Winter's End (24 page)

There was silence. Fulgur didn’t move. “You don’t ask whether I’m a former winner too?”

“No.”

Fulgur, obviously dying to talk about himself, was annoyed by this response. “Just as you like. One last thing: you have to take the name of a fighting man. I picked Fulgur because I’m as fast
as lightning. You want to find a name that suits you. I’ll get them to show you the list and you can choose one.”

“I don’t want to. I’ll keep my own.”

“Just as you like,” Fulgur repeated with pretended indifference. “Show me your leg.”

Milos put back the sheet and uncovered his thigh. The wound had closed up well and looked clean and almost dry already.

“Excellent,” Fulgur said approvingly. “I’ll take the stitches out in a few days’ time.” And then, before Milos had time to protect himself in any way, he raised his right arm and hit the thigh as hard as he could directly on the injury. Milos screamed and almost fainted.

“So now,” said the man in unctuous tones, “kindly ask me if I’m a former winner. You’d really like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“Are you a former winner?” Milos groaned.

Fulgur’s small blue eyes, staring into his own, were cold as a reptile’s.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m a former winner. I killed my three opponents. So I could be living it up in the capital, but I’d rather stay here. Ask me why I’d rather stay here, why don’t you?”

“Why would you rather stay here?”

“Well, seeing as you ask, I’ll tell you. I’d rather stay here because I like it. Training hard every day, seeing the fear men feel getting into the vans to go to their first fight, watching the winners,
hearing about what they did, watching the losers die and hearing about their deaths, the yellow sand in the arena, the red blood flowing into it, all that — I can’t do without it. It’s like a drug. You wouldn’t understand. I was like the rest of them at first, just wanted to save my skin. Kill my three men and get the hell out of this awful camp. But after my second victory, I started thinking what a great place it was — and liking what went on here too. It’s a matter of life or death. You don’t find that anywhere else except in war, but seeing as there’s no war on right now. . . . Well, any more questions?”

“No,” said Milos faintly, praying that Fulgur wouldn’t hit him again. The pain was spreading all the way to his stomach in waves of agony.

“Right. I’ll leave you, then. Thanks for this nice little chat.” He turned at the door. “Yup, I really like you, Milos Ferenzy. I just love talking to you.”

F
ive days after he had arrived, around midday, Milos felt well enough to leave his room, leaning on a pair of crutches. As he went down the corridor, he discovered that the room next to his was fitted out as a rudimentary operating room, with a table covered by a white sheet and globe-shaped medical lamp at the end of an articulated mechanical arm. Jars and bottles stood around in no particular order on dilapidated shelves. This was clearly “Dr.” Fulgur’s domain, the sinister scene of his experiments!

Milos shivered when he thought that he had been lying there, unconscious, at the mercy of a sadist like Fulgur. However, since his leg wasn’t hurting too badly now, he ventured outside. Fulgur had shaved his head the evening before, and the cold air froze his skull and temples.

The camp did indeed stand in a clearing in the forest. You could see the bare branches of tall oaks
on the other side of the wire fence. There was a watchtower at the entrance. The man in military uniform guarding it, gun in hand, gave Milos a nod. It was hard to tell whether he meant it as a threat or a welcome. Milos returned it, and laboriously made his way farther on.

After skirting the wooden huts that he thought must contain the dormitories, he came to the canteen hut. An unappetizing smell of cabbage wafted out of it. From here he could see that two more watchtowers guarded the back of the enclosure. Fulgur was right: this was no summer camp.

A square building with no windows occupied the center of the clearing on its own. It was made of tree trunks, like a trapper’s log cabin. Milos had to go all around it to find the way in: a low door, unlocked. He pushed it open with his left crutch, went in, took a few steps along a trodden-earth pathway, and came to a gate made of planks. Beyond it lay the arena, like a circus ring. It measured roughly sixty feet across and was entirely enclosed by a palisade the height of a man.

Four men in canvas pants, their chests and feet bare in spite of the cold, were fighting on the sand. A handful of spectators was watching from the gallery. They glanced at Milos, registered his presence, and then ignored him. The men in the arena were not equally matched. Three of them, armed with swords, were harassing the fourth, whose head was shaved and who was fighting them with his bare hands. The unfortunate man had to keep watch
on all sides at once, throw himself on the ground, roll over to avoid blows, get up again, and run. His adversaries pursued him relentlessly, surrounded him again, and threatened him with their swords. He didn’t stand a chance, but he faced them with an expression of fierce defiance as if he could still hope to win.

Even from a distance Milos noticed the blunt features of his young face, his flattened nose and bushy eyebrows, his sturdy limbs. He felt as if he had met the young man before, but where? The fight went on in startling silence. No cries, no calling out, no encouragement. There was nothing to be heard but the crunch of feet on the sand and the gasping breath of the man under attack. He managed to escape his pursuers several more times, losing none of his fury and showing no sign of fear. Then a moment came when he stumbled as he fled and fell to the ground. The next moment, the man closest to him leaped up and struck him on the shoulder. Then he immobilized him, one knee on his chest, the point of his sword to the man’s throat.

“That’ll do,” called a cavernous voice. “Let him go now.”

The fighters obeyed and retreated without a glance for the breathless young man, who was dripping with sweat and swearing under his breath as he held his bloodstained shoulder.

The man who had given the order rose to his feet. He was half a head taller than everyone around him. Thick black stubble covered his angular face.

“See that, all of you?” He was addressing the spectators. “He lost because he fell. If you fall, you’re dead. Never forget that. Ferox, Messor, take him to the infirmary; tell ’em to patch him up. The rest of you go and eat.”

They climbed down a small flight of steps at the side of the arena — it came down to the pathway just behind Milos — and left in silence. The colossus bringing up the rear stopped. His massive size was impressive.

“You the one who strangled Pastor?”

Milos saw in his eyes the same spark of admiration as Fulgur’s had shown a few days earlier.

“Yes,” he said soberly.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Good. My name’s Myricus and I’m your trainer. Welcome to the camp, laddie.”

With these words, he turned his back and walked away. His shoulders only just fit through the door.

Tired after his outing in the morning, Milos dozed through part of the afternoon, but around five o’clock he was woken by the creak of a bedstead being wheeled into the room. The man injured in the arena was lying there, on his back and covered by a sheet that was none too clean. The cut on his shoulder, although not very deep, had been stitched up. Fulgur hadn’t been able to resist his little weakness for playing with needles.

“Doing all right?” asked Milos.

“Yeah, I’m OK,” grunted the injured man.

There was nothing of him to be seen but his pale skull, with the hair roughly shaved. A scar traced a pink comma above his forehead. But when he turned a little to one side to spare his wounded shoulder, his face showed clearly, and Milos looked at him, his jaw dropping.

“Basil!” he cried. “I must be dreaming. It’s you!”

Astonishment and delight choked him. The other young man opened his eyes and broke into happy laughter. “Ferenzy! Ha, ha, ha! I don’t believe it!”

“Basil! I thought you were dead!”

“Dead? Why would I be dead? You’re crazy!”

“But I saw them take you out of the detention cell! And carry you away on a stretcher! Basil, you were covered with blood!”

“You bet! So I fooled you too! Ha, ha, ha! It’s easy to make yourself bleed, you know. Look at this: I got a thumbnail as hard as a bit of old iron. I nicked my scalp with it; blood flowed like someone had bashed my skull in. I wiped it all over me, my face, my neck, everything. Then I bashed my fists on the door, and when they came, I flung myself down and played dead. They thought I’d bashed my head in. Only way of getting out of that rat hole. I was getting bored, see? Only trouble is, instead of chucking me out of the school and sending me to another, same as usual, they locked me up in here. Which is worse.”

“But you haven’t done anything serious,” Milos
interrupted. “I thought they only put criminals in this camp.”

“Yeah, but they kind of explained it was . . . Oh, I dunno what now. . . . It was, like, for all I’d done, see?”

“For all you’d done?”

“That’s kind of what they said. Hey, you hit the jackpot first go, right? Did you really kill a dog-handler?”

“So it seems,” Milos admitted.

“Go on, tell me about it. I always like to hear how one of those Phalange guys got done in.”

“I’ll tell you about it, but first you tell me why they were fighting you three to one this morning. You didn’t have a chance.”

“It’s kind of a test thought up by that trainer, Myricus. We all take it in turn. He wants everyone wounded at least once. After that, he says, you’re — well, sort of baptized. Mainly it’s to show what’ll happen if you refuse to fight in the arena. If you just run to save yourself, after ten minutes they’ll send in another opponent, and five minutes later a third if you go on trying not to fight. So the more you chicken out, the less your chance of surviving. Get it?”

“I get it. And apart from that, what’s this Myricus like?”

“Myricus? Three times stronger than you and me put together. But he’s no fool either. Guesses everything you’re thinking. For instance, the other day he says to me, ‘Listen here, Rusticus —’”

“Is that what you’re called here, Rusticus?”

“Yeah, they gave me the name — I dunno why. Don’t even know what it means. Do you know, then?”

“No,” lied Milos, suppressing a wish to laugh.

“Well, he takes me to one side, says, ‘Listen here, Rusticus. You know why you’re not scared?’ I say no. And it’s true: I’m not scared. ‘You’re not scared because you believe you won’t really fight,’ he says. ‘You think something will happen, you don’t know what, but that’s what you think, and you think no one can make you fight, isn’t that so, Rusticus?’ I don’t know what to say because he was dead right, and I don’t want to admit it. So he explains how it’s the same when everyone comes here; they all reckon they’ll escape fighting. ‘But they’re wrong,’ he says, ‘and that’s the best way to lose a fight. No, you want to know for sure you’ll be fighting.’ Follow me?”

Milos followed him only too well. During the hours alone in this room, he had worked out his own secret conviction that he wasn’t going to fight. Discovering that he was thinking exactly like the others was extremely annoying.

“There’s some of ’em feel sure right up to the last moment they won’t go into the arena,” Rusticus went on, “and them, they’re dead already. Listen, Ferenzy, this is what I’ve learned since I’ve been here: first, it’s no use thinking you won’t fight; second, it’s no use chickening out when you do.”

“I see,” murmured Milos, although he couldn’t
bring himself to admit that this line of reasoning had also been his own. He wondered whether it was simply a question of time — after all, he’d only just arrived — or whether his own intrinsic nature would rebel to the very end against the terrible idea of entering the arena with intent to kill.

Basil had closed his eyes and seemed to be dropping off to sleep.

“Can I ask you one last question?” said Milos softly.

“Go ahead.”

“You talked to Myricus about the best way to survive, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“But did the two of you talk about how to live with yourself afterward? I mean, once you’ve killed a man. Or two men, or three?”

“Yes, he talked about that. He said . . . Oh, I can’t remember just what. . . . You mustn’t worry about that.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, meaning if your opponent dies, it’s because his time had come.”

“His destiny?”

“That’s it, his destiny. And if you think you’re here for some good reason, you’re fooling yourself. You’re just a tool, see? And then you have to . . . Oh, and he said if you ask too many questions like that, you’re finished.”

They remained silent for a while. Milos thought Basil had fallen asleep when his friend muttered,
in a thick voice, “Hey, I’m glad I found you here, Ferenzy. Really glad.”

Milos and Basil left the infirmary together the next day. They had made a kind of pact without needing to put it into words, and no doubt to compensate for their youth compared to the others: they would stay together and help each other through whatever trials they faced. They’d support each other to the last.