Page 15 of Shackled to the Orc

“Spears?”

I point to two practice spears, the longest we have, unwieldy things, and Peter grabs them, along with the long, wooden replica of a dirk. He’s slight, but he’s quick, and if it wasn’t for me, he would have tried to fight with a sword. I taught him to stalk. To dance around your opponent, to wait patiently, to ignore the jeers of the crowd calling you a coward, to wait for your moment. They don’t like the fighting style at first, but when you draw blood, they scream for you. He won them over. I watched the fight from the entrance, staring out through the bars, as Trooper broke two of Peter’s ribs with a horrible crunch, but Peter let the blow carry him, not resisting, rolling and getting back up to his feet.

I take a wooden axe, the closest I can find to Grommash’s chosen weapon. The balance is all wrong on it, too light at the end where it should be weighed down by the metal blades, but it’s the best we can do.

Shug is smart.

He doesn’t let us have real weapons, not even dulled metal ones. The training ground is sunken in the earth, surrounded by tall walls. Some of the half-orcs could climb them, but they couldn’t avoid the crossbow bolts of the ever-watchful guards if they tried to escape. A human once tried it. Shug let him bleed out from the bolt wound, his guards swearing that they would turn anyone who tried to help him into a pincushion. We listened to him die for seven long hours.

No one tried to escape since.

I’m limping more than usual, my knee protesting, but my headache has lessened. I stride out through the corridors to the training ring. In the center, the two criminals are standing, the stench of their fear on my nostrils. They are not gladiators. Not yet. The sun is rising, painting the horizon in reds and oranges.

Peter stands beside me. I grab one of the spears and toss it into the air. It lands in the sand, sticking up next to them. They both flinch. I take the next and throw it, and the man missing teeth manages to catch it, his grip around it firm.

“You are Tooth. You are Bald. Until you survive your bout, you do not get your real names.”

I heave my sword into the air. It twirls, flying upwards with my full strength, and their eyes go upwards.

I charge. My knee shrieks in protest, my entire leg on fire, as I lower my left shoulder and plow into Bald, the crunch of his jaw loud in my ears as he flies back. Tooth nearly gets his spear forward enough to poke it into me before I am on him, and I lift him by his throat, throwing him into the sand.

The two men are dazed, and Bald reaches up to his mouth, spitting out blood and a fragment of a tooth.

“You’re going to have to call them both Tooth,” quips Peter. His entire left side of his body was yellow when I was done with him, but he had longer to train before his first fight. These two, I have to go easier on. They’re nothing but meat. Nothing but statistics, two men who will never make it past their first fight.

But I will give them a chance. It is more than they would get from anyone else.

“Get up!” I bark out, and the two of them slowly stand, using their spears to prop themselves up, the butts digging into the sand. I point to their spears. “Your opponent will underestimate you. He will charge. When he is close, you will dig the butts of your spears into the sand. You will brace. And you will let him skewer himself.”

I limp, moving heavily back to the marks in the sand where I pushed off. The wound under my left arm is an extra little sting of fresh pain and added annoyance. The two men are shaking. Bald’s lip is already swelling up, blood dripping from his mouth, but in their fear there is the stink of something new.

Hatred and anger.

I charge. The two spears snap against my body, and I push them aside, but this time lighter, just enough to knock them back, but not to pancake them against the sand. They are panting, white-knuckled, holding the wooden fragments of the spears.

“Get two more,” I order Peter. He turns and saunters back to the barracks. He’s getting cocky after winning his last three fights.

“Don’t waste your time with these two. They’re meat. They’re going up against Grommash,” says Garvin from the seats at the entrance. He’s chewing on a piece of bread, sipping a cup of the poison he calls coffee, which is half filled with whisky. Most of the other gladiators are sleeping off the night of festivities, but he’s never needed much rest to stay sharp.

The stink of their fear intensifies. “Grom…Grommash?” says Bald, his eyes wide in horror. He probably watched the half-orc fight more than a few times from the stands. He never thought it would be him inside. He probably screamed out in bloodlust at the brutal coup de gras.

“You. Tooth. You will be on the left. Grommash is missing his right eye.”

“Because you took it out with your sword,” laughs Garvin. “That one holds a grudge. He likes to make mincemeat of anyone in our stable.”

I ignore Garvin, addressing Tooth. “You’re faster. Grommash will favor his left side, turning too far. His right side is the one to strike.”

“They’re a lost cause.”

The hatred intensifies in their scents, but it is no longer directed at me, unless they are so dull and dumb they think I am putting them through this for nothing. It’s a weak tendril in their scent, overpowered by their raw fear, black despair rotting them from the inside.

When I’m done with them, they’ll be too tired to feel anything.

9

MAYA

The morning light streaming through the window wakes me, and I stretch out in the too-huge bed, yawning. I’ve woken up in the same bed since my childhood, and it’s surreal to be here, surrounded by cold stone, in a gladiator’s home.

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