When George awoke, he could immediately hear a loud noise, like the sound of heavy rain. He understood after a few moments that it was the sound of an enormous crowd of people cheering. His whole body ached. Of course, it was dark again. But this time he didn’t seem to be in a pit; rather he was inside a small, metal box. He barely had enough room to stand up. There wasn’t space to take one step in any direction.

Without warning, one side of the box slid up as it was opened by some kind of device and light flooded George’s vision. The noise got much louder. He stumbled out onto a sandy floor, blinking and rubbing his eyes. There was indeed a huge crowd of people seated all around him, cheering and bellowing at the top of their voices, almost deafening him. In front of them was a huge wooden barrier, too tall to climb, which made a big circle around the sand. He was in an arena.

“PEOPLE OF NACHASH!” shouted a voice even louder than the crowd. “WELCOME TO YOUR WEEKLY ENTERTAINMENT DEATHMATCH! THESE PRISONERS WILL NOW FIGHT TO THE DEATH! THE LAST REMAINING SURVIVOR WILL WIN A CHANCE TO BE RECRUITED INTO THE ARMY OF SHUL! COMBATANTS, BEGIN! KILL OR BE KILLED!”

There were other figures near George on the sand, not in the crowd, other men who had just been released from their own metal boxes. Across from where they stood, on the far section of the arena barrier that separated them from the crowd, were a number of bladed and close-range weapons mounted on the wall.

“BEGIN! KILL OR BE KILLED!” shouted the voice again.

George spun round to see if there was any other way out. Of course, there wasn’t. Behind him were a number of other soldiers in the same black armour as Khilliarkos, the man who had captured him, though without the spiked shoulders and horns. They were all holding longbows notched with arrows, which were pointed right at George and the other prisoners. The message was clear: If they tried to escape, or didn’t choose a weapon to fight one another, they would be shot.

The other men were already dashing towards the weapons. As soon as George realised this he ran as fast as he could towards the barrier, ignoring the pain in his chest and limbs, trying as hard as he could to tune it out. Some of the others got there first and broke away with the weapons they had picked up, but one of them stayed by the rack of weapons, trying with a huge mace to stop anyone else near him from picking anything up. George stayed out of his way and grabbed the first weapon he came to, a short sword, and then tried to put as much distance between the rack and himself as possible, without getting too close to the archers. As he glanced back behind him, George saw someone cut down the mace-wielder with a horrifying gash to the back from a longsword. He felt as if he was going to be sick. The crowd went mad with noise. George picked out a few calls from close by in the front row.

“Kill! Let’s see some more blood!”

“Chase the stragglers! Don’t let them get away!”

“Break their bones! Spill their guts!”

The rest of the men reached the wall and selected their weapons too. They began to fight with one another with the wild frenzy of people who have nothing to lose, who have no family or friends, no life to go back to, just the single, driving will to stay alive. Kill or be killed.

George kept well back. He wanted to stay alive too and he had one simple tactic: Keep himself out of the way. He could not fight. He could not kill, even to be avoid being killed. His whole body was shaking. He tightened his grip on his sword and gritted his teeth.

The man with the longsword went down to a man with a trident and net. A man with a pair of long knives let out a blood-curdling scream as an axe took off one of his arms. Another man dropped his weapon and made a run for it, then dropped to the ground, a flurry of the black soldiers’ arrows protruding from his back.

George stayed just clear enough of the melee to avoid being drawn into combat, but close enough to it to avoid the soldiers that stood at the perimeter of the arena, threatening to put an arrow in him too if he tried to escape. One of the other prisoners spotted him and made to run at him an attack, but another opponent got in his way and cut him down first.

“Coward!” people started shouting from the crowd.

Sweat dripped down George’s forehead and arms. He didn’t care if what he was doing was cowardly; he needed to stay alive.

The problem was that after what only seemed like a few minutes, there was only one other combatant left. A hulking great man carrying a net and a trident. He was wearing a metal helmet, but George could see ferocious eyes staring out from under the visor. He looked as though he had done this before. He looked thirsty for more blood. He looked around for another opponent, and then saw George. The man started to walk towards him. The crowd roared their approval.

“TWO COMBATANTS REMAIN!” bellowed the impossibly loud voice. “KILL OR BE KILLED!”

The man began walking towards George, net and trident at the ready. The trident’s spikes were dripping. It was useless. They were the only two left. George couldn’t’ avoid it any more. He would have to stand and fight.

“Please!” he called out to the man, loud enough to be heard by him, and he hoped not loud enough to be heard by the cheering crowd. “I don’t want to fight you! We don’t have to do this! I didn’t ask to come here!”

“You think I asked to be here, boy?” said the man with malice. “I’m just trying to stay alive. And you’re in the way of that. So you have to die.”

The man ran at George and threw his net. George struck out at it with the sword he had picked up, but instead of slicing through it got tangled in it and he only succeeded in making it flop the ground in a heap, out of his hand. The trident followed fast. George leapt to one side to avoid being skewered. More thrusts followed. George moved as fast as he could to get out of their way, then ran backwards away from them.

“Please! Have mercy!” yelled George as he ran. “I don’t want to fight you!”

The noise of the crowd grew deafening. He could hear them chanting “Kill the coward! Kill the coward!”

The trident caught George in the arm with a lucky blow from behind. A big red furrow opened up in his tricep. He cried out in pain.

Then George crashed into the barrier. Somehow his legs had carried him back to the rack of weapons. He picked up the first thing his hands settled on, a scythe--a wooden pole with a long curved blade attached to the end, usually used by farmers for harvesting. He turned and struck out wildly with it. The pole of it clanged into the trident, knocking it aside as it came at him again. Where it would have impaled him in the stomach, this time the trident sliced open a cut at the side of his abdomen. George cried out once more. His opponent was showing him no mercy. But this time the trident kept going, and plunged into the wood of the barrier behind George, sticking into it temporarily.

George used his chance to dash away again, running back towards the centre of the arena. But he discovered he couldn’t run properly any more; the wound in his side was too painful. Another shout came from the crowd. George turned round to see what was going on. The man with the trident had wrenched his weapon free from the wood and was bearing down on him, on his way to finish his work and deliver the killing strike.

Panic took George. He stumbled over his feet. The man was nearly on him. It was too late. George was going to fall and leave himself exposed. This was it. As he fell, with one final effort of desperation or instinct, he was never sure which, George flung the scythe around to defend himself. His arms went rigid as the scythe hit something.

George shut his eyes as he hit the ground. He kept them shut and scrunched up his face, readying himself for the worst.

But, to his surprise, nothing happened. The crowd had gone completely silent.

Slowly George opened his eyes. In front of him the man with the trident twitched, the blade of George’s scythe sticking out from deep in the right side of his chest.

The man fell backwards, dead, the scythe still in his body.

There was a vast, confused pause.

“PEOPLE OF NACHASH!” bellowed the announcer. “WE HAVE A NEW CHAMPION OF THE ARENA!”

The crowd went crazy.

“Coward! That wasn’t a fair fight!”

“Bring in the next combatants; let them have a go at him!”

“No, he won it fair and square, no cheating!”

George stood up. He was panting heavily. His side leaked red. He looked down and realised what he had done. Then he threw up. Somewhere he could hear the crowd laughing and mocking him in disgust. As his breathing began to slow, the pain, which had masked by his desperation to stay alive, screamed at him. But even this was drowned out by other thoughts in his mind. He had killed someone. He was a murderer. Even if he had been forced. Even if he had been acting in self-defence. Even if it had been a reflex. He had killed someone.

The world became a blur. Some of the soldiers with the bows approached him and forcibly took his weapon from him. He did not put up a protest. He was dragged to a podium where a short, fat man with a very loud voice lifted up his hand and bellowed some more announcements that only echoed around faintly inside his skull. Then he was led by more soldiers out of the arena through a passageway and a tunnel and back into the cell that he had been waiting in before the fight had started.

He was pushed in and the door slammed and locked behind him once more. They said something to him before they walked off, but he didn’t listen to it. He hit the floor.

All the while, all that he could think above the pain was that he had killed someone. He had killed someone. He was a murderer.