The messenger turns to face the barbarians.
‘Beroxar is still bound by his vow. On no account should he forget that. Traitors die quickly. Of course he is free to win back his place in the Inner Circle at the appropriate opportunity. As any of you’ – his sweeping gesture includes the entire Arena – ‘is free to fight for a place in the Inner Circle.’
The very next warrior takes this encouragement literally and challenges Wyrdana, the dark she-elf of the Inner Circle. She doesn’t so much defeat him as dispose of him. Her hail of fireballs, lightning bolts and well-aimed spear throws doesn’t last longer than it takes to blow your nose hard. It leaves the challenger lying in the sand; he departs the Arena a sad and sorry One.
Dark elves are no good? Yeah right. Show me someone who can beat that for a start. Sarius feels something like pride rising in him. No wonder Blood preferred to stick to one of the other muscle heads.
The next three fights are so unspectacular that Sarius’s thoughts wander. He briefly takes notice when a wish crystal is at stake for the first time. Neither LaCor, the vampire, nor Maimai the cat woman possesses one, but they both really want to. Goggle-Eyes conjures one up and offers it as a reward. The cat woman cleans up and LaCor loses a level. Who to? No-one. Just because.
‘Feniel!’
He hasn’t seen her so far in the mass of elves, but now she struts past him. Too bad the scorpions didn’t get her, with her idiotic snub-nosed doll face. Sarius watches how she positions herself in the centre of the Arena and hopes she makes a bad choice. Maybe Drizzel, or one of the others who’ll absolutely thrash the levels out of her.
‘Choose your opponent.’
A heartbeat before the answer comes, he knows what it will be. ‘I challenge Sarius.’
Straightaway the fear is back, and the image of Xohoo, dead, being dragged out of the Arena. He can’t see Feniel’s level, and she can’t see his either, or she wouldn’t be allowed to challenge him. So she’s a Three. That ought to be do-able.
The crowd’s impatient grumbling makes him realise that he’s still standing thunderstruck among the other dark elves. Go, go, go!
Feniel can’t know that he’s a Three. So how come she chose him? Because she managed to oust him so effortlessly in the fight with the scorpion? Probably.
He pushes his way through the other elves without looking to the right or left. He needs tactics to use against Feniel’s halberd. She’ll keep him at a distance with it, no doubt. Sarius can already see himself poking round uselessly in the air with his sword while his opponent thrusts the tip of her weapon between his ribs.
‘What will you fight for?’
Feniel doesn’t take long to think about it. ‘One level and twenty pieces of gold.’
Everyone has gold except him. But he does still have the grave robber’s bowls and plates that he hasn’t sold – that he’d forgotten about. How come it only occurs to him now, when the thought just gets in the way?
‘I don’t have any gold, and I’d rather fight for a wish crystal,’ he says, not very hopefully.
Close up, Goggle-Eyes’ ugliness is disturbing. His earthy brown skin shows cracks and rips as though paint has cracked off an old canvas. The feeling that the master of ceremonies doesn’t belong here grows to a certainty in Sarius’s mind.
‘A wish crystal is not one of the choices,’ the man declares. ‘You will fight for a level. That will have to suffice.’ He raises his muscular arm as a sign that they may begin.
The trick will be to get past Feniel’s lance. Sarius dances back and forth. Mustn’t be too slow. Mustn’t be an easy target. Unfortunately all his hopping around doesn’t make Feniel even the slightest bit nervous. She looks as if she has all the time in the world, stands calmly holding the halberd in both hands with the tip pointed – naturally – at him. Sarius tries a lunge, just feigning, and leaps back out of range again immediately. Nothing happens, the tip of the halberd merely twitches briefly in his direction once, and that’s it. It’s only at the moment when he lowers his sword a little – more at a loss than exhausted – that Feniel explodes. Two leaps and she’s beside him, the tip of her weapon pointed directly at his chest. He yanks his shield up, but it’s too late. She wounds him, and the screeching tone starts. He knocks her halberd aside with his sword.
Chalk on a blackboard, a fork on china. A saw right on the auditory nerve. This time the tone arouses only rage in Sarius. Without a thought for his own defence, he strikes at the halberd once again with his sword, hard, as hard as he can. He lets his shield drop and grabs the long handle, pushes it away.
‘Sarius! – Sarius! – Sarius!’
Are they cheering for him? It’s more a whisper than a shout, from many ghostly voices. Are they hypnotising him?
He steps on his discarded shield and almost stumbles, but he’s not going to let go of Feniel’s weapon, not for anything. Her body is unprotected. He’d be an idiot to hesitate now. Then she’ll land a blow, the tone will pierce his hearing like glass . . .
He thrusts his weapon into Feniel’s chest, pulls it out, thrusts it into her belly. Blood is streaming from both wounds, her hands slip from the halberd; Feniel topples over. Sarius pursues her. Her belt is almost bereft of colour. One more blow, one thrust and . . .
‘Sarius is the victor.’
The voice tears him out of his fighting frenzy. Feniel is no longer moving, not at all. He lowers his sword, and at that moment the injury tone falls silent and music swells up. Magnificent music, like in the movies when the hero has won the decisive battle. That’s how it was with BloodWork too, but Sarius couldn’t hear his victory music. Why? Because only the victor can hear it, Sarius realises, because it’s part of the victor’s reward. Like the Four that will be on my armour now, and the Two that suddenly appears on Feniel’s leather vest.
His opponent is carried off – not dragged off by the legs like Xohoo, but carefully, and quickly. So it’s very likely that she’s alive and that she has an in-depth discussion with the messenger to look forward to.
Whereas he is a Four. A victorious, unscathed Four. Sarius returns to the dark elves’ corner. He looks around – now he can clearly recognise the Threes, and there are loads of them. The female werewolf, for example, whom the master of ceremonies is calling up.
‘Galaris!’
Hold on. Galaris – Sarius knows the name. The wooden box. Totteridge. The Dollis Brook Viaduct. Was it Galaris who hid the sinister box under the yew?
He can’t ask her; right now she’s busy choosing an opponent. Moreover Sarius has a hunch that his curiosity wouldn’t be taken kindly by the messenger and his gnomes. Galaris, whose dark brown hair shimmers in the sunlight like melted chocolate, decides on a female barbarian called Rahall-LA. Courageous. Or dumb. In the end it’s worth it, because she’s fighting with a bow and arrow and Rahall-LA – also a Three – doesn’t even get close to her.
After that a few of the higher ups fight against each other; the fights last a long time, and are conducted with enormous ferocity. Sarius attempts to remember the names and determine the adversaries’ weaknesses, but he soon gives up. Interest is waning all round. A few of those who already have an Arena victory withdraw. Sarius follows them inside after he’s witnessed the fight between Drizzel and Keskorian, in which the barbarian loses three levels. Drizzel is totally devious, Sarius recalls.
He finds Lelant and Arwen’s Child in the dark elves’ lounge. ‘ . . . was an idiot to have another go after he’d already lost,’ Lelant says.
‘I liked Xohoo,’ Arwen’s Child declares after a brief pause. ‘It’s sad that he’s dead. I think he deserved another chance.’
Sarius feels the same way. Xohoo of all people – he at least was nice. Why couldn’t it have been Lelant who copped it, that coward with his big mouth?
‘Aren’t you fighting at all?’ Sarius asks him.
‘Is that any of your business?’ Lelant snarls.
‘He never fights in the duels; he waits for the big battl
e at the end instead. It’s not as risky and you can win more rewards,’ Arwen’s Child answers for him.
‘Hey, do you always have to tell everyone everything?’ Lelant complains.
He’s still carrying the same weapons as in the labyrinth, no recent acquisitions as far as Sarius can tell. Does he still have the wish crystal? Would Sarius be allowed to jump him and search his inventory? Probably not.
‘Battle at the end?’ he asks instead, and pointedly turns his back on Lelant.
‘Man, you really have no idea,’ the latter snipes, before Arwen’s Child answers.
‘Yes, at the end of each tournament there’s a big battle, a round robin. It’s very dangerous, because then the higher levels can thrash you as well. But you can win their most valuable possessions from them.’
‘Wish crystals?’ Sarius asks with a sideways glance at Lelant.
‘I suppose, if someone is lugging one around. That’s not very likely though.’
If he’s honest a big battle wouldn’t actually suit him right now. He’s only just won a level; it could be gone again all too soon. On the other hand, what’s to say there aren’t two or three more in the offing, right here and now?
‘Wicked how Xohoo bit the dust,’ Lelant changes the subject.
The idiot just doesn’t give up. Just wait, Colin.
‘He was a stupid blabbermouth. Always bragging. He’d never have made the final cut; he might as well have given the whole thing a miss. He was a wimp – just like you, Sarius. I reckon I’ll finish you off as soon as the battle begins. May as well say bye to Arwen.’
‘My name is Arwen’s Child, you idiot.’
‘Like anyone cares.’
It’s as if everyone’s waiting for the signal so they can start a race in different directions, and in a way that’s true. Big Goggle-Eyes has positioned himself at the edge of the Arena and is holding up his staff. Sarius lets his gaze skim over the throng for the umpteenth time. There’s a Two not far away, a vampire; he would be easy game, but LordNick is lurking close by, and Sarius needs to avoid him. The master of ceremonies explains it exactly: Someone who’s already fighting cannot be attacked by anyone else.
That means quickly finding a worthwhile victim, an easy victim, before some Nine gets the idea that Sarius could be a good target.
The vampire Two is ideal, and very close. Goggle-Eyes lowers his staff and Sarius starts running, but straightaway Lelant enters his field of vision from the right. He has lowered the visor on his shimmering green helmet, and resembles a steel frog on two legs. The tip of Lelant’s sword is pointed at Sarius, but his aim is poor because he’s running. The blow doesn’t hit home; it only scrapes Sarius’s arm. The hit doesn’t trigger anything more than quiet creaking, like a badly oiled garden gate. But it makes anger rise up in Sarius like a hot red sun.
If that’s what Lelant wants, then that’s what he’ll get: Sarius’s shield bashing against his ribs like a battering ram, not to mention Sarius’s sword, striking first his helmet and then his armour. The main thing is to make sure he has no time to recover his balance.
This time Sarius doesn’t need any uplifting music in order to feel like a victorious general. It’s enough to see how Lelant retreats, parries clumsily, stumbles, loses his shield. How he falls and lies there, holding his sword up as if it were a bee sting and Lelant was hoping Sarius would step on it.
After two hefty blows the sword is gone as well. Sarius sees the blood on Lelant’s shoulder and chest with satisfaction. His injuries should suffice for a very nasty tone.
He puts his sword up to Lelant’s neck, right on the edge of the armour, and resists the temptation simply to plunge it in. But what now? They can’t talk here.
Once again a gnome provides the solution. A broad grin spreads over his bluish face. ‘Look at that, Sarius actually won,’ he squawks, and opens Lelant’s inventory.
‘Free choice to the victor.’
Of course the first thing Sarius looks for is his wish crystal. But it’s not there any more, naturally. Who knows what Lelant used it for.
Who knows what it’s for at all.
But still, Lelant has 130 pieces of gold stashed away. Magnificent. Sarius starts helping himself and is promptly restrained by the gnome.
‘Not more than half.’
That’s fine. Sixty-five pieces of gold are a decent sum. In addition Sarius finds a pair of emerald-encrusted boots, a dagger, and a bottle of healing potion. He takes all that for himself and the gnome doesn’t protest. He only pipes up again after Sarius has stowed his acquisitions safely away.
‘Rather greedy, the young master. It goes without saying that he may not help himself freely to levels. He can have two, if he leaves the defeated fighter his armour.’
Naturally Sarius would rather take the levels than Lelant’s armour and weapons. To his enormous satisfaction the Roman numeral Five appears on the armour of the defeated fighter.
So he was a Seven and I was easy prey for him as a Four. Or maybe not. Tough luck, Lelant, you idiot. But now he’s shown Lelant – the idiot – what’s what.
He watches him as he slowly gets to his feet and hobbles off, as a few other defeated fighters are leaving the Arena. As a Six Sarius can finally see the bigger picture; now he can recognise the level of about a third of those present. Unfortunately there aren’t many familiar faces among them. Blackspell, LordNick, Keskorian and Arwen’s Child are still superior to him, or at least Sixes like him. That’s a pity. But Sapujapu turns out to be a Five, as does Nurax. Both of them are still caught up in their own fights. At the other end of the Arena Sarius spots Drizzel, who’s trying to drag BloodWork from the platform of the Inner Circle.
‘Are you ready for another fight?’ the blue-skinned gnome inquires.
Is he? He’s not sure. It would be very tempting to win another few levels, but he doesn’t want to push his luck. Starting the day as a Three and finishing it as a Six isn’t bad going.
‘No. That’s enough for today.’
‘Then leave the Arena.’
He does. He goes out the same gate he entered through, casts a glance into the dark elves’ room – there’s no-one in there, no-one at all – and marches towards the exit. When was the last time he felt so good? He doesn’t know. Must be a while ago, a year perhaps, or two. With his pockets full of money, he walks boldly out onto the street. Time to see what else the White City has to offer.
CHAPTER 12
It was dark outside the window. The evening news was droning on in the living room. Nick massaged his aching temples.
Sarius had traded all his remaining treasures for gold, including Lelant’s dagger, which had brought a surprisingly large amount. After that he’d gone to The Final Cut, where Atropos had unceremoniously thrown him out again. He didn’t know why, and she wasn’t prepared to explain. Night had slowly fallen over the White City; torches and braziers had been lit all around. Night was a promising time in the world of Erebos. Night was the messenger’s time. But he hadn’t put in an appearance anywhere. Nick’s eyes were burning as though he’d been swimming in chlorinated water for hours. They were probably as red as the rubies on Lelant’s dagger.
A break seemed like a good idea. Food seemed like a good idea. He would make a quick trip to the kitchen. No doubt Mum was already cooking something. He stared at the screen, at the streets of the city, his elfin self. But he couldn’t tear himself away. Something told him that any minute something was going to happen. An orc attack, orders from the messenger, a quest, a puzzle. Something he would miss if he disconnected.
Maybe an hour? An hour to eat, exchange a few friendly words with Mum and Dad and . . . go to the toilet. Only now did he notice how urgently he needed to go, and how much he’d twisted himself round on his chair to ease the pressure of his bladder.
Come on, move it. But first he had to exit the program. Nick ran the cursor over the screen. Where did he save the game and exit? He realised he’d never done that before. The game had chucked hi
m out or made him take a break; he’d never left it voluntarily before. It probably wasn’t even provided for.
Nick weighed up his options. He could power down the computer, but that was risky. If the messenger didn’t like it, he might take his hard-won levels back from him. Or he’d think of something even worse.
Another possibility was leaving the computer running and turning off the screen. Then Sarius would be standing on the street as if he was rooted to the spot and any One who happened along could relieve him of his possessions. That wasn’t a great idea either.
Nick’s bladder felt as if it was about to burst. He had to go to the toilet, there was nothing for it. First he needed to get Sarius to safety quickly. But where to go?
The idea came out of the blue – he’d rented a room, hadn’t he? He made his elf run through the night-time streets of the White City as if big Goggle-Eyes was after him. Was this the right way? He remembered some narrow stairs, next to a bakery – he had to go along there and the next right. But where were the blasted steps?
He made Sarius run and run and run. The blue bar on the stamina meter got shorter and shorter – despite the fact that he was a Six. If he didn’t find his way soon, he would leave Sarius somewhere and go have a pee. But not here, on this dark corner, where dubious characters were hanging around.
Bakery. Steps. Finally. He rushed Sarius over the threshold of the inn, up the creaky steps to his little room. Closed the door. Turned the screen off. And now quickly, pleeease, quickly . . .
Nick leapt up, ran out of the room as if wild dogs were chasing him and sprinted to the toilet. Just made it.
‘Nick?’ his father yelled from the living room. ‘If you slam doors like that again, you’ll get what for!’
There was vegetarian lasagne with tofu instead of meat, but Nick didn’t complain. He could hardly taste what he was eating. His parents were discussing the film they’d seen at the cinema, and were satisfied with the occasional ‘Mmm’ or ‘Oh’ he put in. They did wonder at the quantity of food Nick shovelled into himself, though. He was pretty astonished himself, until he realised he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.