CHAPTER 7: HELLSPORT

The self-named city of Hellsport was terrifying.

It sat at the center of a wheel-and-spoke set of roads, each of which was two lanes wide and paved with tight-fitting reddish granite slabs, raised and graded to provide good drainage. The forest had been cleared back for two miles from the city, with the wheel road a mile out from the walls. Those walls were yet more granite, this time a mix of shaded yellows, grays, and blues. They towered sixty feet above us with a tilted-out section at the bottom; I could see from the open gate that they were thirty feet thick.

The gate was manned by six guards, only two of them human. The humans were a bald man with the darkest skin I'd ever seen and a woman with so many tattoos that I couldn't tell what color her skin was; weirdly, she had a small animal on her shoulder, something with bat wings wrapped around itself. The first of the nonhumans was a gray giant, nine feet tall and massive with a single horn growing out of his forehead. Beside him were a pair of seemingly-identical...people (?) with the torsos of human men and the bodies of snakes. The final guard was a bipedal cat with long fangs and claws. My lips instinctively pulled back into a low growl; cats were evil and I was not going to let him hurt my people. Or steal all the petting. Either one.

Our arrival was a bit challenging; Marcus was riding me at the front of the caravan with a rope halter loosely encircling my nose. That had been the subject of much negotiation between us; he had been of the opinion that I wouldn't be allowed inside unless there was some visible sign that I was under human control, whereas I had been of the opinion that he could suck it and he wasn't putting no stupid halter on me. He had explained that if I didn't want the halter then I had two choices: Stay outside the city or declare my status as a sapient being...which would be a problem as soon as we got inside the walls. Hellsport had a strong dueling culture and if I were known to be intelligent then I would quickly be challenged by people looking to collect whatever Skill had made me big and smart, or by aggressive jerks who simply wanted to test themselves against strong opponents. On the other hand, if I seemed to be nothing more than a pet or riding animal then I would pretty much be ignored as people focused on my 'owner'.

This was a pretty solid argument, but I was not having it. I had explained to Marcus that if he tried to put that thing on me I would smack him so heckin' hard his mother would feel it. He had asked politely if I'd be willing to wear it, as a favor to him, so long as the rope stayed loose at all times. Then he pointed out that I was way stronger than him and could easily pull the thing out of his hands, or just roll over and crush him. I had pondered that for two hours and finally, grudgingly, allowed it.

Marcus's argument with Eugene had taken almost as long as his argument with me. Eugene insisted that, as the primary investor of the caravan, he needed to be at the front and part of the entrance process. Marcus had insisted that Eugene was a pain in the [rude word] and he should stay back so as not to complicate things. Eugene had finally won by virtue of being willing to argue longer.

"Blorble?" asked the tattooed woman as we rolled up. She was sitting at a small desk beside the gate, a lockbox on the ground next to her, with the other guards leaning casually against the wall a short distance away. They all wore uniforms, dark blue with bright yellow stripes on the sleeves, bulky rifles slung across their backs, and shortswords on their hips.

The animal on her shoulder had been wrapped up in its bat-like wings, but now it unfurled them and revealed itself as a small human with bright yellow skin, a pot belly, and tiny horns.

"Names?" it asked. It was speaking flawless English and I couldn't help but huff and step back in surprise.

"Eugene de Maliyé, Third-rank Citizen of Ozurdati," said my fistbump brother, smiling and patting me on the shoulder reassuringly while still keeping his eyes on the woman. "This is my caravan. We're here for trade and tournament." As Eugene spoke, the little bat-winged man whispered something I couldn't understand into the woman's ear—a translation, presumably.

Marcus rolled his eyes. "I'm Marcus, chief operator of the caravan. I've got our papers." He slid off my back so that he could produce a sheaf of documents from inside his jacket and offer them to the woman at the desk. The top page listed his name, his occupation ("caravan leader"), a line labeled 'Hellsport Citizenship Status' ("none"), another for his point of origin ("Ozurdati"), his species ("human"), and a physical description.

The woman took the papers from him and riffled through them quickly, then looked up with a cocked eyebrow. "Huh," she said by way of her shoulder-mounted translator. "All in order. You been here before?"

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Marcus shook his head. "No, but I did my research. Talked to some others who had been."

She nodded. "I'm Guard Sergeant Alissa Poswell, badge number 741. There's a five-stone-each entrance charge. How do you want to pay?"

"Gemstones," Eugene said, untying a leather pouch from his belt and reaching in to produce a twinkling green thing. "When we set out I was told that tier-one emeralds were running a hundred stones to the carat?"

The Sergeant nodded. "It's dropped a bit," her translator said in response to her babble. "Today's price is ninety-one. I show twenty entrance applications, so that's a hundred stone." She opened the desk and produced a small magnifying glass, a two-pan scale, and a set of weights. Eugene placed two emeralds on one pan; she studied them briefly under the glass, then shifted weights on and off until it balanced. Satisfied, she dropped the emeralds into her lockbox before scribbling something on a piece of paper, signing and stamping it with a stamp from the desk, and handing it to him. "Here's a receipt for the change. It's legal tender on its own and can be converted to stones or to various foreign currencies at any branch bank." She pulled out several small metal rectangles and one by one handed them up to her shoulder animal. It wrote on them with one finger, sending a curl of bitter smoke up as it did, and then gave them back to her.

"Here are your entrance tags," she said, handing the metal slips to Eugene. "Everyone in your caravan needs to have theirs on them at all times in order to enjoy legal protection. Be advised that it is a capital offense to attempt to pass as a citizen, or to kill a citizen outside of tournament or sanctioned duelling event. Killing a tagged visitor outside of tournament or duel is a lesser charge, typically twenty-point spike and permanent exile. Mental intrusion is a major crime, regardless of what Skill or other means enables it. Finally, untagged visitors are not protected by the laws of the city, so keep your tags with you at all times."

The words came out in a bored rush, clearly a memorized speech that had been recited more times than she could count.

"'Twenty-point spike'?" Marcus asked.

"Thought you said you did the research?" Eugene demanded. "They stick a spike in you, suck out twenty points of Spirit to pay the demons." He turned back to Sergeant Poswell. "Sorry about him. We'll be careful." He gave her a charming smile. "Gotta say, I'm really impressed by this process. You guys have it down."

She unbent enough to smile for just a moment. Her face was one enormous bird tattoo and when her lips curved it seemed as though the bird's wings shifted.

"We should," she said. "Sages know that we do it enough. If it weren't for the damn Ymelites there'd be a line halfway to the Wheel Road at this time of day."

Marcus frowned. "The Ymelites? What about them?"

Against the wall behind the Sergeant, the cat-man shifted restlessly at the name. I kept my suspicious gaze upon him, fully expecting a cowardly attack at any moment. I knew these cats and their sneaky ways. They even did it to humans while being petted!

"Eh," she said. "They're getting stroppy again. It'll be the same-old same-old; they'll show up with a giant army of half-trained serfs, we'll set the demons loose on them, a handful of survivors will limp home and tell their kids scary bedtime stories about those awful people in Hellsport. Ten years from now some new idiot will declare himself God-King and the whole thing will repeat."

Marcus's frown got less happy. "They closed their borders to Ozurdati trade three months ago. Before that there were rumors of famine."

"Good riddance. More famine means more good Ymelites."

"Yes, but—"

"I'm sure you're right," Eugene said, running over what Marcus had started to say. "Hey, can you suggest a good place for us to stay? Somewhere that we can stable the horses and park the wagons. We'll probably be here a month, maybe more. We're a little lost in the woods and sure could use some local expertise." His smile got wider and the tone was suggestive.

She started to smile, then froze at the slight sound of metal tapping on stone from where one of the snake-men had shifted positions and bumped the barrel of his rifle against the wall.

"I'm sorry," she said in a purely-business professional voice, "but the city prohibits gate guards from making personal recommendations while on duty. There are several caravansaries in the city, including two within a half mile of this gate."

"'While on duty', huh? Any chance you can give me some recommendations later, when you're off-duty?"

Her eyes got slightly wider and she shifted in her chair. "I'm afraid I'm on duty until sunset and unable to accept solicitation during that time."

Eugene clicked his tongue and finger-gunned her with both hands. "Gotcha. No solicitation here. We'll just go get ourselves squared away. Nice meeting you, Alissa. Excuse me: Guard Sergeant Poswell."

A few feet away, the gray giant snickered. From her expression I suspected that Sergeant Poswell was blushing under her tattoos.

Marcus rolled his eyes and sighed. "C'mon, everyone," he said over his shoulder. "Let's get inside and get this done." He put his foot in the rope stirrup (another nifty human word!) and swung up onto my back. "Gee up, Athos." He flicked the halter so it slapped against my neck. I craned my neck around so I could give him a narrow-eyed stare, then faced forward and headed through the gate. I may have done a bit of high-stepping so as to bounce him around a bit. He grunted; I think he may have landed on his boy bits. I felt no satisfaction about that at all. Nope. Not a bit.