Ch 20

It was late already, and I was staring at the ceiling from the cot I had taken after my fight. Not long after I had laid down someone had approached me, and I looked up not knowing what to expect but thinking that it would be nothing good. When I looked up, I saw another goblin approaching me. This one was wearing robes and carrying an abacus. “Dung, yes?” the greasy voice speaking to me seemed to be inherently irritating. “Yeah that’s me.” I responded offhandedly. “Ok! I am accountant for arena here in Toduk City. You win today, make 30 coppers for master. Keep winning and make more after ten days are up. Keep, keep winning and maybe make many more money.” With that he turned and walked away without another word.

Anyways, back to why I was staring at the ceiling lying awake at night instead of sleeping to make sure I was properly rested for my next fight. I was pissed. Plain and simple I could not understand a system wherein the amount that I had been purchased for was the same amount that I had earned by killing someone. This was likely why so many people chose to fight their slaves, a cheap slave doesn’t cost much but if they somehow manage to survive a couple of fights one could make a profit buying cheap slaves and fighting them even without training by simply having an eye for scrappers. This didn’t help me any at all. No matter how much I made or how little I was worth in the eyes of society, I still had a fight coming the next day. I rolled over and went to sleep.

*****

The next morning came all too soon and I woke up to the sounds of people milling about and goblin voices calling out to line up and move out of the resting room. We were lined up in double file and then walked through a doorway opposite the one we had come through after exiting the arena. After walking for what could not have been more than a couple minutes, we were led into another room that seemed to be much like the one where I had awaited my fight the previous day. After a moment a que formed by the goblins by the door, this time while one held the bag for placing their names in the other seemed to be distributing rolls of bread and mugs of water. I might be expected to fight for my life but at least they wouldn’t expect us to fight on an empty stomach.

After lining up and getting my breakfast and putting in my name to the raffle for fighting I took a seat on the floor next to the wall so that I could lean on it and keep my back to it. As I was chewing on my roll and observing the room in a passive sort of way wherein I wasn’t really looking at anything but just sort of spacing out a young man with tousled blond hair walked up and sat next to me in a carefree manner as if he felt there was nothing to be worried about. “Something I can help you with?” I asked him a bit roughly when he sat next to me. “Nah, just looked like you could use a friend,” he replied simply with a pleasant grin on his face. “Name’s Legger, and today is my eight day here in the arena. Only three more fights for me and I can get out of here for a bit, until my master decides to send me back anyways. At least then I can leave and come back though. This fighting everyday is hard on the nerves.”

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I never should have opened my mouth. My query was intended to encourage him to move along and bother somebody else but instead he had started yapping like a schoolgirl and would not shut up. “Oh, and by the way,” he continued, “you needn’t worry that we will have to fight each other while we are here. Those coming in fight from the first room, after your first fight you fight from the second room so that the survivors only ever fight new competitors and not each other. The goblins that run this place may be cruel, but they do understand that poor morale leads to high fatalities and then nobody would ever get well known enough to make any real money for them. After all the bigger the name of the fighters the bigger the crowd drawn to watch, matches like ours where nobody has finished their first ten days are cheap and only the poor come to watch.” Despite his endless ramblings it seemed like he was giving me some pretty useful information so instead of acting angry I decided to let him keep talking my ear off. Besides, now that I knew that we wouldn’t have to kill one another in the near future I was less worried about making friends.

All too soon I heard the name my master had given me called out and went walking towards the door to see what today’s challenge would be. When I went through the door what I saw what pretty similar to yesterday, there was a goblin wearing a leather tunic and cloth pants. This time though the teka was handed to me respectfully, with the hilt coming first. This teka had a slender blade and seemed to have been fixed to a handle by splitting a stick and scraping some from the middle before wrapping it with a bit of rough cord. I gripped it in my hand and walked towards the gate as I thought about my options. Yesterday, I had been on the opposite side of the arena and the sun had been in my eyes when the gate came up and I ran out. If I was right in assuming that this was nearly the same time of day, then that meant that I could count on a similar situation for my opponent. Should I run out and try to attack him in that moment of blindness or should I walk out calmly and give him a fair fight?

I was still deliberating when I heard the rhythmic drums begin signaling the slow rise of the gates that would release us into the arena. Oh Hell! I waited only until the gate was raised enough to slip underneath it and then took off running towards the far side of the arena. My luck held and as I had calculated the sun was at my back. I ran as fast as I was able, not paying attention to anything but my task as I flew across the arena, my bare feet leaving slight impressions in the earth as they struck it running towards the dog eared man who had just emerged from the now raised gate, his hand predictably covering his eyes from the glare of the sun. Maybe he was unlucky or maybe I was just faster than my opponent from yesterday but before he had fully recovered his vision my teka was thrusting forward. His hand moved out of the way just in time to avoid my teka, his eye socket which I had been aiming for on the other hand was pierced and as the blade sunk in it snapped off at the hilt and his body fell to the ground.

I looked down from the broken hilt of the teka in my hand to the corpse lying on the ground in front of me. I had again taken a life but this time I had not hesitated. As I thought about how much easier it had been this time I heard the roar of the crowd, first shocked that the match was over so quickly but also elated that the would-be-gladiator had ended before he even had a chance to see his death coming. I walked towards the gate on the side that had begun to open. I was ready to relax; I hadn’t had much free time at all since coming to this world and the cots in the room were much more comfortable than the pile of rags I had in the basement of my master’s house. Did I feel bad for killing that dog-guy? Yeah of course I did, but there was no point in dwelling on it, there was going to be more killing to come unless I was ready to accept my own death.