clung to his tongue, to the back of his throat. He could see trails of blood in the sand, leading to different closed gateways positioned around the walls.
Nico gazed around at the thousands of faces waiting expectantly in the stands. For a breathless moment their stares devoured him where he stood. Someone laughed, and then they were all laughing, a cacophony of howls that was like some awful nightmare come real. Nico shrank into himself. Shame overwhelmed his panic.
'You came to kill us, little Rshun,' called out a voice, and he turned to face the Matriarch herself, who stood in the royal box flanked by Acolytes and priests. 'Now pay for your failure.'
A hush descended across the vast bowl of the stadium. A shadow passed across the sand: birds – black crows – wheeling overhead.
Slowly, a gate began to open on the opposite side of the enclosed space. He heard the snap of firecrackers. Flashes lit the dim interior of the gateway.
A pack of wolves raced out on to the sands.
Nico took an involuntary step backwards.
Soldiers lined the stone walls of the arena, which were too high to climb. The gateway ahead was now closed tight.
Nico counted six wolves in all. At first they moved in some confusion, but then they began to take notice of him. They ranged outwards, around the arena, but closing the distance.
Nico gripped the short-sword tighter. He hefted the blade, trying its weight. It was a hacking weapon, weighted towards its tip. Baracha had made them train at times with such simple blades.
Movement caught his eye and he turned to see a wolf darting in towards him, kicking up sand from its feet, its tongue lolling loose.
There was nowhere for him to run.
Nico spread his feet for balance and raised the shield. It took all of his nerve to stand and face the charging animal; it was, very possibly, the single most determined act of his life.
He swung the blade, almost unbalancing himself with the force of the movement. The wolf snapped its teeth and darted away, its animal reek lingering behind it.
Another sped in from his right. Again, frantically, he swung the blade, just missing as it dodged out of reach.
Three were now approaching him slowly from directly in front. Sweat began coursing off him as though someone had doused him with lukewarm water. Nico backed up against the closed gate. The crowd howled in anticipation.
In the back of his mind a quiet place suddenly appeared, a corner of detachment that he retreated into without question. He took a mental breath, and it provided enough of a space for Nico to wonder what these people could possibly gain from such butchery as this.
Echoes of the crowd's laughter still occupied his mind. He recalled those bitter times as a youth at the schoolhouse, when children had laughed at another's misfortune. Cruel, cutting laughter, without compassion. At times he had even joined in himself.
He thought, too of the monk calling out in anger to this crowd, earlier. All these thousands of people, and that man had been the only sane one here.
It was true and, as he realized it, the shame of their mockery left him. It turned outwards, directed on to the crowd themselves, so that he felt shame for them instead – for their desire to watch the murder of another and take delight in it.
We are all cruel children at heart, he reflected.
Blood flushed to his face. His jaws clamped tight, shooting spikes of pain through his head from his ruined teeth. It came to him, then, that to be terrified of this situation, to cringe away from it, was only to allow it to win, to be right. Better to be angry, he decided. Make a stand.
The six wolves charged.
Nico hesitated for an instant, and then something vital occurred within him. His training suddenly connected with his despair.
With a grunt, he pushed off from the gate and staggered forwards to meet the animals head on – just as Ash would have done.
A wolf raced in from his left, so fast that it left spouts of dust trailing in an arc behind its feet. He smashed its muzzle with the shield, both of them rebounding from the collision, Nico gaining only strength from the agony that burst from his broken hand. He slashed out at another wolf coming in to his right, air whooshing from his throat in rapid pants. The blade opened up its scalp.
As he closed on the group of three, he skipped in his stride and kicked deep and hard into the sand, spraying a cloud of it across their eyes. It blinded them enough that, for a moment, they faltered, shaking their heads – and then he was in amongst them, stabbing and hacking with his blade, smashing with his shield, mercifully feeling nothing as their teeth and claws raked him.
Nico was conscious of very little after that, for he was in a red frenzy. He was aware of stopping one of the wolves in its tracks by uttering his own animal snarl. He was aware of chopping at another until it was no longer of one piece. He was aware of getting bitten deep in the thigh, and biting his attacker in return just as fiercely, his sword stabbing and stabbing.
And then Nico was on his knees in the sand, sucking air into his heaving lungs, and he was done for, his strength utterly spent.
All around him, the wolves lay either dead or dying.
Not a sound stirred in the stadium save for his own gasping and that of one adversary nearby, panting as it lay on its side. An image of doom flashed in his mind, and then it was gone.
Nico was unaware of his own wounds as he looked up to see the Matriarch staring at him across the distance between them. Even from here he could see that her mouth hung open in astonishment.
Nico heard a chant rise from the crowd. He had no idea what it meant.
He spotted an Acolyte hurrying through the press on the stands to reach his mistress. He shouted something into her ear and again her gaze flicked towards Nico. She took a curved knife from her belt and even as he watched, she plunged its blade deep into the messenger's belly. Blade still in hand, now darkly wet, she turned back to face the arena.
'Burn him,' her voice rang out. 'Burn him alive.'
A storm of protest rose up from the crowd. She stood against it, unswayed.
Acolytes appeared from the various gateways around the walls. They converged on Nico, pointing their swords at him so that he would not move.
Not that he could have moved. He dropped his own weapon and rocked back on the sand. He put his face between his knees and sucked in air. He could think of nothing but regaining his wind.
When next he looked up, he saw men busy erecting a bonfire in the centre of the great arena. In relays, guards and soldiers ferried armfuls of planking and chopped wood towards it. Around the stadium people still shouted their dissent. They pushed against the ring of soldiers, some even hurling missiles at them.
The bonfire grew higher.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A Storm in the Mountains Che awoke to a foul taste in his mouth and a pounding in his head as though he had been drinking hard liquor, though he knew he had not. It was the after-effects of the berry juice he had smeared on his forehead all those days before.
He heard a sharp crack in the distance, and then another. Rifle shots. He opened his eyes, saw it was evening. Early stars hung, brightening, overhead.
Che groaned and forced himself up. He swayed on his feet, stumbled, toppled on to his back. He groaned again and looked about him. He knew this place.
He was at the foot of a high valley. By his side a bush swayed in the breeze, heavy with plump berries. Che blinked his eyes clear. The daylight was fading fast, though he could just make out the course of the broad stream
