A narrow corridor under the stands led to a sturdy iron gate which stood open. This was one of two entryways into the Bellodrome arena, a wide hall forming a notch in the stands. The guards shut it behind them, a few other gladiators from the equipment room then walked up to watch.
At Selva’s urging, they started walking. The stands were thronged with people, cheering and jeering when they caught sight of them entering the dirt-floored arena oval. To left was a covered platform partway up the stands, where Caesar Dulane lounged on a chair as he held a silver goblet with disinterest. An old crone of a woman stood to the side.
“There!” Selva pointed to her. “She’s a Keeper!”
“How can you tell?” asked Cobb.
“Wrong ethnic traits, and I can detect her cybernetic implants with mine.”
“The fighters will halt!” an announcer shouted. They paused, just inside the oval. On the other side was another entryway, this time forming a cleft in the stands with a portcullis-like gate at the far end. Big enough to fit a Tyrannosaurus, if that’s what they were up against. “The charges will be read!”
A man on a platform below Dulane’s unrolled a scroll, and with an impressive stage voice, proclaimed:
“You are found to be trespassing from the stars into this, the glorious Panarchy of Arztilla, invaders and defilers of our most sacred lands. As the whole world is under Caesar’s decree, so you are also traitors to Caesar, and shall die traitors’ deaths! What say you?”
Selva stepped forward, lifted her arms, and shouted, “Eat Ricardius’ Rice!”
A wave of laughter swept the crowd. At the lowest level of benches, some twelve feet off the ground, a man motioned Kadelius over and began passing down tall shields. Eric traded his decaying wooden disk for one, fastening it to his arm.
The announcer declared, “The sentence shall be carried out! Release the beasts!”
A gate in the wall beside the portcullis clanged open and with a screech, a pack of raptors charged out. Cheers went up from the crowd. These were bigger than the ones Eric had seen earlier—utahraptors?
“Circle up!” Selva shouted. “Stand fast!”
Eric crouched and put the bottom of his shield in the ground, held his spear under his arm with its long axis aimed right below a raptor’s neck. The dinosaurs skidded to a halt, too smart to throw themselves on spearpoints. There were six of them and ten people: the expedition and Sir Wotoc, plus Kadelius, Two-Tooth, and three other sailors from the sunken Argo, a little under two people per raptor. They might actually win this. Then again, this might be the appetizer course, to weaken them before Dulane unleashed something bigger.
The raptors circled, probing their defenses. Eric thrust his spear and nicked one on the snout, drawing blood. It screeched in anger.
“Towards the wall, slowly!” Selva began to step. “Get it at our backs!”
One sailor, too focused on the raptor menacing him from the front, left a gap between him and Two-Tooth. A second beast bowled in and seized him by the ankle, thrashing as he screamed.
“Regroup! Fall back!” Temerin closed the wall with Two-Tooth. The injured sailor tried to get up, only for three raptors to set upon him and cut short his final screams. The crowd cheered.
Eric’s heart sunk. These were the people he was supposed to save? Maybe they deserved to be conquered by Dulane, languish for a few more decades in filth and disease.
Sir Wotoc speared one raptor, it squealed and stumbled, mortally wounded. Another he slashed with his sword, feathers went flying. Against the wall they had a chance, with extra support on each person’s shield and more force behind their spears, they felled two more raptors. The last two dinosaurs stepped back and forth, working out their next moves. Wotoc expended his spear and skewered one in the side.
“Trap it in our shields! Kill it!” he charged the last raptor. Penning it in, Eric felt his spear jab into the murderous beast’s hide. Stricken with numerous blows, it flopped down dead. “We won! Bested your ordeal! Now free us!”
Dulane waved his hand. With the rhythmic clank of chains, the portcullis entrance began to rise. A dinosaur moved inside. Then another. Two creatures emerged.
Both were theropods, like Tyrannosaurus rex, only one was smaller with a double-crested head and stumpy vestigial arms. Carnotaurus? The second was a spinosaurus, larger but lower to the ground, with short legs, an elongated crocodile mouth, and double-peaked fin on its back.
Eric felt ready to surrender. “How are we going to beat this?”
Selva glanced over shoulder. “With their help.”
Running out the gladiator entrance came a good dozen armed and armored men led by Fightmaster Flavius. They formed a line of spears and shields, holding back the gigantic dinosaurs.
Flavius looked to Selva. “I hope you’ve got a plan!”
“I do, follow me!” She took off running towards the open portcullis, Eric followed.
Dulane leapt to his feet. “Treason! Treason among the gladiators! Archers!”
Atop the Bellodrome walls, archers aimed their bows and loosed a volley of arrows. Several gladiators were struck down, one who created a gap in the shield wall which enabled the spinosaurus to sweep up another.
Stopping before she reached the edge of the arena floor, Selva turned back and hefted up the sword in her hand. Leaning back, with one smooth move she lobbed it out at Dulane. Even with her cybernetically-enhanced throwing speed, the distance traversed was too great to guarantee a hit. Caesar Dulane threw himself to the floor as the blade whizzed over his chair, embedding several inches into the wooden wall behind it.
The shield-wall gladiators ducked through the portcullis opening, Selva followed and kicked the winch to send the huge gate crashing down in the carnotaur’s face. It roared and banged against the bars with impotent rage.
“This is your plan?” Cobb said. “Now what?”
“There are drainage channels and streams under the city,” Selva said, looking around. “If we find an entrance, we can make it to safety.”
A few servants, coming to check out the commotion, saw them and took off running. Sir Wotoc followed them to a door, closed it, and tipped a crate across it.
“That will hold them for a bit,” he said.
Eric looked around. This was where the Bellodrome’s beasts were kept, a two-story space connected to the arena’s side. In cages he saw raptors, stegosaurs, triceratopses, another carnotaurus, and the obligatory T. rex. Others held more pedestrian animals like lions and tigers. From a hallway came shouts and footfalls as red-caped guards ran in with swords and shields.
“Eric!” Selva pointed to a cage beside him. “That one! Baryonyx!” She climbed atop another containing an ankylosaurus, the rest of the gladiators did likewise. A metal pin held the baryonyx’s cage closed, he pulled it out and swung the door open, forming a wall across the alley between two cages to shield himself. The crocodile-snouted dinosaur stared at him, then growled and faced the guards. Eric clambered atop the cage; that would keep them occupied for a while.
They ran from cage to cage, avoiding anything likely to bite off ankles that fell through. Selva caught up with Fightmaster Flavius. “What made you change your mind?”
“I knew Caesar would tire of me one day, and send me into the Bellodrome too. If anyone could stop that, it was you.”
Leaping down, Eric fell atop a grate in the floor. Below was a fifteen-foot drop, to a pit which crawled with red compies. Several leapt up like grasshoppers as they chittered, and among them were scattered bones, picked clean.
“Where do you even get that many compies?” He shook his head, and stood.
“Here!” Temerin waved them over to a brick-lined hole in the floor.
Selva grinned. “Perfect! Sir Wotoc, bring up the rear!”
“With pleasure, my lady!”
Eric shed his shield to jump down after Cobb and Kadelius, splashing into ankle-deep water. This was a narrow underground channel, small enough his elbows would scrape the walls if he lifted them level with his shoulders. Wotoc came down last and, thinking fast, dragged a crate over the hole to cover their exit. The tunnel stunk, Eric tried not to think about what got poured down here. Selva opened her left hand and a white holographic orb appeared, casting just enough light to see by.
“This way.” She headed towards the darkness.
In a way, this was a welcome respite from days of torment, the serene silence of the underground broken only by the chattering of people on streets above as they passed by inlets. They worked their way through what felt like kilometers of passages, then waited until nightfall.
Finally, Selva pushed aside a cover-stone and peered up. “All clear.” She climbed out, and helped Temerin. Once he was out, Eric found himself in a narrow alleyway paved with cobblestones. Beside a wall, a rat nibbled at a dead compy. “Stay quiet, we can’t draw attention.”
Flavius passed the word on to his men. Eric crept after Selva and Temerin, up to a corner and around. Selva stopped before a corner. “There is a person there. See if it’s a guard.”
Eric leaned into the intersection. Down a curving alley Eric saw a woman staring at a wall, then she looked to him with surprise and hurried off the other way. “Just a lady. No guards.”
“Good.” Selva stayed close to the wall as she headed down this new alley. They passed the spot where the woman had stood, and Eric saw she’d been looking at a little hatch in the wall, with an inscription over it. He didn’t have time to read, Selva rounded another corner and came to a door. Raising a fist, she rapped on it.
A latch unlocked, it creaked open to reveal a bearded man in a brown robe. He stared at Selva for a moment, then glanced back and forth to the others. “You’re not from around here.”
She answered, “Neither are you.”
Eric realized: this was a starman, another offworlder! His teeth, white and properly aligned, were too good for Meridianite healthcare.
Selva continued, “I’ve got about twenty people in need of a hiding place, we just broke out of the Bellodrome earlier today.”
“The starmen Caesar condemned to death?” the man said, and opened the door further. “We were praying for you. Please, come in.”
