A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind) (3 page)

The girl’s bright cinnamon red hair hung all the way to her waist. She was sure to be noticed, even though she had yet to show the maturity of a grown woman. Something told me that these two must have been the two I had overheard the night before.

A sudden disturbance off to our left caused them and the guards to all turn and glance over in that direction. I kept walking forward though. I’m not sure what possessed me to do what I did, but it felt like the right thing to do and I didn’t question my actions any further than that. My manacled hands separated apart and I raised a fist and swung at the girl’s head hard, as her face was turned to the side.

I intentionally side swiped her left cheek, with the chunky metal protrusion of the manacles binding my hands instead of with my whole fist. Blood spurted from where the edge of my rough manacles caught her high on the cheekbone and lower down on the cheek ripping the flesh badly. The force of the blow, even though I had pulled the majority of the strength behind the punch off to the side, knocked her forwards breaking her mother’s hold on her arm. She fell heavily into a muddy puddle of water, which splashed all over her dowsing her in the dirty water of the marketplace gutters. Complete shock at the unjustified hit had widened her eyes into a questioning gaze, as she looked up at me from where she lay in the muddy water. Blood trickled down her face in abandon and I mouthed two words.

“I’m sorry!”

I had barely gotten the words out when I was slammed to the ground, from behind by the guards. I was only pulled back up to my feet after I had been kicked and whipped sev
eral times savagely.

My aggressive actions got me placed in a group of other surly individuals, who were unified in their dislike of me. Hitting a woman was bad, a girl worse and a fellow slave even worse than that. No matter I didn’t regret what I had done. They just didn’t understand what I had done.

I watched as the girl and her mother were led up to the examiners. They pulled the mother to the side and shoved her towards a group of older women, who also had small children. The chief examiner grabbed the girl’s chin and held it up examining her. He paused for a moment and then muttered something and shoved the girl towards an attendant who led her away. The attendant dragged her towards a pen that was filled with other attractive girls and young boys.

As they drew near the pen the girl’s head had fallen forward her dirty hair shielding her face from view. The at
tendant dragged her past that pen though and on down the line of slave pens towards the pen at the very end of the line.

Looking around with a dazed expression she found me in the sea of faces. She lifted a hand and slightly waved it at me, before she was jerked onwards by the attendant towards what was the field slave pen. Everyone deserves the chance to meet their end in the best way possible and I was sure she would prefer the fate of an overworked field hand, than a
longer life of being used as a cheap vessel in the gratification of other people’s desires in a brothel.

The moment of connection with the girl helped to assure me that I had done the right thing after all. I glanced around and was surprised by what I saw. The hostile stares of the men around me were gone, and in its place was respect. All of them seemed to comprehend what I had done for the girl. The hostility had been easier to bear than the respectful deference they were now showing me. It made me feel like I had to do something or be something special now to be worthy of their respect.

I may have only been fourteen at the time, but I’d already had the large bone structure and the beginning great strength of my father budding within me. It was apparent to the buyers, what I would be most useful for. The arena wars.

Gladiatorial entertainment was the favorite pastime of many Zoarinians throughout the empire. The mortal combat of men against animals and other men was big business and it was closely monitored as such by the ruling elite of the day, who got fabulously wealthy off betting on the games fought out by slave warriors.

I was bought by one of Carsea’s prominent fighting school owners. He was a big bellied man that looked at me as if I were but a piece of meat or a chew bone fit only to be thrown to the dogs. After the sale was over I was hustled to a wagon by armed guards and tied to a shackle bolt on the floor of the wagon along with several other men.

The wagon started to move out of the marketplace at a slow pace as my life as a slave had begun. Other slave wagons had passed by ours headed towards their perspective des
tinations within the empire. In the last wagon that passed us I saw the girl from the marketplace that I had hit at almost the same time as she saw me. We stared after each other, until we lost sight of each other. My wagon going towards the southern cities and hers headed out toward the open
plain

Chapter Two

Branded

The fighting school of Ramnotan was located on the out
skirts of Carsea. We were yanked out of the wagon roughly by the guards.

I’d hit the ground face first, after having been shoved by a guard off the wagon. I’d tried to get up spitting the dust from my mouth as I did so, but I was knocked flat down again by another guard. I’d tried to get up again, but several hard kicks had slammed into my side and I’d curled up into a ball in the dust. It had been hard to breath and I’d had to repeatedly gasp to get my breath back. I’d looked up into the face of my tormenter then before trying to get up again. He’d stood with his feet shoulder width apart and appeared to have no weapon upon him. He smiled down at me. His face had looked like worn cracked leather and the smile that was splayed across it did not reach his eyes.

“I’ll show you the meaning of what it is to be a slave boy! I think I’ll start your education with your pretty face!”

He had reached down with one hand and grabbed my hair jerking my head up. He extended his right leg behind him and I knew that he intended to smash his knee into my nose. As he drew his knee back I had stopped resisting the
grip on my hair and instead I flung myself forward at his support leg. Unbalanced he gave a surprised grunt and fell over backwards away from me.

He had released my hair in an effort to catch himself as he fell. He hit the ground hard and I had gotten shakily to my feet knowing I had probably just made things a lot worse for myself. Surprisingly he had lain there in the dust for a moment and then he’d started laughing as he got up to his feet. I’d regarded him warily waiting for him to strike out at me like a viper.

“This one has spirit left in him! Cato
take
him to the keep and see that he gets branded as a fighter, but not cut. He’ll fight better that way.”

I was seized by strong hands from behind and shoved in
side the fighting school. It was cooler inside than the outside was, but that was as far as the comfort went.

I was shoved against a wall of a room that received some light from a skylight in the ceiling above us. I and the others that had arrived with me were handcuffed to iron rings that projected out from the wall above our heads. I had watched as two powerfully muscled guards held the farthest slave from me away from the wall, as a third guard rose up from a fire kindled in the middle of the room. In one hand he held a hot poker and in the other a hot knife.

I could still see the way the slave’s eyes had rolled back into his head as he screamed, when the branding rod was pressed into the back of his left shoulder. The sizzle and
smell of burning flesh had made me want to throw up. It wasn’t over though.

The two guards shoved the whimpering slave back against the wall and spread his legs, as the man with the knife set the brand poker back down into the fire. He then turned toward the slave knife in hand and ripped the slave’s pants down and proceeded to slice off his seed sac, throwing it to the side, as he then held the hot knife to the wound cau
terizing the flesh.

The slave almost jerked out of the grasp of the two big men as the realization of what had just been done to him hit him along with the pain. I had thrown up all over myself then and I had tried to somehow block out the man’s hysteri
cal cries of pain and loss, but failed to miserably.

One by one the process was repeated down the line until they had reached me. I had been crying my eyes out and sobs of fear and expected pain racked through my body, as the other slave’s anguished screams still lingered around me in the room.

Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of the hot poker being ground into the back of my shoulder. I had screamed and sobbed hoping against hope for freedom from this hellish place, but none came. I had felt my pants ripped down and I had bitten my lip, as I felt the grip on my sac as the edge of the hot knife pressed against it. A moment had passed in which I had sobbed hard from the expected burn
ing pain and the loss of my identity as a man.

The knife had stayed where it was as the grip on my sack was released. I had opened my eyes that were blurry from the tears pouring out of them and looked around as I heard a strange sound. The guards and even the men holding me were laughing! As if this was all a big joke!

The man with the knife withdrew it and joined in on the laughter. I had heard the guards leave the room still laugh
ing as I had pressed my eyes closed because of how I had been shamed by them.

That had been the worst night of my life, being forced to stand there naked and listen to the cries and whimpers of the others in such a dark dungeon of a place.

The other slave’s pathetic cries, the burning pain in my shoulder and my own abject humiliation over what had hap
pened to me threatened to drive me mad. And in someways I suppose it had.

My one burning life’s desire from that moment onward had been to exact revenge and have control over my own fate once more.

Time had passed into months and months became years and I wondered why the Great Creator that my mother had prayed to kept me alive, for there could be no other reason, other than a D
ivine one that could explain how I had been delivered from death so many times. There were just too many coincidences that just seemed to happen at the right time, which always led to my survival and another day in the arena before my adoring crowds. They called me Zeventhal,
which in the Zoarinian language interprets simply as ‘Storm Maker’.

The average life expectancy in the arena world was marked by being violently brief. I was an exception to that, as I had already lived and fought for almost nine years in the arena. That’s how long it took for the opportunity of escape to occur.

I had done the most with the time and resources provided to me over the years. I had learned and mastered dozens of fighting styles and weapon proficiencies. But most valuable of all I befriended the men around me.

We all knew that we could die from each other’s hand, as easy as that of a rival school’s fighter, because of the whims of our masters so why not be each other’s friends and help each other as we could to make the short brutal days of our lives better. When I was forced to fight against my friends we fought with dignity not holding ourselves accountable for the death of either one of us, if it was required by the crowd or our masters.

Perhaps no one would understand how one could fight with a friend to the death, but my answer to them was that they hadn’t been there so what did they know about it. In addition to fighting skills I had learned all that I could about the tactics of war. I even discussed the merits and lessons to be gleaned from the literary works of wisdom of our time, which I had known nothing of previously, but which many thrown into the arena dungeons did.

We thought of, dreamed of, and planned every day for a chance at acquiring freedom for ourselves once again and the vengeance we would bring down against our captors, but freedom eluded us. Then one day we got a lucky break.

It was the festival of the moon goddess, which was the patron god of the city of Carsea. Games of extravagant pro
portions had been planned for the festival. All six of the Zoarinian governors of the Rings of Hath were going to be in attendance.

This was a rare occasion, within the empire and it would require only the finest in amusement offerings. Our handlers taunted us in glee over the special ordeal that would be faced by us fighters in the arena the next day. The spectacle was supposedly to be well beyond the usual by all accounts. The fighters from the city of Rauin were to be the first to face this new height in crowd amusement offerings.

The night passed, as all nights did before a fight, it either went by to quickly or passed by to slowly. It had been rain
ing softly, as I had looked through the bars of the door that opened out into the great arena.

The fighters from Rauin numbering a little over forty in number, stood expectantly in the middle of the arena as rain dripped off their helmets making moisture trails down their armor clad bodies. The rain would have normally put a damper on the crowd’s mood, but not today. They had been promised something special today and they were eager for it to begin.

The noise of the crowd was suddenly drowned out by the enraged, crazed screams of an animal I had only heard of, but never seen before then. The big doors at the other end of the arena had been shoved open suddenly and three large bull elephants, from the southern lands of Kharta rushed into the arena. Angered and driven mad with rage, by their handlers who had poked at them with spears they looked around feverishly in search of something to take their rageful ag
gression out on. Unfortunately the only prey available was the men of Rauin.