167 - My only way home

Svetkabras came out with the tzvazahn diagonally before and across him, as usual; he didn’t spin it while fighting, only training. I’d understand why later, when I thought about it. His step checked for a moment as I closed my eyes, but then he let out a laugh and picked it up again. I opened them and fixed them on him, and met him at the centre of the Ring.

His face was set in concentration, but then a kind of stillness seemed to come over it, like a monk’s meditating, and I felt a strangeness in the air, that somehow had the colour green, though I cannot describe how. He’s doing it. I closed my eyes, we traded one stroke, and I opened them. I saw him before me, sending one of the blades whistling for my neck from his odd low angle, but by weapon-sense he’d side-stepped to my shield-side and was thrusting two-handed for my side, below the ribs, fast as a small person can do.

My body thought for me, wrist-parrying one and striking to parry the other with Chirel. My wristlet struck steel, but my sword, only air. It’s sight fooling me; weapon-sense tells truth. I closed my eyes again, fast, before they killed me.

“Oorztral,” he gritted; I didn’t have to speak Zak to know it was a curse. “But how long can you fight blind, sheep-fikker?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, pitching my voice just loud enough to carry to him over the din of the crowd. “But you are so well-liked, they’ll show the white. I will ask it.”

He came at me hard with a string of curses, a blow of one end or the other coming with each guttural word. Turning them, I found myself holding back, as if I was sparring a child again. Maybe I can’t bear the truth of winning fifty fights, I thought, and it’s like at the start, I’ll have to take a wound to begin in earnest. How many shadow-Svetkabras’s were around me, striking blows that would stop my heart, if I let my eyes open even a crack?

But then the green and the strangeness were gone; risking a peek, I saw and weapon-sensed him in the same place. He stood still, firm in stance with the tzvazahv across him, and fixed his eyes on the place on my chest behind which was my heart. His grey-green eyes widened with intent, as wild as a warrior’s who has gone berserk, but motionless.

I should be moving, but it was as if his stillness somehow caught me; then terror and pain were flooding out all over me, from my heart, and sparking down my arms and legs, into prickles in my fingers and toes. It had a greenness, again, like the thought of green. He’s doing this, too! I closed my eyes again, feeling it best somehow that I not see his; then the tzvazahn was moving, streaking in at my shield-side again. Time slowed to creeping, though it was just a easily-parried blow; my own panic was doing it, I knew. It was if a spiked ball of fire was within my heart, growing, sending out tendrils. Get him now, my mind entire commanded my body. I cross-parried low with the back edge of Chirel, then drew the sharp edge back slashing across his shield-side thigh. Not elegant—Azaila would have berated me for a parry that clashed so loud—but it stopped the fear in my heart instantly, and the pain began to ease a moment later.

I looked down. I hadn’t thought I’d got deep enough to the cut the artery, but that was forgetting his smallness. The shock of it had felled him; he lay sprawled with one hand clutching the wound, bright blood boiling up around his fingers, the other gripping the tzvazahn. “Fik you, fik you, fik you, fik you,” he said unendingly, staring at me with eyes full of rage, but empty of manrauq.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, and looked up. I could feel the shaking of the whole place from the crowd’s jumping up and down even through the sand; their roar was loud almost beyond bearing. I didn’t need to raise my empty hand; it was a sea of frantically waving white, his wanting to save him, mine knowing I didn’t like to kill.

In the Imperial Box, Minis was showing the white; Svetkabras was a favourite of his too, I’d read, so it must have been a painful fight to watch. But Kurkas let a slow vicious smile cross his face, and raised the red in his gold-crusted hand.

The crowd noise checked for a moment in sheer shock; then there was a wail of anguish, and a chant started up, “No! No! No!” I looked around the crowd again; had I imagined it? There were fifty whites to every red if I had eyes.

I hear you. I see your vote. Semana kra. I whipped the blood off Chirel, wiped it with my rag and sheathed it, just so I’d have two hands free to do a double-charcoal sign at him. You see what your people want, Kurkas Aan. The people wills.

There was a check, a frozen moment of almost silence, again, in disbelief. Then the surf roar of their voices rose beyond bearing again, wild with cheering. Scarves and gloves and flowers rained on the Ring.

I fixed my eyes on his. They are no longer yours, now, Kurkas Aan. They are mine. I spread my arms, as if to gather their acclaim into myself, and it rose even more. Arko has very few gestures, but there is one whose meaning is doubled by the obscenity of hands, in Arkan mores, especially naked ones, like mine. I jammed one finger into the curled fist of my other hand, like a raping penis, then drew it out and pointed it at him.

Maybe the spirit of the vote is more in Arkans than I knew, I thought. A good many howled with laughter; many more just cheered. Kurkas stood frozen, his face turning scarlet.

I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye; the torturers were coming through the Director’s Gate, to stake Svetkabras down; now there was a Mezem guard at each of the fighter’s gates, dart-tube to his lips, aimed at me. My Mahid drew theirs. The Director looked so terrified his bowels might burst any instant, but he’d kept his head enough to know what to do. Another motion caught my eye, in the Imperial Box; Kurkas had backhanded Minis across the face. Svetkabras struggled up onto his good knee, making himself bleed harder.

“No! No! No!” the crowd were chanting again, the whites as thick as snow. Now Forlanas had raised his red, too, and mouthed the words to me, “Do it, you mad barbarian fik, do it or you’re birdmeat!” Skorsas was mouthing the same, without the insult or the threat. Everyone in the Fighter’s Box was on his feet, all chanting “No!” with the crowd. Kurkas raised the red in his clenched fist again, and shook it.

Then I froze, feeling the thought of green again. Svetkabras had the same look on his face, but it was aimed at the Imperator. Too far away, I somehow knew. Kurkas put a hand to his chest, but then straightened, and Svetkabras fell again, backwards into his own blood in the sand, letting go the tzvazahn. When his lips moved again, they said, “Raikas.”

I went to him. By his face, I knew he’d given himself up, and now just wanted the mercy of my sword rather than to be tortured.

“He wants me dead,” he said. “And to harm you. This is my only way home, Shchevenga.”

No. I won’t. This last, I won’t. I will have my fiftieth without killing. I will carve my way out of the Ring, take all the torturers as I go. I’ll leap the lion trench and storm the Imperial Box, take Minis or even Kurkas himself hostage, trade his life for Svetkabras’s, hack my way out of this whole city. But I stood flat-footed, my hand on the hilt of Chirel, and tears beginning to burn in my eyes.

“Please,” he whispered. “Think of what they will do to me… think of what they did to you, and spare me that. By the Honey-Giving One, I forgive you, in advance.” The crowd was quieting, giving up themselves, lowering their white kerchiefs. They could all see the dart-tubes, and the stakes, and the instruments.

I put my hand over his eyes, and did it both soft and fast. I lost sight of his setting face for tears.

The noise of the crowd sunk to an almost silence, then slowly rose in a long cheer, and I understood they were not cheering me for this fight, but for all fifty. I wiped and sheathed Chirel again, and lifted Svetkabras’s corpse in my arms, small and light as a child’s, to take to his boy in his gate. Things rained down on the Ring so hard the golden sand was vanishing fast; there was even a tiny dog, that ran pell-mell over the edge and into the lion-trench, as if there had not been enough death here. Then they stormed the Ring, but stayed back from me, as if out of respect. The whole Mezem chanted my Ring-name, as one. I went to the stairs, and it came to me that I was climbing them for the last time.

I had never done what fighters usually do, after they’ve received the victory chain: turn around and raise my arms in victory to the crowd. Now I found myself wanting to. What is this? Is it because I had them in my hands for a bit, then lost them, so now I want them back? What do I care, when they are the enemy? Is this just the madness? I have always hated them; am I changing my mind now?

I turned, and put two fists to my heart, and flung my hands out open to them, unsure why I did even as I did. The chant was lost, in a sheer, unending, all-encompassing roar. As I went down, they spilled out onto the stairs, despite the guards trying to hold them back, and when they reached for me, I gave them my hands and clasped theirs, blind with tears, all the way down.

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This scene from Minis's point of view.

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