Level: Observer

Bad luck had always followed Omaya around like a stray dog.
He had been beaten like a dog and now he felt almost defeated. His sister had been killed by a runaway cart when he had been eight. He had been blamed for that, because, a year older, he should have kept her safe. He hadn’t minded being blamed, because it saved him blaming himself.
At fifteen he had lost his mother to a disease nobody could recognise any more; sweats followed by bouts of coughing blood and a deathly white face during her last breath.
His father, Demitri, had remarried and given him three half-siblings. Two had died and the last cursed him every day.
Now Omaya lay gasping in a wooden cage, about to fight for his life. The Dragon’s slavers had come to his village in the night, but been repulsed. Only one house had been sacked, its master murdered, matriarch raped and the children stolen; Omaya’s.
Only in the deepest depth of his soul did any will to live remain. But it required a clear head to form a plan. And Omaya had drunk nothing for two days. He noticed a guard, grinning at him:
“Nice and ready to fight like a cock for the Princess, are we? You’re next! And your opponent has dogs!”
Omaya spat and the guard laughed, punctuating it with a belch.
Though Omaya strained to hear the waves on the beach, he could only hear the febrile screams of the games’ customers.
The baying of the crowd rose to a roar and then fell silent.
“Another one gone. Probably no good!” a voice whispered, trying to cover the silence.
Omaya’s heart rate rose fast so that his chest felt even tighter and surprised him.
“Maybe I still want to live!” he told himself.
A guard passed, carelessly spilling water from a jug right in front of Omaya’s cage. He waited impatiently for the guard to move away and stretched out his hand to scoop up some of the precious liquid. But it’s blackness caught his eye and drew him in. He felt himself falling forward, falling into an endlessly deep pool of water. A dim, yellow light shone, far, far beneath its surface. Omaya forgot completely about his attempt to drink the water. And then it had gone, seeped into the sand.
“You can scoop it up and drain the water later,” a man cried out, from the cage opposite. “I can show you how, if you give me half. I can’t reach it!”
Omaya put his hand through the bars of the cage, but then he noticed that the man had no eyes, only empty, black sockets. He tried to see if there was anything, anything at all, inside them, but he could only make out empty space, receding forever. He felt himself falling and cried out:
“He has no eyes!”
“What the fuck’s goin’ on up there!” a guard yelled, whipping a man with two dogs ahead of him.
The dogs had been barking feverishly at everything that moved, but when Omaya screamed, they suddenly became as docile as lambs.
Omaya quickly pulled his arm back within the cage, but the other man wasn’t so fast.
“What you doing reaching for those dogs matey? Come to think of it, you’d be a better match for them anyway. You’ll be next. Stand back.”
“No!” the man screamed. “You can’t! I was only trying to help him! He wanted water! A guard spilled some! Look! A damp patch!”
The dogs looked around them silently while Omaya stole a glance at the guard’s victim. The prisoner’s eyes looked completely normal now. Omaya shook his head and closed his eyes, perplexed.
“Are you okay mate? Answer me!” a voice insisted. Something rocked his cage so he forced his eyes open and licked his cracked lips.
“Wha- … ?” he forced out.
“What just happened!”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, you’re blood lucky mate! You’d be dead if you had to fight dogs. He won’t make it, and I’ve seen him. One of the best. Wait.”
They listened as the fight with dogs began. It didn’t take long before the dogs were barking themselves hoarse again. Moments later a man screamed and the audience went wild.
“He’s dead!” the voice told Omaya. “You’re next. You have to fight! Stay alive! Remember what I told you?”
“No. Yes. Act stupid, wait for a weakness.”
“And strike! Remember. Strike!”
“Yeah. Sure. Why do you care?”
“I dunno. Why shouldn’t I? We’re all going to get out of this. One day we’ll be rich! War lords of our own. Don’t forget it!”
“Bullshit.”
“Hang on!” another voice, calmer than the first protested.
“What’s your name? I’ll mention you to God, whichever one decides to pick up my pieces.”
The first voice laughed, a smoker’s cough catching in its throat. The second whispered:
“Only one god now if you want to stay alive round here. Name’s Aylun.”
“Chen,” the first voice added. “Yours?”
“Omaya.”
In image of Chen came back to Omaya; dark, muscular, his black, tightly curled hair only half caught in a pony-tail and a grin too benevolent for the New World. Omaya could remember nothing of Aylun, except that he was a giant. He couldn’t remember where he was, or how he got there.
“Where are we?” he whispered, painfully forcing himself to his knees.
“That’s right. Flex your leg and arm muscles Ome. Stretch anything you can!” Chen replied. “They transferred us last night. These are the Unga cliff caves, a few miles outside Currency. This is where the rich come to watch us fight, now it’s banned in the City. They say the Queen is here tonight!”
Omaya got himself into a crouched position and found that he could stretch each leg alternately by poking his feet through the frame of the wooden cage. The rough rope, which held the whole thing together, gave a little allowing him to stretch until his thigh stuck in the gap. The scraping of rough wood on his skin hurt. He tried to ignore it.
“You! Back from the door!” the guard bellowed. He yanked a long, iron bolt from the retainers at each end of the cage and pulled open the door. Omaya crawled out and tried to stand.
“Gerup, yer ponsy scum!”

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