His opponent’s name was Bvar, a pit fighter hailing from nearby Marrn. Borchus had informed him the man had four victories to his name already. Junger had listened to the other minor details, but it was really Bvar’s record that interested him the most. The warrior would be his best challenge yet in the Pit.
His awareness extended nearly five paces out, an unseen wall of alertness surrounding him, a veritable fortress of danger sensing. Anyone breaching that invisible mental barrier would be known to him. Anyone venturing within his personal space would be dealt with.
“Kill the man.” Goll’s command spoke in his head. “Make an example of him. The House of Ten isn’t to be trifled with.”
Bvar came closer, edging toward Junger as if the very earth might give away underneath. The Perician frowned. He would satisfy one of Goll’s wishes, and that would be all.
Truthfully, no more would be needed.
On some grandiose yet silent note, Junger extended the scabbarded blade toward his opponent, pointing at his foe’s head. A low rumble of cheers as warm as the recent rainstorm flowed from the spectators. Junger circled to his right while a pursuing Bvar swatted at the covered weapon in annoyance.
“Draw your sword.” Bvar’s metallic voice grated with chagrin. “Pull it, damn you.”
Junger did not.
Instead, he tilted his head, gauging the distance, taking aim at Bvar’s person.
“Draw your steel, damn you!”
Junger kept circling just out of reach, completely focused.
And Bvar attacked.
He charged in, horned helm lowered. He stabbed and slashed with his blades, stabbed and slashed again, repeating a deadly combination while grunting with every effort. Junger, however, sidestepped and jumped back, parried and leaned away. Metal clattered. Bvar split the air with an overhand chop, and Junger skipped away from harm while maintaining his guard. Bvar whirled around, slashing his dagger across the empty space where the Perician’s head had been just an instant before.
Bvar caught himself from spinning off balance, stomped in the sand, and studied the other man over his weapons. The audience approved the flurry of action and voiced their enjoyment.
The pit fighter from Marrn shook with growing anger. “Draw yo––”
Junger’s sword blurred ahead and slapped the horned helm left, right, and left once again before gonging Bvar’s helm with a monstrous over-the-shoulder chop that seemed to travel the breadth of the world before it smashed down. And when it connected, the very earth leapt.
A stunned Bvar crashed hard to his knees and attempted to rise as if awakening from a prayer far too quickly.
Junger did not want the man to rise and so cracked the pit fighter’s head across the skull once again.
Bvar toppled and was still.
The Perician’s foot hooked the warrior’s sword and sent it flying. Junger drove a knee into his downed opponent’s chest and unsheathed a hand’s worth of sharp edge before placing it to Bvar’s stubbly throat.
Amid cries for his life, clarity returned to the fallen pit fighter’s eyes—and then terror. “Hold! Hold, I beg you, hold!” He released his dagger and held both hands over his head.
Poised like a dangerous bird of terrible appetite, Junger considered the gesture for a moment before snapping the length of exposed steel back into its scabbard. He stood and stepped away from the defeated man at his feet.
The crowds stood with him. Cheers cascaded as hard as a sun-warmed waterfall, and Junger regarded the thousands applauding him before walking back toward his slowly rising portcullis.
*
Above, in the private viewing box of the three owners, Gastillo marvelled at the nearly sorcerous display of swordsmanship he’d just witnessed upon the sands.
“Who is that half-naked pisser?” Nexus choked out, staring with wide eyes and wondering if he possessed anyone of equal quality in his school.
Curge concealed his surprise much better than the others, but then his chin dipped, his brow furrowed, and his eyes took on a murderous, contemplative shade of black.
*
In the private chamber of the House of Ten, a short chuckle burst from Clavellus’s lips. Machlann straightened and blinked, the only bit of emotion he’d allow himself to show.
“What was that?” the taskmaster chortled and stroked his beard with genuine delight. “What was that? Machlann?”
“Unknown,” the trainer growled, the word glazed with wonder.
“Unknown,” Clavellus repeated in whole agreement.
“What happened?” Torello wanted to know.
“What happened was…” and Clavellus glanced from Machlann to the unimpressed expression of Goll, though he failed to recognize anything wrong. “Several people just became very much aware of the House of Ten. Very much aware. Wouldn’t you say so, Machlann?”
“Aye that. I’d say so.”
An enthusiastic Clavellus lifted his shaking hand and gripped Goll’s shoulder. “I hope you had Borchus place coin on that lad.”
“I did,” Goll replied, tight lipped. The Kree took a breath and faced the others, singling out Torello. “There’s another fight, and then… you’re next.”
39
Torello listened to the Orator yelling the introductions in a straining voice badly in need of wine or beer––something to wet those burning vocal cords. As the old man tortured his throat, Torello tightened his grip around his sword, hefting his round shield. His open-faced helm cooked his head like a tough roast, leaching considerable juice from his skull, the sweat flowing down the sides of his face and the dastardly stubble on his chin and neck. Heat. Dying Seddon. Made a man want to die just to escape it. Surely Saimon’s hell wasn’t as hot. His stomach knotted and threatened to void, but that didn’t bother Torello. He was standing on the world’s biggest shite trough, and if his bowels demanded it, well, he suspected the crowds would no longer complain about cow kisses in the road.
The thought made him smile just a little.
Torello stood in the flesh-baking wrath of the sun and regarded the man across the way.
Cron of Sunja wore a vest of toughened leather. Bracers protected his forearms while greaves covered his legs from the knees down. He carried a sword-and-shield combination, and one look informed Torello that the punce was feeling the heat as well. What do you know about heat? Torello chided, his eyes becoming slits. You’re not the one with a gurry price on his head. Placed there by Curge of all people, not that Torello cared. He had a natural dislike for men and women in places of power, believing them all corrupted. That belief enhanced his usual scornful tongue and got him into trouble. And as much as he might complain about it, secretly, he was quite satisfied having joined the House of Ten. No other would have taken him on so lightly. Not the Ten, however, and he still wondered at times how he’d removed himself from the hell of general quarters to his own little cot—above the floor, even, with a curtain to pull across the way at night. Then there were the meals and the baths! The baths alone were worth whatever punishment he endured at the hands of the trainers––Machlann in particular was a right and proper old bastard that extracted the best and the worst from the Sunjan. Though he openly complained at every turn, to the very brink of being slapped upside the skull, Torello very much wanted to win this fight. He very much wanted to impress his trainers, Machlann in particular.
To show they weren’t wrong in taking him into their ranks.
To show he had learned a few things in the short time under their teachings.
And to prove to himself he was the equal of any other… if not better.
For all his miserable, wretched, beating-the-weak life—and for a few coins, a meal, or a drink—he’d dispensed violence for someone: innkeepers, merchants, anyone harboring a grudge or looking to retrieve coin owed, deplorable men who likened themselves to kings and ordered the cruelest punishments for commoners late with payments. Torello had broken the fingers and wrists of husbands and fathers, even wives
and mothers for that matter, while children bawled and pleaded—haunting cries that still woke him from nightmares. He had done that for four years, alongside Kolo, his friend since childhood, an orphan like himself, left to survive off Sunja’s scraps. Only this year had he decided to not hurt innocents anymore… at least, not on another man’s command.
Torello felt sick because of that, fully expecting to die horribly because of what he’d done in the past.
Fighting in the Pit, however, was different.
It was for him and for him alone.
An evil smirk slunk across his sweaty features. Equal to any of them… except Junger. That one was unfit.
It took Cron of Sunja moving toward him to break Torello of his thoughts. He crouched into his guard and lifted his shield, peering over the edge at his countryman. A tingling uncertainty rushed up Torello’s spine like a cold stream of water.
He was determined to show them all.
Cron rushed in, swinging for the hills with mighty expulsions of breath as if he were heaving boulders into the air. He slashed for Torello’s head and missed, slashed for a shoulder and got parried by a shield, stabbed for a gut and had his blade knocked aside.
“That all?” Torello grinned evilly over the edge of his shield. “You stain of maggot shite.”
It obviously was not all, for Cron waved his sword and split the very air right underneath the nose of Torello, who jerked his head back a blink before the edge could open a second mouth. That sudden flat slash heralded a veritable storm of steel flying from the other man, each blow powered by an animalistic grunt. He stabbed, slashed, hammered, and hacked at his moving opponent.
And Torello moved.
Remembering the lessons from Koba and Machlann, he backed up and sidestepped, parried with sword and shield, or got out of the way entirely. But Torello wasn’t the sort to just allow each miss or near miss to go by without saying a few words.
“What gurry was that? Are you sick? Unfit, lad, unfit. Come on then, try again. There you go! Come on, try once more, you ugly punce. See how easy I turned that aside? Who’d you expect to meet out here? More, he-bitch, try again! Aha!”
Free Trained, he thought all the while. I was once like him.
Then Cron apparently had enough of the dance. He swung for Torello’s head, blade whistling from his shoulder with the full strength of his arm and hips behind it, looking to give a deadly haircut.
Torello ducked, however, and struck––slashing his sword at Cron’s bare thigh, cutting up underneath the meat in one bloody flash and slicing open a fleshy flap, straight to the red bone. Torello spun away from Cron, dragging his sword free of a thigh frothing from a lipless mouth. Cron’s face paled, and he collapsed to his knees, sending up a small cloud of dust that clung to the flowing brilliance of that terrible, terrible wound. He dropped his sword, threw off his shield, and clutched at his thigh, shifting the chunk of meat and causing even more blood to spill forth.
Torello saw it all.
And as Cron bent over at the hips as if in prayer, Torello moved and punched his sword through the back of the man’s neck. Another spectacle of blood, but the crowds screamed for more, even as Torello put his foot to the dead man’s back and yanked his sword free.
“Ten!” Torello raised his arms and screamed. “House of Ten!”
He circled the corpse at his feet, screaming back at the crowds, even exchanging curses with a select few.
Then, his entire frame seemed to ooze a sheen of sweat all at once, soaking the padding underneath his leather. The battle rush drained away, and Torello felt almost ripe and ready to drop dead himself. His breath quickened, vision blurring. His heart thundered in his chest and ears. He saw a portcullis rise, and he walked toward it, feeling the ground beneath his feet suddenly shift and elongate into a journey measuring days. The roar of the spectators became a garbled rush of underwater sound.
But through force of will, he did not fall.
He made it into the tunnel and leaned heavily against the wall. There he stayed, shaking, hearing the portcullis drop behind him, and waving off the gatekeeper’s questions at the bottom of the stairs. Torello wouldn’t have talked to the crusty old shagger even if he were feeling normal.
Shoulders heaving, Torello pulled his helm off, felt better for doing so, and continued summoning deep calming breaths into his lungs. He bent over and blinked, watching glistening beads of sweat fall away from him. After a few moments, he felt strong enough to walk.
“Dying Seddon,” Torello breathed.
The first time that’s ever happened. He’d have to talk to Shan about it and see what the healer had to say.
Keeping the wall nearby, Torello straightened and carefully returned to the viewing chamber of his house.
40
Kolo wasn’t so fortunate in his fight.
He was paired against a Sunjan called Cota, a smaller man that strode into the arena flashing a set of short swords and a grinning visor adorned with tusks. Upon the Orator’s command, they lunged at each other, and Cota darted nimbly away while Kolo dropped his sword. In that briefest contact, so fast the eye couldn’t follow, Cota nearly slashed Kolo’s arm off right at the elbow. Kolo stood in agony, all thoughts of defense gone. He lifted his right arm up while his forearm dangled and wept scarlet, the weight of the barely attached limb pulling down on the raw joint. The sight of the wound caused even Goll to wince.
Cota wasn’t a cruel man, and once he saw and heard Kolo’s cries, he hacked into the side of his opponent’s neck—twice—hard, killing strokes that drove Kolo to the ground.
Then Cota stabbed him through the back.
The audience loved the butchery, and the raucous sound erupted from the Pit like a ripe volcano.
“Well?” Torello asked from a bench, resting against the wall and appearing as if he could sleep for a week.
A stern Machlann turned away from the window. He looked into Torello’s eyes, gave a curt shake of his head, and broke the stare first.
Torello bent over until his chest touched his knees and then held his face. Halm reached over and gripped the Sunjan’s shoulder.
“Unfortunate,” Clavellus muttered. “I liked that lad.”
Goll didn’t know the man long enough to know if he liked him or whether Kolo was good or bad. He seemed close enough to Torello, perhaps the only friend that one had. Goll hoped it wouldn’t affect his morale going forward in the tournament. Thus far, the House of Ten wasn’t faring nearly as well as he’d hoped—two dead and one deserter leaving in a fit of rage.
Not the start Goll wanted.
“Brozz,” he called without looking back. “It’s time.”
No sooner were the words spoken than the knock came at the door.
The tall Sarlander stood to his full height like Death itself lording over a field of recent dead. Black eyes twinkled within the hollows of his helmet, and the long, flowing moustache hiding his lower lip only added to the gloomy air pulsing from the warrior. Unlike the others, he retained his own leather vest, which was just as well, as there hadn’t been anything else ready to fit his size. The five dried-out heads dangled around his neck, black beaks fixed in tiny screams. Crowhead gripped his shortsword and hand axe and left the room without a word.
*
Brozz defeated and killed his opponent in short time, muting the crowds. Unlike the finessed Junger, the man called Crowhead was brutally efficient in his fight, weathering a few probing strikes until lashing out with maximum force and putting his foe down. Some of the audience members even cheered for the dark man, and he returned to the house viewing chamber like a haunted shadow seeking its crypt. He entered the room to the quiet nods and approving looks from the trainers. Brozz took his helm off and dropped it on the stone floor, fragrant and shiny with perspiration. He drew a heavy arm across his brow and accepted a cloth from one of the hired guards.
“A fine performance.” Clavellus beamed at him. “A solid display of skill. You can be sure you caught th
e eye of many this day, good Brozz.”
“Even frightened a few,” the taskmaster muttered low enough for the trainers to hear.
Goll didn’t waste words on the Sarlander. He focused on Halm.
“You know what you have to do.”
Halm reluctantly nodded. “Aye that.”
“Then… go do it.”
*
The gatekeeper said something to Halm, but the Zhiberian registered it as a voice coming from somewhere off a foggy shoreline. Targus. He shrugged. He absentmindedly slapped the leather sleeve protecting his sword arm and inspected the rest of himself. His bare gut hung out like a swollen water bladder, stitched and bandaged and barely holding itself together. One sharp move too much in one direction, and Halm figured he’d just burst apart at the seams. That put a faint smile on his face. If that happened, it’d be interesting to see how much saywort and thread young Shan had in his pocket.
The smile didn’t last as deep thoughts overcame him again.
“Hope you perish out there, Zhiberian,” the gatekeeper said vengefully. Halm took to the stairs, toward the opening portcullis. He didn’t bother replying to the old man.
Outside, the sunlight made the sweat on his frame sizzle. His conical helm started to slow cook his skull. The day was the kind on which, if wisdom prevailed, people would stay in the shade. Halm wished he was on a grassy hillside somewhere with a few bottles of firewater beside him.
Targus was already on the other side of the arena, war braid flung over one shoulder. Ill-kept leather armor covered the lad, the same ill-fitting garb he had worn the day Halm first set eyes on him. A round shield decorated the Sunjan’s arm while his shortsword was already out and ready.
Eager, Halm thought pensively and hefted the square shield on his left arm.
The Orator shouted to begin, startling the Zhiberian. It seemed as if he’d only just stepped into the sun, but somehow, he’d missed the introductions.
131 Days [Book 2]_House of Pain Page 35