This night there was no plates of food nor any ale. They pair of slaves were tossed without ceremony into the pens with the others. Calliope was woozy from the blow to her head, though probing with her fingers indicated that nothing was broken. Bahdir looked none the worse for wear beyond a corpse like coating of gray dust adhered to the sweat he had kicked up in the arena. The other slaves gave them a wide berth, some even went so far as to shoot them hateful looks. Calliope didn't doubt the fact that they had been wined and dined last night had made its way down to the slave pens, possibly even deliberately.

"So," Badhir asked as he handed her a bowel of the gruel that had been slopped out as the evening meal, "Do you... have plan for escape?" The pitfighter's Riekspiel was bad, but it was a more secure tongue than Arabyian down here. Calliope nodded, not in agreement but as a place holder as she slurped the gruel down. Landlubbers might find the stuff atrocious, but they had never been at sea for fifty days with nothing but tack so hard you had to soak it in rancid beer before you could eat it. She had expended tremendous energy in the fight and she was hungry even for such poor fare.

"I'm working on it," Calliope admitted. She flexed her fingers and leaned back against the cool stone. "I think... if we can survive to they make us fight each other, there might be a way."

"What way?" Badhir demanded. Calliope smiled a lopsided piratical grin.

"Bad luck to be telling, savvy?"

The next day dawned with an unusual chill. Notionally it dawned, there was no sun in the slave pens. Calliope didn't notice it but Bahdir looked uneasy, muttering prayers to his god and touching the stone with the palm of his hand.

"You don't like the cold?" Calliope asked. It was cool technically, cold was when a gale blew in from the Sea of Claws and you had to stand into the wind till it blew itself out and the Daemons take you if the winds changed faster than you could set your sails. Bahadir looked at her as though trying to decide if the stone which had brained her had driven her senses from her body.

"This is summer in Araby, it cannot be cold," he informed her. Further discussion was interrupted by the arrival of the armed stewards. They shouted for slaves and kicked and beat them into lines for the tunnels that lead up to the arena. They were divided into two relatively equal lines. Calliope was somewhat surprised and gratified to see that many slaves tried to get into Bahadir's line most of which were brutally shoved or clubbed back into place by the overseers. They were marched to the point where the tunnels diverged to lead both teams up to the arena. At the point where the tunnels separated two old slaves sat beside buckets of foul smelling paint. Each slave was splashed with paint as he entered the mouth of his tunnel, blue for left, red for right. Calliope squeezed her eyes shut and suffered a splash of the paint across face and left side, spitting the blue muck at one of the overseers on general principles. The guard bared his teeth and kicked Calliope in the hip but Bahadir shoved past to prevent any further retaliation. The mouths of the tunnels were colder yet, worse they ran with rivulets of water. Calliope frowned but said nothing shuffling up the tunnel and following the curve towards the light and the roar of the crowd. They reached the armory room and took their weapons, Calliope selecting a heavier sword than she had used the previous day and a long fighting dagger with a broad hand guard.

When they finally reached the mouth of the tunnel Calliope slitted her eyes against the sun and stepped out onto an unfamiliar wooden platform and peered out in amazement. The entirety of the arena had been filled with water. It still chattered down through wooden sluices at four points combatting evaporation and whatever leaked into the sublevels. Each entrance to the arena had a platform to which two twenty foot rafts had been lashed. Single masts stood in the center of their decks and cloth hung from them in imitation of sails. The sides were built up in imitation of real ships though it was all a gawdy show. It was an incredible achievement and a statement about the wealth and power of the Sultan that would last a century. The crowd were already cheering themselves hoarse and trash and confetti, flung in their exuberance floated atop the imitation sea.

"There are ships," Bahadir blurted in wonder.

"Boats," Calliope corrected absently, "Ships have three masts." There was no possibility of 'sailing' the ships, but long poles stacked on the decks would easily sink the six feet or so to the arena floor to propel the floating abortions.

".... the pirates of Abukar Bay!" an announcer was shouting through a brass speaking trumpet. The crowd leaped to their feet and howled for blood. Calliope could see the other team of slaves coming out onto their own 'dock' looking equally shocked by the spectacle before them.

"And to drive this filth to Allah, the brave Sailors of Sultan Kayem!" There was another roar, somewhat throatier at this. Calliope presumed this was some reference to an ancient battle she neither knew nor cared about. She smirked to think how far back the would have to have gone to find a naval battle the Araybian's had actually won.

"And just like on that great day the seas will run red... with blood!" There was a boom as one of the Sultan's guards fired a jezzail. The Slave two places down from Calliope sighed and tumbled forward into the water with a splash. The other slaves cringed back, though Calliope stood her ground, determined not to give these camel fucking sons of third rate whores any satisfaction. The body floated in the water for a moment and then there was an explosion of froth and fury as something dark struck from beneath the wave. Calliope had only a split second, but the fins and teeth were unmistakable to a sailor.

"Well I will be damned," she muttered, "They have sharks and everything."

Bahadir had seen some amazing things in his time as a slave-fighter. He had even been a part of a team set to fight one of the deadly chimera's of the far north, just barely coming out of that alive. He had seen men eat their own arms rather than starve. But this was something he had not seen. It was a marvel of engineering and logistics, something Bahadir had heard about but had never been witness to. Briefly, he had a weird sense of loss. If he escaped, he might never be witness to such things again. Perhaps his life was not so bad...

He knew that was a falsehood, however. How much sweeter would his life be if he was in the crowds right now, eating pork and sitting with a lover? Or perhaps even plundering the real seas himself? His sudden hesitation was curtailed and then redirected to a longing to be free, and a wonderful sense of thankfulness that he could do it with a bang such as this! That is, if he and Calliope survived.

"Yataharak!" A Mamluk called, indicating the slaves to move. Calliope needn't be told. She stepped onto the boat as if it was made by her commission, hard boots clacking across the roughly hewed timber. Bahadir was unsure of how steady it would be, but evidently she was not. He would trust her practiced instinct, and leaped onboard as well. The boat lightly bucked, swaying from the new weight and the small ripples in the water. There was a moderate wind today, dilapidating the surface of what should have been pristine, calm water with no current. Bahadir was used to sand or stone, or the timber structures of men. He was not used to floating on water.

"I must tell you..." Bahadir said in his strange accent, Calliope turning to look at him. "I..." He tried to find the right words."-cannot swim."

She snorted, bewildered she had not thought of it. "If we live, I'll give ye some proper lessons, but as for now, if you fall in, just find the arena floor and kick off it. Plus, the sharks might keep ye a bit busy."

More and more slaves piled off, until there was roughly a dozen, along with the two would-be partners. Across the expanse of water, the other slaves had gotten onto their boat at the insistence of moon-bladed halberds. A few of them looked not unsure of what to do, and Bahadir wondered if there were other corsairs or sailors on their side. He didn't know. The sun peeked through the clouds above, basking his scarred chest with merciful heat, and a keening trumpet sounded, before others followed.

"Take the handle and do exactly what I say," Calliope commanded Bahadir. He looked at the fastened pole, and gripped it with a big hand as Calliope drew her saber. Above, the Sultan stepped forward, raising his hands to the heavens, and the people cried out in joyous celebration as the games began.

Intellectually Calliope knew there was a real chance of of her dying today. Many people were literally betting on it afterall but inspite of that the emotion which reigned supreme in her head was anger. Did the camel buggering ragheads really thing these things were boats. It offended her at a level so deep it made her eyelids twitch. These barges would tip over in any swell beyond that of a millpond, and god help them if they ever got a sail on, not that it would even be possible with the mockery of rigging. If any wind at all came up they would probably be smothered by the bloody shroud.

"Push off!" she roared, it wasn't till Bahadir yelled the same thing in Araybian that she realised that in her anger she had spoken in Reikspiel.

"Stroke together you bastards!" she shouted to the would be rowers as they wavered into action.

"Who died and made you the leader," a scarred slave demanded looming up and flexing his knuckles on the haft of polearm. Calliope hacked into his neck with her saber, sending spray of blood fountaing up to stain the ersatz sail with gore. The slave opened and closed his mouth for a moment before Calliope kicked him over the side. He plunged into the water without a sound.

"Anyone else?!" Calliope demanded. No one did anything other than work their oars and avoid her gaze.

"Good, Stroke! Stroke!" she yelled. They were picking up speed in marked contrast to the other barges which were wallowing in disorder. She stepped back over to Bahadir, jumping up onto a bulwark and gripping one of the ropes to judge speeds and angles.

"Are we going to board pirate?" Bahdir asked.

"Not unless we have to she replied tersley. One of the enemy barges was looming up quickly, slaves clustered at the bow brandishing weapons.

"On my word, throw that tiller hard over," she instructed.

"Do what?" Bahadir asked. Calliope resisted the urge to snap.

"Turn hard to the right," She explained, counting down the seconds.

"Now!" she screamed. Bahadir did as he was instructed and the barge slewed infront of the onrushing enemy, so violently it generated a literal wave. The two bages struck with a splintering impact of colliding timbers. As Calliope had hoped the enemy barge hit them broadside. A dozen enemy tumbled into the barge, some jumping, most simply knocked off their feet to crash to the deck. The two clumsy water craft bounced appart as the crew grappeled and stabbed at each other but all was not well with the enemy barge. Calliope watched with satisfaction as the enemy barge came appart in a handful of loose timbers dumping half its crew splashing into the shark haunted waters. The barges were simply logs lashed together and disguised to look vauglely like real boats. They were strong enough on the beam, but a blow to the prow knocked half a dozen timbers back through the knots which held them, shattering the hull into a handful of logs and tangled ropes. Half the crew had gone into the drink, few knew the trick of swimming, but those who did struck out towards Calliope's barge to be greeted with skull crushing blows from paddles and polearms.

"One down," she grinned as the crew hacked and stabbed at those few survivors who had found their feet.

Men who could not swim waved their arms frantically as the merciless god called gravity pulled them under, and those that could swim either tread water or tried their luck trying to board and take the closest boat, which Bahadir and Calliope resided on. The pirate woman cut them apart without giving quarter, her eyes flashing with anger and bloodlust as her sword moved like a zephyr, leaving red to pour off the side of the boat as Bahadir turned the craft around. At the back, a cunning slave with a knife in his mouth, one of the few that had survived the capsizing of his own shoddy craft, pulled himself out of the water and leaped at Bahadir, blade swiping. Bahadir let go of the rudder and backed away, using his arm to block. Better a limb get pierced than a vital area. The blade cut into his muscled forearm, but Bahadir's body was tough. His own eyes flashed with murderous rage, and he took hold of the slave's knife arm and shattered it with a twist of his hands, bending it an unnatural angle. The man screamed in pain, and then sucked in his breathe when he was subsequently lifted off the boat, and launched like a javelin over the water with a great heave. Bahadir watched as the flailing man, beginning to scream again, landed on a spike at the edge of the wall, his body falling atop it to be spit like a roasted pig.

Across the expanse of the water, the other two ships had traded javelins, arrows, even a few swords thrown in haste. Bahadir watched as scarred man with a burn mark on his face climb the mast of his ship, for a reason he could not fathom. The crowd's roar waxed and waned like a squall as the violence continued.

"Bahadir!" Calliope called, her saber raised like a beacon. The pit-fighter turned, and sharing just one look, he nodded and took hold of the rudder again. She grinned, but turned to the men who were happy to just sit and watch their enemies kill one another. The captain snarled, pointing at them, speaking broken Arabyan with a few sprinkled in words of reiskpeil. "Get rowing you lazy dogs, or it's you we'll come after next!"

They could understand her well enough, and took to the oars to row. The water sprayed from the wind and the oars slapping into it as they slowly turned to barrel toward the two boats, both now having struck one another head on, their 'crews' trading platforms as they threw themselves at one another in a bloody assault. One of the masts, the one with the burned man atop it, had broken and even now Bahadir saw it collapse into the other ship, crushing a slave and squashing the one that had taken it as a roost. A screaming man, skinny as bone, had ran through a slave who looked barely old enough to grow facial hair of his own, and tossed him into the water before he too was cut down by a man wielding twin daggers. Splotches of dark red had begun to grow in the virulent sea of the arena, like islands of death.

Bahadir and Calliope's boat was approaching at a good coasting speed, and at this rate they would strike into the middle of the two in a few more seconds.

"Let go of the rudder!" The corsair called, and Bahadir obeyed, letting the platform move freely as he took his spot next to Calliope, picking up the axe he had dropped. A few of the men in the other craft had noticed their approach, but most were now either wounded or still locked in combat, and they were about to be hit by a fresh crew of hardened men. Calliope laughed, and as the ship struck the two fighters leaped, Calliope's sword whirring and Bahadir hitting the 'deck' with a drop kick that sent an assailant flying off the platform to hit the wall.

The western section of the stands cried in rhythmic unison: "Mamba! Mamba! Mamba! Mamba!"

The eastern crowd whooped: "Namir! Namir! Namir! Namir!" Using the Arabyan word for Tiger.

The battle was over in less than a minute, the slaves too weak and confused from their own battle to survive the maelstrom of Calliope, Bahadir, and their slave fighters. With a last, contemptuous cut of her sword, Calliope slashed the throat of the last enemy slave, his body tumbling into the water to join the rest of them, swallowed by Manann.

"I hope you are pleased with yourselves," Azim sneered from beyond the bars. They were back in the more luxurious cells now, fruit and even watered wine had been provided. Calliope took a long drink and made a face at the taste but noticabley didnt spit it. Instead she swilled the wine around in her mouth for a moment and then swallowed.

"Moderately, would have been better if I had a hat, like a really big hat," Calliope admitted as she leaned against the far wall. There was a cut across her left arm where an arrow had grazed her but other than bruises she had escaped the battle unharmed. Azim glowered, put off his stride by her nonchalance.

"The rest of the slaves will go to shaitain tomorrow morning, but the two of you... the 'Mamba and Namir' are reserved for a special fate," he leered.

"You will fight each other tomorrow, if you win slave..." he nodded to Bahadir, "the Sultan will grant you your freedom." He turned and glared a Calliope.

"If you should win pirate, we shall tell the people you were set free, and your body will be fed to the tigers. I hope you both sleep well," he sneered, then turned and strode out of the cells. Bahadir was quiet for a moment as he crunched a juicy apple between his teeth.

"SO what do we do?" he said finally, "I've no doubt my throat would be cut the same as yours." Calliope picked at the cut on her arm till it began to bleed then picked up the wineskin. She regarded the pit fighter from the shadows, her eyes glittering.

"I suppose you will have to kill me then," Calliope replied, her grinning teeth white in the candlelight.

The morning was met with blaring trumpets and the heat of the merciless sun.

Peddlers walked up and down the seats, plying their wares of baubles and gems they claimed had come from far Cathay or the sea beyond the Dragon Isles. So crowded was it, Arak sellers were making good business even before the noonday. Courtiers filtered into their seats below the Sultan's mightly overlook, cordoned off from the teeming masses that had come to watch the final day of the games. Dancers in pantaloons and flowing silks spun and gyrated as men gave undulating cries to appease allah for their sinful thoughts and good fortune on their bets this day. Upon one of the statues of the old gods, a street boy had climbed to watch the spectacle, eyes wide as the beating heart of the great city readied itself for the fight.

Bahadir and Calliope had slept in the same cell, but they were awoken with shouts and rough hands, and soon separated into different corners of the vast underground hall, given their favored weapons and a small time to prepare as the crowed outside swelled with life like a pregnant concubine. They were given water and a small breakfast of cakes and meat they ate standing, mamluks with halberds between them, as was traditional for a duel. It would not do for one to kill the other before they were set to fight in the arena, or to have second thoughts, in their case.

A rattling of chains and the clamor of wood rubbing against wood announced the time was nigh, and as the great gate opened and the mamluks filtered out, Bahadir and Calliope could hear the ending of the Sultan's great speech, his voice carried over the crowd by Azim's mystical talents. How Bahadir wanted to behead the both of them! But he needed to stick to the plan, trusting the dark woman that her idea would work.

"Move, scum!" The Mamluk closest to Bahadir snarled, moving to shove the slave. Bahadir deftly pivoted and struck the Mamluk in the face with his elbow in one, smooth motion. The honorguard fell to the floor, stunned for a moment as blood began to pour from his nose and split lip.

"Seems you stumbled, I hear that can happen with unendowed men. Messes with the balance." Bahadir remarked with a casual concern. It seemed the man had regained cognizance right when he made the quip. Calliope was a quick study, it seemed, for he said it in arabyan and she understood enough to laugh wickedly. The Mamluk retrieved his fallen weapon and growled, surging to his feet in wrath.

"You bastard son of a whore!"

The embarrassed Mamluk was stopped by two others, keeping his arms from ramming Bahadir through with his moon-bladed halberd. "No, he is the Sultan's to decide. He will die soon enough," they said. Bahadir smirked, giving Calliope a subtle wink, before stepping forward as he was bade. He knew he needed to be saved for the fight, but he was not about to press his luck any further. The guards kept their blades pointed at him from then on, however, and the two fighters were escorted into the blazing sun.

As the glare caught them, drums rumbled and trumpets rose once again, accompanying the crowd's roar of exultation at seeing the two legendary combatants in this dramatic finish of the Sultan's Games.

Long they strove with axe and sword
with might blows and corteous word
Comrades through blood and danger passed
To battle now til one breathed their last
Of such feats the bards do sing
such beauty in the axes swing
and poetry of knife and sword
that would the very god's have awed.

The sand which drank the oceans tears
shook with lusty blood mad cheers.
And though the lusty mamba led the dance
the Namir not from his purpose glanced
and ruse or trick could from fury take
the brutal blows that axe did rake
Until with tears of anguish in his eyes
Tiger smote the snake no more to rise

~Araybian Folk Song

The guards carried Calliope from the field, her limp body hanging between them. Blood soaked the front of her tunic in such volume that there could be no doubt she was dead, even if several thousand people hadn't watched Bahadir's axe hit her cleanly between the breasts. The crowd was roaring, some of them chanting Bahadir's name, others bemoaning the fortunes they had lost by wagering on the pirate. The guards themselves were muttering about this very thing as they hurled her body off a stone dock into the back of the corpse cart which waited, already loaded with bodies, to be driven out into the desert to dump the carrior for jackals and buzzards to dispose of.

_______________________

"This is the man," the vizier declared pointing at Bahadir through the bars of his cell. There was dissapointment in his eyes for he would have much prefered to butcher the pirate, but so long as she was dead it made little difference to him. Bahadir backed up in his cell as two mamlukes with pikes stepped forward, meaning to skewer him where he stood. Unfortunately the cell was large enough that if the slave kept himself pressed against the back wall, they couldn't quite reach him.

"Don't be tedious," the vizier sneered, "try to die with some dignity slave."

"Maybe an example would help?" someone whispered in his ear. THe vizier half turned an arm locked around his head and he felt naked steel at his throat. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Calliope and trembeled, momentarily beliving her to be a vengeful ghost.

"By Allah how..."

Calliope could have told him. She could have explained how she had kept the wineskin from the previous night, how she had patiently kept her wound flowing so that she could collect blood and mix it with the wine. She could have told him how she had placed the blood filled flask between her breasts before the fight, perhaps even explained how Bahadir had deliberately struck her just so, so that the wineskin would burst and she would appear to be slain. She might even have told him how she hid under the pile of corpses until dark, then stole a dagger. Why she had come back at all was harder for her to explain, though perhaps a promise to a ship mate, even the piss poor ships they made here, was worth something. She explained none of this, instead before he could speak another word she raked the blade across his throat so hard she felt it grind on bone. The vizier made a noiseless bubbling scream, his wind pipe no longer reaching his vocal cords. Calliope shoved him into the one of the guards, who staggered aside cursing. The other tried to withdraw his pike from the bars, only to have Bahadir snatch the weapon free, then drive the butt end into the soliders stomach. Calliope cut both their throats before they could recover themselves enough to scream. Blood was already pooling on the floor. Calliope took the key from the nearest guard and opened the cell.

"There is a cart filled with deadmen waiting to take us out of the city, and I think I've seen enough of its delights for the time being."