8 -- Raikas's First Fight

I decided I wanted to see his first fight anyway and was in the colonnade with the oddsmen, the scribblers from The Watcher of the Ring, and other gladiators and hangers-on. The low-chainers with their thin wreaths of gold gleaming sparse around their necks, showing their teeth at each other like a pack of barely restrained dogs. The high-chainers were quieter, lone wolves staying out of the dominance scrum, only snarling quietly when the dogs showed too much fang too close.

The scribblers had ink-stains on fingers and robe cuffs and katzeriks hanging from their lips, spiraling smoke into the air and around their heads. Their fingers were yellowish from smoking and their teeth when they smiled. I caught a whiff of that fragrant smoke coiling down the covered colonnade.

That reminded me that I hadn’t had one since breakfast. I snapped my fingers at a Mahid and he pulled out my enameled katzerik case, tapping one out for me to take. Another struck a match and held it to the end as I puffed it alight. It was harsh and soothing at the same time, the quiver building up in me settling down. My father’s Haian disapproved but my father, who didn’t indulge, just laughed and said becoming Imperator would stop me.

The training ground was open to the sky, the sand just as white and just as carefully raked. Around the three other walls gladiators of old were carved and painted onto the plaster, fifty chainers of the past in procession. There had been no room for any new portraits for generations but the ancient pit-killers were carefully maintained and re-painted as an inspiration to the new slaves brought in. Fifty chains could be won. Freedom could be earned with fifty deaths other than your own.

Tobeas, of course, claimed that any death would be freedom but then he was concerned more over souls than bodies… and very few of the gladiators were actually Arkans any more. Any Arkans were usually misguided youths or down on their luck solas younger sons who couldn’t be dissuaded by distraught fathers.

Raikas was second fight and the servants had just carried the body from the first down to the morgue through a door cleverly hidden in the painted walls, others raking and sweeping the sand smooth behind. Oddsman passed betting chains back and forth, scratching their odds on slates. One or two of the scribblers decided they had the fighter they wished to follow, at least until he got killed, and packed up their blade-narrow notebooks and pens.

Raikas was brought out by his boy while his opponent, some fellow from Brahvniki came in from the other side, that closest to me. Raikas looked very young compared to his opponent who had a hefty scar across the bridge of his nose, his arms and shoulders laced with other fine scores and marks, all well healed but showing pale against tanned skin.

The Brahvnikian was taller than Raikas but had arms and legs shorter than was proportional and that spoke well for his skill as a warrior, dealing with that kind of reach. He radiated confidence while Raikas… I looked at him and he seemed, somehow, to not be present.

He wore undyed cotton, kilt and shirt. He had metal wrist cuffs that I overheard some writer say were Yeoli warrior symbols and was barefoot. His eye floated over the lot of us as though we weren’t there. He had a shoulder harness, the plain, circle-pommeled hilt of his Yeoli sword, his kraiya, rising to one side of his head.

The scribblers had wondered why I had shown up and my ‘adoption’ of a new fighter obviously made the Pages of the Lips while the first fight played itself out, all but unwatched. On the training ground there were no fighter’s gates, no thunderous clang as the fighters are released on each other, only the boys sending their fighters each to an opposite corner and getting out like stink.

The Brahvnikian stood in front of me, close enough for me to smell musky sweat, quivering like a high-bred racing hound sighting prey. Raikas stood on the corner opposite, creamy cotton, pale skin, dark hair, the sunlight cut diagonally across him the beginning shadow that would move across the ground later in the day. His face was solemn, distant as the moon, the Goddess's Eye.

“FIGHT!” The trainer’s voice cracked and both fighters moved before the final sound left his lip.

Raikas came out more warily than the Brahvnikian, making some flap their lips at him for too much caution. He was almost hesitant and the fighters met on the far side of the ground as the Brahvnikian took the fight to Raikas. The bigger man's style was a power style, very straight line, very strong. Raikas blocked once, spun out of the way as light on his feet as a crane flitting away from the claw slash of a heavy cat.

That curved Yeoli sword tapped the heavier sword like a bell, deflecting, never taking a straight strike. Then a low slash from the bigger man raised a bloom of red on Raikas’s left leg, luckily as he moved back or it could have been much worse, cut the tendon inside the knee perhaps. I caught my breath. NO! No no no! You can’t die on me now.
I’m wrong? I thought. No. I’m not, I’m not. You are better than this, Raikas! I was dizzy with holding my breath, my guts twisted into a solid knot of fear. I had never felt such fear for anyone that I could remember. I cared. I truly cared and I was terrified I was about to lose it and lose him.

The injured left leg had come up, just the toe on the sand, Raikas standing still on the right, the Brahvnikian and half the gallery were convinced the fight was finished and they were right.

But Raikas’s face had changed and he was there suddenly and a feeling, an emotion rose like heat on the sand. As the Brahvnikian lunged to kill him absolutely certain the Yeoli would be locked in place by the injury Raikas turned on the supporting leg. The straight sword aiming for his heart skimmed past his chest, tearing his shirt as he struck back. His kraiya, left a pulsing fountain in its wake splattering the Brahvnikian’s blood in an arc splashing across ancient painted faces where the sweeping stroke opened his neck.

The body dropped limp as dirty hair.  Raikas stepped away from the falling corpse, injured leg obviously still able to bear his weight. He ended up facing away from the dead man, his boy at his side almost as fast. He wiped the kraiya with the rag he was handed and sheathed it, threw his arm over his boy’s shoulder, all without looking at anyone in the gallery. He said nothing, no one could see his face.

“Hey!” Koree’s shout stopped them on the sand. “Skorsas! His chain.” Since he was injured the boy brought him over to accept the chain. “You accept the chain from the Director in the ring, Yeoli,” he said and placed it over Raikas’s head where it fell against his crystal. My friend nodded and limped to the door leading to the hall and the infirmary, behind Iskanzas’s desk.

There was a rustle and it appeared that other people were resuming breathing as I was. I dropped the katzerik on the flags before it could burn my fingers, let a Mahid grind it out with his boot.

I walked down the gallery out into the hall and sat down in one of the chairs of honor by the front desk. I wanted to take my gladiator friend out to congratulate him on surviving his first fight. I wanted to speak to him. I wanted to find out why he seemed so sad when he should be happy. I’d wait until he was stitched and cleaned up and I’d take him out to dinner, get him some clothes, some of the gifts he’d need. I could be patient for that. The famous glass doors swung open again and the third FIGHT shout cracked out before being cut off by its closing.

I took a deep breath and waited until my Mahid had re-arranged themselves to protect me, then got up and walked past Iska’s desk, pushing the door into the infirmary open. I ignored the unassigned boys who were already setting things up for Iska to start stitching when he got there. Raikas already lay on one of the tables, arm flung over his face, Skorsas applying pressure to the cut on his leg.

He shifted the arm over his eyes only slightly, to drop the hand on that side down to catch his forelock.

One of the other boys spoke up. “Maybe we should give him a needle for pain.”

“Not gonna help,” Skorsas replied quietly.

I mostly ignored them. He’d won. He only had forty-nine fights left and he’d be free. I’d seen other fighters with a wound that wasn’t just a scratch but not life or limb threatening acting much happier having won their matches.

“Raikas? What’s wrong? Other than the wound?” I turned to the boys and spoke in Arkan. “Is he in pain? Do something to help him!” And then back to him. “Raikas, you won! You’re all right.”

He let go his forelock and stared at me, his look bleak. “I just killed a man, just took his life for no good reason, for Arkan’s enjoyment and you’re asking me what’s wrong?”

His boy didn’t understand what he’d just said, but tried to get him to lie quiet. I caught the edge of the usual glance I got from people as they tried to guess how I would react. “Sh, Raikas, its all right, stay quiet, Iska is coming to stitch you up.”

Another boy said quietly “Maybe we should give him something to numb his head.” For a second I wasn’t sure if he were talking about Raikas… or me. I felt so stupid. Raikas had objected, tried to not fight in the arena.

“Oh,” is all I said to him, ignoring what the boys were saying. “I was reading something about Yeolis last night… someone named Yeola was quoted… should I say what it was?”

He said something muffled behind his hands in Yeoli, while his boy continued to sooth him. So I continued. It had puzzled me but it seemed like he should hear it. I wasn’t sure he’d hear it from an Arkan. “Yeola is your country’s… ah, not father… mother right? She said “Responsibility is in the mind driving the actions of the kraiya - that’s like your sword right? – Not the hand on the blade.”

His voice sounded cracked and broken as he answered me, still behind the fence of his hands. “Yes, she was the mother of my country and yes, she said that.” He was weeping openly now. I’d been trying to help, not make him cry. He wasn’t that weak. He couldn’t be. He couldn’t be.

“Oh, I thought the word was like our solas caste… but… I thought its my father’s mind driving this… not your hand so its his responsibility isn’t it?”

He shook all over, almost enough to buck Skorsas off his injured leg and shouted something in his own tongue that I didn’t understand.

“Raikas, what can I do to help?” I was struggling not to get angry. I wasn’t used to feeling helpless.

Raikas caught his breath. “Unless you can give me wings, nothing.” His boy whispered something in his ear in Arkan that I probably understood more than he did even though I only caught a couple of the words. Be careful what you say to him. Or something like that. Iskanzas came in and took up the curved needle and Haian skin thread and without paying any attention to me began sewing up Raikas’s leg.

I thought I knew what might be making things worse so I argued with it. “This isn’t your responsibility. You’re a Yeoli solas with your duty to your country and your people, right? Your family needs you to live through this.”

He made a sound like I had slugged him in the wound. I didn’t want to make it worse, I wanted to make it better. “I’m sorry Raikas, you’re doing this for your oaths and your people who need you, right?”

“Ye..ye… yes. I wouldn’t do it for anything less.”

“So you need to breathe and take your boy’s comfort, for your people and for your family.”

Iska finished and Skorsas had washed his bloody hands and begun wrapping the soft lint bandage around the thigh. Raikas began weeping harder. I couldn’t help him. It made me angry. I could see the anger in the boy’s eyes even as he modestly lowered them. Modestly or prudently. I could choose not to take offence, and didn’t care to.

The boy offered him some medicine and said quietly “You’re done, Jewel of the Mezem. You’re stitched up. You can only soak in the tub if we figure out some way to elevate that leg.”

The other boy said “There’s no use mentioning it if we can’t; it’ll just torture him.”

“You’re right,” Raikas’s boy said.

I asked him, “There’s no invalid slings in the Mezem baths?” This was the first I’d heard that they were perhaps deficient. I knew slings and so forth from my father’s baths, though he was no invalid.

“No, Spark of the Sun’s Ray.”

I shrugged that off as I translated the “You’re done… “ part and didn’t mention the baths. I was angry and upset enough that I thought I should go and leave them alone to look after my favorite person.

They were helping him to sitting as I turned away. I didn’t want to take my frustration out on him or them because they were looking after him. I waved a hand.

“He’s a valuable man, I’ll let you look after him.” To Raikas. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He looked up at me, his brown eyes full of a pain I had never thought to see, but waved an acknowledging hand as I left.

--

This scene from Chevenga’s (Karas Raikas’s) point of view.