"Is this for real or is it a game?" Silvie asked.
"This, or that?" Johnis indicated the crowd"s roar from beyond the walls.
"That," Silvie said.
"Killing for mere sport seems a bit barbaric, but this is the Histories."
"Then this costume is ridiculous. Are we doing this to blend in or to fight? Because it won"t help our fighting."
"I have no intention of fighting," Johnis said, pulling on a metal helmet. "Hurry."
Silvie threw on a cape like his, then a large metal helmet that covered her head like a gong. If they did get into a fight, the first order of business would be to ditch it.
"Good," Johnis said, looking her over. "It"ll slow them down."
"And us," she said.
"Just till we get out of here."
He led her quickly through the armory. Leather and metal fighting dress. Knives and mallets and swords. Enough armor and weaponry to outfit a whole division.
Silvie s.n.a.t.c.hed up a sword and spun it in her hand. A long steel blade with a handle formed from wood. Not the best craftsmanship, and the blade was duller than she liked, but the balance was decent. For the first time since entering the fireball called Las Vegas, she felt a measure of confidence.
Johnis grabbed a sword and rushed forward without bothering to scrutinize it. Silvie had spent some time showing him the finer points of swordplay, and he was improving rapidly, but the l.u.s.t for battle wasn"t what made Johnis great.
He tried a side door, found it open, and ducked in. Silvie followed him into what turned out to be a small white room with half a dozen stall doors and a row of white stone basins. Mirrored gla.s.s hung on one wall, reflecting them in their red capes and helmets.
"A bathroom." Johnis"s voice echoed.
"Clearly."
They stood undecided for a few breaths. The guards would now be coming through the armory. They were running out of time. Only one reasonable option.
"Hide!"
Silvie was halfway to the row of stalls when the main door pushed open. A man dressed in black slacks and a black shirt with a face that looked too long for the tuft of hair perched on its crown snapped at Johnis. "Enough heaving, man, it"s getting started."
Then he saw Silvie, who stood facing them both. A grin twisted his white cheeks. "Oh, I get it. Save it for later, man."
"She comes too," Johnis said.
"You wish. Let"s go,"
They could either play along with this dimwit or take him out and face the guard. Clearly they should do the former.
"Wait here," Johnis said to her. "I"ll be right back."
"What? What are you talking about?"
He stepped closer and spoke in a hurried hush. "They"re coming! We can"t risk a disturbance. We have to blend. Hide in the stalls; I"ll break away as soon as I can."
"Johnis!" The thought of separating from him filled her with a bone-jarring dread. "I can"t!"
"You have to!"
He spun back to the man who was plastered with a knowing grin. "Okay, let"s go."
She watched him walk out. The man with the long face winked. Watched the door swing shut with a whoosh. And all the while she could not move.
Johnis had left her.
The sound of running boots reached her from somewhere in the armory. He was right; if we"d tried to make a run for it, we would have run into the guard.
The sound of the cheering crowd swelled. Johnis doesn"t know what he"s getting himself into!
Rushing water swirled in the stall on the bathroom"s far side.
I"m not alone.
he moment Johnis stepped into the doorway, he realized that he"d walked into a trap.
They walked onto a field similar in some ways to the stadium in Middle where they"d played with the Horde ball. Where challenges were made and fought. Bright lights lit an arena fifty yards in width. At the center rose a platform and a gallows. A circle of twenty warriors stood at attention around the platform.
The stands were filled with thousands of onlookers who"d gathered for the fight. An earsplitting roar swelled as the door behind Johnis closed. "Fight, fight, fight, fight! Kill, kill, kill, kill!" The chant rose to a crescendo.
He instinctively backed into the door, tried the handle, and found it locked. The walls that surrounded the arena rose ten feet before meeting rings of benches that ran the arenas circ.u.mference. No doors, no halls, no ladders.
This wasn"t good. He"d left Silvie, knowing that the guards were looking for two people who didn"t belong. Making a fuss in the bathroom would have only attracted attention. The guard had rushed past the bathroom just behind him. So his play had bought them a breath or two.
But none of this calmed his heart.
"It"s a good day to die," the man said. He stepped behind a tall gate, locked it, and walked into a booth with bars.
When Johnis looked back at the platform, the warriors were spreading out in two lines. A quick glance around told him three things that were now as unbendable as the ground itself: One, the crowd was here to see someone fight. And perhaps be killed. Two, that person was him, unless his logic was failing him totally, which could be the case. He"d felt inordinately stupid since his arrival in the Historiesa"fast on his feet and full of pa.s.sion but slow in his mind and as jittery as a trembling mouse crossing a table in broad daylight. Three, the crowd would see him fight and perhaps be killed because there was no avenue for escape that he could see.
A fighter dressed in black from head to foot, wearing a tight-fitting black hood, stood tall on the platform and clapped his hands three times. The crowd fell silent.
The executioner"s voice rang out: "Prisoner, you have been found guilty of fleeing justice and giving aid to the enemy. As is mandated by law, you have been sentenced to death. As is also permitted by law, you may either be hanged by the neck at the gallows until dead, or you may fight to prove your innocence in mortal combat with twenty of the king"s guards. Which do you choose?"
Neither, he tried to scream, but his throat remained closed.
"Has the cat nipped your tongue, prisoner?"
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
Johnis stepped forward, weighing his options, which were few, perhaps even nonexistent, in this death chamber. He could try to confound them and buy some time, but doing so would only give the guard more time to find him.
Or he could fight.
His limbs felt numb. This was it, then. He"d crossed the worlds to face his death in a chamber of bloodthirsty, scabless Hordea"
Unless a "I choose to speak to the king!" he called out.
"That is not an option."
The warriors he was to fight now stood in rows of ten on each side. The executioner motioned them forward, and they began to advance.
"Then you will have his wrath!" Johnis circled to his right. "I am his cousin, and to kill royalty is death."
His announcement stopped them cold. But not out of fear. Confusion at his audacity, more likely.
He picked up his pace, closer to the soldiers on his right and farther from those on his left. Better to take them head-on, a few at a time, than broadside, where the whole ma.s.s can club you to death, Silvie had learned the tactic as a child, and had also taught him.
"There"s been a mistake! I am not sentenced to death. I was kidnapped on my way to the lake a by the Horde a who then forced the Chevy that was carrying the prisoner off the road and put me in his place!"
His voice echoed to silence.
"Is that so?"
"That is so! Send for the king; he"ll tell you."
Johnis wasn"t about to think his nonsensical little tale would earn him any more than a few seconds if the executioner had any wits, but he needed every advantage he could get. His mind spun, considering the odds of his survival in sword fight with twenty warriors.
None.
So what was he to do, kill as many as he could and then take a sword? He hadn"t come to the Histories to die in an arena, mistaken for whoever they thought he was!
"You care to entertain us with your stories, is that it?" The executioner demanded, unable to hide the humor in his voice. He spread his arms to the crowd. "What is your verdict? Fight or flight?"
"Fight, fight, fight, fight! Kill, kill, kill, kill!" They"d done this before, in perfect unison. The Horde from the Histories didn"t drown their prisoners as the Scabs in his world did.
They forced them into a death match for sport or hung them from the neck until dead.
Johnis tossed his sword far to one side. The crowd stilled to the snap of a twig as the blade arced gracefully through the air and landed in the dust with a dull slap.
"Then let me take any one man, give him a sword, and let me fight him bare-handed," Johnis cried. "If I win, let me go free. Or is that too much for the Horde from the Histories?"
A lone spectator yelled raw from the top of the arena. "Fight the b.u.g.g.e.r!"
"An entertainer for sure," the executioner said. "Well? Do we have a taker?"
From the far end a single warrior, twice Johnis"s size in both thickness and height, stepped from the line and walked out into the open.
He ripped off his helmet with a thick, gnarled hand and dropped it into the dust. "I accept."
SILVIE CONSIDERED TEARING FROM THE BATHROOM THE moment she realized that someone else was in the stalla"the party Johnis had been mistaken for.
But now she was alone, and the guard would be intensifying their search. It would be better for her to hide in one of the stalls until Johnis returned, a.s.suming he would. The thought sent a chill down her back.
Silvie stood frozen in a moment of indecision, staring at her mirror imagea"a red-caped warrior with a ridiculous helmet that was suffocating her. She could hardly see in the thing! So she ripped it off.
Move, Silvie!
She"d taken two steps toward the nearest toilet when the far stall door flew open and a warrior dressed in a red cape stepped out, cleared his throat, and spit to one side. She knew by the widening of his eyes that he hadn"t expected to see her standing here looking at him.
"Wrong bathroom," he said.
What was she to say?
"Ladies across the hall."
Sorry.
His look of shock gave way to a thin grin that snaked over a scarred face. His head was shaven clean, but the helmet he held in his right hand was identical to hers. And he, like she, wore a red cape. He was comparable to Johnis only in his smaller sizea"she could see how they might be confused for one anothera"wearing helmets hides their features.
"I didn"t know they were going to execute a la.s.s today."
"They"re not," she snapped.
"No, you just dressed up like a prisoner for the thrill of it, eh?" Now he was wearing a wicked, yellow-toothed smile that tempted her to slap him hard. Instead, she opted for keeping calm. There were still boots thudding past outside.
Another thought dawned. They"d taken Johnis, thinking he was a prisoner to be executed!
"It"s all a mistake." She fought to keep her nerves under control. The man"s eyes dropped to her trembling hands. Why couldn"t she control herself in this place cursed by Elyon?
"Yes, of course." The man angled for the door, eyes steady on her. He smelled like too much drink mixed with a night of vomiting.
"You"re a fighter. I can see it in your lovely little eyes, sweetheart. Gonna take half of them down with you, aren"t you? This ain"t the Dark Ages, you know: 2020 when they just played around. It"s brutal out there. Why don"t you let me have some fun before they kill us both?"
"Why don"t you take your skinny backside out of here before I put my boot up it?" she retorted. But did she really want to leave an unconscious man on the floor for the guard to find? It would only bring more of them.
The man"s grin only widened. "Pa.s.sion before death and all that. It"s all part of the deal, isn"t it?"
Silvie suddenly realized that he wasn"t intending to head out the door but was circling around to cut off her escape. She needed to distract him.
"Do they execute all prisoners here?"
"Only the ones with the red capes. Unless you manage to kill them all. You see, we have nothing to lose." His emphasis on the word kill clearly revealed his doubt that it was possible.
Johnis was in terrible trouble a A wave of heat spread down her neck. She nearly swatted the bald fool aside and bolted for the door then. But she had no reasonable course that would land her anywhere except in the gallows herself, in no shape to help Johnis.
"Come on, sweetie, what do you say: a kiss before the old death match?"
The door behind the skunk swung wide and filled with a guard. Silvie"s line of sight was mostly blocked by the other prisoner, but she could see over his shoulder enough to know that this guard wasn"t the same one who"d confronted her at the front doors.
She moved closer. "Now you"re talking my language," she said. Then in a whisper, "Don"t let him stop us! Kiss me a"
The rank-smelling man stepped up and snaked his thin arms around her. His lips smothered hers in a thick, wet kiss.