Sovereign's Gladiator (7 page)

Settlements were small and widely spaced. Their people of the desert did not come out to greet their Sovereign. They doused their fires and hid. Nomads on shaggy steeds ran for the hills.

Whole villages cleared out at the column’s approach. Devon could see the dust clouds of their retreat.

“They’re afraid of me,” said Devon.

“You are surprised,” said Xan, with an edge of mockery.

“I am,” said Devon. He kicked his stallion and rode to the empty houses. Smoke still curled from their chimneys.

Devon found all the houses abandoned, their inhabitants gone in haste, dinner still in the hearth.

In a barn he found spilled milk, a knocked-over stool and an uncomfortable, mooing cow.

When he came out, he saw some of his soldiers leading away livestock that had been left behind—a scrawny steer on a tether, a gaggle of sheep.

“Leave everything,” Devon commanded and motioned his soldiers to turn around and take the animals back to where they found them.

It was like that the entire journey. Native tents folded up and settlements vanished at Devon’s approach. The desert winds carried off the dust of their retreat and erased their tracks.

Devon spoke, not to anyone, maybe to the wind. “Why do they run?”

“From an
army
?” Xan asked back skeptically. The answer ought to be obvious to a fool.

“On the other side of the pass, my people did not run from me and my army,” Devon said.

They had not. Xan remembered that. The Raenthe villagers had loaded their Sovereign down with gifts, and it had not been out of fear. The girls kissed him. Men came out just to touch the hem of his cloak.

“You say you have come to see,” said Xan. “You shall see.”

* * * * *

Devon reined in. The train halted.

In the distance, a magnificent fortress palace appeared carved on a low spur that jutted out of a mountain like a dog’s knuckle. The stronghold’s colossal pillars looked to be carved out of solid rock. They were polished to a red sheen. The approach from the front was sheer. The fortress was impregnable. Around its base stood a stockade of pointed timber. An approach up any path up the rear was exposed to archers’ towers. Behind the citadel, terraced into the mountain slope, spread high pastures of sheep, short-legged cattle, horses and orchards.

The citadel was entirely self-contained. It was the kind of structure built by men who were afraid.

And men who were far too proud.

Devon called for his guide. “Is that it?”

“Yes,
ma dahn
.” The scout showed Devon the camel-hide map. Xan had never learned to read a map. The marks on the camelskin meant nothing to him. He stared at the fortress.

The citadel was built in a mix of Raenthe architecture and barbaric styles. Devon had been told that Governor Kani had a strong outpost. Devon had no idea.

Devon said, “Is that—is that
ours
?”

“Yes,
ma dahn
. That is the citadel. It looks very secure,
ma dahn
.”

“One ought to be able to get something more done from a base like that,” Devon said.

“Harpy’s Rook.”

Devon’s head turned. “Xan?”

“That building was not here when I was taken away. Later prisoners would come into the arena from the wild lands and talk of a place called Harpy’s Rook. This must be what they spoke of.”

“‘Harpy’ is a word from the Old High speech,” Devon said.

Harpy
meant
snatcher
.

The fortress appeared more vast and impregnable as Devon’s troop came closer.

The citadel did not take alarm at their approach. The garrison would recognize the blue uniforms, the Raenthe precision formation, the gold and silver standards and the scarlet litter.

The huge gates between stone towers parted to welcome Devon’s army into the wide stockade with its high picket walls below the lofty citadel.

Devon rode through the gates behind the imperial standards. The garrison troops were jubilant. Reinforcements had come at last.

Devon announced loudly, “These are not reinforcements. This is your relief. You are going home.”

Oceans did not roar so. The sounds rang off the citadel’s rock.

Devon gauged from the soldiers’ riotous cheering how much they hated garrison duty here. Their voices resolved into a thunderous chant.

“DEV-ON! DEV-ON! DEV-ON!”

Governor Kani came out of a tower to greet the Sovereign with a forced smile. Devon had seen that look on ship captains when an admiral boarded their vessels. A master of his own world was not accustomed to having a superior.

Kani was a hulking man with a well-upholstered wrestler’s build. His teeth shone white within his black beard. He wore strange garb that had a military look to it. It was dark green.

Kani greeted Devon.

“
Ma dahn!
You made it! Thank all the gods!”

“I am here,” said Devon.

“Why? Why are you here?”

Devon must have looked affronted, because Kani quickly rephrased, “I welcome you. I am astonished that you risked the passage. You have no idea how reckless that was.”

“I have some idea,” Devon assured Governor Kani.

“Why would you do that to yourself?” Kani said.

“I needed to see for myself what you are up against out here.”

“I trust you saw.”

“Do you?” Devon said.

Did Kani already know that Devon had been attacked on his way here? “What do you suppose I saw?”

Kani seemed to hesitate. He threw out like a guess, “Wild men acting wildly?”

“There was some wildness,” Devon admitted. “We were hit in the pass.”

“There! You see?”

“It means the barbarians knew we were coming,” Devon said.

Kani shook his head. “Out here every mountain pass is some bandit’s target. These people are trapdoor spiders. You will always be hit in a pass.”

“No one goes through the Witch’s Cleft but once in forever,” Devon said. “Bandits don’t lay traps where no one ever travels. These men were waiting. For
me
.”

“That is not possible,” Kani said.

“They hit my litter. First. They knew the Sovereign was coming through the Witch’s Cleft.”

Kani put his hand over his heart. “
Ma dahn
,
I
told no one.” The official communication had gone directly from the Sovereign to the provincial governor. “It had to be someone on your side. Who else knew?”

“Trusted people of my court,” Devon answered.

“And your guard,
ma dahn
,” Kani added significantly.

Kani’s eyes and everyone else’s eyes turned to the barbarian Xan.

“No,” said Devon. Afraid he sounded too insistent.

“How can you know that,
ma dahn
?”

“Because I
am
here.”

If Xan had meant to kill him, Devon would not have arrived at his destination.

Kani gave a provisional sideways nod, allowing that argument. Kani suggested instead, “Then perhaps your regent wants to keep the reign?”

Marcus.

Devon stiffened. He did not respond.

Devon noted other men of the citadel dressed in the same strange green garb as the governor. They must be Kani’s inner circle of personal guards. They were dressed differently from the garrison troops out in the front courtyard, who wore standard Raenthe military blue. “Your men out of uniform.”

“Our uniforms wore out,” Kani said. “We make do. We don’t like to go begging back to the capital if we can fend for ourselves.”

“You should look like Raenthe.”

Devon was aware of eyes rolling around him, as if the Sovereign had been so petty as to travel all the way from Calista City just to take issue with the color of the provincial dress.

Some of the green-clad men bore red tattoos on their left hands, all the same design, a serpent within a circle. Devon did not know what that signified.

“Uniforms should be uniform,” Devon said with finality. He assumed Kani and his men would fall in line.

There was a lot of Raenthe technology on display inside the immense walls—a water wheel, plumbing, metalwork.

Raenthe civilization existed behind the fortress walls, but nowhere else in the wild lands under Devon’s rule. Kani’s civilizing hadn’t got anywhere. Devon had expected more from his deputy.

“Men get cut down outside these walls,” Kani told Devon. “A lot of good people never came back.”

Kani took Devon around the fortress. When they passed a dust pit that was ringed by high walls and tiered banks of seats, Devon stopped dead. Devon spoke in hollow surprise, “You have an arena.”

“That?” Kani said. “That is an exercise area.”

It was a pit with high walls and an iron-reinforced door, overlooked by stadium benches.

“You are not permitted an arena,” said Devon, stern.

The arena was serious business, a terrible place where were held games that were not really games at all. Gladiatorial matches must have a profound purpose or they were nothing but barbarous bloodshed. Arenas belonged to state rulers only—Princes and Sovereigns. Outpost governors had not the right.

The only lawful arena in Shiliya Province was Devon’s arena in Calista City.

“Oh, the walls?” said Kani. “Animal trainers also use that space. There are vicious creatures in the hills.”

“No games?” Devon asked in dread concern.

Gladiatorial combat was a rite of redemption and honor. Not a sport.

Kani smiled, hand over his heart again with a slight bow that asked how could Devon even ask him that? “It is not permitted,
ma dahn
.”

Kani joined Devon on the ramparts as the sun was going down. The two rested their forearms on the carved stone balustrade and watched the western horizon turn bloody. Kani passed Devon a heavy electrum goblet filled with wine. “Here. You don’t have this in Calista City.”

Devon sipped the offered wine. He lifted his brows appreciatively. “We
should
have this in Calista City.” Why weren’t the locals trading this stuff? There was no trade at all of goods between the capital and the wild lands. There should be trade by now.

Kani chuckled and drank from his goblet.

As the sun tucked under the western hills Devon saw fires on the black heights. The blazes were too big to be nomad campfires. “What is that?” Devon asked, poised to dispatch soldiers at once to help the locals fight the blaze.

“Retaliation,” said Kani.

“You mean
we
did that?” Devon said, staring at the blaze.

“We cannot let the savages get away with the attack on your person. Burning a settlement or two will let them know they will always pay for what they do. More gladiators for your arena, eh?”

“I really don’t need more gladiators,” said Devon.

“It needs to be done. You saw what these people do.”

“But
why
do they do it? My rule is not harsh.”

“There you have it. They are animals.”

Devon nodded out at the flames on the hillside. “Are those the homes of the men who attacked me?”

Devon had come from the southeast. The burning settlement lay to the west.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kani said. “They need to know that too—that it doesn’t matter which of them commits the crime. Sooner or later they will learn that what one of them does falls on them all. That’ll teach them a lesson.”

It would. But Devon was not sure what lesson this was teaching.

The sun was completely gone. Torch fires lit the vast citadel. In the sumptuous chamber provided to him, Devon dressed for dinner.

The room led off from a half bridge, which overlooked a wide, high great room below. Stairs at either end of the half bridge led down. A guard station stood at the base of each stairway. It was like being in an eagle’s nest.

The chamber for the Sovereign’s first guardsman was next to his.

Devon found his first guardsman in his doorway.

Devon had not admitted the gladiator into his chamber. Yet here he was. “Xan?”

“What is appropriate to wear to a governor’s dinner?” Xan asked.

Devon shook his head, assured him, “You don’t have to be there.”

“I should not leave your side.”

“This fortress is even stronger than mine. Nothing can happen at dinner. You will secure this chamber while I dine.”

“If the fortress is secure, what am I looking for?” Xan asked.

“Spies.”

“You think someone will spy?”

“I
know
they will if they can.” Devon turned and presented himself. “How do I look?”

Xan wore a remote expression between softness and pain. “You take my breath away.”

He made Devon blush.

The dining hall was set in a coarse sort of opulence.

Crossed spears with ermine tails were arranged heraldically over the high entry arch. Devon pointed up, “I have a spear just like those. It’s stuck in my litter.”

“I have a whole collection of savage weapons,” Kani said. “They’re quite beautiful in a brute sort of way. The wild men make an art of their barbarity. I’ll have to show my collection to you.”

Dinner was a sumptuous, vulgar affair. The diners reclined on couches, as civilized folk did. But here a buxom nymph sat at the foot of each couch. Devon, trying to converse with his governor, kept getting distracted. Three of the other diners were reclining on their backs, their couchmates sitting astride them, their hips rocking forward and back. Devon glanced, glanced again. What he was looking at was not frottage. The women were taking penetration. This had been going on for some moments now.

Sly looks passed among the three mounted men, challenging. Apparently it was a contest to see who could last the longest.

It was a very Raenthe sort of entertainment, but definitely not high class. You found this kind of dare at dockside taverns, yes. State dinners, no.

Devon had been critical of Kani from the moment of his arrival, so the Sovereign refrained from commenting now on what was not important.

Devon tried to get back to business, but he kept catching humping glimpses out of the corner of his eye. He heard now and then a heavy escaping gasp of slipping control.