‘Yes, it is a Kudreyan fighting style, a flail and a buckler – that’s a small round shield. We whirl the chain around our heads, choosing the moment to direct it at the opponent. First wound to draw blood on the torso or shoulders wins; no armour thicker than cotton or linen allowed.’
Willem swallowed. ‘Then how do people die?’
‘Ah, well you see it is far easier to smack it around someone’s head than their chest. If you are knocked out or unable to continue, you lose by default. The professional fighters try to keep head attacks to a minimum; that way, the fights last longer and are more entertaining and also you don’t really want your skull caved in while just doing your job. But not all fighters are professionals. Many are like me; they have debts to repay. Others just want to try it; if it goes well, they could earn a lot of money in a very short period of time. It beats farming, or sailing – just as long as you don’t get killed that is.’
Willem digested what he was told. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know. Perhaps we could get the barons of Osperitsan or Felmere to help us. We have connections, after all.’
Haelward did not seem keen. ‘And how long would that take? Months probably. We have nothing to lose by trying this.’
‘Just your life,’ Willem said candidly.
‘Possibly,’ said Haelward. ‘Let me tell you this, though. I had an uncle, a soldier or rather a mercenary. Fought all over the place he did, for Chira, Fash and other places. Made a pretty penny, too, bought a house in Edgecliff near Tanaren City, a big house. We used to visit him now and then and he would tell tales of great battles against enemies who painted their faces or who wore studs embedded in their flesh. For a young lad it was captivating to listen to him. One day, though, he fell ill, a wasting illness. The last time I saw him he was half the size of the man I remembered, white as a ghost, his skin drawn tightly over his skull and his eyes were enormous as his flesh had withered away. He told me then he had rather he had died at the end of a sword, quickly and gloriously, than go the way he was now. He died but weeks after I last saw him but his words have stayed with me ever since. My opponent tonight sounds formidable, but I would rather try and get Alys back this way than run around with my cap doffed begging for coin.’
‘Do you trust this Odo fellow?’
‘No, but there is not much I can do about it. Let us do the fight and see what happens next.’
They left the tavern, which was situated in a cul-de-sac at the end of one of the long streets running from Sea Street. It nestled right up against one of the city’s encircling hills, located almost directly underneath one of the large estates atop them, the Kegertsa estate as Haelward was to tell him later. The next couple of hours were spent wandering the streets and perusing the markets, Haelward purchased a black linen shirt for the duel that night. He kept up a constant chatter as they strolled around, mocking the mountebanks peddling their useless health tonics, avoiding the street preachers and flagellants, and politely refusing the approaches of countless prostitutes, but Willem could see he was trying to mask his nervousness. It was the first time, after all their adventures together, that Willem had seen him troubled by something. They retired to Marten’s inn where they rested up for a couple of hours. They tried to eat but Haelward in particular had difficulty getting food down him. ‘I am not really hungry,’ he told the younger man.
But, inexorably time kept grinding its gears towards the appointed hour. Both men were fidgeting now and neither spoke to the other. Finally, noiselessly, they returned to the fleapit for their appointment with destiny.
As Haelward had said, the fleapit was buzzing. Dozens of excited sweating men, maybe well over a hundred, were packed into its confines with barely a sheet of vellum to pass between them. Upon arrival, Haelward had left Willem to find his own way around, vanishing into another room that must have been situated directly under the hill, the room where the fighters practised. Gingerly, Willem managed to squeeze himself into a spot on the second row. Above him he could hear the runners of the betting syndicates shouting out the odds, and the wide steps between floors were packed with people moving up and down them, putting an extra ducat on one fighter, or changing their bet entirely. It looked like complete mayhem, but Willem knew the men controlling the betting had everything under perfect control.
In front of him, almost directly underneath him in fact, sat Odo Kegertsa flanked by two of his men; one Willem recognised as the man who had taken him to Alys at the brothel. Close by, two or three other men were seated, other gang leaders Willem presumed; one of them had to be Odo’s rival, Lennark Skor. Odo did not look left or right; rather he stared directly ahead at the arena, occasionally passing instructions to his men, one of whom who would walk off to place another bet. All of the other gang leaders were doing the same, Willem noticed.
As Haelward had told him earlier, the arena itself was now covered in sand. It was as yet unbloodied; the fights had obviously yet to start. To his left, cut into the lower gallery, was a doorway, obviously the place for the fighters to make their entrance as it would have led directly to the room Haelward had vanished into upon his arrival.
Hot, nervous and constantly jostled, Willem watched as a man wearing a stained linen smock walked into the centre of the arena, scuffing up sand as he went. Willem recognised him as the landlord, a big muscular fellow with a broken nose that almost veered off at right angles to his face. He raised his arms to quieten the baying audience, but it took several minutes before things had calmed sufficiently for him to continue, and even then he had to shout to get himself heard.
‘Get your last bets on, gentlemen, for our first fight tonight. We have Poul the Mangler, an old professional well known around here, fighting for the Veska family.’ There was a cheer. ‘Up against him is a Kudreyan visitor no less, a man who gives his name as Strava. If you want to know who is who, then Poul is not quite as good looking as me’ – many ribald cheers – ‘and this Kudreyan fellow fights like his countrymen with no shirt at all. Enjoy the fight and don’t forget the ale never stops flowing here and that the girls, courtesy of Master Odo, Master Lennark and Master Reggunen, sat here in the front row, will be arriving shortly. It is a ducat a room for half an hour; the rest you discuss with the girl herself. Enjoy the fight. May you work up a great thirst watching it!’
The crowd roared in their excitement as the tavern-keeper left the floor and ascended the stairs. Willem watched as Odo’s man and those of Lennark and presumably this Reggunen fellow followed him to place bets with those on the top circle. He tried to listen to the conversations in the crowd, but making sense of such a babble was difficult. Many of the languages were unfamiliar, too; he realised that these were sailors and travellers from many different places coming here for a night of bloody excitement and presumably to get fleeced by those seated below. He desperately hoped that Alys was not one of the girls mentioned earlier, though he thought Odo would probably not take the risk of letting her out when there were people around who wanted to steal her back.
Then finally the fighters’ door opened, an event that was greeted by such a cacophony of excitement that Willem fair thought his ears would burst. An ancient, wizened, hunched man clad in black from head to toe walked out first amid much laughter from the crowd. ‘Poul, you have really let yourself go!’ shouted some wag, but then Willem realised that this man was actually leading out the two fighters, who followed some feet behind him. The first man was tall with fair hair that was in the process of turning from straw-coloured to grey; he wore a loose linen shirt and had obviously been in this game a long time, for his face was covered in little nicks and scars. One ear was misshapen, as though it had once received the full impact of a powerful blow long since healed, and when he smiled to receive the applause of the crowd Willem could see several teeth were missing. The other man wore no shirt, revealing a torso swathed in black, blocky tattoos. His features were dark and swarthy and he had heavy gold rings piercing his left ear and nose. Picking up the weapons fro
m a low table close to the door, just outside the arena, the ancient man handed them to the fighters, along with their iron bucklers. The protagonists then started to circle each other, keeping the enclosing rim of the arena close, while the man in black lifted some kind of red cloth flag high over his head so that the entire audience could see him. Willem heard someone behind him speak to his companion; he was either a local or a regular visitor, for he seemed to know a little about the unfolding drama.
‘Poul is a regular in these things; he wins more than he loses and is seen as a safe pair of hands. They have him as an even money favourite but I always wonder when we see a mystery Kudreyan – he may have been fighting these battles for years. You will get five ducats back for every two you put on, so that’s where my money has gone.’
‘Really?’ said his companion. ‘All I was hearing earlier was how Poul was an experienced veteran and hardly ever gets beat.’
The other man laughed. ‘Don’t believe all you hear. Often two gang members will talk like that, making sure everybody hears them. It drives the odds down and the gangs bet on the outsider.’
‘Bollocks!’ said the other. ‘The tricky buggers! I have five ducats on Poul just because I heard that.’
‘Don’t worry, he might win; he is a good fighter, after all. It just means you will get less money back than you could have because the odds have been massaged. Let’s cheer him on regardless.’
The man in black still held the flag up high. The crowd, buoyed by both drink and anticipation, roared louder and louder until Willem was expecting the roof to collapse under the noise. Then, as hundreds of throats were getting too raw to sustain the volume, he brought the flag down to signal the start of the fight.
Instantly one great roar became dozens of separate ones as everybody bar Willem started to cheer for the man on which their coin was riding. Below him, on the sand, the two men, legs splayed and keeping low, quietly circled each other. They both started to swing the chains of their flail above their heads, the noise of the whirring balls of steel getting the crowd even more frenzied. Even Willem had to acknowledge the visceral power of what was unfolding beneath him, though he dreaded to think what Cedric, or even worse, the head of his monastery would say of his being here.
Swinging their weapons over their heads, holding their bucklers out in front of them, the two men patiently watched each other, anticipating an attack or waiting for the time to strike a blow themselves. Finally, the Kudreyan made his move, making a quick dash towards his opponent and bringing the flail down towards the other man’s shoulder. Poul saw it coming, though, moving swiftly out of the way so the other man’s attack impacted nothing but the air. Poul tried a counter swing but was slightly off balance, meaning the Kudreyan could easily bat it away with his buckler. The two men resumed their positions on the outside of the circle and the whole ballet began again.
The tension from both fighters and audience as the fight developed was tangible to Willem, who was feeling parched by the heat and the proximity of so many jostling, unwashed, sweating bodies. He could not stop watching, though, the fight exerting a macabre grip on him as he wondered how it would all end.
Poul and the tattooed man continued to circle each other, swinging their flails – attacking and retreating, attacking and retreating. The crowd was getting ever more frenzied by the knife-edged contest.
When it came, though, the end was swift. It was Poul’s turn to attack. He came forward with a lightning-fast attack swing, catching the other man briefly by surprise. However, he wasted his advantage – the spiked ball grazed the other man’s cheek and, although it drew a spray of blood that speckled the sand underfoot, was thus not a wound to the torso and so did not count. The other man fell to his knees but on his way swung out wildly with his weapon. Poul, thinking he had won the fight, was oblivious to this until it caught him smack on the side of the head and he went down poleaxed, his fair hair matted with thick blood that oozed over his twitching form, to clump in the sand beneath. He would obviously not be getting up for a while.
There was a deafening roar, of both triumph and disappointment from the crowd, as the Kudreyan raised his arms in triumph, throwing his weapon to the ground. Behind him two men dragged the prone Poul over the sand and through the doorway where Willem hoped that, if he was still alive, he would be seriously considering his future in this business.
Time for a drink, he thought, as he joined the throng of people on the stairs. Some stopped on the top circle to collect their winnings, but most went out through the door to stand four deep at the bar. The girls had arrived, too, and those who were happy to wait for their refreshment went over to them to sound out how much half an hour of sticky, quickly forgettable excitement would cost them.
Willem sat at a small table in a dark corner, head in hands, listening to the conversations going on around him. There would be some ten fights in total, it seemed, going on well into the night. Ten more fights, he thought; he was exhausted after one. After some twenty minutes or so a bell was rung from behind the bar. He recognised the voice of the landlord. ‘Get your bets on. Next fight in ten minutes. Callan the Left Hander against Denham of the city guard.’ The bar rapidly cleared and Willem at last could get his drink.
‘Just an ale, please,’ he asked, his stomach churning with nerves. The landlord, though, recognised him.
‘Hey, you’re the young fellow with the one fighting Degg, aren’t you!’
Willem nodded. ‘Do you know when he will be on?’
‘Oh, Degg is the main attraction; he will be on last. I hope your man is quick; if not, I hope you have enough coin to pay the apothecary for a decent funeral.’
‘Apothecary?’
‘Yes, no house of Artorus here. People want one but the gangs don’t, and here what the gangs want they get. Here’s your ale, sir, and I hope the apothecary is one man you don’t meet tonight.’
Willem returned to his table and sipped his tasteless watery ale. Soon, through the door leading downstairs, the noise struck up again; evidently the second fight would begin shortly. Up here he scanned the crowd; it was just the girls, their clients and several well-built burly men he would be in no hurry to get into an argument with. He guessed they were employees of the gangs, here to keep order, to ensure that the flow of money into their bosses’ pockets continued.
Eventually, and inevitably, he was noticed, though fortunately only by those whores not working at that moment. A few came over to him, only to see pretty quickly that he had no interest in them. He was surprised, then, to hear the chair opposite him being pulled back. He looked up and saw it was one of the girls, gaudy and over-painted like the others. This one, though, was young, younger than him, and retained that fresh bloom of youth that had yet to be sullied by cynicism, desperation and hopelessness, or indeed rendered sallow by disease, childbirth or ill-usage. She knew he did not want her business, she said, but fancied a chat before the next flood of men poured through the door after the current fight had finished. Willem was glad for the company and they talked for a half-hour or so, as the next fight appeared to be a lengthy affair. She was a sailor’s daughter, sold to the gangs to pay off her father’s gambling debts. Of course, they never would be paid off and she was expecting her servitude to last a long time. She was friendly and well spoken and Willem realised that he would desperately love to help her, too. He did not want to hear her name but she told him anyway. ‘Rose,’ she said. The other girls thought it funny, as they worked for the Rose District gangs. ‘Rose, from the Grytsa brothel, the second one on Sea Street.’
He looked around the room at the other women. Their ages ranged from Rose’s upwards, maybe to women in their fifties, though, as Rose told him, their profession aged them quickly. He wondered how many of them chose this life freely; maybe some did – the profession could pay better than most honest ones. If one were lucky, could stay free of disease, not get beaten up and avoid multiple childbirths then a good living could be made. Rose hoped this would happ
en to her; she was saving a little money and when the gangs let her go she hoped to move to Tanaren City to set up in business there selling cakes and sweets, for she was a good cook and no one in Tanaren would know how she came by her financial means. Willem gave her his name and address and told her to look him up. She could not read, so he didn’t write it down for her.
The conversation got no further, as the fight then finished and a tide of humanity spilled through the door eager for refreshment and further entertainment. Rose wished him every happiness and he did the same for her, as she was accosted almost immediately, disappearing into a backroom with a man twice her age. She must have been kept busy after this, for he did not see her again that night.
Depressed at his inability to help Rose and the futility of his own predicament, Willem sank further into his tasteless ale. The cadences of noise from the fleapit under his feet rose and fell like the sea barely a mile away. He drifted – his ale was almost gone and his head throbbed as it took a grip on his skull. One ale, he thought, and he was nearly asleep. He bought another drink and another as the monotony of routine took hold. Then, however, he jolted back to wakefulness as if a dagger of ice had entered his brain. The landlord was speaking to the excited masses.
‘Coron Degg the Undefeated. Coron Degg against Haelward of the marines.’
Willem drained his ale swiftly and strolled to the door where, beneath him, the fleapit awaited.
It had been a long wait for Haelward, long and fractious. He sat in the waiting room with the other fighters, listening to the noise of the baying throng that never abated. He picked out his opponent quite early, a youngish, agile-looking man with dark hair and olive-brown skin. He had one earring from which dangled a gaudy gold chain and wore a loose white shirt with silver buttons. The fighters spoke little to each other, but at one point his opponent did break free of his half-dozen fawning minders to come and see him.
The Forgotten War Page 115
