Meritorium (Meritropolis Book 2) (20 page)

“He’s tiring out,” Charley cried out. “And he still doesn’t see the wolverators coming. Let’s see if we can form a wall to keep them occupied for a while.”

Chest up, Orson pranced forward astride his unicorn mount, directly at the wolverators, his dashing good looks showing grim determination. But the idyllic storybook scene came to a jarring halt. His countenance changed from a picture of courage to something like uncertainty and then to outright revulsion. Furiously trying to high-step backward, a desperate whinny squeaked out of his mount.

“They’re climbing up!” Orson jabbed his blade directly into the gaping, teeth-filled mouth of a wolverator that had fastened itself onto the side of his mount and was scaling methodically higher. Leveraging against the rows of teeth, Orson tried to use his sword like a spatula, flipping the attacker off his mount’s flank without hurting his transportation.

Charley suddenly became grateful for the functionality of his horse’s wings. Even with the added weight of Hank, they were already a few feet off the ground, and out of reach of the snapping jaws below.

“Oh, forget this!” Orson hopped off his mount with a final stroke of its glossy mane. “Sorry, girl.” Free to maneuver, Orson now darted in and out of the snapping jaws like a salsa dancer, but with a deadly flashing weapon. Staking, kicking, and slicing, Orson made short work of the first three wolverators.

If Orson was learning to dance the salsa, Charley was learning to swing the mace like a medieval warrior. His flying horse kept him and Hank safe from the gnashing teeth below, and his mace was more than long enough to wallop the top of the spiny skulls below. Every swing of his mace was accompanied by a satisfying crunch barely drowned out by the roar of the crowd.

“Charley!” Hank screamed just moments before Charley felt a searing slash along his hip. Pain lanced down his leg like a million fire ants darting through his veins and tingling through his capillaries. Their flying mount veered wildly and crumpled them onto the ground, landing Charley and Hank in a tangled mess of limbs.

Charley cursed. “What was—”

Hank tried to scramble free of Charley, his knee crushing Charley’s hip, and causing Charley to yell out in pain. “We’ve been hit!”

“I know that, you idiot!” Grimacing, Charley tried to heft himself to one knee, but his ankle was pinned beneath the trappings of a discarded chariot and other battle detritus littering the arena floor. “What happened?”

Hank pointed to a cadre of warriors that had managed to slip around Grigor and Orson. “They happened!”

Charley winced as one of the men brutally kicked his flying horse and sent it hobbling away. The largest, a big-bellied man with a bristly black beard, carried a twisted club with nails and other pieces of metal stuck into the knotted end. He eyed Charley with a sneer and slowly walked toward him.

“Quick, get this thing off me!” Charley cried out. “I can’t move!”

Hank bent down quickly, eyes trained on the men fast approaching, and heaved until a vein popped on his forehead. “It’s wedged into the sand against something. I’m trying.”

“Well, try harder!”

“I—I can’t.” Hank’s eyes widened in panic. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to distract them and then get Orson or Grigor.”

Charley looked over his shoulder frantically. “Just hurry! They’re releasing even more animal combos, too!”

“I’m on it.”

Hank picked up his blade and ran, screaming, directly at the group of men, exhibiting a touch of his old psychopathy. At the last moment, Hank veered off wildly to one side, swiping across the exposed shoulder of one of the warriors.

With a bevy of shouted curses, the men clanked after Hank.

All except one.

The man with the nail-studded bat continued his steady walk toward Charley. A coarse laugh burbled up from lips stained purple.

Charley wrenched his knee, straining backward against the weight of the chariot, but he simply wasn’t strong enough. If this was how he was going to die, then so be it, but he wasn’t going to die bowing his head. He jutted his chin forward and looked up.

The warrior walked up to Charley and stopped, his burly figure casting an immense shadow that engulfed Charley. “You’re as stuck as a taped ape,” he said matter-of-factly, spitting a dark purple stream of viscous liquid into the dirt.

Charley looked down.

The inky fluid pooled in the sand, billowing outward and transmogrifying into a Rorschach test of sputum that only came up death.

Charley looked up. This time the warrior’s profile eclipsed all remaining sunrays; he held his nail-studded bat with two hands straight above his head.

“Pathetic little Low Score.”

Charley was shocked, and for a brief moment, he didn’t understand that the warrior meant him. But it came back to him: the sad realization of his plight. He had become a Low Score and now he was to die like one. An image of his brother appeared in Charley’s mind. Was this how Alec had died? Thrust out of the gates of Meritropolis at the hands of armed men who had mocked and jeered his low Score? A wave of icy calm spread throughout his body.

The warrior spat again, but Charley didn’t look down this time.

“Go on then,” Charley said, his lip curling. Despite the dryness of his mouth, he hocked the biggest, wettest globule of phlegm he could and spat it directly onto the warrior’s dusty boot.

The warrior bent the twisted bat straight back with a snarl. “Well, at least you’ve got spiri—”

A high keening prehistoric scream ripped through the cacophony of the arena like the sound of an ancient pterodactyl on the warpath. With a whoosh and a chomp, an enormous llamabill swooped down from above, and bit the warrior’s head clean off with a sickening crunch.

The now headless warrior, bat still raised, remained upright for the space of a second. Absurdly, Charley had an image that the headless body would continue to fight, moving like a chicken with its head cut off. But, before the thought was even fully formed, it was gone, and the warrior’s decapitated body slumped sideways and then fell into the dirt, a plume of smoke puffing up and enveloping the still form.

The decibel level of the crowd grew deafening.

Pain spread through Charley’s knee and he looked down. The inky sputum from the warrior bloomed outward, forming a new slide, the administration of the Rorschach test incomplete. A new shape emerged. It was still death, all he could see was death, but if he squinted, maybe he could see wings.

An enormous webbed foot with yellow splayed claws stepped directly onto the spitblot, transforming its shape entirely, and plastering a new footprint in its stead.

The llamabill squawked defiantly, claiming Charley as its own. Its foot was just inches from Charley, but strangely he didn’t feel afraid.

Charley looked up slowly.

A beak as wide as a garbage-can lid, proven capable of decapitating a fully grown man, yawned open inches from Charley’s wide-eyed face. The llamabill’s mouth belched out noxious fumes, reminiscent of swamps, wharves, and rotting fish all in one, accosting Charley’s nose.

Charley recoiled. Forgetting his current predicament in the surprise, he winced as his knee wrenched against the dead weight of the heavy chariot. The llamabill cocked its head to one side, looked at Charley quizzically, and then let out a staccato of bill-clattering. The llamabill nimbly stepped up to the dirt-encrusted chariot, lifted a great webbed foot, and then kicked out, toppling the chariot, and freeing him.

Charley stood up slowly, not taking his eyes off his rescuer. “Thank you.” His eyes widened. “It can’t be … You—you’re the same—you followed me?” The llamabill squawked, eyes glinting. “Did you get captured too, boy? Is that how you ended up here? You got captured—trying to follow me?”

The llamabill capered up and down, and, followed by two sprightly sideways hops, seemed to twist its massive mouth into a smile.

Charley squinted, getting a closer look. “Is it really you? Shooey?”

The llamabill nuzzled his shoulder in return.

“It is you …” Charley tentatively reached a hand out and stroked the downy fur along its neck.

Hank ran up, breathing hard through his mouth. “You, um, know this animal?”

Shooey turned to Hank, planted a heavy webbed foot in front of Charley, and screeched an aggressive warning. Hank stepped back hurriedly, falling over his own feet in the process. “Call him off! Call him off!”

“Shooey, it’s okay. It’s okay. This is Hank.”

The intelligent eyes, severe as a falcon in flight, twitched from Charley to Hank and back again. Leaning down, as if to sniff Hank, Shooey ducked its beak.

Hank scrabbled backward in the dirt, covering his head with one arm. “Please, Charley, don’t let it eat me!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Just get up,” Charley said, trying to sound more certain than he really was.

“Okay, I’m getting up slowly.” Hank lifted himself gently to one knee. “Don’t let it pee on me, either.”

“Come on, it’s a llamabill, not a dog marking its territory.” Charley held out his hand to Hank. “Let’s go, we need to help Grigor.” Charley looked over his shoulder at Orson furiously staving off wolverators left and right to protect Grigor, who was still astride the rampaging horoceros.

Shooey, now eye level with Hank, tilted its head to one side, and then belched a gaseous blast of fishy smog directly into Hank’s open mouth.

Charley tried to hide a smile. “I think that means he likes you.”

Coughing, Hank turned away quickly. “You go ahead and ride Shooey. I think I’ll fight over there with Orson on my feet.” Looking over his shoulder at Shooey, Hank coughed again and half-tripped, half-ran to Orson.

Charley looked at Shooey. Well, yeah, I guess I do need a ride—if that’s okay with you?” Charley reached out and gently patted the springy curls on its back.

Before he could lose his nerve, Charley quickly hopped onto Shooey’s back. “There, there, that’s right. Good boy.” He stroked an enormous feathery wing. “It’s up to you, but maybe we could even try a little flyi—”

Shooey launched into the air like a rocket, a prehistoric shriek piercing the battle sounds of the arena. Charley leaned down and hung onto Shooey’s long, fuzzy neck for dear life. He squinted, the whipping wind bringing tears to his eyes. Shooey’s enormous wings unfurled and propelled them upward, seemingly faster than Charley’s stomach could follow. He hoped he could hold on without throwing up. An obviously intelligent animal, Shooey seemed to intuitively understand that the other beasts and armored warriors roaming the arena, posed a threat to Charley.

Swooping and caroming on the downdrafts, Shooey darted along the breeze in a feat of aerial acrobatics that belied his enormous size. Man and beast alike scattered in all directions on the arena floor below, diving and rolling out of their way, to avoid the grasping yellow-and-black talons and wide gaping mouth. Charley was transported back to earlier, more savage times, a time when dinosaurs ruled the land and the air; he was cresting the wind currents mounted on a winged hunting machine.

Charley nudged Shooey’s neck. “Over there, let’s help my friends.” Orson and Hank were valiantly attempting to fight off the streaming wolverators, but there were so many that some were getting close to the unprotected hindquarters of Grigor’s horoceros.

Still clinging on tightly, Charley poked Shooey behind the ear. “Do you understand?”

Incongruently, Shooey let out a whooping maw and then dive-bombed a pack of wolverators that had almost overcome Orson. Breath catching in his throat, Charley felt like his cheeks were rippling back in the wind, his lips flapping so that his teeth were exposed to the wind. With a screaming squawk, Shooey scooped up a wolverator in each gigantic webbed foot, and then ascended straight up.

Bile rose in Charley’s throat. They were at least fifty feet in the air and still climbing. Abruptly, Shooey leveled off, and then cruised sideways on a slipstream, giving Charley just enough time to gulp a breath of air.

The wolverators, stunned and disoriented, began to squirm in the grip of Shooey’s talons.

Charley looked down—and immediately wished he hadn’t. They were at least ten stories up. He was lying prone on Shooey’s fuzzy back, clinging with everything he had not to fall off. He tightened the grip of his arms and legs. Shooey seemed to sense Charley’s discomfort, and retracted the bony pivot joints of his wings to secure Charley in place like a father giving a piggyback ride to his child.

Charley chanced a second look down.

Every eye in the arena was staring up at them. Even contestants on the battlefield were maneuvering away and pointing.

Shooey glided lazily over the top of a dozen armed warriors, before opening his talons. The two wolverators plunged, their flat reptilian bodies twisting in the air, jaws snapping angrily.

The effect of Shooey’s carpet-bombing was instantaneous. Wolverators hit gladiators like detonators, exploding into a roiling mass of clawing and gouging, the vicious snouts of the wolverators sinking their pointy teeth directly into the exposed necks and limbs of the scrambling warriors.

With a triumphal screech, Shooey turned back toward Orson. He now flapped close to the ground, leaving a dark shadow of terror along the arena floor—the fighters below cowering in fear. An arrow sizzled past Charley’s leg, narrowly missing Shooey’s wing, but Shooey seemed unperturbed. Charley had read that an eagle could see an object the size of a small coin from almost a mile away. Judging by the microscopic mid-air adjustments that Shooey had been making, slightly tipping and dipping up, down, left, and right, Charley got the sense that Shooey was aware of all threats, both land-based and airborne.

Charley panned the arena floor, searching for Harold, the pot-bellied slave trader he had glimpsed earlier. He squeezed his knees into Shooey’s downy neck and pointed down at a cluster of heavily armed warriors who appeared to be congregating around a leader half-hidden from view, someone with a portly midsection spilling out beneath an armored breastplate much too small for him.

Charley’s eyes narrowed. “There, go get him!”

Shooey screeched, dive-bombing the group of warriors, who were already dispersing in a rapidly widening concentric circle. Leaving Harold all alone in the center, falling and stumbling backward, eyes wide and panicked underneath the visor tilted comically askew on his head. For a moment, Charley was tempted to sympathy—the old fool probably thought that he still had what it took to “fight” in the arena—but then he thought of the look on Harold’s face when he had purchased the two young girls at the auction block, and he leaned in closer to Shooey’s neck.