Chapter 73: Seventy Three
Lucien
A Hundred And Seventy-Some Years Ago.
The mercenary was slight.
Somewhere around five foot six. Built more for speed than strength. He looked like a single swing could snap his ribs in half. And yet his feet were planted in the blood-wet sand with a stance that mirrored my own--firm, grounded.
A hood covered most of his face, but it did nothing to hide the soft, sinful curve of a mouth too pretty to belong to a man. He was bleeding, too, not where I could see, but the scent of iron curled around him like perfume.
The rancour above us built to a dreadful level. The thing in my chest needing an out. Violence. Perhaps, it was unseemingly for the king to belittle himself doing things like this, but I couldn’t fight it anymore. These days, I could hardly remember what they looked like. I didn’t deserve to forget. I deserved more pain. The fracture in my chest would never leave. Waking up with ash in my mouth would never stop. The years may drag on, but the wound only stretched wider. And on days like this when the alcohol or herbs didn’t help sleep come easier, I knew it was yet another day of reckoning. And if pain was the only thing that reminded me I was alive, then so be it.
I jerk my chin toward my opponent, eyes trained on the pit-lord, whose coin belts sit heavy tonight. "He is injured. This will be no fair fight."
It was the mercenary who spoke, voice soft, nearly feminine as he lifted twin daggers, spreading his foot. "Can’t stand a little blood, pretty boy?"
The crowd erupted in a set of goading ’oohs’. I cocked my head as he moved, studying me with eyes I could not see, but could feel burning into my skin. He was so small, it was ridiculous how easy it would be to merely reach for his neck and disconnect it from his shoulders. But he seemed not to notice that as he circled me with a swagger, daggers twirling in his hands like toys.
I’d heard so much smack talk over the years I’d visited the pits. But no one ever called me ’boy’. Not since I was a handful of years.
My mouth tightened, the crowd growing restless and louder. The willowy pit-lord looked us over and snarled, "No sorcery. No magic. No weapons."
The mercenary rolled a blade on a single finger. "Disappointing," he said, before sheathing his weapons.
"Names," the pit-lord demanded.
My opponent seemed to consider it for a moment. "Eldric."
He didn’t look, carry or sound like an Eldric.
"Pretty boy," I responded, smiling under the mask of the fox that encompasses my face. The mouth under my opponent’s hood curved into a smile.
The crowd was frenzied, shoving to the railings of the bloodied pit that reeked of piss and vomit and the death of numerous other fighter who have entered from those steel gates. Last minutes bets were made. My opponent paced around me in circles. I didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. I had no blind spots.
And the pit-lord roared for the match to begin.
My opponent moved with a punch so swift, most men would have had their heads spun around. But I dodge it, catching his short arm in one hand, locking it into a bone-snapping hold. A wisp of blonde hair fell out from under the hood before he hooks his free elbow so deep into my rib, I felt my bones shatter.
I released him on instinct, doubling over, and he drove his knee into the side of my head twice.
My ears rang as I pull back, wiping blood from my mouth as I reassessed my opponent. He rolled his shoulder, widening his stance. Slight as he might be, he was skilled. A worthy rival.
A smile parted my lips. "Where did you learn to fight?"
He raised his fists, circling me once more. "In my father’s shop. I didn’t have anything better to do."
"Does your father smell like jasmine, too?"
He faltered a step and I ran for him, grabbing for his hood. Perhaps, I wanted to see what was underneath. Perhaps, it was the excitement of finding someone worthy of my time, someone who could beat the living shit out of me, for once. But before my fingers touched cloth, he spun, vaulted, and climbed my body like a damned spider. His legs clamped around my neck, wrenching me into the sand with a bone-jarring thud.
Unusual, to say the least. And not nearly as painful as the thought of having a stranger’s balls hanging far too close to my royal face. Growling, I grabbed his trousers, intent on sending him sailing ten feet across the pit. But his thighs only clamped tighter around my neck, forcing a wheeze out of me.
"I’ve had women beg for this position. And I can assure you, you’re doing it wrong."
"Don’t flatter yourself," he said, tightening his hold and I felt all the blood run to my head. "You are not my type."
I wrenched him off me before he could crush my windpipe. He landed in the sand a few feet away, returning to his feet almost immediately like a roach in the same moment I straighten.
His hood was still intact. Absurd. I hadn’t needed to put in effort to win a fight in years--decades, perhaps. The very idea that this one demanded my focus set my blood singing.
Excitement spiked dangerously high.
We clashed together with brutal force. Punch after punch. Block. Lunge. Duck. Spin.The crowd was a writhing thing, frothing at the mouth, at the swiftness, the skill. We collided again and again, fists, sand, sweat and blood, and for the first time in decades, I was fighting for more than victory. I was fighting for answers. For the delicious, maddening question of who the hell this was and how they had reduced me--me--to a man desperate to know.
Small fists hammered at my mask. Before it could crack, I twisted, hurling him off with ease. My counter came like a hammer--a fist colliding with his head, sending him sprawling in a spray of dust.
And still, he rose.
Again, again. The pit walls rattled when my kick drove him into them, the impact echoing like a drum. And yet he dragged himself upright, bloodied mouth grinning beneath the shadow of his hood. There was blood on me too, copper flooding my tongue but where he faltered, I did not. Strength had never been my problem. Endurance least of all.
He knew it. He was tiring, and I wasn’t. It was beginning to anger him.
I should have expected something desperate. But I had grown arrogant in my own certainty. I had never lost. I thought his next charge was another reckless high lunge.
But at the last second, the slippery bastard feinted and dropped low--slid right beneath my guard and yanked down my pants.
For one stunned heartbeat, the pit went silent. I was too startled to move. Confused. The fighting pits have seen a fair of desperate, cheap tricks, but this took the cake. And that heartbeat of confusion and hesitation cost me.
He rammed into my legs with a burst of adrenaline, sweeping them further apart. I hit the sand hard, half-tangled, half-blind. Then he was on me. Not like a fighter anymore, but like an enraged animal. Knees, elbows, a fist like a hammer against my temple. A hand clawing through my hair. Sand flung into my face, stinging my eyes.
I snarled and swung blindly, but he was already behind me, wiry arms snapping tight around my throat, tugging us back into the sand in a chokehold.
Pressure. Too much. The angle was wrong, his weight hanging off my back. If I jerked too hard, I’d tear something. My windpipe burned. My vision spotted. I was going to kill the bastard.
"You yield," he hissed in my ear, half-mad, "or I’ll make you choke while they laugh."
Because the crowd was indeed laughing and cheering for him. And while I appreciated a good jest, I didn’t like being at the center of it.
"You fight without honour," I spat.
His breath was hot against my ear, and for a moment, I caught a whiff of shampoo, and something rather sweet. "And yet they’re cheering my name, not yours. Yield."
"I think not."
He barked a laugh. "I do not think you understand." His finger taps against the mask and I stiffen, noticing how easy it would be to pull it off. "If you bother at all with putting on a mask in this pit, then your identity is something you wish not to be revealed. You could toss me off you, sure, but I’ll be taking that with me. And then, all of Ebonheart would know their pretty king was bested in a fight, cock dangling out for all to see."
My eyes narrow. "You know who I am."
"Sadly," he murmured. "I feel like I have known you all my life. Though, I did not think I would meet you here for the first time." His chokehold tightened. "What say you that you yield, I get the coins, and I buy you a drink or two right after?"
My eyebrows rose. "So you choke me, humiliate me, then try to court me? I am thoroughly flattered," I say dryly.
A pause. "I’m bargaining."
"Do you often bargain with your competition, Eldric?"
"Better bargain than plead for my life, no?"
The pit-lord called over the growing shouts of the crowd, clamoring for more blood. "Do you yield?"
After a moment’s hesitation, I said, "I yield."
The crowd shrieked in triumph and outrage, for the wins and losses of the gamble respectively. The mercenary rolled off me as the pit-lord tossed down a full pouch of gold in the center. The black hood fe back as he reached for the pouch, revealing a length of rose gold braids than ran down the curve of his back, the color quite unusual and striking.
I found myself straining for a glimpse of his face.
I saw his ears first. They were round and small. A half-breed, that much I could tell at first glance.
But his face turned to me and I found that I stared at eyes that held the beauty and intensity of the fiery sun. They pinned me to the spot, bright with mischief, and slowly, I glanced lower. At the small nose. The shape of his mouth, smaller on the top, fuller on the bottom. Cheeks flushed red and bruises from our fight littered over a face that could fell kingdoms.
Something dark slithered in my chest, stirring for the first time in ages and it took a moment longer than it should have to realize what I was staring at.
The mercenary was a girl.