14. Insult and Recompense #3
“Yes, my lord.” The fight marshal bowed and turned to face the box. “Fighters, commence or face penalty!”
The exhausted opponent leaning against the grate made no move toward his weapon, and Imalroc made no move toward him.
His blood surged in his shaking limbs, and he whipped back and forth across the center of the battlebox, gaze never shirking his target seated far above. His sword carved the sand alongside him.
“Melgreth,” he thundered, “if you want a fight, come the fuck down here and have one. I’ll cut the rotting flesh from your bones, you earthbound piece of shit.”
The watching audience gasped. He was halfway aware that the fight marshal’s jaw was flapping in the wind.
Hize dabbed at his lips with a kerchief. “I believe that’s quite enough out of him. Would someone get in there and—”
“Too afraid to do it yourself?” Imalroc jeered. “Worried you’ll shit your best satin?” He felt as if he might leap right off the sand at any moment, spring up like a beast they’d tried to collar, and get his claws around that chicken neck at last.
“Don’t you dare address me,” Hize snapped. “Be silent!” He hurled the kerchief away.
Imalroc grinned. Even from this distance, he saw red splotches spreading across Hize’s cheeks.
“Handler Toriem,” the fight marshal sputtered, “get control of your fighter!”
“Imalroc.” Rerdas’s voice was breathless somewhere behind him. “Stop this. Now.”
He barely heard it. “Come here, Melgreth, come down and make me be silent! You failed before. You will fail again,” Imalroc yelled. “I don’t fear you, hiding up there behind a wall, waiting to lick the bloodied corpses! Damn you to Drida, you torturing coward, you fucking murderer—”
“Shut up!” Hize was out of his seat, the ugly pink flush sheeting from hairline to collarbone as he clomped down the steps.
It was too far a distance to throw the Draalish sword with any hope of accuracy, but hurling something sharp would feel so good.
“Imalroc!” Rerdas shouted. “Fuck, get out of the box!” He had scurried around in the pew to get into his line of sight. The huntmaster leaned so far over the wall he looked as though he were about to topple into the battlebox.
Guards poured in. One of them snatched up the axe and prodded Hize’s fighter back toward the opening gate. The rest circled Imalroc.
He couldn’t concentrate on their approach. The circle tightened, but again and again he looked back at Melgreth Hize’s scalded expression. The man was livid, and if Imalroc was about to be driven from the box and knocked around by battlebox guards, it was worth it.
“Master Toriem!” Booker Alsot rushed into the pew, grabbing at Rerdas. “I must remove your battleboxer.”
“Yes, of course, just let me—”
“No,” Hize said. His nostrils flared wide, his teeth flashing beneath his curling lips. “I invoke the right of recompense for this… this insulting lunacy.”
The guards glanced at each other. Somewhere in the midst of his red rage, a warning prickled. A shadow swept through Imalroc, a memory, the smell of a cold and blood-soaked room.
“Imalroc, drop the sword!” Rerdas bellowed. Finally sounding like a handler.
He let the Draalish blade fall and took a slow step away from it. The circle of guards would haul him away, and he’d be tossed out of Tamasyad like a severed limb. If he were lucky.
“Alsot!” Hize barked at the booker. “I invoke recompense.”
The booker bowed. “Yes, milord, as is your right.” He shot a nervous glance at Rerdas.
“What exactly does that mean?” Etiana joined the group in the handler’s pew.
Booker Alsot made a quick signal into the box.
Imalroc tensed, but the guards didn’t advance.
For a while, nothing happened until the gate he’d used before creaked and rose.
Another group of guards entered, carrying two long poles across their shoulders.
Spear-tips drove Imalroc off the center to make way for a team of battlebox clearers, who dug deep into the sand at the center of the box.
The metal posts were screwed into the rock below the sand.
Imalroc’s throat closed. He knew well what those posts were for.
He flung himself toward his abandoned sword in the same moment that the guards closed in on him.
His weapon lay beyond reach, spears and armored fists all around him.
He spun, swiped at the onrushing bodies, battered a shoulder, someone’s cheek, bashed into teeth.
Heel-stomped someone’s foot, grabbed one by the collar and bowled him into his fellows, pain thundering through his back and his stomach and his shins as they struck back.
“Stop! What the fuck are you doing?” He could barely make out Rerdas’s cry.
There were so many, and more rushing into the box. They filled it wall to wall. Imalroc snarled and thrashed in their midst until someone landed the butt of their spear against his head. The last thing he saw was the black sand rushing up to smother him.
***
When he came to, the world looked strangely smeared. Everything smudged together. His head and wrists were throbbing. Dark spots flickered across his eyes, and he tried to brush them away.
He couldn’t move his hands.
Imalroc forced his head up and strangled a groan.
When he staggered to his feet, the pain in his wrists receded a little.
Each wrist was shackled to one of the metal posts, forcing his arms wide.
They’d stripped him of his fighting tunic and undershirt.
Melgreth Hize’s favorite way to view battleboxers.
Half-naked, shivering, and tied to whipping posts.
At the edge of the battlebox wall directly above him, a loud argument held the crowd’s attention. Unsteadily, he raised his head and squinted up.
“This is preposterous!” Etiana seethed. “Booker Alsot, I demand you unchain him!”
“My lady, it has long been the practice of Tamasyad to honor the right of recompense—”
“Not on the back of my battleboxer, you don’t!” Etiana cried.
“Your beast insulted me, and I will have recompense,” Hize retorted.
Imalroc shuddered at the sound of his former master’s voice.
“Lord Hize, perhaps there is another way—” Alsot began before Hize butted in.
“There is no other option.”
“It does seem rather unfair.” Umber’s calm, rich voice addressed Booker Alsot, but he lifted every word for the benefit of the listening audience.
“You would permit him to damage Lady Toriem’s fighter?
This is a very expensive battleboxer, and Lord Hize is not known to exercise expertise with them. ”
“How dare—” Hize choked and seemed to remember he was blustering at a duke.