Page 68 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

Fuck if Verna Zan Zan didn’t just carry on like nothing had happened.

“You will all learn to fight, Thumos willing. You are here to fight and make me money. If you make me enough money, I may one day decide, from the generosity of my heart, to free you. The odds of this happening are quite low, since I will make money from you while you are good at fighting. The first sign that you are no longer good at fighting is usually a minor condition called death. If I notice that you have died, you will be excused from duty. If I do not notice, please do not tell me; I would like to keep making money from you.”

That got a laugh from most. Even from Galva, when I translated.

“Now, I am rotten to the core, but I am fair, except when I really want something. People seem to find me funny. Some of you may even come to like me. That is your problem. Like me at your peril, for I will use it against you, and I will never like you. Even if I do, I will never tell you I do, so you don’t get lazy or stupid. If I find you sexually attractive, which is different from liking you, you will know because I will fuck you. Except that one,” she said, indicating Galva. “Because that bitch is crazy. Sometimes I like crazy. But I rarely fuck it, or if I do, I kill it after. All right, that is all for now. Handler, get their chains off and show them to their luxurious shitholes.”

So my smack-happy handler could pummel me at will, I was owned by a rapist, and I would soon be training to fight other slaves to the death out here in the middle of fuck-all where I had only one friend, and she a slave as well.

Perfect.

Before I launch into my woeful tale of the rigors of gladiator training and the disgrace and horror of my first public fight, I suppose I should back up and tell you how Verna Zan Zan came to purchase all three of us, us meaning me, Galva, and the wee giant. You’ll remember that Urkus made quite a speech about what a murderous creature Galva is, which caused her price to go quite high, and that I only figured out what he was saying in Erydoni because of his arm-and-leg-cutting gestures. Well, when Galva had been bought and my turn came, he played for laughs recounting my role in the fight with the Wostrans. I knew this because he ducked his head hard, as the camel-riding hatty karks did, and came up with his fingers in a V on the top of his head. Right. All I’d managed was to stick a couple of arrows in a big red hat. But then, almost as a throwaway, he said something else about me and nodded at Galva. I’ll bet my last copper shave what he said was, “Of course, Verna Zan Zan, if you wish to speak to your promising new fighter, perhaps this quick little blacktongue will be useful to translate. They seem to be companions, and he is loyal to her.” He knew damned well that some of those she had beaten out for Galva would try to buy me just to thwart her; and if he knew he had a Holter navy man still in the pen who could speak to Galva, he didn’t say, because he could sell that kark to anyone on his likely merits as a fighter. My only real value was as a companion to her. So Verna bought me, having to tussle a bit with a red-haired fellow who was her only real rival among the city’s sandmasters. But this fellow knobbed himself good by angering Verna—when bidding got sharp on the giant boy, and his offer was about to be taken, she swooped in and started bidding high. She might have been content to bleed him for money, but she saw that he really wanted the lad, so she taught him a lesson and took him. Verna Zan Zan wasn’t just smart and cruel. She was rich. Rich as Old Kesh, as the saying goes, and the only thing these half-giants like better than making true giants bow and grovel to them is money.

The smack-happy handler told us his name, but I won’t tell you, because I hate that fucker and his name can die with him. I’ll just call him Smacky. I can still see him with flies crawling on his leathery bald head—they loved Smacky, did flies, and he might have loved them back, so little did he try to keep them off him. He saved all his swats for us. There he is in my memory, like a turd in milk, standing there in the sun with his loincloth so loiny one nut was always hanging out, that expression on his face like he just fingered your sister, then reached the same hand into your cookie bag and took one.

Oh, and he smelled bad, too. If my village’s midwife had smelled like that, I’d have been born out my mother’s mouth.

Fuck him.

He’s not the one who tried to teach us fighting.

That was Verna Zan Zan herself.

“The thing about fighting true giants,” she said, “is that you have to work together. By yourself, they’ll walk on you and pull you off their sandal’s bottom. But in a group, you can overwhelm them. Thinking is not a giant’s strong suit. Look at thickboy here.” She nodded at Birch. “He has two expressions: confused and asleep. But even confused, he’s dangerous. You don’t have to be able to quote old poets to swing a club. You don’t have to know algebra to pull arms out of sockets. We’re going to play a game now. Try not to get injured, you’ll be fighting soon.”

So saying, me, the navy Holter, and a tan, blond-haired dam from Oustrim were all given poles about five feet in length. Birch got a sort of pillow, but big. Smacky put him on one side of the black sand square, and we got on the other.

“Now remember that this is a game, and try not to hurt each other for real. You three will poke Thickboy, and he will thump you with that thumper. No points, no real end to it. I just want to see how you all move. Don’t worry, my expectations are low. Now FIGHT!”

It wasn’t much of a fight.

For the first moments, it was just the three of us keeping well back from that twelve-footer while he whirled his leather thumper around where we weren’t.

“Fight, I said, not play bull and chickens,” said the sandmaster, so I leapt and gave Birch a wee poke in the cheek. To be honest, I was holding back on purpose, but I couldn’t hold back too much. If Verna decided I was worthless, she’d sell me down a mine. If she knew what a quick, vicious little bastard I was, especially with a knife, she might decide to fight me against some truly hard kark in the arena. Anyway, getting that poke in had felt kind of good, so, when Birch swung at the Oustrim girleen and knocked her off her feet, I lunged in with another poke, this one in the tit, then rolled away. I guess the boyo had tender paps, because I got him a bit angry. Thing about rolling away is you need to roll away far enough, and there is no far enough away from a biggun. Here he came rubbing his bruised knap with one hand and twirling that big sack of biff-boff over his head like he meant to launch it at the gods. I rolled again, saw that he was too close for that to have been a good idea, and when he hit me, I went in the air. Worse, he hit me so hard I went flying, saying, “AWWWHHH!” as I lost all the wind in my lungs. It shook my brains, that thump, so I wasn’t able to land as gently as I’ve been trained to, or as I would have had my ring of Catfall not been nicked. I hit the hard ground, it hit back like it was personal now, and I lost my wind again. But not from my mouth this time. That fucking giant knocked a fart out of me that would have stopped bagpipes. That thing had an echo.

I sat up going, “Erp, erp,” with my flattened lungs. Yah, I know, real tough. But you get hit full-bodied by a three-quarter-ton man-child swinging a thirty-pound whomper, and we’ll see how fine a speech you make.

Worse than the bung-trumpet was the humiliation of Birch throwing down his whomper and coming over to make sure I was all right. The other two set about poking him because nobody had said stop, but he just shook them off and put his big hands on me, all worried-looking. It was quite dear, but I’m embarrassed to say that I punched him in the eye and said, “Fuck off! I’m all right.” Never mind that that’s how I’d have served my own brother in the same situation, it hurt the boy’s feelings more than the punch did. He covered the poked eye with a big meaty hand and ran away, oblivious to the many pole-stabs of the Holter and the dam, both trying to make sure the sandmaster saw what kind of fighters they were.

She did.

“What was that?” she said. “What the FUCK did I just have stuffed in my eye-holes? Thickboy, get back on the sand! Nobody told you to leave the sand! You great fucking baby, please tell me I haven’t bought a big wet sponge. You’re a giant, for shit’s sake, act like one! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Now Smacky came up with a real live spear, topped in wicked-sharp blackglass, and two of Verna’s blacksanders, likewise armed, came with him. The handler jabbed the big, gentle boy in the thighs and arse until, blood running down his legs, he took the sand again, shaking like he does. He was made to play poles-and-pillow three more times, and he did his best, but he’s just not for fighting.

Some aren’t.

Thing about Smacky was he liked hurting the boy as much as the boy had hated hurting me. So Smacky’s place in the Ludus of the Green Devil was assured. When he snapped his spear back up after prickling poor Birch with it, a big drop of blood splatted on his bald head. He let it run down his face. He probably thought it was a fly.

The very next week, Verna bought a proper giant, a right mean bastard named Kaenik. She sold Birch to a stone-quarry to spend his short life hauling the red building-stones they make everything out of in Erydon. The Oustrim dam went to a salt mine. The navy Holter died the next week, in our first real fight, at the games of the Winter Folly. Turns out their calendar had no gloaming here, just went straight from autumn to winter.

Verna Zan Zan kept me because I could talk to her prize mare.

And because she misses nothing.

She knew how fast I was and that I was holding back.

She guessed I’d stop holding back when my life was on the line.