Onslaught by J. Robert King

Author:J. Robert King
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: OPENING DAY

From the top of the central pillar, Phage watched the elephants race. They really were magnificent beasts-so powerful, so fast, so full of blood. They were down to twenty now. The ones that remained had to dodge the ones that had fallen. Phage had planned on the corpses providing obstacles, but she hadn't realized that every time the beasts came in sight of their slain kin, they would trumpet and charge the giant lizard scavengers and set in for a ferocious melee. It was all the handlers could do to drive off the remaining beasts and resume the race.

Down to thirteen.

The crowd loved it. Most of them had never seen an elephant. Now, they saw fifty of them and watched forty-nine die. It was merely the opening act, the diversion that kept everyone happy while they got seated.

Half the world was getting seated. Twenty thousand filled the lower reaches, and twenty thousand more flocked across the bridges and rode the courtesy barges. Once they had seen today's entertainments, there would be fifty thousand tomorrow, and then eighty thousand, and then a capacity crowd of one hundred thousand.

Braids had brought all these people. She had traveled the whole continent of Otaria, taking with her a taste of the coliseum's splendors. To yokels, she presented a freak show. To families, she showed a menagerie of exotic creatures. To magistrates, she offered an arena for the resolution of disputes.

The coliseum was everything to everyone. The rich enjoyed luxury boxes replete with every pleasure both legal and illegal. The poor crowded on dusty benches and screamed their lungs out. Braids had proven herself a human Mirari, knowing just what each person wanted and providing it-for a price. She had arranged walk-in one-day passes and boat-in week-long excursions with full accommodations.

By the end of the week, the coliseum would have paid for itself. By the end of the month, its revenues would have outstripped those of the pits.

Only one elephant remained-bloodied but unbowed. The crowds cheered it with almost vicious approval. The animal meanwhile stomped stupidly beside the bone piles of its kin. It bobbed its head in manic distress. Its handlers jabbed it with short hooks, leading it toward the animal paddock.

At the arena's edge, Braids announced the next spectacle. She opened her throat to two worlds-reality and dementia space-and wove the sound together into a bellow that reached for miles: "Come one, come all to the newest, truest wonder of the world! Come see beasts you have only heard of. Come see beasts that have never been! Leave behind your weary world. In the Grand Coliseum, every man is a king. Every woman is a queen. Every child is heir to the riches of the world!"

Braids was both the coliseum's promoter and one of its star attractions. Even as elephants died below, many folk watched Braids capering above.

"Behold the brutality of beasts. View the vendettas of warring clans. Witness the wonders of history.

"Get ready now for the battle of the centuries-the War!" crowed Braids.

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