Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [24]
There were fifteen prisoners shackled together now. Most seemed ready for, or at least resigned to, the arena. A few struggled and pleaded with the guards as they were pulled from the cell. The human who had called out for mercy. An elf woman dressed in rags that had once been quite fine. A hobgoblin who cradled one arm to his chest and looked feverish and ill. A dwarf who glared at the guards surrounding him, thick fists opening and closing in barely restrained anger. Tariic made sure he got a stripe of paint.
“They don’t want to go,” said Geth.
Munta’s ears flicked. “They don’t have a choice. Don’t interfere, Geth.”
The shifter ground his teeth together and held his silence—until a guard emerged from the cell leading the last of the prisoners. Geth’s breath burst out of him. “Grandmother Wolf, no. That’s enough.”
The final prisoner was an elderly goblin woman, so hunched and wizened that she stood no taller than Geth’s thigh. He wasn’t sure that she would have been able to walk easily on her own without the guard’s support. She looked up at his outburst and he saw that her eyes were milky. Geth fought back a growl and turned to Munta. “She’s not going. She doesn’t stand a chance. What’s she even doing in here?”
Munta looked to the keeper, repeating Geth’s words in Goblin. The keeper grunted. “She led a famine march during the Gan’duur raids. Her followers damaged the Bloody Market.”
“A famine march is a rite of the Dark Six,” Munta said. “Marchers make sacrifices to the Devourer in an attempt to ward off further suffering.”
“I saw the march, Geth,” said Tariic. “I remember Haruuc’s anger at it. He ordered her thrown into the dungeons.”
“He didn’t order her to fight in the arena, did he?” He faced Tariic. “How will the audience react to that? An old woman in the arena?”
Tariic’s ears went back, but after a moment he nodded. Geth glanced at Munta. The old warlord frowned but nodded as well. Geth went over and knelt before the goblin woman. “Old mother,” he said in Goblin, “what is your name?”
“Pradoor.” Her voice was sharp and shrill. She reached out a gnarled hand and put it on his face, feeling his features. Her big ears twitched and her mouth curled in recognition. “So, shifter—am I going to the arena to honor one who turned his back on the gods of the Six?”
The confidence in her sharp voice almost took him aback, but he shook his head. “No. You’re going free.” He looked up at the guard who held her. “Give her food and take her out of Khaar Mbar’ost.”
His words opened a floodgate. Abruptly all of the prisoners who had been struggling to stay out of the arena—as well as those who now saw the possibility of release—were calling out to him.
“Me, shifter! Release me!”
“I don’t stand a chance!”
“Look at me!”
“Have mercy!”
Some of the harsher goblin prisoners just laughed. A few of the cries for help ended in sharps gasps of pain and more urgent, realistic cries as those in the cell were dragged down and shown just how little of a chance they stood. The keeper and some of the guards started banging on the cell doors. Geth clenched his jaw and made sure Pradoor and the guard escorting her got out of the dungeon and started the climb up the stairs leading to the fortress above. He didn’t look at Munta, Tariic, or the keeper, and he did his best to ignore the slowly dying pleas for aid.
Then one shout cut through the din. “Hey—brother! Here!”
The voice had a distinctive gravelly roughness, the accent of Geth’s own home in the Eldeen Reaches. He turned around in time to see a shifter clinging to the bars of one door, struggling to get his attention while holding off the jeering prisoners who shared his cell. Wide animal eyes met Geth’s own. “Let me go, brother,” the other shifter pleaded. “Or at least make sure I get a sharp weapon for the arena!”
“Quiet, you!” said the keeper, slamming a fist onto the fingers that gripped the bars.
The shifter held on, though. Geth charged across the dungeon hall and grabbed the keeper