Shroud of Eternity

CHAPTER 54

“Today you won’t be fighting me, boy,” Lila said as she led Bannon out of his cell. His morazeth trainer had a bandaged left forearm and stained cloths wrapped around her side where the spiny wolves had mauled her. Lila had killed the animals and survived. Now she didn’t seem to notice her wounds at all. “And don’t think it’s because I am weak or in pain. Adessa has another challenger for you.”

She handed Bannon his sword, and he felt his heart lift as he wrapped his fingers around the familiar hilt. The morazeth woman stood before him unarmed, wrapped like a bird with a broken wing. If he wanted to, he could simply swing the sword and kill her. He could strike her head off. He could run her through. She certainly deserved it.

Lila’s hard gaze bored into him. “Don’t even consider trying to harm me, boy.” Her voice was quiet, not threatening, but filled with a wealth of danger.

He realized that even if he did kill her, then what? He could fight like a madman and try to break free, but he would never defeat all the morazeth or their indoctrinated fighters. He would not battle his way out of the tunnels, single-handed. Even then, once out in the city streets where would he go? Could he find Nicci or Nathan?

No, the chance was much too small.

“I would never think of it,” he said to her.

She sniffed. “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re weak, but I’m working on that. I will make you into a worthy fighter yet.”

Bannon felt Sturdy’s weight in his hand, and he grew more confident, knowing how well it had served him in many battles. Neither Lila nor any other fighter in the pits could be more fearsome than the selka, the dust people, or the vicious forest women who had once been his own lovers.

Lila walked ahead, leading him away from his cell. He watched the muscles ripple under the exposed skin of her back, how the leather wrap around her hips rolled as she walked.

Instead of taking him to the practice pits where she had first fought him, Lila led Bannon to a communal area where the trusted fighters and morazeth trainers sparred in the open. Torches shed yellow light accompanied by thin curls of greasy black smoke. The sandstone walls of the chambers echoed with conversations, but not the clash of metal on metal. Bannon saw several morazeth standing against the rough walls near muscular male fighters. Normally, the trainees would be practicing with various weapons, but now the smooth sandstone floor had been cleared … empty and waiting.

Bannon tightened his grip on the sword. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him. He felt sweat prickle his skin and wished he had his normal clothes back, his homespun shirt, his canvas trousers. He felt exposed with only the rough cloth wrapped around his hips.

Adessa stood there like a spring-wound crossbow, even though she held no weapon except for the agile knife attached to her hip. “You are ready to fight.”

Lila answered for him. “Yes, he is.”

Bannon didn’t have any say in the matter.

“Good, because if he is not ready, then he will die.” Adessa turned her head and called out, “Champion!”

Bannon’s heart stuttered in his chest as a hard young man emerged from a side tunnel. Though he was only Bannon’s age, Ian carried the weight of years of misery.

“Sweet Sea Mother,” Bannon whispered, and his hand clenched around his sword as if strangling the hilt.

Ian stepped forward, blank-faced, his gray eyes cold as frozen steel. His bare chest and arms were a webwork of scars, straight slashes from blades, swoops and curls from ragged wounds, perhaps claw marks. His brown hair was cropped close. His lips were a firm line, neither a smile nor a snarl. Instead of a metal blade, he carried a wooden knout, a rectangular club as long as his arm. The four sides were smooth, with sharp edges, though bands of hard leather were wrapped around several places. He gripped the club, swinging it easily.

Bannon’s throat went dry. He was reminded of the wooden axe handle his father had used to beat beaten his mother to death.

“I don’t want to fight you, Ian,” he said in a low voice.

Adessa laughed. “It does not matter what you want, boy.”

Lila pushed him, and Bannon stumbled closer to Ian, who stood like a tree carved into the shape of a man. “Fighters fight,” Ian said.

“But friends don’t,” Bannon said. He held his arms out, raising Sturdy with its point turned away. “I’m your friend, Ian. We were friends. Do you remember Chiriya Island?”

“No one wants to hear you talk,” Adessa said. “Demonstrate your skills, or your failings.”

“But…” Bannon looked at the morazeth leader. “I have a sword. I could kill him. He just has a club.”

“If you can kill my champion, then he is worthless to me, and I will just take another lover,” she said. “Do not be fooled. The knout can be just as deadly as a sword. Ian can batter you to death with a sharp edge, or just bruise you with the leather-wrapped parts. The choice is his—and yours, boy. Can you defend yourself?”

Bannon glanced at Adessa, then at Lila, seeking some escape while trying to find words. In that moment, Ian moved like an arrow launched from a bow. Making no sound or threat, he lunged, swept back his arm, and swung the knout with all the strength he possessed.

Bannon saw him just in time, twisted out of the way, and brought Sturdy up so that the sword blade deflected some of the force. The club’s sharp edge grazed his shoulder, and Bannon realized it would have been a killing blow if he hadn’t dodged in time.

He staggered backward, whirling to face his opponent. He heard the morazeth muttering, critiquing, some cheering, others jeering. Lila’s sharp voice cut through them all. “Fight, boy! Disappoint me at your peril!”

Bannon braced himself, and Ian paced back and forth, studying him. He shifted the knout from one shoulder to the other. His gray eyes darted.

“Ian, I’m sorry!” Bannon said.

The words seemed to trigger the other young man. Ian strode toward him, sweeping the knout down toward his head. Bannon swung Sturdy up to meet the heavy wooden club, and the blow rang through his wrists and arms all the way up to his shoulder. He yelled in pain, stumbled back, and Ian kept coming.

Bannon parried with his sword, using every skill that Nathan had taught him during their training sessions. “I don’t want to hurt you, Ian.”

The young man’s lips curled back. “Fighters fight.” He drew a quick breath. “Cowards die.”

“I’m sorry, Ian,” Bannon cried again. “I mean it. I shouldn’t have run. I shouldn’t have let the Norukai have you.” Anger flared across Ian’s face, and he swung the knout again, battering Bannon. Sturdy’s sharp edge shaved off splinters of the wood, gouged notches into the club, but the blows themselves nearly broke Bannon’s wrists.

“You talk too much,” Adessa called.

Her words only hardened the determination. “I talk because I have something to say to him,” Bannon snapped. He softened his voice even as the wooden club smashed against the sword. “Do you remember when we collected shells on the beach or picked crabs from the tide pools?” He watched for any flicker of memory on Ian’s scarred face. “Remember when we found caterpillars on the cabbages and raised them until they hatched into white butterflies?”

Ian swung, his face blank, and Bannon raised the sword to block the club. “Remember it, Ian! I know you remember it.”

“I remember the Norukai,” he said, and struck again harder. The knout slid down the sword and struck him on the right bicep, leaving what would surely be a purple bruise within days—if Bannon survived.

“Do you remember the stray dog we fed? How we collected scraps and gave them to him every night, until my father caught me?” Dark wings of memory fluttered around his vision. “I paid dearly for that.”

His father had beaten him so badly he could barely get out of bed for days. His body was so mottled with bruises he had been ashamed to show himself, and his father had told the other people in the town that Bannon suffered from a bad fever. Ian had come to check on him, worried about his friend.

The champion faltered. “I fed him for that week when you were in bed. Then he ran away.”

“I’m sorry,” Bannon said again. “When I learned you were here in Ildakar, I came to save you. I tried to get you free.”

“He is free—free to be a fighter!” Adessa said.

“I am free to die in the arena.” Ian’s expression became wooden again, and he flashed forward, swinging the club.

Bannon braced himself, blocked the blows.

Lila removed her agile knife, holding the black handle in the hand of her unbandaged arm. “If you don’t draw blood, boy, I will make you feel more pain than you have ever before enjoyed.”

“I don’t enjoy pain,” Bannon said.

“Then fight!” Lila cried.

He drove himself forward, hoping to somehow render Ian senseless so this combat would end. He swung his sword, imagining not his warm boyhood friend, not the companion who had roamed across the island with him.

Ian swung the knout sideways like a mallet, trying to crush Bannon’s ribs, but he spun out of the way, his muscles oiled with the heat of the battle. Blow met blow. The knout was splintered, and Sturdy’s edge was dulled. Bannon thought of how he had chopped the testing block to pieces in the swordsmith’s backyard in Tanimura.

“I’m sorry, Ian,” he said again. He saw an opening, his friend’s head exposed, and he turned the sword, using the flat of the blade. He knew this was how it had to be. He could stun Ian, end this combat. He saw the sword descend with plodding slowness, moving through the air like thick honey toward the curve of Ian’s skull.

At the last instant, his friend somehow moved with the speed and grace of a coiled whip. The knout slithered up, deflected the blade, and twisted Bannon’s wrist. He gasped in pain, spun, and tried to dodge, unable to believe that he had missed his target.

Then the knout came up and around faster than Bannon could react, faster than his eyes could even process the blur. He had no breath with which to cry out. From the corner of his eye he watched the deadly club hurtle toward the side of his head. Only at the last instant did the square club rotate slightly so that the splintered edge turned and the leather-wrapped section smashed the side of Bannon’s skull, just above his ear.

The explosion of blackness engulfed him and sucked him down into a bottomless pit of pain.