Suvau scrambled for cover, narrowly missing being torn apart by the oversized claws of a Cerberus. Unlike an orthros, whose two heads always seemed to be battling for dominance, the three headed hound of Maul was a monster of a beast, perfectly united in its determination to rip Suvau apart. Suvau’s only reprieve, and that was a generous description of the blink of an eye breathing room between attack and evade tactics, was when he hid behind a pillar. Though Cerberus had three noses, there was enough sweat, blood and dust in the air of the pit to confuse its olfactory senses.

  Suvau leaned against a pillar, breathing heavily. He wasn’t sure he would be alive to worry about what Urik thought of him. Ermaus’ prediction that something larger might be coming after no monsters had invaded the Arena had been proven true and much sooner than Suvau would have liked. They’d barely eaten their rations for the evening when Jole had come for Suvau, Urik urging him to hasten, barking something about the lookouts on the top of the fort sighting a large monster incursion coming towards the gate. As it turned out, the Cerberus was the only beast to appear, large indeed but hardly the large numbered incursion the slave driver had clearly been hoping for. Urik had even ordered that the gate be left up, hoping for more monsters to come but only the Cerberus bounded through, three heads eager to share Suvau’s flesh.

  Suvau risked a peek around the corner of his pillar and saw the Cerberus sniffing, favouring its left hind leg. A small advantage, especially when Suvau had already had to pop his shoulder back into its socket after wrenching himself out of the monster’s grasp. It wasn’t the same shoulder the unicorn had impaled but Suvau didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Now both his arms were weakened.

  “Urik!” Suvau blinked the sweat out of his eyes and glanced up. From his position he could just see Sir Donimede’s head above the line of the balcony and the low wall to keep the spectators, which was only currently Urik, safe from even the tallest monster allowed into the pit. “Where in Maul is the minotaur I ordered? It’s been days!”

  “Unfortunately monsters aren’t able to be ordered. The more specific you are, the longer it takes and there has been a distinct drought in larger beasts of late…”

  “Are you making excuses?” Donimede’s voice was dangerously furious.

  “No, my lord,” Urik grovelled, the first time Suvau had ever heard him cower before anyone, “it…it is this Maul you gave me.”

  “What about him?”

  Suvau ducked out of sight. Thankfully both he and the Cerberus were distracted from the fight by the argument above. Three jaws quivered and three sets of teeth barred themselves, snarling at Urik and Donimede high above.

  “He is the strongest Maul I’ve ever put in the Arena. He refuses to bleed.”

  “What has that got to do with it?”

  “Other monsters are more sensitive to blood so they come in droves.”

  “Then make him bleed! I want that LaMogre gone from Mavour,” Donimede paused, “or dead in the Arena…in full view of my wife’s,” he spat out her title, “illustrious guests that she has invited for him. They are already arriving and all fawning over him as if he were as great a knight as Rylan…”

  “Sire, was it not Sir Rylan’s wish that those on the knighthood quest be required to come to Mavour to slay a Minotaur? Is it not your position to assess them?”

  “Do not tell me my duty, you filthy slaver of flesh!” Donimede was more than a little tense. “I want that LaMogre shamed so badly he will desert Mavour in the night like the middle class coward that he is!” There was a pause. “If this Maul won’t bleed, end this.”

  “He must not return to the other slaves triumphant!”

  “Then close the gate and let the monster deal with him!”

  Suvau heard the gate falling, forcing his legs to move against their will, running towards the only way out of the pit, into Maul. The Cerberus immediately sensed his motion, whirled about on its back legs and lurched after him, its huge paws launching it across the pit in three giant bounds. Suvau could feel the heat of its breath and the stink of its foulness as he dropped his body into a slide, scraping his legs as he skidded across the ground beneath the gate.

  The Cerberus, with only one thing on its mind, lunged for Suvau, the gate crashing down on its body, impaling on the spikes that held the gate fast into the ground. The Maul hound howled and writhed, unable to free its body, Suvau staggering back from it, seeing the pit from the Maul side of the wall.

  “I suppose you think you’re very clever,” Urik’s voice taunted him, the slave driver unseen yet heard with perfectly clarity, “but anyone who made the same mistake as you, seeking sanctuary in the south…met a rather unfortunate end…”

  In the silence that followed the three headed hound’s death throes, Suvau heard a strange snaking noise…a slithering…as something or many somethings raced towards the gate. Suvau looked around and, seeing that there was no cover, ran back to the gate and climbed the grids of metal, clambering all the way to the top. The snaking sound was suddenly beneath him and he dropped his eyes to see long, red tendrils coming out of the chasm, twisting and curling around the body of the Cerberus. With the strength of a minotaur it tore the body from the gate, dragging the half a corpse, green bloodied and gruesome, across the ground, scraping it back into the chasm and out of sight. One tendril remained, poking about as if sensing something else was there. Suvau held his breath, the translucent tendril even poking through the lower gaps in the gate, finding the back half of the Cerberus. As if it possessed the capacity to reason that the lifeless lump was what it was sensing, the tendril drew back, slinking away into the chasm which was a haze of night and malevolent darkness.

  Finally Suvau allowed himself a moment to breathe. With shaking arms he dropped back down, unable to get into the fort until the gate was raised. If it had just been Urik’s command, Suvau wasn’t sure he would have been let back in but when it lifted and Suvau ducked his head and entered the pit, the gate closing firmly behind him, he saw the knight of Fort Mavour studying him from the balcony.

  “Shackle him to the outer Arena wall.” Donimede said at length, turning away. “If you can’t figure out how to break him, don’t let him return to the dungeon until LaMogre leaves or dies.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Suvau’s shoulders bowed and it wasn’t a performance. If he was not returned to the dungeon, freeing the other prisoners became that much harder to accomplish. Jole locked him to the shackles that Suvau had been bound with when Urik first whipped him and left him to sit in the darkness. Unlike the shackles in the dungeon, these were far better maintained.

  Suvau wasn’t going anywhere.

  Donimede wanted Judd dead.

  And Suvau’s people were still imprisoned.

  Heavy rain and a violent storm overnight had turned the land around Mavour into a swamp. Not even Captain Chael would ride out in those kinds of conditions, citing that monsters trying to dig their way under the wall would drown in mud before reaching the northern side. To Judd’s barely suppressed delight, the early morning patrol was cancelled. Not even Giordi could muster the enthusiasm to go to the markets.

  “The coin wouldn’t be worth the pain.” He declared, half burying himself on his bed, digging down like a mole.

  “How is your back?” Judd asked.

  “Considering I could barely walk a week ago…” Giordi clenched his fingers. “I’m desperate to scratch it…but Verne keeps ticking me off for doing so…”

  Verne heard his words, hard to miss when they were directed at him, as he came through the concealed door into the master chamber. He folded his arms.

  “Aalis gave me strict instructions to make sure you didn’t tear at those stitches.”

  “Surely they can come out now,” Giordi groaned, “where is Aalis?”

  “She left with one of the daughters of Donimede.”

  Judd looked up sharply. “Willower?” Then he blanched at their amused expressions. “What?”

  “Well…what if I said it was?” Verne asked, sinking into a chair.

  “Yes,” Giordi pressed on with the interrogation, “I mean, are you disappointed she didn’t call for you…or are you worried about what Aalis might be telling her?”

  Judd eyed them both. “She wasn’t at the door, was she? It was one of the other daughters.” The corner of Verne’s mouth curled up and Giordi chuckled as Judd groaned. “Would you both cut it out?” He stood up and began to pace. “It’s hard enough with Sir Donimede glowering at me, constantly being corrected by an overly zealous cleric at supper…”

  “Caste?”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Alast?”

  “No, the other, other one.”

  “Rodel?”

  “Him,” Judd nodded, “I’ve also got sons of lords aspiring to be my squire, even though I’m not yet a knight, soldiers begging to hear stories of my conquests, guards wanting to spar with me as if it’s some kind of badge of honour and the fort is starting to become full to bursting with the nobility from all the southern forts who want to see me fight in the Arena and toast my success at a feast afterwards. On top of all that, I’ve got romantic entanglements that I thought were purely plutonic but seem to be charging headlong into an ‘understanding’ that…” He threw up his hands and exclaimed wordlessly.

  Verne and Giordi glanced at each other then back at Judd.

  “So…you’re not romantically attached to the eldest daughter of Sir Donimede?”

  Judd made a few unintelligible noises.

  “Well, I’m convinced.” Verne snorted and looked at Giordi and was surprised at the seriousness of his expression.

  “You’d better be careful, Judd,” Giordi urged, “you know just how dangerous it can be to mess with the daughter of your host. Learn from my mistakes and save yourself the injury and for her, the heartbreak.”

  “There is no messing,” Judd promised, “but there is…a fa?ade…”

  “Convincing fa?ade.” Verne remarked dryly, arms folded. “I’ve seen the two of you together.”

  Judd grimaced. “I know, I know…where in Maul is that minotaur?”

  Verne didn’t know how to answer that. The elusive monster seemed as far from reach as it had two weeks ago and despite their plush, comfortable surroundings, the companions were split, awkward, frustrated and worried.

  “One does wonder…”

  Verne and Judd turned to Giordi who was leaning back on his bed, eyes on the ceiling but his mind far away. Judd glanced at Verne and raised an eyebrow.

  “What does one wonder?”

  “Why do the monsters come to the Arena? There is a lot of wall for them to approach. Why, specifically that part where there is a gate, warriors and an audience?”

  Verne opened his mouth then closed it. “I…don’t know.”

  “Maybe word spread?” Judd laughed at the absurdity of his words. “As if monsters tell their friends like noblemen and women gossip…”

  “As if any survive the Arena in the first place to be able to tell.”

  “Huh,” Judd frowned, “you know…I never thought of that…”

  Verne studied Giordi. “Do you have any theories?”

  Giordi shook his head and leaned forward, eyeing both of them. “None I think we want to entertain.”

  “They are drawn to the smell of our flesh.” Verne murmured. “They come because they can smell us.”

  “If that were the case, why did the unicorns not turn on the centaur and take a few tasty bites?” Giordi waved his hands, his mind whirling with ideas. “It cannot just be enough that the monsters are interested in our flesh. There has to be something fundamentally different about humans and monsters. Something so unique that even a monster that looks exactly like a human, could not fool another monster.”

  Judd gazed at his hands, recalling the times he had fought the monsters of Maul.

  “Blood,” he said softly, “they are drawn to the smell of our blood. Not flesh…our blood.”

  “Yes,” Verne breathed, “even that centaur bled dark green and it has that strange smell to it, a little like the taint! It’s the smell of our blood.” He turned to Judd. “The monsters are drawn to the scent of blood in the Arena?”

  “But there have been no battles, that we know of, fought in there since we arrived,” Judd’s spine gave a quiver of fear, “so whose blood would be attracting the monsters?”

  Suvau was grateful for the meagre scraping of his rations the night before as it seemed that his separation from the other prisoners in the dungeon meant he didn’t warrant food brought to him. But worst was the thirst. Shackled to the wall, so close to the pit, his darkened corner was illuminated by flashes of lightning that exposed every crack in stone and around the doorway that led into the pit. He could hear the peals of thunder rolling, so loud they caused the foundations to shudder and most torturous of all was the sound of rain. Unlike the dungeon, there were no cracks or rivulets for the water to trickle along. All Suvau could do was sleep fitfully and listen to the cruel sound, so close he could but taste it and yet his throat grew ever more parched.

  Sleep did little to ease the headache that built in intensity like the storm had outside and when he heard noise nearby, the sound of scuffling and the opening of a door, he pried his eyes open, feeling stabs of pain enter his skull. He winced and peered up as Urik entered the corridor. But where Suvau thought he would look at him in frustration, there was a terrible triumph in his eyes.

  “Thought you could best me, did you? That I would not find a way to break you? Well, after Donimede’s…inspiring talk I was highly motivated…and had an epiphany. If I cannot break your body…I will break your spirit.”

  Suvau frowned then heard someone grunt, stumbling into the corridor. To his horror, Ermaus scuffed into view, head bowed, hands bound together with Jole behind him.

  “As old as he is,” Urik chuckled, “there is still blood in his veins…”

  “You bastard!” Suvau roared, pulling on his shackles. “Don’t you dare!”

  “I don’t answer to the likes of you,” Urik spat at his face, “slave!”

  Suvau strained against the unrelenting lock of his manacles even as Ermaus tried to speak but Urik clipped him over the back of the head and ordered Jole to drag him into the Arena. The door closed behind them but the small window, while it wouldn’t let Suvau see what was happening, meant he could hear Ermaus scuffling through the dirt and across the barren, uneven rock. There were minutes of almost nothing then Suvau heard Ermaus groaning. He pulled so hard his wrists screamed at him, the metal cutting into his skin then he heard the sound of whip lashes, over and over again.

  “No! Urik! Let him go!” Suvau shouted. “Urik! Urik!”

  But the whipping did not stop. It went on and on and on…