26. Veshion’s Test #2
Battleboxers sprawled in the shade along the sloping banks, and a few floated in the gentle current. Martau hurried forward, but Almatra touched Imalroc’s arm before he could follow.
“We might find a quieter place. You’ll have to put Veshion down eventually, but it doesn’t have to be now if you’d rather not fight.” Her gaze was somewhere over his shoulder. Imalroc surveyed the shade until he saw the mace-wielding fighter from before.
“I came here,” Imalroc began slowly, “to fight for these people, not against them.”
“They’ll be with you once you prove you’re not…”
“A coward? A pet?” The words festered beneath his skin, but he chained his temper down.
In battleboxing, he’d been feared as a mindless, raging killer, communicating only in violence.
He hadn’t considered that there could be other words slapped onto him by different people who didn’t care to know him.
He’d been known, before. Rerdas’s smile welled up in his mind, and his stomach twisted.
Almatra gave him a fierce look. “I’ll back you if you want to fight now.” She sniffed one of her armpits. “We’re already a mess. Might as well make more of one.”
He could show they were wrong about him without needing to lock blades. “I’m going to swim.” As he picked his way down to the water’s edge, every step brought him closer to where Veshion sat in a circle of muttering Easterners.
The other battleboxers had noticed his approach, and were considerably less pleasant than the scenery. Imalroc’s chest clenched again. Feet seemed to appear out of nowhere to trip him. Every scarred hand seemed to rest on a weapon. He was already tired of this game.
“There are other spots for you, Kirinoll coward.” The gruff voice belonged to the man Almatra had called Veshion.
Imalroc unbuckled his scabbard. The Draalish sword thumped onto the grass. He peeled his feet out of the sweat-stained, thinner shoes he’d been given.
Veshion chuckled and narrated for his audience.
“Too good to even talk to me. Probably was a well-broken lad, with a handler to flag him out of situations like this in the past.” He stood and stalked down the bank.
“There are no fight marshals out here. No one to stop the fight until I say it’s finished. ”
“If you’re so skilled, why would you insist on picking a fight with someone you think isn’t very good?
” Imalroc flicked a gaze from Veshion’s toes to his scalp.
“Did you lose often, and now you hope to make up for it?” He wasn’t supposed to be antagonizing the man, but he couldn’t keep his tongue entirely tucked behind his teeth.
To his surprise, Veshion wasn’t rattled. He grinned, and Imalroc saw one of his front teeth was badly chipped and another looked metallic. “Used to talking your way out of fights?”
Imalroc yanked his tunic over his head. “I usually talk my way into them.” He draped the sweat-drenched garment alongside the sword and busied himself with his trousers, ignoring the muttering that rippled out from everyone watching.
It felt good to be free of his foul tunic, but less enjoyable to have so many people staring at him as he stood there in smallclothes, especially not with their jaws hanging open like they’d all suddenly lost control of their stupid faces.
Dappled sunlight spread over his raked and ruined skin. No pet would have been handled in such a manner, and only defiance could have summoned so much evidence of the lash. He was not fucking broken. He flicked his braid back over one shoulder.
“What... what happened to you?” Martau stood in the shallows.
Imalroc lifted his chin. “I talked back. I was punished. I lost fights. I was punished. I dropped a weight on my handler’s foot, and I was punished. Still...” He locked eyes with Veshion and twisted his mouth into a savage grin. “I’d do it all again.”
The Easterner regarded him warily. The derision had vanished from his battered face, but his eyes narrowed a little.
Imalroc spun on his heel, back toward the water.
Almatra drew up alongside him. “Care for a swim, champion?”
“I haven’t been in water like this since I fought in Navona,” he said grimly. At least there wouldn’t be a freakishly strong battleboxer trying to drown him in this river. Although there were probably plenty of slimy fish in that perfect blue.
Unbidden, Rerdas’s laughing eyes flashed before him.
A kiss that tasted like blackberries. Imalroc swallowed.
This couldn’t keep fucking happening. He couldn’t keep aching as if his whole heart was a fresh bruise.
Almatra patted his forearm in an attempt to comfort him, and he almost cringed away.
She didn’t know, and wouldn’t understand, that it was not the memory of Navona that made him shiver.
“You fought in the Lakara battlebox?” The question drifted from somewhere behind him.
“Yes.” He moved closer to the river. Its shallow edge was crystalline over pale, flat rock. “And in Iffroa. The Vandro and the Arble. Tamasyad. Widran.” He stepped into the water and sucked his ribs in at the sudden cold. A few steps ahead, he could see where the ledge fell away.
“And what about...” Veshion spoke as if every word took something out of him. “Bren Kul Mari? Did you fight there?”
“Drida,” Imalroc muttered.
As if on cue, there was a flurry of muttering and the sound of every battleboxer within earshot spitting. Fucking Drida. At least they could all hate it together. He glanced back at the fighters arrayed behind him. Many had stood now; many had drawn closer.
“I was in the city. Meant for a fight there, but it never happened. There was an unfortunate accident.”
“Accident?” Veshion echoed.
Imalroc smiled wide enough that it felt like his lips might split. “Yes. Almatra and I accidentally burnt that fucking shithole to the ground.”
When he went to the training grounds the following morning, it swarmed again with battleboxers.
Veshion held court still. They hadn’t spoken since the river, but the Easterner watched him without interrupting as he ran a full loop of the grounds.
Imalroc felt the weight of his gaze, knew Veshion was considering something, but it was still a shock when he passed the Easterners a second time.
Veshion left his mace in the dirt, fell in beside him, and ran.