9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
W rage
“Wake up asshole!” This order from one of the guards yanks me from my sleep. “Playtime with your whore is over. Time to fight.” He pokes the barrel of his laser rifle through the bars and into the soft meat between my shoulder and my neck.
I sit up, my hand on Elyse’s back, bringing her with me to protect her from his abuse. I’ve spent my whole adult life tolerating drack from my owners and their minions. Their words mean nothing to me, except now when they’re talking about my mate. Him calling my beloved a whore makes me want to lunge through the bars and squeeze his throat until the light fades from his eyes.
I don’t, though. They’ll just kill me and take it out on Elyse.
I strip out of my pants, preferring to fight in the nude.
“Don’t worry about me, Elyse,” I tell her, knowing my words won’t make her worry one bit less.
“Come, whore. You get to watch.”
When he points his gun at her, I grind my teeth together so I don’t lunge at him. I continue to remind myself that any act of aggression upon my captors will only result in torment for her.
They lead us down the dirt hallway lined with black rock and into a cavern. I assume this is an old mine shaft that’s been cleared of green salt. The walls still shine with iridescent sparkles, though, contaminating everyone who spends more than a minima here.
There are no stands, unlike the arenas I’m used to, just males standing, jammed around a square enclosure that’s maybe twenty by twenty. It’s ringed by a thick crossbar every five fiertos up, and topped with cross-crossed bars. It’s empty.
As soon as the males in the cavern see me, the heckling begins.
“This is a gladiator?”
“He won’t make it two minimas against Ormek.”
“Won’t last.”
“Dead meat walking.”
“Odds changed . . .” one of the males calls out. “. . . make a bet.”
It’s been annums since I’ve been greeted in this fashion. After enough wins in a row, no matter what a gladiator looks like, he’s given respect. No one here knows my record. It doesn’t matter.
I glance at Elyse. They’ve put her at a corner of the ring. I make note of it and forbid myself from even glancing at her until the match is over. The last thing I need is to get distracted by my mate’s fear and concern for me. I need to do two things and two things only—fight and win.
“What is my weapon?” I ask the male guarding me. He’s exchanged his rifle for a laser pistol which is still trained on me.
“Ha! He wants to know what his weapon will be,” he says to the crowd who all find his statement amusing. “You get what the crowd hands you. Looking at you, I doubt you’ll earn one.”
Scanning the crowd, I see some of the males have pickaxes, a few have thick clubs that have been spiked with long nails. I spot a scythe and wicked barbed ball connected by a chain to a wooden rod.
These aren’t miners like we saw in Sooma Ryone’s mines. Perhaps these are males who came to this forsaken planet to stake their own claims. They’re itinerant males, the dregs of the galaxy, who came seeking their fortunes and whose only fun is watching males fight in this cage.
I see their eyes on Elyse as if she’s the biggest diamond in the galaxy. Places like this have a shortage of females. Sooma Ryone must have given orders that she be protected in the hopes I’d die tonight and he’ll take immediate possession. Thank the Gods his guards aren’t letting any of the crowd paw her.
The crowd noise swells, telling me my opponent is entering from the other side. For a split modicum I wonder if I’m seeing a play of the poor lighting, an enormous shadow. Then I get my first glimpse of Ormek.
He’s huge—a mountain. Humanoid, but just barely. His shoulders are easily twice as wide as mine. From the neck down, he’s quite humanoid, although his musculature is otherworldly. His head, though, is bestial.
He’s vaguely bovine, with a thick mane of coarse hair trailing halfway down his back and ringing his neck. His pointed horns swoop down, following the line of his jaw and jutting out away from his body.
A formidable opponent.
I inspect him for weakness. His upper body strength is prodigious. I will never be able to pin him through strength alone. Pin? I’d better ask the stakes.
“To the death?” I ask my guard.
“What do you think, asshole?”
The guard was probably right, no one in the crowd will give me, an unknown newcomer, a weapon. I won’t be able to wrestle this male to the ground. My only chance is to wrest his weapon from his huge hands.
“Ormek versus Wrage,” Sooma Ryone’s voice announces over the loudspeaker. I’m not surprised he’s watching, nor am I surprised he’s doing it over vid. I can’t imagine him for a minima walking through the filth and stench of these caverns, or deigning to stand amid the unwashed masses that throng here.
“No weapons allowed in the cage until the timer hits two minimas ,” he says.
I don’t know where the timer is, but I know when the match starts as the din rises a notch.
I stand where I am, waiting for Ormek to approach me. One of his weaknesses is his speed. Although he’s well-muscled, his bulk alone will slow him down.
He thunders toward me, his nose making a distinct snorting sound as he breathes. Perhaps another weakness is his intelligence. That remains to be seen.
He opens his arms wide in an attempt to grab me, but I slip away before his slow movements reach me.
This goes on for the full two minimas of the warmup. I scurry to a corner, he lumbers toward me, and I scurry away. I know the fight will change the moment he’s handed a weapon.
Hearing a ding and the frenzy of the crowd, I assume it’s time to up the stakes. A filthy, grinning toothless male hands Ormek the rod with the swinging spiked ball. Although it doesn’t have a long reach, it’s deadly. Since my opponent’s arms are longer than mine, it’s easily within his ability to kill me in modicums .
The cage is built of vertical bars that reach to the stone roof. Horizontal bars at five, ten, and fifteen fiertos high ring it in its entirety. I scramble up to escape my foe. Even when I reach the top, with his weapon he’s got access to me from my calves down. And I’ve limited my mobility.
Squeezing myself into the top corner, holding on with my hands, I’m far enough from his swing to buy myself some time. But I’m trapped up here, unable to get down without putting myself in harm’s way.
“A weapon? Someone?” I ask the crowd, not taking my eyes from Ormek.
Their taunts drift to me over the boos.
“Give a weapon to the loser? Why?”
“This isn’t even fun to watch. Why prolong it?”
“ Drack you.”
I’m completely helpless up here—backed into a corner, unable to scramble out until he takes his eyes off me, for which I would need a miracle.
I’ve avoided looking toward Elyse’s corner, managed to forget for long moments at a time that she was here, watching. I need to keep my eye on my goal—winning. I’m surprised when her voice rises above the crowd.
“Wrage. Here! A weapon.”
I glance at her, certain I’ve misheard.
She has the best weapon in the room in her hand—the bat spiked with long nails. Pushing her way to my corner, she reaches up, handing the spiked end toward me. While the beast is distracted by the beauty of my mate, I climb to the next rung and carefully snatch it from her, snagging it in a sturdy grip.
This changes everything.
Ormek’s impassive face is no longer impassive, his eyes wide as he sees the weapon in my hand.
Scrambling down to the next horizontal bar, I leap the rest of the way as I swing at the brute’s head. He ducks just in time; my bat only snags his hair and barely scrapes his face.
With lightning speed, I aggress again, catching him off guard as he still recovers from my first strike.
My weapon hits him hard in the chest, squarely across both nipples. His eyes widen, showing white all around as he takes one step back and then another.
Pivoting, I pull my weapon out of his body, the spikes now dripping crimson, turn 360 degrees and slam the spikes into his back with such force they penetrate as far as the wooden bat will allow.
He roars so loudly, the crowd is silent for a brief modicum . Still not sure I’ve dealt the killing blow, I yank the bat out of his flesh. Pivoting again, I turn 360 degrees and with every unce of my strength, I slam into his chest.
This impact is met with a grunt. He hasn’t the energy to roar as his body convulses, his eyes roll into the back of his head and he falls to his knees. His meaty hands struggle to pull my weapon from his chest. I help him, pulling it out with a wet suction sound, then slamming the bat onto his skull.
I don’t bother pulling it out of his lifeless body as it lays on the black stone in a widening pool of blood.
I’m panting with exertion. Sweat drips from my brow, stinging my eyes. I survey the floor again, making certain he’s not moving, not crawling toward me or his weapon. But he’s dead. Lifeless.
The crowd was quiet for a moment, but now they roar, calling my name.
Snatches of conversation drift my way.
“I knew he’d win.”
“You can tell good fighting stock at a hundred paces.”
“Sooma Ryone has an eye for gladiator flesh.”
It’s only now I allow my eyes to seek out my mate. She’s standing in her original corner, her gaze looking only at me. As hard as this match was on me, I imagine it was harder for her to watch.
I don’t say anything, nor do I approach her. The less these thugs know about our relationship, the better it will be.
“Your whore’s titties . . .” wafts to me over the fetid air.
“Sure pretty.”
“Paid the price . . .”
I keep my face impassive as I put the puzzle together. During the fight I didn’t have the time or mental energy to wonder how Elyse managed to get her hands on the weapon that eventually saved my life.
From what I’m hearing, it appears she bought the bat with her tits. Whether it was a look or a feel, a flash of anger and possessiveness flares through me with the white heat of seven suns.
When I glance at her I see her guilt and shame. Her eyes can’t link to mine, they find the floor.
My flare of anger dissipates as quickly as it arose.
My Elyse is a good woman who hated her slavery so much she mated an oaf like me at the end of a hot branding iron. My sweet mate is nothing but a good, honest, female who does what she needs to take care of herself and the one she loves.
She did this for me at the cost of her own pride and comfort. She is not the type of female who would ever welcome the touch of another, especially one of these filthy beasts.
She saved my life. I love her more than ever.
The guards open the lock on the cage and escort the two of us back to our cell.
Evidently, news not only of my win, but of Elyse’s display has travelled down the cell block. The guards jump in, “I got me a look. Why are tits like that wasted on a dracker like you?”
I don’t know how to make them stop, but I know how to neutralize the acid. I learned it early in captivity. Embrace something and it removes the sting of embarrassment, stealing the joy from the drackholes who want you to feel bad about yourself.
“You displayed those pretty breasts to the whole crowd?” I ask, so loudly the words reverberate down the hallway. I wink at her, trying to tell her I know what I’m doing, and this is for the best.
“Don’t you think I deserve a peek?”
I sweep her into my arms, even though they’re covered in blood and still shaking from the adrenaline coursing through my system.
I pretend to glance under the neckline of what she calls her t-shirt, exposing nothing of her flesh to the prurient guards.
“You can reward my win with those when we’re in our bunk,” I shout as I’m pushed, one of the guard’s feet on my ass, into our cell.
“The cell blocks quiet, see?” I whisper to her. “Embrace the taunting, let them see it’s nothing to you and it will stop.”
She looks around as she listens. The drackholes have moved on to another topic when their bullying didn’t get a rise out of either of us.
Tipping her head as she thinks about what I said, she says, “Wrage! Really?” her voice is loud. “Don’t you need a moment to recover after your fight?” she slaps my shoulder, then giggles.
“Well done, my love,” I whisper. My face grows serious as I tip my forehead to hers. “You saved my life, Love. It cost you, I know. I love you for it.”
There’s a triangular sink in the corner of the cell. Although it’s small and almost rusted through I manage to get my head under the spigot, working around my horns, and run water through my hair, then wipe the sweat and blood off my body. We have no bedclothes, certainly no towels. I stand and drip, letting the relentless heat warm me until I’m dry.
“Let me lay with you, Love. Let me tell you how much you mean to me.”
Elyse
Dear God, watching that match was more painful than anything I’ve ever done—and that’s saying a lot after what I’ve endured the last four years.
I was certain he was going to die. Ormek was so huge, a living breathing Minotaur. I didn’t think Wrage had a chance. When my mate wasn’t even given a weapon, I couldn’t bear to watch. That lasted all of half a minute, then I opened my eyes and tried to figure out a way I could help.
“I’ll give you this in exchange for a feel of your cunt,” a spotted male said as he held up what amounted to little more than a butter knife.
That’s when the idea was born. I wasn’t even smart enough to think of it myself. I looked around and knew the weapon Wrage needed. The long spiky one that would reach farther than his opponent’s.
I elbowed my way through the crowd to the owner of the stick.
“What can I give you for that?” I asked boldly.
It didn’t take him more than two seconds to reply. “Dip my cock in your cunt.”
I shook my head. “Too steep a price.”
I looked around and saw a fellow with a scythe, or was it a sickle? I began pushing my way toward him when the male with the bat said, “Slip my finger in your cunt.”
“No way,” I said and shouldered away from him.
He followed me, stuck his nose in my hair and snorted in my scent as if I was fresh as sunshine.
“Titties,” he said, showing two teeth black as night at the front of his mouth.
“I’ll show you my tits for that,” I said without having to think about it.
“Feels,” he countered.
“Feel one,” I spat back.
He actually moaned, then shuddered when he grabbed my exposed breast and squeezed. It hurt like the devil.
“He needs this,” I said as I slipped the weapon from his grip and pushed through the crowd, calling Wrage’s name.
I don’t regret it. Wrage is right, I saved his life.
We’re lying, his front to my back—spooning. When we did this in the malta it felt like heaven—I felt so protected. It doesn’t feel that way now.
Facing away from him, I allow myself to cry. What happened today is going to keep happening until one day for whatever reason he doesn’t win. No team I ever followed back on Earth had a perfect record. It can’t be done.
And then I’ll have to watch him die, smell his blood on the air, listen to the fickle crowd cheer his opponent, and then be brought to Sooma Ryone within the hour. I wonder how long it will take for me to have dead eyes again like poor It.
Now that I’ve tasted love, now that I’ve had Wrage, I won’t settle for a life of abuse for long. I won’t just contemplate suicide, I’ll have the courage to do it. Maybe those religions are right, the ones that promise a hereafter. Maybe I’ll meet Wrage there.