House Glaw and its guests sat in steep tiers, jeering down at us. I saw Urisel Glaw, Lord Oberon, Locke, Lady Fabrina, the ecdesiarch Dazzo, the pipe-smoking man. Terronce, the militia captain who had sat at our table during dinner, led an honour guard of nearly forty men of the retinue. All wore green armour, plumed silver helmets and all carried autoguns. More than two hundred baying members of the Glaw clan, house staff, militia and servants made up the rest of the crowd in the meatre. They'd been up all night, drinking and doing whatever other indulgence it took to turn them into hyperactive bloodthirsty hyenas by first light.
Ignoring the noise, I surveyed the compound. Breaks of trees sprouted at various places, and there were low outcrops of bare rock, giving the arena a sort of landscape.
Nearby stood a rack of rusty weapons. Macheles and his brethren had already rushed to it and taken blunt shortswords and toothless lances.
I went over and took a basket-hiked dagger and an oddly hooked scythe with a serrated inner blade.
I weighed them in my hands.
Heldane had taken a dagger and a long-hafted axe, Bequin a wicker shield and a stabbing knife. Aemos shrugged and took nothing.
The jeering and booing welled around us. Then it hushed and a chorus of gasps whispered from the auditorium.
The camodon was six metres from nose to whipping tail. Nine hundred kilos of muscle, sinew, striped pelt and sawing tusks.
It came out from behind one of the clumps of trees, trailing a line of heavy chain behind it from its spiked collar, accelerated into a pounce and brought Macheles down.
Macheles, envoy of Guild Sinesias, screamed as he was destroyed. He screamed and shrieked far longer than seemed possible given the spurting
body parts the carnodon was ripping away. It must have been my horrified imagination, but to me the screaming only stopped when he was a gnawed ribcage being shaken in the bloody moss by the vast predator.
The other envoys screamed and ran. One fainted.
'We're dead,' Heldane said again, raising his weapons.
I swallowed the capsule he had given me. It didn't make me feel much better.
Its huge bared mouth running with blood and its chain jingling, the carnodon turned on the other envoys.
Bequin shrieked.
A second carnodon sprang out of its trap towards us. It was slightly larger than the first, I noticed. It came right for me.
I stumbled and dived to my right and the feline dug its claws into the moss to arrest its pounce, overshooting and scrabbling round. Its trailing chain swished over my head. The creatures both made low, sub-sonic growls that shuddered in their cavernous throats and thumped the air.
The larger beast swung around and made for me again even as I regained my feet and leapt backwards. Heldane ran in from the side while its attention was on me, and hacked into its flank with the blade of his axe.
The carnodon issued a strangulated hiss and lashed around, hurling Voke's man across the arena, the clothing of his torso shredded by deep parallel claw marks. I jumped away and got a few of the twisted trees between it and myself.
The first carnodon had brought down another of the envoys. The shock of the impact and the crippling wounds simply silenced the man and he uttered no sound as his limp body was thrashed and worried.
The creatures were hungry that much was evident from their prominent ribs. One factor in our favour then… when the carnodons brought down prey they were primarily interested in consuming it. The long chains secured them to ground spikes next to their traps, and allowed them free movement anywhere in the pit. Clearly the chains were measured carefully to prevent them leaping clear of the pit into the crowd.
Tail slashing back and forth, the larger predator circled the edge of the arena- bowl, its dark, deep-set eyes surveying the humans in range. Bequin had dug herself and Aemos into a corner, using her frail shield and a wall buttress as cover for them both, but the ruthless crowd were pelting them with coins and bottles and pieces of food to drive them out. They wanted sport. They wanted blood.
The circling carnodon, barking vapours of breath and spittle from its dripping snout, came round and began to accelerate towards Bequin and Aemos. Its pouncing mass alone would kill them, I was certain. I ran out from cover to intercept it side on, and the crowd whooped and stamped.
It faltered in its ran up as it became aware of me rushing it from the flank, and started to turn as I cut in with the scythe. The old hook planed matted fur from its shoulder blade and left a long red scratch down its ribs. It turned hard to face me. A paw lashed out, jabbing. I jumped back,
swung again, hoping to at least hit the huge paw, for its reach was far longer than mine. Then it threw itself forward, a throbbing roar welling from its throat.
I simply dropped on my back, stealing its chance to knock me down and shatter my bones. Then it was on me and over me, a paw crashing and slicing my chest, its head down, mouth open, reaching to bite off my face. Frantically, I thrust with my weapons, blind, and kicked up at its more vulnerable underside.
The weight was off me abruptly. The carnodon jerked away, making a terrible low moaning. My dagger was no longer in my hand.
The pommel was jutting down out of the beast's chin. The blade transfixed its mouth, pinning it closed. It pawed and tore at the weapon, trying to dislodge it, shaking its massive head like a horse bothered by a fly.
I got up. Blood ran from the fresh gashes on my chest. Heldane suddenly crossed my field of vision, his shredded tunic fluttering behind him. His axe came down square onto the great carnivore's back, cutting through the backbone with a loud crack. The carnodon went into spasms, thrashing and clawing, rolling in the dirt. Heldane brought the axe down again and stove in its skull.
The audience shook the pit with their howling. Missiles rained down on us. Heldane turned and looked at me with a murderous grin of triumph.
Then the huge weight of the other carnodon hit him from behind and flattened him face down into the arena floor.
It had finished with the other envoys, all except the one who had fainted, who still lay where he had fallen. It tore into the helpless Heldane, ripping his scalp, rending the flesh off his back.
With a guttural cry, I ran at it, caught it behind the ear with my scythe, and pulled. The curved blade hooked into the meat and I succeeded in yanking its head back for a second. Then a well-aimed bottle struck me on the side of the head and knocked me over. I lost my grip on the scythe.
The creature turned, leaving Heldane a mangled wreck, face down in the bloody soil. I scrambled back, kicking at it.
'Eisenhorn!' Bequin yelled, running forward on the other side. She threw her knife over the creature's back and I caught it neatly. Disturbed by her cry, the beast swung about and lashed at her, tearing the wicker shield into hanks of raffia and knocking her down.
I threw myself astride its back and thumped the dagger down repeatedly into its neck. The dagger barely seemed to bite into the thick hide.
It writhed, trying to throw me off. I saw the scythe dangling from its scalp behind the ear, grabbed it, and hooked the blade under its spiked collar.
The creature was frenzied now, pulling hard at its chain. I pushed the tooth of the dagger in through a link in the chain and down into its shoulder blade, then levered the weapon over with all the force I could muster.
The link twisted open. The chain parted.
