might.

The carapace rose from the ground, and something clattered inside. Rikus heaved harder,
pushing it higher. Six canelike legs shot out and planted themselves firmly in the sand,
three to a side. The shiny black limbs were about as thick as Rikus's forearm, divided
into five segments by a series of knotted joints. Each limb ended in two-pronged claws
that now clutched at the sand in a futile effort to hold the shell down.

With the singing stick still clenched in his teeth, Rikus shifted his grip and lowered his
body again so that he could push the shell the rest of the way over. This time, it
required more effort to raise the beast. On the opposite side of its body, the gaj had
extended its legs well beyond its shell and was using them to counter its attacker's
efforts. Nonetheless, Rikus was slowly lifting one side. Even a creature like the gaj was
no match for the dense muscles of a mul.