Alax climbed onto Mayka, his winning steed, settling into position.
He clicked, and the beast moved forwards, towards the patch of light ahead of them.
He sometimes felt he had a connection with the animal, almost like it was human.
He could look into the animal's eyes, as he petted its head, and he sometimes caught what he thought looked like a glimmer of intelligence in those deep, brown pools that seemed to catch any fragment of available light. Even when he was cleaning the animal down in the gloom of the stables.
He had inherited the beast when its last owner had developed an inappropriate relationship with the animal. At least that was what he had been told.
It turned his stomach to think that people could take advantage of a creature in that way.
But then, animal life seemed so cheap these days. Even one with such a rich and heroic history as Mayka.
It was increasingly expensive to keep a fighter like Mayka stabled. Creatures like him needed a decent amount of heat to keep them alive through cold winters, as they could only stay alive within a narrow temperature range.
Some thought the creatures an ancient abomination that had no place in the modern world. Such people let fear rule their thoughts.
Alax shielded his eyes momentarily as they emerged into daylight. Mayka didn't flinch, and bore his Master past the entrance from the tunnel, and onto the awaiting dusty pitch.
Even when the crowd roared as the duo became visible, cantering into the arena, Mayka was unfazed.
Even when, as they came to a halt in the centre of the great expanse of dried earth, a huge black animal and a snarling man that straddled the beast, approached from the opposing entrance. Mayka stood his ground, silently.
Alax and Mayka were reigning champions. Mayka had the war wounds to show for it, but it never seemed to affect him mentally, as it did most animals that Alax had worked with.
But then, Mayka had seen action in the Belargian wars. Took a spear to the side, but he ploughed on, his Master wreaking havoc on the enemy as his steed held him firmly aloft. Never wavering.
Mayka grunted, and Alax patted his side.
Easy, boy. I know you want to get going. Your old Master would be proud.
The animal shifted its weight slightly, seeming uneasy at Alax's words.
Sometimes, it seemed that Mayka understood what he said. But that was just anthropomorphic thinking, of course.
As though the creature had feelings about how its original Master, Savyo, a decorated war hero, had been executed at the orders of Drarkon.
As if the memories of that night continued to haunt the beast.
Drarkon, a corrupt government official who had seen the public popularity of Savyo and his powerful war steed as a personal threat.
Nobody could trace the quiet night-time assassination of Savyo back to Drarkon, but everyone knew.
Savyo's steed only survived because he had escaped his stable somehow, and had beaten the assassin to a bloody mess when he had emerged from Savyo's residence. The assassin was unrecognisable as human, they had said, by the time Mayka had finished with him. Such was the beast's love for its master.
The assassin's steed, normally trained to deal with such surprise confrontations, had disappeared into the night.
The roar of the crowd brought Alax back to the moment once more, as they came to a halt in the centre of the pitch.
The past was the past. He doubted Mayka even remembered the incident.
Alax punched a fist into the air, and the crowd roared. He did so for the sake of the sponsors. They liked that kind of thing. As though it connected him with the unthinking masses in some way. As if they mattered to him.
Mayka's opponent beast and its rider reared up in front of them, coming to a snarling halt fifty feet away.
The beast swung its head up and down, impatient for battle to commence.
Mayka stood, impassive.
Damn, thought Alax. If Mayka was human, he would make a great Poker player.
Alax heard his opponent's thoughts try to calm the beast, but it didn't seem to hear. Of course it didn't hear. It heard through ears, not thoughts.
Humans had lost their hearing and vocal speech many generations ago. Some said that this took some beauty from the world. But when you can hear the thoughts of humans, animals, plants and even the rocks around you, what use was the blunt instrument of hearing and the raw vibrations of the vocal cord?
Once, it had been that eyes only saw a narrow waveband of light, and were restricted to the head rather than being distributed over the entire body surface. What a limited world that must have been. It seemed inconceivable for sight to have been such a localized phenomena. How could people have lived with such an impediment?
But, he guessed, they must have been barely conscious. Barely human.
The beast that held him aloft was a visceral connection to that old world. It gave Alax a sense of the base nature of man, that could never be wholly evicted from his essential self.
The nature that had two gladiators and their beasts facing each other off in an arena, as thousands of privileged individuals crowded into the stands, and a few highly placed government officials occupied the Royal Boxes that gave the best vantage point of the arena. Billions watched from surrounding planets and star systems.
Such was the draw of the primal.
There was a flash of light that seemed to engulf the entire arena.
Once more, the fight began.
Alax was almost pulled from the shoulders of his steed as Mayka powered towards the two opponents.
Alax had just managed to draw up his spear when Mayka seemed to drop down, and slide to one side of their opponents.
Alax was momentarily confused, but then saw what his steed had somehow seen already.
This creature with but two eyes had seen a slight discrepancy in gait, where his opponent's steed had a weakness.
Alax could see a slight raising of the skin where a scar had formed. But only just. How could an animal see something so subtle in advance of an evolved human like himself?
Alax lowered the angle of his spear away from his opponent's chest slightly, in preparation for the first and final blow.
He saw his opponent's spear raised, aimed squarely at Alax's exposed chest.
But Alax and Mayka were three steps ahead.
Mayka kicked out sideways at the old scarred injury on the opponent's steed, levering them both from this manoeuvre to swivel sideways. The animal cried out in pain.
No time to think. His opponent's spear was down, and the steed was keeling over to one side.
Mayka dug into the ground to give his Master extra force, and Alax's spear found its mark squarely in his opponent's chest.
The man's chest exploded outwards, hot blood raining fom the fatal wound. The crowd were up on their feet, a deafening wall of sound that enveloped Mayka's consciousness. All except for a pinprick of deafening quiet.
As he jumped from Mayka's back to allow him to finish off his opponent, Alax glanced up at one of the Royal Boxes, furrowing his brow.
His attention was drawn back to the fight, as Mayka advanced with zeal upon the fallen beast.
The defeated man's steed received no mercy.
Mayka's fists pummelled into the opponent beast with a rage beyond anything Alax had seen before. It had no chance. The crowd roared in raw glee.
Slowly, he calmed Mayka by tentatively stroking the beast's head as bloodied fists bore down on its opponent again and again, gradually slowing.
Mayka finally quietened, shaking as he knelt over the remaining meat of his opponent.
Alax noticed a change in the crowd - a movement in the consciousness where there was a hole: a pinpoint of white hot fury.
A man in the royal box was standing.
Alax felt dread as no opponent in the arena had ever made him feel.
The man standing in the box was Drarkon, the man who had ordered the killing of his steed's former master.
An unknown, and yet familiar voice whispered into the edges of Alax's consciousness.
Every sensory pore over his body became atttuned, as a beast might widen its eyes.
It couldn't be possible.
The point of fury that was Drarkon turned and left his royal box.
Alax turned his attention to his steed, who stood before him, looking into where, many centuries ago, his eyes might have been.
It was then that Alax realized the reason for Drarkon's fury. And for the fury of his steed.
Lying, broken apart by Mayka's fists, was the missing animal that had borne the assassin to kill Savyo, Mayka's former Master.
Drarkon intended to finish the job he had started, which meant that he, Alax was now a target too.
Alax walked over to Mayka, and rested a hand on his shoulder.
You may have two arms and two legs like us, and you may even look like some ancient form of human, Mayka. But God, I sometimes wonder if you think like us too.
Alax shuddered at the implications of that thought.
To think a beast like Mayka, a mere homo sapien could have the same emotional, rational and psychic range as a human was heretical at the least; a sign of the madness that years of fighting had brought upon him. Perhaps it was time to be done with this insanity, and retire.
As they walked back to the gloom of the stable, Alax couldn't shake the echoes of the voice that had whispered into his consciousness in the arena.
He killed my master.