Chapter 22 #2
The lad was perhaps twenty-two, with his father's broad build and the look of a young man who had done some training but not enough for this. He came down to the sand from the box, clearly trying hard not to show how frightened he was, but not succeeding.
His opponent came through the western archway. The pit fighter was enormous, not tall but wide, built like a brick. He had the scarred face and the calm of someone for whom entering an arena was simply another morning's work.
The crowd murmured.
The Hardy boy lasted the full count of fifty, which was to his enormous credit.
He didn't do it well, taking a great deal of damage in the process. He went down twice and made the count both times, then he walked off the sand at the end with blood on his face and his left arm hanging at his side. He was led by a guard to the healer’s room underneath the walls of the amphitheatre.
The crowd cheered him off.
The Velmart boy was next. He was younger, closer to nineteen, and he had yesterday's competition still written on his face in the form of a healing cut lip and a bruise under his eye.
He went in with his chin up and a great deal of courage.
He went down on the count of twelve and didn't make it back up until eighteen.
The crowd was silent during those six counts.
He lasted his fifty. But only just, and the last ten counts were spent largely on one knee with his hands on the sand, while the pit fighter stood back with the patience of a man who had been told to maim not to kill.
The people became quieter as he stumbled off than they had been after Hardy.
The next house sent a young man who looked like he had never been in a fight in his life.
He went down on the third exchange and the healer had to come onto the sand.
He made his count eventually, but the crowd watched in the deeply uncomfortable silence of people witnessing something they hadn't signed up to see.
The fourth house. The fifth. Each one was the same. Young men of varying degrees of preparation and courage going into the sand and absorbing punishment from professionals who had been instructed to inflict it without quite crossing the line.
The line, Verna thought, watching with her hands tight in her lap, was getting thinner with each bout.
Marie Carlton had gone very still beside her.
"Finn won’t go down easily," Carlton said quietly, to nobody in particular. It sounded like he was telling it to himself.
"He'll be fine," Thom said, which was not particularly convincing.
The Carlton house was called sixth.
Finn stood up in the box with the eagerness of someone who had been waiting to demonstrate something, which was the most painful part of it to watch.
He was twenty-three and healthy, and had clearly done some training.
He had his father’s wide shoulders and the way he moved down the steps.
He had his mother's sharp eyes and he was using them, watching his opponent come through the arch with the alert assessment of a young man who believed he could read a situation.
When his opponent came through the arch, Marie made a sound beside Verna, the involuntary cry of a mother watching her child walk toward something she couldn't stop.
To his credit, Finn went in without hesitating.
He moved well and he had good instincts in a difficult situation.
Against a different opponent, he might have acquitted himself admirably.
But the pit fighter was not that opponent, and the first exchange established the parameters of the bout with a clarity that was hard to watch.
Finn went down on the second exchange, hard enough that the sound of it carried to the upper tiers.
He got up on six.
He went down again on ten.
He got up on fourteen.
The third time he went down the count reached twenty-two before he made it to his feet, and when he stood, he wasn’t steady and one of his eyes was already swelling.
The silence from the crowd had an edge in it that was different from the earlier silences.
Marie Carlton did a lot of charity work in the poorer parts of the city and was held in high esteem.
Carlton had his hands flat on the rail in front of him, his knuckles white. He wasn't watching the arena. He was watching the floor.
Verna took Marie's hand beside her and held it, and Marie gripped back without looking at her, her eyes fixed on her son on the sand below.
Finn made it to fifty. He did it on his feet, barely, with blood on his face and the slow careful movements of someone managing a significant amount of pain. But he made it, and when the herald called the count, the people booed.
He walked off the sand under his own power to the healer’s room.
Marie let out a breath beside her that she had clearly been holding for most of the last five minutes.
"He's all right," Verna said quietly.
"He is," Marie said. Her voice was very controlled. She glared at Borgine's box with an expression that Verna had never seen on her face before. Then she looked back at her son disappearing through the archway and said nothing else.
The seventh house came and the eighth.
By the time the eighth house had finished, the mood in the arena had turned ugly.
Then the herald called the Lanath house.