War God for Hire- Gladiator by David Burke (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

“What’s that got to do with anything?” the first human asked.

“They want to see if we will fight amongst ourselves. How we act tells them things about us. They aren’t just judging us based upon our fighting ability. The arena matches are games as much as they are battles. It is a show for the masses, and they need to know who will play nicely together.”

Kyle noticed that Saber was standing in the entryway to one of the tunnels that led out onto the arena floor. Maybe they were being tested, even now. As the humans backed away and their body language implied that they were no longer interested in fighting, Kyle felt strangely deflated. There was a fire in his blood that cried out for expression in combat.

It was like the excitement when going up to bat against a new pitcher. He needed to test himself. But it didn’t look like that was gonna happen. The trainers must have come to the same conclusion because they came running out and pulled each of the fighters off to their own individual training.

His afternoon training started with Kyle being equipped with two large leather belts that he wore crossed over his chest. Saber explained that they would add to his look and at the same time provide him with something to attach weapons to. The man told him that he would come up with a better outfit for him. The way he talked about it reminded Kyle of Gilthan’s words. Maybe there was a certain element of showmanship to all of this.

He was glad to get back into the training, though, as it kept his mind occupied. He was first given a pair of curved scimitars. With his size, they seemed more like short swords and felt ridiculously light, sorta like using a kid’s bat. Saber insisted that he learn to use them.

So, for the first hour, he trained with a different one of Saber’s underlings in not only the use of scimitars but in two-handed fighting. Everything the man said just seemed to click and by the end of the hour, Kyle was able to move the swords around in the flashy patterns that he had been shown. He could instinctively tell how to improve the form, but the trainer insisted that the little flourishes would make the moves more popular in the arena.

From there, he was put back to the jumping and flipping thing, but this time with the scimitars. Somehow having the weapon in his hands made everything feel more natural. When the sun started to set, Kyle realized he was truly enjoying this. He had worked up a sweat by twisting and spinning in the air while delivering practice strikes with the blades.

He knew that much of it wasn’t practical fighting, but trusted that it was more about teaching him to move his body than learning actual fighting techniques. He figured it was like wax on, wax off, and at some point, the purpose behind the motions would all be made clear. Either way, it came naturally to Kyle, more like he was remembering something rather than learning it for the first time.

Just after sunset, the fighters all gathered together again and Saber gave them another little speech. “Not bad for your first day of training. Some of you are making real progress. Others are still fighting the system. You need to know that I am more interested in seeing you succeed than just about anyone else. I get a bonus for training winning fighters based upon which of the teams buy each of you.

“Nothing I ask of you will be beyond you. Some of it may not make sense at the time, but there is always a purpose. I am trying to create not only the best fighters, but also ones who can make a good showing in the arena. You just need to listen to me. Tomorrow, we will increase the pace a bit more. The same every day until we separate the wheat from the chaff and see who is cut out for this and who isn’t.”

With that, they were dismissed. Kyle found a meal waiting for him in his cell. He was too hungry after working out all day to even care that he was put back into a barred and locked pit.

A short time after he finished eating, Nyda appeared again with two guards and he spent the next three hours practicing the common tongue. She seemed quite pleased with his progress. There was no opportunity for him to learn anything about her really, but he realized that he would have worked very hard to get her to smile. She was shy but gorgeous, and there was just a gentleness about her. She definitely seemed out of place in the harsh surroundings.

Of course, when did a slave ever get to pick where they would end up?

Chapter 13 - Training Time

The next few weeks took on a timeless quality. Kyle trained from sunup to sundown every day. Every day, it was a different weapon, and yet he felt he was getting the feel of each. Whether it was daggers or polearms, bows or spears, each weapon just started coming back to him.

That sense of remembering rather than learning continued to bother him, but Saber and the other trainers kept him too busy to worry about it. Each day, they had him lifting and hauling stones that got bigger and bigger as they tried to determine just what he could handle. They gave up when he was able to lift boulders larger than himself and started focusing more on repetitions rather than just a straight max lift.

He would be given flexibility and agility exercises to follow that. The poles course was still challenging for him but not nearly as much as it had been. The extra point he gained in agility was helpful, although he lamented that there was no exact way