Shuffling and jostling, three dozen men in black lined up with their swords. In front of us appeared a giant, resembling the tank commander from my first day here. Just as lumbering, massive, and ominous.
— Hello, scraps! Ended up here, did you? That means you’re the dregs of society. Worthless slag, garbage, — the man laid out our situation and continued: — We’re going to mold you into something sweet. The metal in your hands is a combat weapon. What’s on your shoulders — who knows. Might be heads, might be cabbage stumps. We’ll find out. Your job is to show you can survive out there.
The speaker waved a hand toward the arena and continued:
— Whoever ends up as feed for the livestock will from now on and forever be feed. Whoever fights off that fate can consider himself moved up to the next level. Becomes a fighting monkey. So, the assignment’s clear. Forward, males!
I did not understand what it was about. Not at all. The shield, heavy and rigid, dug its sharp edge into my shoulder and pressed on my elbow. The sword was no product of design thinking either. The hilt, cold and slippery, awkward in the grip, kept trying to slide out. Touching the blade with a finger, I cried out. It proved sharp and seemed familiar. I fell into the unknown, either past or future, where this shield and sword, scutum and gladius, were the meaning of my life.
Someone cracked me on the back of the head and bellowed over my ear: — Scrawny monkey! Onto the arena!!!
I walked out onto a field strewn with sawdust. Slopes rose all around, packed with people. Wherever I looked, an uncountable crowd howled, whistled, hooted. The number of spectators defied even a rough guess — it seemed like millions. They filled the space around and above for hundreds of meters. The spectators near the top of the slopes looked like tiny bugs. But even they were screaming, pouring their ant-sized squeaks into the general roar.
Whoa!
The noise and racket began to die down, almost stopped. But no silence followed. The crowd churned, boomed with every kind of weapon — a salvo of volleys to salute something joyful.
What?
Ah, there it was!
At the far end of the arena, gates swung open, and out sprang striped cats… would you look at that! Ten tigers gathered into a yellow-brown clump, glancing around nervously, hunted, in the exact same wretched confusion we’d been in seconds before… they couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
«The kitties are in trouble,» flashed through my head.
The creatures that had inspired pity stopped glancing around. The kittens’ eyes flashed. The tigers had found breakfast. Breakfast was us — thirty men in black. The predators charged.
I had never felt so miserable and terrified.
My palms went sweaty instantly and nearly dropped the sword. A dull ache spread through my gut. My legs turned to wood. Nausea knotted my insides and threatened to spill them out. Ugh! One man broke away from us and, screaming, ran sideways. Two tigers went after him. The rest charged straight at us, as single-minded as before.
But what was this? For a fraction of a second I flew into the past, where the shield and sword were extensions of my arms and the battle with death was the meaning of life. From the past I came back a fighter. The fear evaporated. I shoved the lad on my left to stand a little back and to the side. He understood everything, moved, put up his shield and froze. To the lads on the right I waved my sword to press closer to us, and I roared with all my might: «To battle!»
Whew! Just in time!!!
Our crowd drew together, bristling with raised swords, and there! take that! like this!!! one striped monster crashed to the sand, its belly ripped open mid-leap. The smell of enemy blood was a rush.
We realized that together we were a force. We charged the tigers, splitting into groups of four, shoulder to shoulder. I have no idea how, but we beat the predators back. We killed two tigers. The rest, whimpering and snarling, vanished. Five of our brothers, mauled but alive, were carried off the arena.
Whew!
I looked around.
All that remained of the poor devil who’d tried to run was a pile of scattered meat on a skeleton, about ten meters from the shield and sword he’d dropped to run faster.
With the price of his cowardly life, he’d drawn off two predators — the hungriest, the quickest, the sharpest. Eight dull-witted tigers are easier to handle than ten average ones.
What now? How much time had passed?
