A Dragon Rises: Gladiator

By Dale R. Boyd

The gladiator slave pens of Thanus, capital of Byrunthus, were renowned throughout the Southern Kingdoms. A life wearing the iron collar was a life unforgiving and harsh, and often brutally short. There was only one rule within the arena: kill or be killed. It was into such a grim existence a young farm boy named Titus found himself thrust. He was the youngest slave ever sent to the pens in Jax's long memory as master of combat. A slave himself, it was Jax's responsibility to train the new slaves in the ways of sword and shield, of spear and axe. He would train this new lad as well, but there was something about Titus that pulled at a part of his heart that Jax thought long calloused over. Yes, he would teach the boy to become a killer of men because he had no choice, but he would fight for the spirit of the lad as well. He could not strike the chains from Titus' body, but he could strive to keep the boy's soul free. And in so doing, the fabled master of combat of the greatest gladiator stable in the West would start a lost and lonely young boy down the grim, often violent road to becoming a hero that would change the course of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dale R. Boyd
• Release date: Jul 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310954580

Dale R. Boyd

Dale R. Boyd was born in southern California in the late 1950's. By the time he was ten, he had found a true love of all things fantasy and science fiction, books and comics in particular. Beginning with Robert E. Howard's tales about Conan the Barbarian and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, he read just about every book his parents would buy him or he could borrow. From his early teens on, he created his own characters, lands and plots, filing them away for some promised future date he would actually write the stories down. As he got older he took the traditional route of what most would call a normal career in the corporate world, but never gave up his love of reading nor the creation of his own little worlds. In large part due to the encouragement of a dear and close friend, he finally sat down and began to write. "A Dragon Rises: Mercenary" is his first published work of fiction, the first of a series of stories.

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A Dragon Rises: Gladiator (Revised)

By Dale R. Boyd

Copyright 2014 Dale R. Boyd

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Glossary

Author’s Notes

About the Author

Chapter 1

Titus leaned his head back against the worn stone and closed his eyes. Checkered bands of sunlight, hazy in the ever-present dust of the holding pens, played across his scarred body as it filtered through the flat iron cross bars some fifteen feet overhead. As common with all combat arenas in the Southern Kingdoms, the cells had been dug below the foundations of the structure itself, thereby saving the price of land and the coin paid to the Masons’ Guild. Only now, with the sun high in the noonday sky, did enough light come through to push back the shadows. In too short a time the sun would move past its zenith and the staging cell would fade back into its customary gloom.

The guards would not come for him until late afternoon. His would be the final contest as usual.

Although on this day, nothing would be as usual.

Against almost uncalculatable odds, he had won contest after contest, his fame and thus his value growing ever greater. Now he was the last to enter the killing circle as was befitting his status as the city’s greatest hero, shackled and collared though he be. At first, many years past, he hated coming out after all the other battles had been waged. In the closed-in space of the arena floor where it seemed no cleansing breeze ever blew, splattered ichor and pools of drying gore quickly turned in the hot southern sun, lending a sickly sweet copper smell to the air. And by all the gods, the flies! Hundreds, perhaps thousands, buzzing and droning while they supped from the spilt blood of losers and victors alike.

But that was long ago. He no longer smelled the blood or heard the buzzing, and paid little heed to the grisly remnants of men’s mortal lives painting the sand. In truth, he scarcely even noticed the roar of the crowd anymore. In the killing circle, where Death waited patiently for his due, Titus learned to narrow his focus to a razor’s keen edge. It was how he survived so long, where others, some perhaps his betters, had not.

In the arena there was ever only one purpose, one goal: Be the last man standing.

Normally he would have dozed dreamlessly, waiting while other slaves fought and died above him. But today, this most special of days, sleep would not come. Instead, in its place came fragmented images and long-forgotten memories playing across his mind in a random jumble as he remembered a life long ago.

***

He had been fifteen that fateful year, the middle son of a poor farmer who toiled and wrestled the rocky ground west of Thanus, the kingdom’s capital. As across all of Byrunthus, the land was owned by the Crown, and the tenant farmers who worked their plots paid for the privilege with an annual tax called the King’s Due. But for the third year in a row the rains came late and when they finally did come, were scant, leaving the crops stunted and of poor yield. After buying what meager food he could for his family and seed for next year’s crop, his father’s purse was as empty as their larder, with little coin remaining to pay the tax. They had sold what few chickens and pigs they owned to pay last year’s Due. There was nothing left.

It was late fall, just after the seasonal harvest, when the royal tax collector came to their pitiable excuse of a farm. He was a fat little toad of a man with bad skin and thinning hair, flanked by a pair of Crown Guards. The collector showed little concern for the farmer’s plight, his jowly face and sour attitude indicating a weary impatience with a story that was all too common of late. With a stern warning, he gave Titus’ father two nine-days to come up with enough to pay his portion of the tax.

The Crown would have its due.

Eighteen days later the tax collector returned. He could have given his father two months or even two years for all the good it would have done. The family had no means to pay and nothing remaining which could be sold. And so, in accordance with the laws of the kingdom, the tax collector took what he deemed to be of the most value.

Puffing up his flabby chest in the self-important manner common to most minor officials, the king’s man gave the farmer an order to present his children. Full of worry and trepidation, he did as commanded, calling his three sons to stand by his side. The tax collector looked over the nervous boys as if they were livestock he was considering buying. His gaze lingered longest on Titus, running over the lad with measured interest. A thin smile creased his rubbery lips.

With unsheathed swords grasped in their mailed fists as silent warning, the guards stood by as the tax collector shackled Titus’ wrists and ankles before snapping an iron collar about his neck. The heavy lock clicked shut with a grim finality that sent shivers down the terrified boy’s body. In lieu of silver or gold, the royal collector would take the farmer’s second son as payment. As satisfaction of his father’s debt, Titus was to become a slave, property of the Crown.

The boy’s mother fell to her knees, hands clutched at her breast as she wailed her grief while her eldest son, confused by what was happening, looked on helplessly. Titus’ father stood rigid, saying nothing. Rage, unbearable guilt and a terrible anguish all warred within him, twisting his face into a mask of emotion so pained, so utterly broken, Titus could not meet his father’s tear-filled eyes one last time before he was led away, tied by a length of chain from the collar’s ring to the rear of the tax collector’s saddle.

Though only fifteen, Titus was already an inch over six feet, his body lithe but well-muscled. He had never suffered serious injury nor was he yet broken down by his family’s hardscrabble life. The tax collector saw promise in the boy when he first laid eyes on him. If he played his cards right, he stood to gain much from that promise. Silver was silver, but a lad this big and healthy? Who knew his true worth in the arena?

***

Although raised less than two hundred miles from Thanus, it might as well have been across the endless sands of the Amber Sea. Titus had never traveled more than a few leagues from his home and had never seen a city or town outside of the little trading village sitting on the banks of the River Denus. It would be a long ten days’ march behind the horse till they reached the capital.

The tax collector, whose name was Hortius, decided to take the boy directly back to Thanus. The other paltry collections in this wasteland of an out-of-the-way province could wait. His intent was to set a reasonably fast pace, but careful it not be so fast the boy would be worn out or pulled up lame. He wanted the new slave in good condition when brought before Setheo, Royal Treasurer of the Crown. All the kingdom’s tax collectors served under the auspices of the Royal Treasury, and Setheo was their lord and master. He possessed the authority to well reward those he saw as performing their duties admirably, or to punish those he deemed lacking.

That first night on the road was the longest, most dreadful of Titus’ young life. Exhausted from hours of walking, he was almost relieved when ordered to sit beneath a tree growing not far off the road, the chain of his collar locked to a stake driven deep in the dry soil.

He lay on the hard ground, his body sapped. Titus’ woefully inexperienced young mind could scarcely grasp what had happened to him. One moment he was working his family’s farm as he had done since old enough to wield a hoe or push a wheelbarrow, the next he found himself clapped in irons, brutally ripped away from all he knew and loved. How could such a thing be? It was not fair! He had done nothing. Nor was it his father’s fault the rains had not come, yet again for the third year in a row. How could he pay the King’s Due when the land itself was barren, seemingly cursed by the gods themselves?

Titus tried to sleep, but every time he started to doze, the dull clink of his iron shackles or the pinch of the collar’s edge on tender flesh would pull him back to wakefulness. When the sun rose the next morning, the boy was more tired than the night before.

All the next day Titus found himself trudging behind Hortius’ mount in a stunned daze, not even bothering to try and avoid the animal’s frequent droppings left in its plodding wake. Mile after mile passed, the boring sameness of the long hours on the road at least helping his mind retreat into a welcomed blankness.

Titus quickly found the nights were worse than the days. At least when he was being forced to walk, his body had something to do. Each afternoon would see them make camp once the sun dipped below the horizon, and the chain attached to his collar’s ring would always be affixed to the same iron stake pounded into the ground. Once secure, one of the two guards would bring Titus his ration of the simple trail fare that served as their nightly meal. After, he would be left alone to suffer silently in wretched turmoil, spared no further thought than was given to the horses. He would lay in the darkness, the chains and collar heavy on his weary body, their weight a constant reminder of his new status as an object, a thing, rather than a person. Yet as tired as he was after each day’s forced march, sleep remained difficult to come by. His mind would not be quieted. It railed against even his simple longing for much needed rest and the few hours of blessed respite it would bring.

The boy could not get the sound of his mother’s heart-wrenching cries out of his ears; could not block the image of his father, engulfed by helpless grief and rage, forced to watch his son being taken away for no crime of his own. Titus could not yet fully fathom the idea he would likely never see either again, nor his brothers. There had been no time for goodbyes, no allowance for final words.

Titus could not even begin to imagine what his future might be. He knew what a slave was, of course, but no one owned any where he was from. It was hard enough to feed one’s family and self, much less another hungry mouth. He tried to picture what was going to happen to him when he got to the capital, but his lack of any real reference and pitiful fear only led him to dark fantasies worse than any child’s nightmare.

Forsaken and without hope, his despair threatened to bury him.

***

One night after camp had been made and his collar’s chain locked through the eye of the stake’s flared top, Titus was rubbing the red, raw abrasions caused by perpetual contact with his shackles. The motion caught Hortius’ eye. The fat little tax collector strode over to Titus and looked down into the lad’s haggard and dirty face.

Better get used to the feel of iron on your skin, boy. It’s rough kiss is now a part of you and will be to the day you draw your final breath. My advice, get tough or get dead. Those are your only options now, Hortius said in a flat voice devoid of any empathy or concern. One of the guards, hearing these words, chuckled. The heartless sound of it was as soulless as a cold wind blowing through a crypt.

Hortius turned and made his way back to his sleeping pad. The boy’s father incurred a debt he could not satisfy, so the son would be forced to pay in his place. Such was the law. The fact the king’s man could have shown mercy and simply made a note in the official Treasury ledger indicating the King’s Due would be collected at a future date had not even crossed his greedy mind. The boy’s fate was to be laid at the feet of his father’s failure, not Hortius’. He was simply doing his sworn duty to the Crown. The fact such a cruel and heartless action would likely benefit him in some small way was beside the point, or at least he told himself such.

***

Nine leagues outside of Thanus, the road Titus had stumbled along for over eight days began to widen, its surface marred by scores of well-worn ruts cut into the almost iron hard ground packed down by a million boots, hooves and wheel rims for untold generations. From both the north and south, smaller roads began to intersect this, the main trade road leading east to the capital.

Along with the ubiquitous ox carts carrying fruits and vegetables from the many outlying farms, Titus began to see horse caravans laden with all manner of goods. Some of the convoys were huge, boasting hundreds of horses and mules, the latter often pulling wagons of every size and description, all strung along one behind the other. Once he even saw a dark-skinned merchant clothed in brilliantly colored robes leading a string of strange animals bigger than any packhorse, their odd-shaped heads ugly as sin itself, and sporting a large hump on their backs.

At first the land they passed through was the familiar rocky hills and equally rocky valleys of Titus’ home. The mighty River Denus glinted with sunlight several miles to the north, more or less paralleling the road they traveled. Even at this distance, at night Titus could see the glow of ships’ lanterns as trade barges and merchant galleys made their way down the watery heart of Byrunthus, carrying goods from the cities and kingdoms lying to the north and west. As their little troupe continued east, the land began to grow more wooded, crisscrossed with numerous small streams and creeks coming down from the ranges of low hills appearing late the afternoon before. After another day’s travel the land changed yet again, most of the wild trees and bushes having been cleared, and in their place cultivated fields and orchards sitting off in the distance to either side of the road. On several occasions they passed small villages and thrice through towns of respectable size.

No one they came upon gave a second glance at the dirty, disheveled slave who dejectedly followed behind the horse to which he was chained, his worn boots covered in road mud and animal dung. It was far from an uncommon sight in most of the Southern Kingdoms, where a man’s freedom could suddenly be lost if fate or the wishes of the powerful went against him.

Late on the tenth day of his enslavement, his body beyond sore and weary from his long journey, Titus absently noted what looked to be a long, low hill on the horizon, its top curiously flat and straight. Drawing nearer, he realized with growing awe it was no hill he was seeing, but rather an enormous stone wall running north and south across the road. Though Titus didn’t know it at the time, he was looking at the western section of the great outer curtain wall of Thanus, capital of the kingdom of Byrunthus, also called the White City throughout the Southern Kingdoms and beyond. Farther away behind the massive stone barrier the boy could see the land rising gently up to a low hill. Along its sloped flanks were buildings and structures of various sizes, some quite large, but all dominated by the imposing edifice siting alone atop the hillock. Gleaming a soft white in the afternoon sunlight, the huge construct was surrounded