“Sounds like a bargain-basement version of the Big Game,” J.B. mused.
Dean gave a barely noticeable shudder as the Armorer’s words triggered the memory of the gladiator-style killing games held in the ruins in the once prosperous Las Vegas, Nevada. Until a few months ago, the youngster had been a student at the Nicholas Brody School in Colorado, where Ryan had left him for a period of proper education.
The kind of learning Ryan had paid for hadn’t come cheap in the hellish world of Deathlands, but he had known his son would need some formal schooling before returning to the harsh realities of daily survival. Knowledge was just as useful a weapon as a good blaster if a man was educated enough to use it, and Ryan wanted his own flesh and blood to have the opportunity to be as culturally aware as he had been during his own childhood.
Unfortunately things had started to go wrong at the Brody School soon after Ryan left his son.
The school hadn’t been able to live up to what its reputation and secure grounds promised. More and more often, Ryan was seeing that so much of anything relied on the strength of a single vision. Sometimes the vision was for the greater good, like the school and the desire to educate, but more often, the vision was yet another nameless, faceless land baron who had grabbed enough power and clout to swing his weight around.
Like the five men locked in the power struggle for the land and villes surrounding Las Vegas.
Dean and nine of his classmates from the Brody School in Colorado had been kidnapped by one of these men, Baron Vinge Connrad, to serve as young warriors in his fight against his competition.
At the same time, Ryan and his friends had been on their way to retrieve Dean after many long months of travel. He had desperately missed his son and decided it was time for the boy’s studies to come to an end. Before they reached their goal, they themselves inadvertently came upon the sadistic and primitive way of settling who would be the leader of the Vegas villes for another year, having been forced by circumstances to be warriors for a different baron.
“If this is like the Big Game, I could probably handle any two-bit gladiator they throw my way with one arm tied behind my back and my other thumb up my ass,” J.B. announced.
“Right. You can’t even see well enough to squat down and take a proper shit, J.B.,” Mildred retorted. “No way are you going in for any gladiator games.”
“I don’t recall asking for your permission, Millie,” J.B. replied.
“She’s right. I’m not having you cut down by a lucky punch from some hardass,” Ryan said firmly. “But without your glasses, you’re a definite liability to be carrying around. Got to change that triple fast.”
“Thanks a whole heaping lot for the vote of confidence,” J.B. said, with an annoyed sneer.
“He has fire, yes, even blind, you say? Would do well, would do well,” the dwarf interjected. “First battle scheduled today for noon. Need to sign on as contender now, yes.”
“Quiet, squirt,” Ryan said, cutting off the little man. “Doc said it best”
“I always do,” Doc quipped.
“We could be in a lot worse shape. Matter of time J.B. broke his glasses anyway. At least there’s a place here to fix them. So, I say we’re not leaving Freedom without two pairsone to wear and one to keep as a backup in case this ever happens again. And the most immediate solution to the problem seems to be this fight in the pit the shrimp’s babbling about.”
“I don’t care, Ryan. John is not going to get himself killed over a pair of eyeglasses in some stupid hand-to-hand battle,” Mildred protested. “We’ve got to find another way.”
“I know, Mildred, I know,” Ryan said impatiently. “But who said anything about J.B. being the one doing the fighting?”
BEFORE STEPPING into the pit, Ryan eyeballed the arena from above.
The walls plunging downward were sheer, with grooves cut into two sides. He guessed it was a forty-foot drop to the floor below. The actual fighting arena was open and wide, with curved walls to prevent any attempts to crawl up and out of the battle.