Fortune's Light - Michael Jan Friedman [17]
“Not often. But then, one does not generally offer oneself up if there is a possibility of slippery hands.”
Riker winced a little as the animal’s claws raked the boot of the Impriman suspended over the pit. The man pulled his feet up instinctively, and the crowd lifted him another hand’s breadth.
“And in our case?” he asked. “What are the chances of someone here knowing what we’re about?”
She shook her head. “It’s highly unlikely. We’ve taken every precaution to keep our mission a secret. Of course, if you are concerned about your safety, I can go first.”
Will felt the heat of his machismo rising into his face.
“No,” he told her. “It will be my pleasure.”
A couple of moments later the Impriman in the pit was raised up—sweat dripping off him, a rictus of a grin on his face.
“Who’s next?” called a tall, broad-shouldered Pandrilite. He looked around the group that circled the pit. “Who’s got the guts?”
As if echoing the question, the isak snarled. It was a sound like ripping metal.
“I do,” said Riker, turning sideways to cut a path through the tightly clustered bodies.
Suddenly all eyes were on him, sizing him up, trying to figure out why a man who wasn’t even drunk yet would want to take his chances in the pit.
But at least some of them had figured it out, because they were looking in the bartender’s direction. Looking and understanding.
“All right,” said the Pandrilite. “Step right up and have your heels cleaned.”
With a last glance at Lyneea—whose grin might not have been all for show—he took hold of the Pandrilite’s hand and then that of someone else—a Maratekkan, but thankfully a big one.
If he thought they were going to lower him slowly, he had another think coming. For a fraction of a second he felt as if they had simply thrown him to the beast.
Instinctively he brought his knees up, tried to grab for the edge of the pit. But they hadn’t let go of him after all.
The isak leapt and snapped, and he could feel its muzzle brush the soles of his boots, just barely feel it, as if a feather had touched him, instead of the business end of a flesh-and-blood killing machine.
Then the passing began, the hand-off from one sweaty grip to the next. Up top, the faces quickly became indistinguishable from one another. Pandrilite blurred into Andorian, Andorian into Rhadamanthan, Rhadamanthan into Impriman. Down below, the beast in the pit was death on a spring—leaping up for a meal one moment, falling to earth the next.
The music and the laughter and the cries of encouragement made a din in his ears, amplified by the korsch, punctuated by the isak’s blood-stopping screams. A stench came up to him, of rotting meat and animal droppings and Impriman parasites.
But underneath it all, underneath the madness, judgments were being made. Judgments that would determine how close he came to those gnashing teeth and razor-sharp claws.
His arms and shoulders were growing sore from the strain; his lower back was aching. He felt a sharp pain as a claw raked his ankle—nothing crippling, but bad enough to draw blood.
Damn, Riker. How could you let yourself be talked into this?
And then it happened. One hand let go of him. Another took its place, but it never got a good enough grip. Whether the hand was too slick with perspiration or the slip was purposeful he would never know.
He swung sideways, held only by a single hand now, and glanced off the hard dirt wall of the pit, his stretchedout rib muscles bellowing in agony. Felt the grip that was his only hope start to yield, unable to bear his entire weight.
Riker heard someone shriek—just before he fell.
If it had all happened at once, he would have been isak meat—period. But in the couple of seconds he spent dangling by one hand, he’d had time to prepare himself. To gather his wits.
So as he slid down the side of the pit, he was ready for the beast’s frantic charge. As soon as he saw the first hint of those hell-coal eyes, those flashing teeth, he ducked and rolled.
A bolt of black lightning struck the dirt wall where he’d been,