Lord of the Clans (7 page)

At first, his plan was to raise the orc to be a well-educated, loyal slave and a peerless warrior. He would send Thrall to defeat his own people, if “people” was even the proper term for such mindless green thugs, and once they had been defeated, use the broken clans to his, Blackmoore’s, own purpose.

But the Horde had been defeated by the Alliance without Thrall having even tasted battle. At first, Blackmoore had been sour about this. But then another
thought came to him on how he could use his pet orc. It required patience, something Blackmoore had only in short supply, but the rewards would be far greater than he could have imagined. Infighting was already rampant among the Alliance. Elf sneered at human, human mocked dwarf, and dwarf mistrusted elf. A nice little triangle of bigotry and suspicion.

He raised himself from his chair long enough to observe Thrall defeat one of the biggest, nastiest-looking men Blackmoore had ever seen. But the human warrior was no match for the unstoppable green beast. The cheers went up, and Blackmoore smiled. He waved Tammis Foxton over, and the servant hastened to obey.

“My lord?”

“How many is that today?” Blackmoore knew his voice was slurred but he didn’t care. Tammis had seen him drunker than this. Tammis had put him to
bed
drunker than this.

Tammis’s prim, anxious face looked even more concerned than usual. “How many what, my lord?” His gaze flickered to the bottle, then back to Blackmoore.

Sudden rage welled up in Blackmoore. He grabbed Tammis by the shirtfront and yanked him down to within an inch of his face.

“Counting the bottles, you pathetic excuse for a man?” he hissed, keeping his voice low. One of the many threats he held over Tammis was public disgrace; even drunk as Blackmoore was, he didn’t want to play that particular card quite yet. But he threatened it
often, as now. Before his slightly swimmy vision he saw Tammis pale. “You farm out your own wife to suckle monsters, and you dare imply that I have weaknesses?”

Sickened by the man’s pasty face, he shoved him away. “I wanned to know how many rounds Thrall has won.”

“Oh, yes, sir, of course. Half dozen, all in a row.” Tammis paused, looking utterly miserable. “With all due respect, sir, this last one taxed him. Are you sure you want to put him through three more matches?”

Idiots. Blackmoore was surrounded by idiots. When Sergeant had read the order of battles this morning, he, too, had confronted Blackmoore, saying the orc needed at least a few moments of rest, and couldn’t they switch the combatant list so that the poor coddled creature could relax.

“Oh, no. The odds against Thrall go higher with ever’ battle. He’s never lost, not once. Of course I want to stop and give all those nice people their money back.” Disgusted, he waved Tammis away. Thrall was incapable of being defeated. Why not make hay while the sun shone?

Thrall won the next battle, but even Blackmoore could see the creature struggling. He adjusted his chair for a better view. Langston imitated him. The battle after that, the eighth of the nine for which the orc was scheduled, saw something that Blackmoore and the crowds had never witnessed.

The mighty orc was tiring. The combatants this time were a pair of mountain cats, caught two weeks
ago, penned, tormented, and barely fed until this moment. Once the door to the arena slid open they exploded at the orc as if they had been fired from a cannon. Their creamy brown pelts were a blur as, moving as one, they leaped on him, and Thrall went down beneath their claws and teeth.

A horrified cry arose among the onlookers. Blackmoore sprang to his feet, and immediately had to seize his chair in order to keep from falling down. All that money. . . .

And then Thrall was up! Screaming in rage, shaking the big animals off him as if they were but tree squirrels, he used the two swords that were his assigned weapon in this fight with speed and skill. Thrall was completely ambidextrous, and the blades sparkled in the bright sunlight as they whirled and slashed. One cat was already dead, its long, lithe body sliced nearly in two by a single powerful stroke. The remaining animal, goaded to further rage by the death of its mate, attacked with renewed fury. This time Thrall did not give it an opening. When the cat sprang, all yowls and claws and teeth, Thrall was ready for it. His sword sliced left, right, and left again. The cat fell in four bloody chunks.

“Will you look at that?” said Langston happily.

The crowd roared its approval. Thrall, who normally welcomed the cries with raised fists and stamped his feet almost until the earth itself shook, merely stood there with stooped shoulders. He was breathing raggedly, and Blackmoore saw that the cats had left
their mark with several deep, bleeding scratches and bites. As he stared at his prized slave, Thrall slowly turned his ugly head and looked straight up at Blackmoore. Their eyes met, and in their depths Blackmoore saw agony and exhaustion . . . and an unspoken plea.

Then Thrall, the mighty warrior, fell to his knees. Again the crowd reacted vocally. Blackmoore fancied he even heard sympathy in the sound. Langston said nothing, but his brown eyes were watching Blackmoore intently.

Damn Thrall! He was an orc, had been fighting since he was six years old. Most of his matches today had been with humans, mighty warriors to be sure, but nothing to compare with Thrall’s brute strength. This was a ploy to get out of the final round, which Thrall knew would be the toughest of all. Selfish, stupid slave. Wanted to go back to his cozy cell, read his books, and eat his food, did he? Well, Blackmoore would teach
him
a thing or two.

At that moment, Sergeant trotted onto the field. “Lord Blackmoore!” he cried, cupping his hands around his bearded mouth. “Will you cede this last challenge?”

Heat flared on Blackmoore’s cheeks. How dare Sergeant do this, in front of everyone! Blackmoore, who was still standing unsteadily, gripped the back of the chair harder with his left hand. Langston moved unobtrusively to offer aid if he needed it. Blackmoore extended his right hand straight out in front of him, then brought the hand over to his left shoulder.

No.

Sergeant stared at him for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then, he nodded, and signaled that this final bout would begin.

Thrall climbed to his feet, looking as if he had a ton of stones on his back. Several men scurried onto the field, to remove the dead mountain cats and dropped weapons. They handed Thrall the weapon that he was to use for this battle: the morningstar, a studded, metal ball attached by a chain to a thick stick. Thrall took the weapon, and tried to draw himself up into a threatening posture. Even at this distance Blackmoore could see that he trembled. Usually, before each battle, Thrall stamped on the earth. The steady rhythm both excited the crowd and seemed to help Thrall feel more ready for combat. Today, though, he simply seemed struggling to stay on his feet.

One more bout. The creature could handle that.

The doors opened, but for a moment, nothing emerged from the inner gloom.

Then it came, its two heads crying incoherent challenges, its pale body towering over Thrall as Thrall towered over humans. It had only one weapon, as Thrall did, but it was a superior one for this battle — a long, deadly-looking spear. Between the length of its arms and the shaft of the spear, the ogre would be able to reach Thrall from much farther away. Thrall would need to get in close in order to strike any kind of a blow, let alone a winning one.

This was so unfair! “Who gave the ogre that spear?” Blackmoore bellowed to Langston. “It ought to have something at least similar to what Thrall has been given!” Blackmoore conveniently chose not to remember all the times that Thrall had been equipped with a broadsword or spear himself and his human opponents had had to make do with a short sword or ax.

The ogre marched into the circular arena like a machine of war rather than a living, breathing being. He stabbed forward with his spear, one head turned toward the crowd, one head facing Thrall.

Thrall had never seen one of these creatures before, and for a moment simply stood, staring at it. Then he rallied, drew himself up to his full height, and began to swing the morningstar. He threw back his head, tangled long black hair brushing his back, and let loose with a howl to match the ogre’s bellowing.

The ogre charged, stabbing forward with the spear. There was no finesse in his movements, only brute strength. Thrall easily ducked the clumsy charge, slipped underneath the ogre’s defenses, and swung hard with the morningstar. The ogre cried out and slowed as the spiked ball struck him heavily in the midsection. Thrall had dashed past and now whirled to attack again.

Before the ogre could even turn around, Thrall had struck him in the back. The ogre fell to his knees, dropping the spear and reaching to clutch his back.

Blackmoore smiled. Surely that had broken the miserable creature’s spine. These fights weren’t necessarily
to the death — in fact, killing one’s opponent was frowned on as it reduced the pool of good fighters — but everyone knew that dying was a very real possibility in this ring. Healers and their salves couldn’t fix everything. And Blackmoore couldn’t manage to find any sympathy at all for an ogre.

But his pleasure was short-lived. Even as Thrall began to swing the morningstar again, gathering momentum, the ogre lurched to his feet and seized the dropped spear. Thrall swung the morningstar at the creature’s head. To the crowd’s amazement, and obviously to Thrall’s as well, the ogre simply extended a big hand and batted the spike out of the way while shoving forward with the spear.

The morningstar flew from Thrall’s hand. He was knocked off balance and could not recover in time. Even as he desperately tried to twist out of the way the spear impaled him high in the chest, a few inches from his left shoulder. He screamed in agony. The ogre continued to shove as he approached, and the spear went completely through Thrall’s body. He fell backward, and was pinned to the earth. Now the ogre fell atop him, pummeling the hapless orc madly and uttering horrible grunts and squeals.

Blackmoore stared in horror. The orc was being beaten, as helpless as a child beneath the onslaught of a bully. The gladiator ring, a showcase for the finest warriors in the kingdom to compete against one another using strength, skill, and cunning, had been reduced to
nothing more than one weak monster being beaten to a pulp by another, bigger one.

How could Thrall have let this happen?

Men now hastened onto the field. With sharpened sticks, they prodded the ogre, trying to goad him into leaving off his prey. The brute responded to the taunts, abandoning a bloody Thrall and chasing after the men. Three others tossed a magical net, which immediately shrank to engulf the raging ogre and compress his flailing limbs close to his body. He thrashed now like a fish out of water, and the men, not at all gently, hauled the creature onto a cart and took him out of the ring.

Thrall, too, was being carried out, though with much more gentleness. Blackmoore’s patronage assured that. But Blackmoore realized that he had lost every penny he had bet on Thrall today because of this single fight. Many of his companions had done likewise, and he could feel the heat of their furious glares as they reached for their purses to pay their debts.

Thrall. Thrall.
Thrall. . . .

Thrall lay gasping on the straw that served him as a bed. He had never known such pain existed. Nor such exhaustion. He wished he would fall unconscious; it would be so much easier.

Nonetheless, he would not let the welcoming blackness overtake him. The healers would be here soon; Blackmoore always sent them after Thrall had been injured in a bout. Blackmoore also always came to visit
him, and Thrall eagerly awaited the comforting words of his master. He had lost the battle, true, and that was a first, but surely Blackmoore would have nothing but praise for how well he had fought nine bouts in a row. That was unheard of, Thrall knew. Thrall also knew he could have beaten the ogre if he had been matched against him in the first bout, or the third, or even the sixth. But no one could expect him to win after a record-breaking eight bouts.

He closed his eyes as pain seared him. The hot burning in his chest was nigh unbearable. Where were the healers? They should have been here by now. He knew his injuries were bad this time. He estimated he had several broken ribs, a broken leg, several sword slashes, and of course the dreadful hole in his shoulder where the spear had impaled him. They would have to come soon if Thrall were to be able to fight again tomorrow.

Thrall heard the lock open, but could not lift his head to see who entered his cell.

“The healers will be here,” came Blackmoore’s voice. Thrall tensed. The voice was slurred and dripped with contempt. His heart began to speed up. Please, not this time . . . not now. . . .

“But they won’t be here anytime soon. I wan’ see you suffer, you poxy son of a whore.”

And then Thrall gasped in torment as Blackmoore’s boot kicked him in the stomach. The pain was incredible, but not nearly as searing as the shock of betrayal that shuddered through him. Why would Blackmoore
strike him when he was so badly injured? Did he not see how well Thrall had fought?

Though the pain threatened to cause him to lose consciousness, Thrall raised his head and stared at Blackmoore with blurred vision. The man’s face was contorted in anger, and even as Thrall met his eyes Blackmoore struck him soundly across the face with a mailed fist. Everything went black for an instant and when Thrall could next hear, Blackmoore was still railing.

“. . . lost thousands, do you hear me,
thousands!
What is the matter with you? It was one pathetic little fight!”

He was still raining blows on Thrall, but Thrall was starting to drift away. He felt as if his body only vaguely belonged to him, and the kicks Blackmoore delivered felt more and more like taps. He felt blood sticky on his face.

Blackmoore had seen him. He knew how exhausted Thrall had been, had watched him rally again and again and again to hold his own eight out of nine times. There was no way anyone could have expected Thrall to win that fight. Thrall had fought with everything he had, and he had lost fairly and honorably. And yet that was not good enough for Blackmoore.