But there’s no time to think. Another one is coming.
Move! Strike the nose!
Go, go, go!
A lightning-fast glance backwards shows me Zaap fist-slamming another sha right in front of Kokayi, saving the Entertainer from its jaws in the nick of time. At the same time Zaap has Chihar by the shirt and is pulling him with the help of a net wrapped around his lower body. Chihar appears unconscious.
A few seconds later we reach the land ring. We drag ourselves on the shore, choking with water and panic, and then take stock of our situation.
If it wasn’t for Zaap’s remarkable quick actions and advice, we would likely all be dead now.
As it stands, things are bad enough. Tuar is badly injured, bleeding profusely, and his upper body and uniform are in shreds. Brie is hurt also, though not so badly, with deep gashes around one arm and elbow. The rest of us appear whole, except for a few bruises and scratches from our own nets.
“Are you okay? Is he—are you—” Lolu mutters to everyone and no one in particular as she crawls along the floor toward Tuar.
But Tuar barely manages to shake his head negatively, and I can see he’s gone deathly pale from blood loss.
Kokayi quickly moves toward him and examines him, then rips off more of Tuar’s already torn uniform and grabs a cord to tie a makeshift bandage around his shoulder and slow down the bleeding.
“No,” Tuar shakes his head again and speaks in a barely audible voice. “Don’t . . . bother . . . I’m done.”
“No, you’re not,” Brie yells harshly at him from two feet away where she too is being tended by Chihar who’s finished coughing up his lungs and regained his breath, while Zaap is busy dragging the rest of our nets on shore.
I get up and approach Tuar. “Check our med-kit supplies,” I mutter to Kokayi. “There has to be something there. . . .”
“There is,” Kateb says coming up behind me. “Should be some blood-clotting spray—anyone?”
From what I remember during my Games prep training, the med-kit blood-clotting stuff comes pressurized in a small bottle. It’s not really a cure but it does slow down or even stop significant bleeding—as long as no major arteries have been hit—and even then, it buys you time.
I hurriedly rummage through my bag and find the spray, and between Kokayi and Kateb and Lolu we manage to spray-cover the multiple gash wounds on Tuar’s upper body. At this point he loses consciousness. . . .
Brie watches us work, with a fierce stubborn expression on her face, while Chihar keeps pressure on her arm. Then it’s her turn, only I run out of the second bottle of clotting spray, so we look for a third, finding one in Lolu’s bag. Brie winces when the spray touches her open wound but says nothing.
“There, all perfect, good as new,” I say useless words of reassurance, spraying one final coat around her arm and elbow. “This stuff is great, wow, dries quickly too. . . .”
“Yeah, fabulous,” Brie replies through gritted teeth. But I can see the sweat breaking out on her forehead from the pain.
Kateb watches the unconscious Tuar meanwhile, as do the others.
“That one—he doesn’t look good,” Chihar says very quietly to me after he leaves Brie and turns his attention to Tuar.
“He’s right,” Kokayi says as he rearranges the uniform around the big Athlete. “He is done fighting, at least for this stage. Sorry, amrevet.”
“Don’t know if he will even survive until midnight,” Kateb adds.
“There’s got to be something else in our med-kits,” I say stubbornly.
We look and find painkillers, antibiotics. Not sure what else—things that may or may not help.
“Give him the pain stuff,” Brie says, wiping the sweat from her temples. “Give me some too.”
“Of course.” I hand Brie the pain meds which she swallows silently.
At the same time Chihar administers an injection of some kind to Tuar, which should help to an extent. He follows up with additional antibiotics for both Tuar and Brie.
We settle around, watching Tuar, gathering our nets and equipment, gathering our thoughts. . . .
Out there we can hear the noise of the crowd.
“What now?” Zaap says, rubbing the back of his hand against his nose.
“We wait and rest a little.” I look at the boy and give him a smile. “Thank you, Zaap, you helped a whole lot.”
“Agreed,” Chihar says. “Good work with the tif-nu-sha.”
Zaap shrugs, keeping his serious expression. But for a brief moment he appears pleased.
Tuar regains consciousness about twenty minutes later, and he motions weakly with one hand. “You need to leave me,” he says. “Or take me as an honorable kill. I give my consent to any one of you to finish me off and take my kill points.”
“Stop that,” I say with a stern look. “No one’s taking your life.”
“My life is now useless,” Tuar replies. “I present a burden. I can’t even swim across the last ring.”
“I think you need to self-disqualify,” I say gently. “You lost a lot of blood, and it’s still a whole night of waiting until midnight.”
Tuar grimaces in pain and manages a few chuckles. “I won’t last an hour after dark so I’m as good as dead. Don’t leave me to be harvested by the enemy teams.”
“We won’t leave you,” I say. And then I repeat again gently, “It might be easier to self-disqualify—”
“No!” Tuar interrupts me with more energy in that one word that he can afford to waste.
“Okay . . . then, just rest,” I say, not wanting to upset him further.
Tuar moves slightly up to readjust his position but surges back in pain, wincing. The painkillers are helping only so much. I take his equipment bag and put it underneath his head then feel his forehead. It’s cold and sweaty.
“He’s going into shock.” Kateb touches my shoulder to make me look at him, to see the hard meaning in his eyes.
I frown, then look back at Tuar. “I know you had an important reason to enter the Games,” I say to him. “I understand—just as all of us here, you had a good, proud reason. But—there are probably people—or at least one person out there who cares what happens to you. They would rather you lived than won.”
Tuar grins, holding back his pain. “Tell it to yourself, Imperial Lady. Not so easy to give up, eh?”
“So why did you enter?”
Tuar exhales with a shudder. “A pardon . . .” he says. “An Imperial pardon for crimes. . . . As a citizen, they would reevaluate my . . . situation.”
“What did you do?” I whisper, leaning closer with my ear to help him speak softly.
“I . . . I was a mercenary . . . I killed . . . a high-ranking nobleman.”
I let out a held breath. “Oh. . . . Sorry to hear. Did you—were you paid to do it?”
Tuar pauses his ragged breathing, then whispers, “Yes.”
“Do you regret doing it?”
A faint smile comes to Tuar’s lips. “No . . . I don’t.”
I’m at a loss momentarily. “You don’t? Was he some kind of terrible—I mean, an evil man?”
“No . . . he was a good man . . . best man I know.”
I look at Tuar, unsure what to make of what he’s saying. “Then how—”
“He asked me to kill him.”
I blink.
“He was very ill, dying. . . . I . . . worked for him as security. . . . He sponsored my athletics . . . weightlifting . . . many years. . . . In the end . . . he asked for amrev seki . . . a mercy killing. . . . He . . . paid for my son’s future.”
I continue to listen, stunned.
“Lark!” Brie interrupts us, tapping my arm. “We need to go—do something.”
I turn my grave face to her. “No! Wait!”
With my peripheral vision I see the others watching us grimly. They’ve been untangling the nets and putting them away in their bags.
“We need to go,” Kateb says to me in his neutral calm voice.
“I know,” I say.
“Go . . . just go . . .” Tuar whispers. His gaze is turning glassy.
Something dark and horrible rises inside me like a tidal wave. “No!” I say stubbornly. “I said I’m not leaving you! And no one’s killing you either! You get no mercy killing, you have a son!”
Tuar makes a sound like a chuckle. “Stubborn . . . Imperial Lady.” He takes a shuddering breath. “Disqualify me.”
I freeze. “Okay. Then let me have your—”
I watch his good hand—the one that’s not mauled—reach slowly inside his torn shreds of uniform, and search clumsily.
And then Tuar starts gurgling, chuckling. “My token . . . can’t find it . . . not here. . . . The sha—”
“Holy crap on a stick! The damned sha ate his Contender token? Or did it sink in the water?” Brie exclaims, sounding angry and unhinged from the effects of her injury and the painkiller. “So the poor bastard has to die because he can’t even self-disqualify—”
“Brie!” I say. “Just stop! Please.”
Kokayi sighs. “If no mercy killing then—”
Chihar moves closer to me. “We can leave him . . . or try to bring him with us,” he says gently. “The last water ring is frozen ice. Easy to cross. . . .”
The others watch me, shaking their heads.
“Then we bring him,” I say, while the dark tidal wave moves around inside of me as I barely cling to control.
In the next few minutes we select a sturdy, densely woven net and place the semi-conscious Tuar on top of it and attach his own bag to it. While Chihar measures the water temperature of water ring one to get the necessary freezing cycle timing, I put on my viatoios gloves and carefully unravel the razor net that was used for our failed shark cage.
My fingers tremble with emotion as I fold it and put it away in the outside pocket of my equipment bag for easy access, since it’s my best net weapon and I still have to survive the rest of the night.
When the layer of ice forms on the surface, we step onto the frozen water. And then we do what we’ve been doing for the last three days to cross the ice in a hurry—we voice-command our bags to move forward at a high speed while we slide with the soles of our shoes along the ice-rink, carried along like Alaskan dog sleds—minus the dogs and the sleds. . . . I key Tuar’s bag myself and set it in motion so that Tuar gets pulled like a sled also as he lies securely in the netting.
In minutes we’re across and leaping onto the shore of land ring one, completing our final stage of the daily task.
The roar of the Games audience greets us on the other side of the glass wall.
And that’s when the greater part of hell begins.
Chapter 81
We’ve just stepped onto the final land ring, pulling up Tuar after us, when the artificial illumination turns on in the Game Zone. And only minutes later the first of the enemy Contender teams appears, moving quickly in our direction along the narrow strip of land.
My teammates have their weapons ready, nets and cords unfurled. But by their resigned expressions it’s obvious they don’t think it will be a fight in our favor.
After all, we can’t do what we normally do each evening—grab our hovering bags and fly out of harm’s way, ditching the pursuers.
Tuar is lying on the ground, and we’ve decided we can’t leave him.
No—I’ve decided I won’t leave him. Stop putting this on anyone else, stubborn idiot Gwen.
It’s my fault, my responsibility.
Which means, now that I’ve put them all in this additional danger, I have to do something to keep them all safe.
“Any ideas?” Lolu says to me as we stare at the approaching enemy.
I nod, my heartbeat pounding again in anticipation. “They’re all coming from the same direction. . . . Makes it easier to focus my voice. I’ll burn them.” And I motion to the others in my team to move back. “Get behind me.”
“We can still run,” Brie mumbles from her hunched over seated position without bothering to get up for the fight. Yes, she’s not doing very well. “He is lying in the net, so just levitate his bag—”
“Dragging him on the ground is one thing,” I reply in a tumble of words. “We can’t be sure the net will hold his weight suspended in the air, I mean we need to test it first, so—”
“All right! Whatever!” Brie cuts me off, furious in her pain. “Just sing already!”
And I do.
I observe the scene before me then focus my voice like a razor-fine arrow. Then I key all the approaching individuals and the objects in their possession and use the heating command on them.
Seconds later, a team of nine people screams as their uniforms all turn rose-pink, even before they get within twenty feet of us. They flail then run for the water, and splashes are heard.
Wow, that was easy. . . .
I turn my back to them and return my attention to my teammates—even as the Games crowds go wild at what just happened.
“All right,” I say in an upbeat voice. “Now we need to see if we can get Tuar safely in the air. Let’s check this net—”
In that moment I feel a weird little lurch followed by the tiniest bit of vertigo.
And then a sickly familiar feeling comes to replace it—a feeling of recognition.
The land ring underneath my feet is no longer motionless.
It has begun turning.
“What in crazy Atlantean hell now?” Brie says, standing up with poor balance and wincing. “Is this going to be like that pyramid merry-go-round?”
The rest of us pause to consider, as we test our footing along the slowly turning land ring. Even the audience watching us on the other side of the super-glass wall has quieted somewhat in curious anticipation of what comes next.
So far, we’re turning very slowly. . . . So slowly that it’s almost imperceptible, about an inch per second of rotation motion, so it feels like we’re barely drifting. But if I look in the direction of the audience and “spot” my gaze against one seat, one audience member—like a spinning dancer fixing on a single point—I can count seconds and see them receding to the left along the circle.
One interesting side effect of this is that now, as we spin, our location will eventually pass before every audience front seat and, at some point, the Imperial Box where Aeson sits.
No, don’t think. . . .
I force myself to focus on the here and now.
“So we’re turning,” Chihar says, sitting down tiredly. “I assume the rate will eventually speed up.”
“We’ll worry about it when it happens.” Kokayi sits down also, watching the gently drifting and retreating figures of the enemy Contenders still stuck in the water—the ones whose stuff I just set on fire. They are also being left behind by this new motion of the ring.
I consider their plight for a moment. These Contenders can’t get out of the water because of their burning orichalcum-laced uniforms, but they also can’t stay there indefinitely because this water ring is undergoing a freezing cycle. Unless they strip naked and divest themselves of anything that contains traces of orichalcum, they’re going to freeze into the ice.
No, don’t think. . . .
We have our own problems to worry about.
Tuar has regained consciousness. So we ignore the fact that the floor underneath our feet is in motion and deal with his net. Kateb ties Tuar’s own bag securely and threads the net with cords so that it acts like a basket seat. I key his bag and slowly voice command it to rise, in order to make sure the net holds him in the air. Tuar gets airlifted in his net basket and hovers three feet above the floor. He lies in the net, head lolling to the side, barely awake. But at least he can definitely travel with us.
So far so good.
“All right, now let’s get out of here,” Kateb says.
And we all direct our own bags to rise and move forward quickly.
Midnight is hours away and a long difficult night of evasive maneuvers awaits us.
&
nbsp; Several hours later, we’re still airborne, constantly on the move through the interior of the Game Zone. By this point, as we pass repeatedly over the ten land rings, crisscrossing the arena, we’ve noticed that all of them have started spinning also. The rotation of each ring is in the opposite direction of its adjacent neighbors, and over time the movement speeds up gradually as the “runway” lights twinkle along each perimeter edge.
Tuar flies in his basket next to me, and is barely responsive. Brie is doing as well as she can, considering her own injury, but she is hanging on to her bag stubbornly with both arms wrapped around it. Yes, she insists on using her injured arm and refuses any help or the offer of her own basket seat.
“What time is it?” Zaap asks constantly as he looks around nervously, keeping a lookout.
“Still tenth hour of Khe,” Lolu responds with annoyance. “Same as you asked a few stupid moments ago.”
So far we’ve run into other teams a number of times, but have immediately escaped, putting as much distance behind us as possible.
Judging by the swelling sounds from the audience and the distant shouts and occasional screams of pain echoing throughout the arena, Team Gratu and Team Irtiu have been cornering and slaughtering a number of lesser teams tonight. They really are out to run up those AG points on this last night of Stage Three.
“I think they’re leaving us for last,” Kokayi says tiredly, as he flies just ahead of me, face leaning into the wind.
“Don’t worry, Imperial Lady Gwen will burn their uniforms too,” Lolu says with confidence.
I glance at the young girl Technician’s streamlined shape as she flies nearby and see the glitter in her great eyes as she quickly glances at me.
So much strange hope there. . . .
It wrenches my heart.
Will I be able to keep my team safe tonight?
It’s late, very close to midnight, when my team and I finally get to find out.
Deneb Gratu’s gang has switched their attention to us. After locating us hiding near one of the inner rings, they chase us for at least fifteen minutes of wild evasive motion. Then they surround and herd us onto the outermost land ring, so that the wall is at our backs, with nowhere to go.