Kyle realized the crowd had fallen silent. Arno was standing there with the King and old bald bonce, the nameless one. Arno waved his long stick in the air, like Gandalf on the bridge at Khazad-dûm, and the King started yelling something that Kyle couldn’t understand. Then Arno cut in.

‘His Royal Highness, King Loopy-Lou the Ninety-ninth, thanks you, noble fighters,’ Arno shouted. ‘I thank you, and the crowds gathered here today thank you, you mighty morons, you brain-dead dummies, prepared to suffer for our enjoyment. In a moment our merry band of musicians will give a crappy fanfare and then you will kick the bogeyman into touch!’

Arno dropped his staff. Trumpets and trombones blared, tambourines rattled, drums thumped and the gates opened to let in the enemy.

Chapter 60

60

A father limped into the arena carrying a length of metal piping, confused and blinking, his semi-naked body a mess of sores and boils and weeping gashes. Ed rubbed his scar, which had started to throb. He hated sickos. Hated them more than anything else in the world. He had no problem slaughtering them.

So why did this feel different?

‘I’m not sure I want to watch this,’ said Brooke.

‘Remember the golden rules of this contest,’ Arno called out from his seat next to the King. ‘There are no rules. This is war now. And we can’t let any of them live.’

Behind the father came two more fathers, then a mother, then a whole group of them, the last being prodded in by Ascot guards carrying long spears and pikes, until there were thirty-five, maybe forty of them in the arena, huddled together. Some armed with crude weapons. Most unarmed. Apart from their fingernails and teeth.

The gate was pulled shut across the entrance. The only way these grown-ups were getting out of there was being dragged by their heels.

The gladiators now turned to the King and raised their weapons in a salute.

‘They honour you, crazy Caesar,’ Arno shouted. ‘And we offer you the blood of these bastards to make us stronger, and to help us win in the weeks ahead, until the next games. Now go to it, brethren, do it for your King, the King of Chaos. This is the death of all bad things, the triumph of the cool. You who are about to die, we salute you!’

The King tipped back his head and howled at the sky, and the howl was taken up by all the kids, like a pack of wolves, and the big hench from Sandhurst strode across the arena towards the sickos and cut one down with his sword with a great cry.

‘Rahhhh!’

Ed was both horrified and fascinated. Next to him Brooke was hiding behind her hands like a little kid watching Doctor Who. Ed noticed that the crowd had thinned out a little. Some kids had gone, unable to watch the slaughter.

‘Do you want to leave?’ Ed asked Brooke.