Page 63 of Bloodguard

I debate telling her and her companion to piss off. But I do want to return to the barracks. And there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say, but I need to retrieve some things.

We mount, and they mercifully allow me to set the pace. We follow a bumpy, barely there trail through the forest surrounding the Iamond family manor, and I even manage to keep my seat as we do it. Credit for both achievements is owed exclusively to my mare, Star. Giselle rides just behind me with her bodyguard beside her. He doesn’t say much, but I’ve noticed Caelen always shadows her, and not for the first time, I wonder at their relationship.

Star’s heavy hooves pound against the moist ground, kicking mud and grass up behind her. The sound reminds me of those damn drumbeats in the arena, and I grimace, hating the way my body instinctively tenses in preparation for another fight.

As we reach a break in the trees at the top of the ridgeline, the terrain starts to change. A long, winding road snakes down this side of the incline. As we descend, the lush pines and dense forest give way to a rocky landscape littered with weeds and thorny plants and not much else.

Caelen draws to a stop partway down.“This is it?” he asks, pointing to the barracks in the distance where I lived with the other gladiators.

“Yes.”

Rows and rows of large wooden buildings with poorly patched roofs fill a vast, walled square. In each tower along the points that make up the compound, royal guards, bored to pieces, pretend to keep watch.

A dense copse of thorned fire bushes—red-leafed plants that burn like hell if the leaves touch your skin—ring the barracks walls, keeping us in and everyone else out.

“Which is yours?” Caelen asks.

“The one at the end, on the left,” I mumble, but it’s sure as hell notmine. It’s where I was brought as a fresh recruit and where I met Sullivan. He’d been there longer. We didn’t talk right away. No one did. Why strike up a conversation with someone who’d likely be dead in a week? Or worse, someone who might become a friend.

As we follow the weather-beaten path down to the barracks past the bare patch of dirt where competitors are loaded like wild animals into the caged wagons that transport us to the arena, we have a good view of the open area where we practice. It’s mostly dirt, sometimes mud or even ice depending on the season. Beq the ogre wields his favorite stick, howling a challenge to those practicing throwing longer sticks like spears on the range.

“Come!” he calls.“Fight.”

Several others duel hand to hand in designated sparring circles beside him. Some turn, debating whether to take him up on the challenge. Most don’t. He’s good with that stick. He’s also good at swiping your shit if you don’t hide it well enough.

Caelen frowns as we close in on the compound’s tall, spike-topped iron doors. I almost laugh at the way he looks at the old rusty things, his features alerting me that he’s offended by this place.

“They don’t have barracks on the front lines?” I ask.

He shakes his head.“Not like this. As a former soldier himself, Vitor provides the best care to Arrow’s fighters.”

Well, therein lies the difference. General—Regent—Vitor prizes his militia. They’re valuable. We’re nothing more than live entertainment.

“My lord?” the sprite guard calls from her perch at the tower. She flaps her gossamer wings as she lands. She’s not greeting Caelen. She’s just confounded by the fact that he’s here. I get it.

“No one is permitted within a mile of these barracks unless first screened by Lord Vitor,” she says. She and the others hold their ground as much as they dare. Caelen comes from a noble house, and he’s a high-ranking military official in his own right.

Giselle, though, is the one who replies.“This gladiator has earned favor from our beloved Princess Maeve, and she currently sponsors him,” she says.“We’re here to collect his belongings and be on our way.” She loses her polite tone.“Move,” she tells them.

The guards flanking the sprite edge away, not wanting to offend Caelen, who has his hand on the hilt of his sword.

The sprite steps back, her beelike eyes blinking madly. Her lingering apprehension softens when Caelen drops several coins in her palm, and she damn near sinks her sword into the cohorts who rush in to demand their share.

We slide off our horses, tying their reins to a designated post out front, and Caelen motions for me to take the lead.

The slanted buildings inside the camp are made of mismatched wooden beams with colors ranging from the gray of an old man’s beard to the brown of toadstools pushing through the dirt. Caelen straightens as a group of gladiators spills from the opening of the building to our left and rushes to the rear of the compound, a battle cry rising.

“Who are they attacking?” Caelen asks, sweeping Giselle behind him.

“No one,” I say.“It’s Tuesday. Their building gets to eat first.”

We cross the yard in the direction they ran. The line stops in front of Heene, the human cook, who lifts one of the wooden bowls from the stack beside him and pours a ladle of fairy elm soup.

He’s generous with his helpings. Everyone knows it, which is why they’re all but stoning one another to be first.

Never mind. Theyarestoning one another.

“They’re hitting each other with rocks!” Giselle gasps, echoing my thoughts.

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