The Swords of August

Apparently, the 'first' round had been something of a test to make sure I wasn't an imbecile with no affinity for combat whatsoever. The actual first round had arrived on a windy, and awfully hot day. It sounded like a simple spar behind closed doors would've sufficed, but I wasn't the one running the place.

As such, it wasn't my idea to be put up against a large gecko-like creature—more of a monitor lizard, really—and get punted through the air by its tail. Despite the name, the Karkrat looked more like a lizard than a rat.

It was like someone had thought to cover a Komodo dragon with hard, shiny scales and give it a toxic bite. Or at least, I'd been told it had a noxious bite. I didn't feel like finding out just how noxious, for obvious reasons, so as with my other opponents, I used my agility to great effect.

The Karkrat wailed at me, gripped in its death throes with my longsword thrust through one of it's eyes. A long forked tongue snaked out and I stayed well clear, watching it from where I'd impacted the ground.

The creature was probably twice as large as the average bear, or cow. Part of me wondered if anyone had ever been crazy enough to try and ride one or domesticate it. We'd done it with wolves, after all.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. It was still dangerous until it was dead. I had to pay attention.

I'd taken a beating, first from the claws that had gouged my armour and then from the numerous attempts to kill me through throwing me through the air with its tail. It had a speed that belied its size and I'd taken a number of hard impacts. Fortunately, nothing that would prove damaging. Few things short of an armor-piercing incendiary round—or a particularly massive block of granite falling on my head—would do much more than inconvenience me.

A huge lizard, while fast and weighing quite a lot, wasn't really a threat if it didn't try to actually eat me. I felt a twinge of fear at that idea. I wasn't going to let anything eat me, least of all some overgrown lizard with a penchant for playing tennis with my body and its tail.

I continued to back off and evade, leading it on a merry chase around the expansive but empty arena. A sword through the head was a killer, at least, I was fairly sure it was. I waited for it to tire and realise it was dead meat walking.

It kept me waiting though and several minutes went by while it doggedly pursued me. I figured I might as well make a spectacle out of things if it was already going down. It wasn't really a well-reasoned decision, but just a spur of the moment kind of thing.

I reached down and gripped a handful of sand, gripping it tight in my fist. As the Karkrat advanced, I edged closer to the magical barrier encompassing the fight, the one keeping the spectators safe.

When I'd just about backed up to the edge of the shield and it began to charge at me I rocketed my fistful of sand at its face with all the force I could muster. That just seemed to piss it off, but that had been what I was going for.

I grinned. "Perfect."

"You know, you could just let it die." Chen said.

"Is that any way to get the crowd to love me?"

I leaped up and above to the arching dome of magic, something that was entirely solid as far as I could tell. I then kicked off from it in an another direction, watching as the thing snarled and turned to follow me.

"The crowd don't really care."

"Exactly!" I scoffed.

I'd set up a link to Chen who'd faced his own battle not an hour earlier. Relaying my suit telemetry to him and keeping an open comm made the fight a bit more distracting, but it was generally an interesting experience for the both of us to see how the other fought, and besides, it was fun. Who was I to deprive my friend of some good entertainment just because neither of us were spectators?

I'd probably stop doing it as the fights got harder, I wasn't an idiot, but if they were all as easy as the first two, I saw no reason to stop anytime soon. It couldn't hurt, and it might well be used as training data someday. If nothing else, keeping records for posterity would please someone back home, I was sure.

"Will this thing just die already?"

I tucked and rolled under a swipe of a massive clawed limb, bounding up and over another whipping of its tail.

"That's what I was going to say." I laughed, skipping out of range of the wounded beast again. While it was fast, it wasn't particularly agile, or it seemed, intelligent. It was also gravely wounded, which greatly tipped the odds in my favour.

It kept running after me, slamming its head into the barrier over and over. It didn't do a thing to the dome but it did make it die faster.

As it ran across the width of the arena, I smirked.

"Hey Chen, watch this."

My next move was either going to be really fucking cool, or I was about to be crushed against an immovable object.

As the thing's head dipped down to bite at me, I hopped up and onto its head, slipping onto its long neck like I was mounting a horse. It began violently screeching and whipping it's head around in a panic.

Just to make it memorable for the crowd, I let my laughter out and hollered like I was riding a bucking bull with one arm on its neck.

I let myself be thrown off after a while, rolling ungracefully into a crouch. Another few minutes of cat and mouse and I found a few more ways to pull stunts and awe the crowd. Unlike a certain character from an ancient movie, it wasn't strictly necessary for me to perform well for the crowd and impress people. Just winning the tournament would be enough for the plan, but being impressive wasn't going to hurt us much, especially since any increased interest hopefully wouldn't bite us in the ass with travel restricted to the gate network.

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Eventually, the beast slumped up against the barrier after stumbling to a stop. I skipped past it in a feint to see if it was faking. It wasn't. On my return trip, I walked up with a bit of swagger and pulled my sword from its eye, holding up the gory implement as I stood on the thing's face.

The crowd loved it.

"See? Now they care."

"What do you even hope to gain from this, anyway?"

"Haven't you ever seen that ancient movie set in Rome? It's basically the same thing."

"He was a former General turned slave, you're just a Corporal."

"Actually, I'm a former Lieutenant Colonel, and we need to win this thing and impress people."

"Back up. Lieutenant Colonel? Since when?"

"You didn't know that?" I walked over to the

"I've known you for months and—no I didn't know that! You're serious?"

"I am."

"What the hell did you do to get busted down to enlisted ranks, then? You take an interservice transfer?"

A group of dour-faced and heavily-armed guards trotted over towards me from the outer edge of the arena.

"Maybe we should pick this up later."

"Alright, but don't think I'll forget about this conversation."

With that, Chen cut our comm connection, leaving me to ponder how to explain my past. I wasn't deliberately private about it, but it wasn't something I went sharing around either.

As the guards reached me I offered my longsword to one of them, hilt first. He gave me a stern look before accepting my weapon. As before, they fell into formation around me and escorted me back to the sheltered interior rooms of the arena.

As I settled down onto an offered bench I waved away a few slaves who came to polish my armour. They'd attempted the same thing when I'd fought a duel the last time I set foot in the arena, but they didn't seem to get the hint.

"It's only water. Be a shame for armour that nice to stay filthy." One of the guards rumbled, the others in the room milling about a short distance away. I gave a begrudging nod. It wasn't exactly covered in gore, but it wasn't polished to perfection either. I didn't see the harm in it, though, as long as it really was just water.

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen anyone fight like you."

I chuckled. "How's that? Not used to people jumping about like a cricket?"

"No… you don't move as you should."

"As I should?" I asked, feeling slightly self-conscious as three men moved in close to scrub me with wet cloths and rags.

"When you fight, it's as though your own limbs power your movements, rather than magic."

I paused for a moment, then shrugged. "A mercenary must keep some secrets, surely you understand?"

"Mercenary? Work tough to come by lately? Is that why you entered the tournament?"

"Part of it. My friend was bored and the men are due for some downtime. That was the other part of it."

"There are regular trade caravans, you could find work easily enough, could you not?"

"Sane work is hard to come by. I have no desire to be out and about with the recent return of the Vitaru. Some maybe, but I don't have nearly enough men under my command to guard a caravan."

"It's true, then? They're back?"

"They're back." I nodded. "Just myths and legends, right? Then I hear Shria was attacked, the capital itself, if you can believe that."

"I thought it was all just rumor. You're sure it was… really them?"

"I'm sure. There were enough of the things littering the streets a blind man couldn't miss them. 'Course, all the blind men are probably dead now. I'd have stayed there and found some work but I've no desire to throw my life away, I don't care how good the pay is. The city crawled. If they came back… well I don't think they would fare nearly as well the second time around with a hole in their city wall."

"Your next match isn't for another four days. I suggest you do some research on the competition. Not everyone will be an easy opponent, I assure—"

A short, high-pitched chirp interrupted me and an alert superimposed itself across the top of my HUD.

I read the alert and felt my body stiffen briefly as the full weight of the words hit me.

Chen broke into my racing thoughts a moment later. "Carver's gone. He was out in the city with Rovald and now he's gone. Someone took him."

"I know. I saw it too. I'm pinging his suit."

"I just tried. There's nothing to ping, it's like he just dropped off the network."

"Or dropped out of range."

"Meet me outside. We're going to find him, safeties off."

"Uh, you sure about that?"

"He fired one shot. Just one."

"Point taken." Chen conceded.

I stood and stomped away down the hall. The slaves scattered and my armed minders moved to accompany me.

I stopped briefly to turn and explain. "I've got an emergency to deal with. One of my men is missing."

After that, I ignored them. I shouldered my way past other fighters, noting in the back of my mind the tension in the guards posted around the rooms I was passing through.

We checked the inn first and gave orders for everyone to hole up and work on the wards and other defensive measures. No one was to go anywhere alone and we were to keep our gear guarded at all times.

Chen and I checked over our gear and retrieved our railguns and sidearms before setting off towards Carver's last known location. Thankfully, he hadn't gone missing without a fight.

When Carver shifted to an alert status his suit picked up on the difference in his biometrics and body position, alerting the whole team.

He'd fired off one shot and then we'd lost his suit telemetry. Not ideal, but we did have a few important bits of data. A visual snapshot and sensor data to match, as well as the location of the alert.

That was where Chen and I were headed next with our sensors blazing and guns at a low-ready position. As we moved toward Carver's last-known location I checked over the data his suit had pulsed out.

Roughly north north-east, a few hundred metres away. The visual snapshot showed a deserted street, tucked away somewhere with very little in the way of visitors. The sensor data was a different story, though.

"I should've thought of this. I'm supposed to be smarter than this." Chen muttered a string of profanities in what I assume was Korean.

"Hey," I said sharply. "We're all responsible, and we'll get him back. We're not leaving him behind."

"What about the mission?" Chen didn't sound like he particularly cared about the mission and I could hardly blame him.

"Fuck the mission. Carver comes first. Besides," I grinned. "Do you know how much work it would be to try and spin up an entire division from scratch without him? We'll think about that when we find him."

We headed towards some kind of deserted slum area. I had absolutely no idea what Carver was doing there. Maybe he'd been brought there and only then managed to fire off a shot. But then… why hadn't he said something before?

I had a bad feeling about this, and it wasn't just because I was missing a teammate.

A floating marker rested in the air above the city, a few metres above street level.

"Hang back and watch my six?" Chen asked. "I'll take point."

"Wait. I left a radio with the others. I'll have one of them join us."

Chen begrudgingly agreed with me, but he wasn't happy about the delay. "We need to find him. We can't just sit around—"

"We're not sitting around. We're waiting for backup. I'll cover you. Just watch and see if anything pops up while we wait, would you?"

I read my suits scanners and found a disturbing lack of threatening info. Magic had to be involved which meant this was going to be an event. Probably the kind with explosions, death and destruction and a pissed off Marine or three.

"I see something!" Chen reported.

I looked and noticed the same thing. Thing being the operative word.

"I'm reading some kind of ground-based… is that digging?"

"I don't know but if it starts tunneling underneath us, don't stick around."

Right around where the marker was there were signs of a 'subterranean anomaly' as Carver might say. Basically, someone was screwing around in the ground and making noise.

If 'it', whatever it actually was, tunnelled in our direction I was going to haul ass across the rooftops and see what kind of a mess our railguns could make.

One of the few upsides to the situation was that at least now we had a probable answer on what happened to Carver and Rovald. What I was going to do to find out where some desert mole thing took him, well, that would be more of a challenge.