Page 78 of The Book That Held Her Heart

“Surely this is madness?” Arpix gazed at the stands where families watched on with eager faces, some unpacking food as they waited for the theatre to start. “These people are in danger!”

“If they’ve got skeer under those covers, then yes they are,” Clovis agreed.

Arpix had meant from stray bullets, but Clovis was right too. He saw now that the heavy palisade of timber behind the covered cages must be to stop the insectoids escaping in that direction, and also to prevent the challengers’ shots from peppering the buildings behind. That still meant that any free skeer could charge off over the stands, cutting a swathe of carnage through the seated audience before dropping off the back.

“This way!” A uniformed man approached Clovis, Arpix, and the stragglers still arriving behind them. “Get to your seats. They’re nearly ready!”

Clovis ignored the orderly and set off along the inside perimeter in the opposite direction, towards the group with the weapons. One, the tallest canith Arpix had ever seen, dressed in a blue velvet waistcoat, and with a mane teased into a mass of curls, all set with gold rings like a storybook pirate, turned to watch her approach. Beside him a woman half his height and almost spherical, but muscly with it, said something that made him laugh. The woman shook her head and returned her attention to a blunderbuss taller than she was.

“Wait! Stop!” The orderly took the words from Arpix’s mouth.

“Where’s she going?” A woman in the same uniform joined the man in pursuit of Clovis.

“She’s heading for the contestants!” The man gave chase.

Arpix bit back on his own objections and followed too.

Clovis shook off two attempts to intercept her and earned a few cheersalong with scattered jeers from the crowd. Several more of the contestants turned her way as she drew closer.

“Who the hell are you?” The hulking canith with the cannon scowled at Clovis.

“She brought a sword.” One of the two men smirked before looking back down the large sighting tube of the long, gleaming gun he had pointed downrange, supported on a slender tripod. “How quaint.”

“I didn’t know this was a free-for-all,” the other man growled. Where his companion was tall, bald, and of middling years, this one was hairy, athletic, and sported a sizeable number and variety of handguns holstered about his person.

Arpix wasn’t sure how the scene would end, but he fully expected it to start with Clovis breaking someone’s face.

“Madam!” An orderly caught up with Clovis, another took hold of Arpix’s arm. “You have to return to the stands.”

A couple of soldiers moved forward to impose the peace.

“I know how to fight skeer,” Clovis said, not backing down. “You should let me show you how it’s done.”

“An Iccrah without a rifle. How droll.” The “pirate” peered down at her, then drew two heavy, double-barrelled guns, each nearly two feet long, from his silk waistband. “Sit yourself down, lass, and let the Kraffians show you how we do it.”

Two soldiers converged on Clovis, each reaching for an arm. Arpix winced, anticipating the violence which neither man, confident in their uniform, seemed to know was coming their way.

“Find her a seat!” the pirate boomed. “Don’t arrest the wench. Let’s just get on with this, shall we?”

Whether through expediency or an unconscious instinct for self-preservation, the soldiers followed the pirate’s command, and Clovis allowed herself to be turned towards the stands behind the combatants. Some lordling a couple of rows back waved wearily for space to be made for her.

Arpix, by contrast, was manhandled back to where they’d entered and given a shove towards the public seating. He found a place, and sat down, feeling the splinters through his newly acquired trousers. His hunger hadreturned after a night’s sleep but somehow the pervasive aroma of the many foodstuffs on offer left him feeling slightly ill. He knew what was in those cages, and whatever happened once they were opened would not be pretty.

A hush fell as an announcer in colourful silks strode out. Arpix couldn’t hear what he was shouting—it seemed to be primarily for the benefit of the aristocracy—but after a short while the herald retreated and two of the three human champions stepped forward, the tall bald man with the very long gun, and the hairy, younger one with all his handguns.

At the far side of the square, wranglers drew back the black cloth from one cage, and the audience gasped at the large white creature revealed within. The men retreated behind their barrier and pulled on ropes to raise the bars at the front.

The skeer emerged awkwardly and scanned the arena with multiple eye-pits. The midnight-blue trim on its armour plates drank in the sunlight. Arpix could see that one of its legs had been shattered, ichor spattering the broken chitin exoskeleton. As it made ungainly progress across the flagstones, Arpix realised that something was wrong with all of its legs. He sucked his breath in in distaste. Each limb had been foreshortened, the sharp points cut back by a foot or more, so that it walked on weeping stumps.

The first shot cracked out, striking the skeer in the middle of its eye clusters. Pieces of chitin flew out and the skeer’s whole body flinched. The boom of the gun and sizeable cloud of smoke focused the skeer on the direction of the attack.

“How is it not dead?” a woman beside Arpix complained.

Arpix couldn’t answer that one.

The skeer began an excruciating, broken advance towards the shooter. The bald man started to reload as the other, with his great dark mop of hair, strolled out to meet the creature, a gun in either hand.

The second man began firing with a quarter of the square’s width still between him and the skeer. He shot rapidly with both weapons, smoke billowing in puffs, pieces spraying from the skeer where the bullets hit. The creature lurched on drunkenly, a shrill wail pulsing from it. Behind it, the half-dozen covered crates began to vibrate, one jolting left, another actually lifting from the ground before crashing down.

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