Chapter 9
Nine
When you ask a gaggle of would-be mages if they’ve got any bright ideas to solve a problem, be forewarned, you are about to receive a deluge of the dumbest concepts imaginable.
Those inclined toward wizardry as a profession are not, as a rule, stupid, but rather they’re so smart that their intellect becomes uncoupled from the pesky facts of reality.
I don’t know how many times that day I had to tell someone, no, we can’t afford that sort of enchantment, or no, we have insufficient element to accomplish that, or no, none of us know a spell that can pick the whole island up and fly it to shore…
And each time when I was done, the look of defeat on their once hopeful face made me feel like I’d just shot their pet unicorn.
Rufus Rudnik, self-proclaimed war mage, may have been dumber than a bag of rocks, but he’d at least come up with a respectable suggestion.
We needed money for supplies. Some of our students thought they were capable of earning money as gladiators, but had never worked up the courage to risk it.
Let’s go fight and hopefully get paid. Which was what brought a group of us to the market side of the Under Slump that night.
This was Skerret family territory, and after my unfortunate encounters with my rat bastard countrymen, I wouldn’t go to this side of the Under Slump without a bunch of friends.
The Skerret family had gotten banished from Fogo for being crooks, and now they were one of the many smaller gangs infesting the Slumps who paid taxes to Carcalla.
Hopefully, the Skerrets had gotten word that us Outcasts had come to terms with the Latrocinium, so in the off chance I did run into one of them, they’d overlook their resentment against me long enough to not do anything foolishly violent enough to anger our local crime boss.
But you know what they say about us hotlanders!
I kept my scarf over my face and my hood over my head as we walked, in the hopes of not being recognized.
And if I was picked out of the crowd by a wrathful member of the Skerret gang, I had Krachma, Rade, Rufus, Danny, Bognar, and Sifuso with me.
The Skerrets had quite a few men, but my group consisted of seven gladiators—well, three with a few fights under our belts and four rookies, but we’ve all got to start somewhere.
There were several fighting arenas around the Slumps.
The Livnight mage fights were held just off the ramp down from the grand market.
That put us only a few blocks from the notorious Crumpled House, home of the Skerret gang, but as Rufus had so helpfully pointed out, if we were going adventuring, we needed to buy more element, and fast. Other than robbery—and I put my foot down against that sort of behavior—there was no faster way to make some coin in the Slumps than fighting in the arena.
So, as it stood, us three with a bit of experience, and the new guys who’d been eager to try their hand at mage fighting, found ourselves at this particular arena.
We had to use up our own magic in the arena, but even if you lost, you got five percent off the house.
Even losers usually broke even on the element use, unless of course you wasted too much magic, or put on a bad show that the crowd didn’t bet much.
But if you won, it was twenty percent. The better the match, the more people would bet, which equaled more coins in your pocket at the end of the night.
Slump fight crowds were pretty bloodthirsty and even upper-class citizens from the finer districts would come down here to watch us low-ranking fighters injure each other.
Our magic wasn’t nearly as potent or refined down here, but everyone loved to watch a good vicious beating.
The biggest danger in a mage fight—especially in these shoddy conditions—was that if the protective charm the goblins issued you fizzled and failed to stop a blow, you’d get crippled or die.
But that didn’t happen too often. Deaths were bad for business, as it scared off competitors.
From what I’d learned about Carcalla’s nature, he didn’t tolerate failure.
If a goblin enchanter screwed up too many times, he’d end up in the canal chained to the corpse of the last gladiator he’d let down, along with some concrete to make sure neither of them would float.
Because the Great Machine had been aligned with the Elemental Plane of Life all day, the air actually smelled nice, as opposed to the usual stink of garbage and piss common to this trash-strewn section of the Under Slump.
“What is that lovely fragrance?” Rade asked.
“That there’s the scent of wildflowers upon the wind,” Rufus said. “I’m from the Realm of Life, so I know it well. Today, the gate’s pointed at our sister city, Hutan upon the Gunang. It’s a thousand miles south of my home, but it’s a place that’s ever green.”
“Mine is ever on fire,” I said.
“My homeland is also always green. Same as lacertian skin,” Sifuso hissed. “Better to hide in ambush waiting to strike.”
“Acheron is cloaked in an endless fog,” Rade said, not to be outdone. “And teeming with the restless dead.”
“Krachma had only dirt.”
Young Danny shrugged. “I was born like twelve blocks that way. I’m not exotic like you guys.”
“Core City, me self.” Big Bognar pointed up toward the Slump. “You can probably see me mum’s basement from here.”
Rufus couldn’t let us get the wrong impression that he’d led a sheltered life.
“Don’t let the name of my realm fool you.
Our element makes things grow, fast and concentrated, so the place is teeming with life, but for one thing to live, something else must die to feed it.
It’s a savage, wild land, with deadly predators lurking behind every tree, and Bergwald’s got a great many trees! ”
I caught sight of a few ruffians watching us at the mouth of the next alley. “We’ve got no trees in the Under Slump, but we’ve still got predators a plenty.”
They were clearly searching for a victim to shank and roll, but when they saw the size of our group, and that one was a rock-scarred lob and the other a tall lizard beast, they took their hunt in the opposite direction.
It annoyed me that bandits could be so brazen here, but the Slumps were a lawless place.
We’d surely have more students if we weren’t in such a bad part of town.
The watch wouldn’t ever come down these ramps because, officially, this neighborhood didn’t exist anymore, so it was all poor folks with nowhere else to go, getting picked on by violent scum.
“It shouldn’t be like this. Someday, when the Outcast Academy has grown strong, we’re going to clean this place up.”
“That’s what I like about you, Mr. Carnavon, sir. You dream big,” Danny said.
We reached the arena. I’d not fought at this particular venue yet, but Krachma and Rade both had.
Every mage fighting arena was set up a bit differently.
This one was a big pit that had once been a quarry.
There were a bunch of stone blocks haphazardly scattered around the bottom to provide cover and give some variety to the terrain.
The contestants had to climb the scaffolding along the sides to get up and down.
A rambunctious crowd stood around the top, cheering for their favorite or booing their enemy, as goblins moved between them taking bets.
The line for aspiring fighters was short tonight, so the goblins were excited to see so many of us show up at once. From their reaction, Carcalla hadn’t preemptively cut us off from fighting. I knew if I hadn’t agreed to his demand for adventurers, the bouncers would be tossing us out of here.
The goblin bookie waddled over to examine us. Like most goblins, he was short and hideous, with huge ears, and limbs that should be too long and spindly to support his ponderous gut.
“Ah, I know this ponderous lob. Krachma the Killer, a fan favorite. What’re you now, six-and-one?”
“Seven.”
Then he squinted up at me. “And you’re the upstart who beat him, the mysterious Put Down Tom.”
It was a dumb name, used by accident, but not wanting to lose my record, I’d kept it. “I’m three-and-oh.”
“Nice to see you two made friends.” Then he scowled at Rade. “I remember you, knife of the dark below or something.”
“You know damned well it’s Sword of the Underworld. I’ve fought here before, Clotz.”
“You deadlanders all look the same to me: bloodless, pale, demon-eyed freaks. What’s your record now?”
“An undefeated four.”
“No it’s not. I watched you lose to Veroy Durrel back in tenth month.”
“That one doesn’t count. Veroy cheated or your shitty goblin magic failed.” Rade pulled open the neck of his black shirt to display a big scar. “I had to pay the Olgaites for a healing. If this happens again, I’m blaming you.”
Goblins had a malicious giggle. “He he he. Splat, right in the throat!”
I cut in before Rade got mad enough to duel a bookie. I wasn’t too worried about fighting one goblin, but rather his hundred nearby friends. “We’ve brought some fresh faces for you tonight.”
The goblin scowled at Bognar and Danny, neither of whom looked like they’d put up a good fight, but then he grinned a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth when he sized up Sifuso.
“A lacertian? The crowd loves the lizards. Make sure to do that hissing thing your kind does and show them the fangs!” Then he snarled at Rufus.
“This crowd is bored of dwarves. It’s always dwarves, dwarves, dwarves.
I’m stocked up on short, fat dummies with beards tonight. Come back next week.”
“How dare—”
I stepped in front of Rufus to keep him from strangling the goblin. “Oh, you’re going to want this one, Clotz. This is no ordinary dwarf. This here’s a Clan Rudnik war mage.”
“What’s that?”
I honestly had no idea, other than Rufus was bafflingly proud in claiming to be one. “Only the baddest of the bad, axe-swinging maniacs from a realm full of monsters lurking behind every rock and tree.”
“Hmmm…” The bookie scratched his booger-colored chin with his cracked dirty fingernails. “The announcer can work with that.” Then he turned and shrieked at one of his assistants, “Bounce that other dwarf off the roster and put this uglier one in his place.”
“Which is which?” that goblin asked. “They’re all ugly.”
“This one. The fatter one,” Clotz pointed at Rufus. “He’s hideous.”
I should have warned the new guys that arena goblins were notoriously mean little shits.
It was a good thing Trax had never accompanied me to a mage fight, because with his tolerance for rudeness, he’d end up eating these obnoxious bastards like they were popped corn.
I’d thought about bringing my Squalo friend, because there probably wasn’t a fighter the goblins could scrape up from the Slumps who could best him in a fight, but Trax, being Trax, would probably end up biting his opponent’s head off or something equally lethal, which would get the locals even more spun up about him, and our lives were complicated enough already.
“Your group benefits me, Put Down Tom. It was looking to be a slow night, but Krachma is main event worthy, and the rest of you have filled my undercard.”
I’d watched my dad barter with enough merchants for barge supplies to recognize an opportunity when I saw it. “I expect a bonus for the finder’s fee at the end of the night.”
“For bringing me two stupid boring humans? Look at them! They don’t even have any extra arms! Can they even do magic? And another damned dwarf?”
“Don’t forget the lizard. He’s terrifying. Bonus percent or all seven of us walk and you’re back to searching the gutter for passed-out drunks to throw in the pit.”
“I don’t need your army of scrubs!”
Rufus tugged on the back of my cloak and whispered, “Carnavon, what are you doing?”
I smacked Rufus’ hand away. “I’m not playing around, Clotz.”
The goblin growled at me as he considered my ultimatum. “So these fools have got themselves a manager. Fine. You’ll get an additional percent on every match of these seven fighters.” He spit a gob of phlegm on his hand and held it out.
“Deal.” I pulled my glove off, spit on my palm, and we shook on it. As soon as the nasty little thing let go of me, I wiped my hand on my pants.