The Sellsword (Tracy Hickman Presents the Anvil of Time) by Cam Banks

Author:Cam Banks [Banks, Cam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780786947225
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2010-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Highmaster Rivven Cairn watched the evening rain wash away the blood on the clay surface of Wulfgar’s Horseman’s Arena.

She and Cear had returned only a few hours earlier, southwest of Willik, which she had left to the ghouls. After reporting the passage of Gredchen and Theodenes to her Black Robe agent, the highmaster decided to return to her base of operations. Wulfgar was, for all intents and purposes, home; even Cear appreciated the place. Perhaps the dragon liked it because he’d already staked his claim with fire and claw back when Rivven had flown in with her forces, driving the famous Feathered Plumes of Wulfgar into the jungle and overwhelming the city.

Another reason she had returned was to watch the fighting in the arena. There, steel and iron were set against claw and horn as humans and other races engaged in life-and-death battle with all manner of monstrous opponents. Many of the inhuman gladiators were chained and bound, in part to prevent them from leaping into the stands and tearing the spectators to pieces, but also to limit their movement and give the slave combatants a sporting chance.

It was the day before the chariot races; Rivven enjoyed the spectacle every year. They combined all the thrill of competitive racing with the brutality of gladiator combat. Weeks of bloodthirsty conflict led up to it, with the victors earning the chance to take part in the chariot race and perhaps win their freedom.

Rivven grew up alongside gladiators. Before she became an apprentice mage, she was entertainment, a token half-breed in a pit fighter’s house in Lemish. Her owner was a thick-necked human with a wispy excuse for a beard, a man she later killed in the course of her escape. He would force her to take on one opponent after the other, sometimes in the dark of night, sometimes under the hot light of day. She learned to kill with a knife, with a sword, with her own fists. She made no friends, saw no future, until the day she understood her owner’s weakness.

Yasmut Shaad had a thing for meek and shy girls. Rivven was anything but. For twelve years, years that most humans would have grown too old for the kind of blood sport her master was making money from, her elf blood kept her body young and undeveloped. Her time in the pit hardened her, made her lean and wiry. Then she realized that her only way out would be to get close enough to Shaad to kill him. Rivven knew that she would have to feign weakness while remaining alive just long enough to use her anger.

The rain grew stronger, pounding on her helmet, collecting in bloody puddles around her boots. She was taken back to the Shaad’s pit again by the thum-thum-thum of the rain, which in her mind became the percussion of bucketfuls of water dumped on her from above. The blood at her feet was the blood of her last opponent, a pale human body on the ground before her with her knife in his chest.

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