14. Insult and Recompense #2
In the tiny cell, he circled, sinking into slow-motion lunges.
He swung his arms, twisted his spine, and practiced footwork until warmth crept into his stiff muscles.
He snapped a kick toward the cell door, spun, and struck again.
The hard blow sent a satisfying echo up through the bones of his leg.
They had to be nearing his fight. This was the third sweat he’d worked himself into, and still no one had approached his door.
But there were footsteps now, approaching, and the murmur of voices.
A moment later, he heard the slick sound of the metal bars being drawn back. He bowed toward the ground once more, crouching, willing focus into every stretched muscle and trembling nerve. A key clattered in the lock. Imalroc kept perfectly still, watching the threshold.
The guards who peered in at him exchanged a glance when they saw him. “No trouble now,” one of them warned.
The battlebox had sent a crowd of escorts armed to the teeth, but they didn’t look experienced.
One of them held her spear like a gods-be-damned walking stick, and Imalroc had a sudden vision of snatching it from her grasp and plowing through half of them with one slice.
The idea gave him barely a spark of pleasure.
He dropped his shoulders and plodded out of the cell.
They climbed innumerable stairs up to the tunnels that fed into Tamasyad’s battlebox. Another team of guards waited there, and one of them held the Draalish sword.
“Step over the mark,” one said, “and you will be given your weapon.”
Imalroc eyed a long line gouged into the rock floor. The nerves he had quelled flickered awake. But he strode past the line while the guards all stood back, and an enormous iron gate plummeted to the ground behind him. It clanged into the rock, the sound ringing in his ears.
They passed him the sword through a little door in the gate and shut it quickly.
The guard who had spoken before nodded toward the tunnel.
“Continue on. Once both fighters have been announced, the doors will open. The fight begins when you enter the box, so do not delay in the tunnel or a penalty will be enacted.”
Standard, so familiar to him it was nearly ritual. But this was the last time. Imalroc balanced on his toes and crept toward the metal doors at the far end of the tunnel. The smell of the battlebox wafted through cracks in the doors. Hot, dry air that bore the copper taste of blood.
The fight marshal’s words were indistinct, blanketed by the noise of the crowd. Imalroc watched the tiny pebbles at the base of the doors jump as the battlebox shook. Any moment now. He heard the crescendo peak.
Like the sky falling, a riot of sound and light poured into the tunnel. The doors vanished upwards. He loped into the heat, his sword cleaving the light.
The sand was black, as though every grain were scorched. It glittered in long furrows left by the clearers’ rakes.
His opponent darted into the battlebox from a gate opposite and skirted close to the wall. Imalroc glimpsed bare, wiry arms and messy dark hair flying loose before he trained his gaze on the weaponry.
The man heaved an enormous war-axe with both hands. Its long metal handle was a blunt weapon made for bone-breaking, just as deadly as the brilliant edge of the axe head.
The noisy crowd in the stands overlooking the box, the baking sand, even the face of his enemy dissolved. He watched the axe.
Imalroc bounded across the empty center, throwing momentum behind his sword. The dark-haired enemy blocked with the axe handle, and the Draalish blade ricocheted away. Whatever that weapon was made of, it was solid.
A counterstrike. He ducked a wild swing. The enormous weapon swooshed over his head, but even in a crouch, Imalroc could take an opening. He slashed the Draalish sword into the worn leather across his opponent’s ribcage. Blood rained onto the sand; the man cried out, and the crowd cheered.
He needed to corner his enemy. Give him no space for those long, carving swings. A few swift jabs drove the other battleboxer closer to the wall, but he refused to back into the corner.
Imalroc tore through a sloppy defensive block and drove the sword across the man’s shoulder. The idiot flopped that axe around like it was a fish rather than a deadly weapon. Ungainly. Bad form.
The crowd roared, a relentless waterfall of sound, demanding blood.
Of course the battleboxer had fucking bad form, it was a front fight for the inexperienced and the faltering.
This one was undoubtedly fresh blood, and every shaky volley from the axe confirmed it.
His swings were still wild enough to be dangerous, but he’d be tired out soon.
He didn’t have the meat in his arms for a long fight with a weapon of that size.
Despite himself, Imalroc dropped back a pace.
The audience rumbled with disapproval, trying to urge him forward.
His skin prickled with a wave of sweat. His gaze passed again over shoddy, incomplete armor and the oversized weapon.
It was all that stood between him and owning his contract.
The best he could offer this unfortunate newcomer to the bloodsport was a quick, clean end.
He struck again, trying to dispatch the man’s wielding arm, but the battleboxer dodged, crumpling to the ground beside a grate. His narrow face was soaked with perspiration, his chin dripping.
Imalroc bared his teeth. He wanted to scream at the boy never to fold on the ground in a battlebox. Maybe he thought if he looked piteous enough, it would stop. Hadn’t yet learned that the only way out was through.
Perhaps the young fighter’s handler wanted to save him. Imalroc chanced a glance up at the pews. But there was no one in the row above the battleboxer’s gate, no one who could raise the flag.
Only Rerdas. Imalroc found the huntmaster, frowning unhappily down at his opponent with his fist pressed across his mouth, his shoulders tight.
Something twisted in Imalroc’s chest and shot straight up through his center, a geyser of lava-hot anger.
You put me here; he wanted to scream. This is for you.
Imalroc shifted another step back. He was almost certain the man didn’t have the strength to throw the axe at him, but he watched the trembling fighter anyway. The dark-haired man clutched the weapon across his chest like it were a comfort.
Why wasn’t there anyone in the handler’s pew? He risked a glance up, scanning the impatient crowd. He spotted Etiana. Almes and Umber flanked her, both on their feet, both watching him like ravens shadowing a wolf. But she sat with her hands in her lap, her face white and unmoving.
Someone shouted, hoarse and too close to be from the crowd. Imalroc snapped his attention back into the box. The dark-haired battleboxer found his feet. With a desperate yell, he thundered across the sand, axe aloft.
Imalroc let him get close and sidestepped. The Draalish sword flicked back with practiced precision, clipping the man’s undefended shoulder. He wailed, veered, lost his footing and went down in a spray of inky sand.
The Draalish sword blurred through the air, the axe head thumped harmlessly into the dark drifts, and Imalroc checked his blow.
His blade tapped the man’s chin, just short of gouging him. Again, the too-loud, too-near shout, but this time Imalroc could see it didn’t come from the battleboxer. His head jerked up as if pulled by the sound.
“Get back, get back, try underhand, get—” Someone was screaming advice into the battlebox with a voice so shredded Imalroc could hardly make out the words.
Again, the dark-haired man regained his balance and hoisted the axe. He attempted an underhand strike, but he didn’t have the brute force for it. Imalroc bobbed out of range. Chest heaving, the other fighter retreated again to the spot on the wall in front of the grate.
The darkness behind him moved. There was something on the other side of that grate.
Imalroc strode forward, barely looking at the battleboxer, and searched the space at the man’s back.
His opponent pressed against the wall, bracing himself.
He chopped the axe down erratically, and Imalroc slammed it aside.
The axe ripped free of its wielder’s grip and fell, buried up to the handle in sand.
The dark-haired fighter cringed into a ball.
Imalroc didn’t look at him.
He watched the grate.
Another face pressed between the crisscrossing metal and caught the light. The same narrow, long face as the battleboxer with the axe.
“Don’t hurt my brother,” pleaded the identical face behind the grate.
“Please don’t draw it out,” the dark-haired fighter gasped.
There was no handler in the pew, no way out for any of them. Imalroc’s hands went numb. He whirled away from the useless axe and the cowering twins and tore a circle around the center of the box, craning his head back, searching.
His gaze skipped over Rerdas, past Etiana, over the blurred, howling faces of the crowd shouting for him to do something that amused them. Then he found what he was looking for.
The nobleman sat far away, enthroned in a seat of honor, but Imalroc knew every detail.
He knew the way sweat dripped from that long nose when he’d worked himself into a delighted fury.
Knew his fine, blue-veined hands, manicured nails prodding Imalroc’s split cheek in a puddle of blood and glass.
The sharp cheekbones framed by waves of thin, sleek red hair.
Skin like wax, eyes the painted blue of a porcelain doll.
“Hize!” Imalroc roared. “Melgreth Hize, you putrid fuck, I won’t break any fighter for you!”
The frenzy of noise died to a shocked hush.
Lord Melgreth Hize adjusted the lacy collar of his coat. The crowd waited, heads turning from the battlebox up to where the owner sat.
“Marshal,” Hize piped at last, calling down to the official, “kindly continue the fight. There are penalties to be enacted if they do not engage.”