As you well know, I have fought graints. I have also fought them with swords that did not kill. But that was a fading dream to me, in those days as a kaidur, and the paradise of the Swinging City of Aphrasoe had never seemed so far distant.
After some more drinking and talking I managed to give Cleitar the benefit of my experience, and hoped he would take it. I had made no good companions as a kaidur. The tragedy of that course was all too apparent. A good friend in the morning might be merely a mangled corpse, dragged by the cruel iron hooks from the blood-smeared silver sand, by the time the twin suns sank in their opaz glory. I scratched my beard. I had let my hair and beard grow unchecked and I was now a most hairy specimen, like a shaggy graint in truth. This was done for a set purpose. Cleitar left, and Nath, also, and I called young Oby to help with my armor. Oby was short for Obfaril -
first beloved — and he was an engaging imp, an apim boy, with tousled fair hair, a wide cheeky smile, and fingers as dexterous in the manner of stealing palines as of buckling up armor. He was slave and was, of course, mad keen to become a kaidur.
I, too, was fighting twice this day. A kaidur’s life was not all lolling on silken cushions being fed palines by delectable Fristle fifis and quaffing wine and counting golden deldys and adding up the winnings. Today I faced a notable kaidur of the greens, a Rapa like the green Cleitar was to face; but a kaidur. That is, he had passed all the destructive tests of the arena from coy and now, with a string of victories behind him (a defeat was almost impossible for sometimes the defeated were allowed to live), was looking for the supreme accolade of being dubbed great kaidur. He, like myself, would be a trifle pampered by his manager. The backers with the money, nobles in consortia, business people, great merchants, and landed gentry, would wager more and more heavily upon him. He would be sought out for combats from his peers; he would not be chanced too often in the melee. He would, in short, be a prize kaidur. Like Cleitar. Like the other kaidurs and great kaidurs of the Jikhorkdun. We fought the combats in theory as unequals, as the blood-lust and the blood-curiosity demanded; but we were arena professionals, and we met and matched our skills rather than the mere differences of weapons. If Cleitar was killed this day, then his ord-kaidur Rapa opponent would be one step nearer to being full kaidur.
I had little fear for Cleitar. He was of the manner of man to whom the arena had come as the real purpose of his life.
Between Tilly and Oby I was accoutered in a clean white linen shirt, a padded vest, a corselet of gilden iron, shoulder wings — scarcely pauldrons — golden greaves, and I buckled up two crossed lesten-hide belts over the scarlet breechclout. Often Nath the Arm would glare at that scarlet breechclout, and say:
“But, Drak the Sword! By Kaidun, but the color is overly scarlet for the ruby drang!”
And I would say: “It has brought the ruby drang fair pickings, oh Nath the Arm! Would you offend, perhaps, the ruby heart of Beng Thrax?”
“By the glass eye and brass sword of Beng Thrax! Do you then mock me, Drak the Sword?”
“May Kaidun forfend!”
We went down to our assembly place where the coys shuffled away with many a long look, at once apprehensive, fearful, envious, at the kaidurs. Cleitar greeted me. So did Rafee the Render, a giant of a kaidur who had been a pirate before being captured and offered the usual alternatives. He was a huge ruffian and a great hand with his ax. With the other kaidurs of the red who were fighting this day we took our places on ponsho-fleece covered benches behind the iron bars where we might sit and quaff wine and swap stories and stare out upon the silver sand. One by one the combats took place. Cleitar disposed of his Rapa, as I disposed of mine. At this time there might be as many as fifty separate combats going on in the arena, and wherever the public might sit, strictly in the color-quarters they would support from the day of their birth to the day of their death, they would have a fine close-up view of the fighting.
The suns crawled up the sky. The wine we drank, that raw rough red stuff the kaidurs called Beng Thrax’s spit, served to slake our thirsts. It was practically nonalcoholic. But — it contained the hidden drug distilled from the sermine flower.
The day wore on and the most important of the combats especially staged as wagers went on increasing. We lost a great kaidur, one Fakal the Sword, who slipped in a patch of sand-strewn blood and so recovered to stare at a thraxter as it plunged over the rim of his corselet into his neck. We yelled and rattled our swords across the iron bars and made the shrieks and ululations from the paid mourners, starkly dramatic in their black robes, separated in their special boxes, seem like thin chittering whistling.
“Ornol the Chank!” yelled Nath. “We have him marked, by Kaidun!”
Ornol the Chank was a great kaidur of the yellow, and we saw poor old Fakal the Sword’s head offered up as a tribute to the diamond zhantil. Out of deference to custom we must remain mute while the observances were being made. But we all looked at Fakal’s dripping head, and we all wanted to get onto the silver sand and cross thraxters with Ornol the Chank.
I checked in horror.
This night I had planned an escape. What then, by Zair, was I doing vowing to revenge our injured red honor by dealing with Ornol the Chank in the future? I had no future I wanted here in the Jikhorkdun. Rather, having established what position I had, I would reject it all as trivial for the realities of my life which were, as you know, Delia and — well, the rest might go hang. Delia, and little Drak and Lela were all I wanted.
So — why shout and rave and shake my sword at the triumphant yellow benches?
There was no denying the excitement of it all, the thrills and terror, the narrow escapes, the great shouts of triumph or of raging despair that roared up at victory or disaster. I was one of the reds. We fought for the ruby drang. Out across that sun-soaked arena of silver sand lives were staked. The huge sums of money and jewels and property were all behind the scenes. Here, in the blood and the agony, the swift clash of combat, here was where it all happened.
Oh, yes, I was caught up in it all. I was a kaidur, and conscious of that, proud even, and I fought for the reds and as much as I joyed in my own victories I gloried in the victories of my fellow reds. I even think that a great kaidur, when at last he was beaten and so fell with his opponent’s bloody weapon drinking his life blood, felt greater sorrow that his color had gone down in defeat than that he was losing his own life.
Eerie and powerful are the ways men may be twisted by systems and customs and the hot passions of blood.
The proud and remote land of Hyrklana gathered men from many other lands and nations and races to fight in the Jikhorkdun. The demands of the arena were insatiable. Of poor people to be used merely as fodder, to whip up the blood appetites, few might be found outside the criminal classes and the political opponents, and those betrayed by hidden enemies. But the land of Havilfar is wide, and there are very many different countries upon its surface, even if the wild lands in the central northwest are relatively barren. Slave dealers thrived. It had taken a mighty empire to support the arenas of our Earth’s ancient Rome. But that empire, large as it was, could not compare with the resources open to the swift vollers of Havilfar.
Fighting in the arena were men from Pandahem, from Murn-Chem, from Ng’groga — their seven-foot height and incredible thinness could not be mistaken — men from Walfarg and Undurkor and Xuntal. Men like my good comrade Gloag from Mehzta who was not apim. There were the wild black-haired, blue-eyed men from the valleys and mountains of Erthyrdrin. There were men from Vallia, too. And, I believe, from Zenicce.
On a day before my plans for escape were complete, I had been engaged in the melee and the reds had been steadily wearing down our yellow opponents. The diamond zhantil remained in the ascendant over the red drang; but we were doing what we might to redress that balance. The four huge colored images on their movable staffs situated at one end of the gigantic oval of the amphitheater showed by their relative heights the state of the colors. If the reds emerged victorious we would lift the red drang another notch higher and bring the yellow zhantil a notch lower.
So, on this day, as we fought and I dispatched my man — for this was a skilled melee, where like fought like, and we were matched — I swung about to smash away a thraxter aimed at my back and so slew that one, also. Cleitar Adria was just stepping back from his man.
The yellow lay gasping on the sand, his face agonized. His oiled curly black hair in tight ringlets gleamed in the steaming light of Far and Havil as his helmet rolled away. Cleitar bent to finish him, as was proper, given that this was a fight-to-the-finish melee.
I saw the man lying there turn his eyes up. His face lost its writhing reflection of the agony he felt. He watched as Cleitar’s sword lifted high against the suns. And then he spoke, quick, simple words, breathy and blood-filled. Words I heard in a kind of stupefied daze.
