by Wilson, Tia
Nasak slammed his fist against the concrete wall and the jarring pain in his hand pulled him from his frozen state. The words, ‘you must fight’ echoed through his mind and he ran towards the bear screaming. Nasak swung his fist at the bears jet black nose and it glanced across it as the bear turned its head away from the blow. The bears jaws snapped shut around Nasaks wrist, the sharp teeth ripping through his flesh. The bear reared up on his hind legs and Nasak was lifted up into the air his feet kicking in the air. The bones in his wrists snapped like kindling as the bear shook him and then dropped him to the ground.
Nasak scrabbled away backward spraying up arcs of sand as he back peddled. He looked down at his damaged hand. The flesh was punctured in several places and blood oozed out in thick rivulets. He tried to flex his fingers and pain shot up his arm. The crowd chanted his name over and over again. The bear backed away from Nasak and growled loudly.
Nasak got back on his feet, his damaged hand hanging limply by his side. Im going to rip those blue eyes from your head he thought to himself and charged the bear again. The bear charged at him on all fours head down and ears pinned to his head. The bear connected with Nasak in his stomach and knocked him to the ground. Nasak struggled to get a breath as the bear approached him. Nasak swung his fist and it slammed into the side of the bears nose and the bear let out a yelp. The crowds exploded in cheers, the roars of his name doubled in intensity. Maybe I can beat him Nasak thought for a second.
The bear pinned Nasak to the ground pressing its huge paw into his shoulder, its claws digging into the flesh. Nasak rained punches down on the bears head his knuckles bloodied as he slammed into the thick bone of the massive skull. A blast of hot fetid breath filled Nasaks nose as the bear stood over him taking the punches. With his other paw the bear raked his massive claws across Nasaks chest ripping the flesh wide open and ripping his shirt off him. Nasak looked down and he could see the white of his chest bones until blood started to bubble out of the wounds. His punches became nothing more than soft taps as he felt the power drain from his body. I must keep fighting he though as white spots danced in his vision.
The bear flipped Nasak on his side, crushing his already broken wrist under him, the bones grinding like broken glass. Nasak let out a scream of pain at the intensity of it. The bear bit into Nasaks side and somewhere off in the distance he heard what sounded like a thick branch being broken over someones knees. The bear raked his teeth across his flank and ripped a chunk of flesh off his body. The crowd shouted in unison “fight back” and repeated it again and again in a rising crescendo. Nasak felt like his body was slowly sinking into sand as the corner of his vision began to darken. He rolled over on his back, the bears mouth was inches from his, blood dripping from his sharp teeth.
Nasak kicked out with his legs and connected with the soft underside of the bear. He kicked and kicked as hard as he could. The crowd rallied and exploded in cheers. I’m going to kill the bear Nasak thought frantically to himself.
His world went dark as the bear snapped his jaws shut over Nasaks face. He screamed into the dark wet void of the bears mouth smelling his own blood on the bears mouth. The bear ground his teeth against his skull and sounds like trees being hit by lightening and exploding on impact blasted his eardrums. Blood ran down the back of Nasaks throat as he screamed weakly, he tried to kick out again and he felt disconnected from his body as if he was nothing more than a spirit living in a dark cave. He heard the bones of his skull begin to crack under the massive pressure of the bears crushing jaws. A sound like boulders crashing in to each other reverberated through his head until everything went dark.
He stood in a dark wood, a full moon over head illuminating his way. A thin path wound through some low bushes, silvery grey in the light. He looked down and he was naked as he walked along the path. He stopped and smelt the air. He could smell smoke and ash and if he stood perfectly still he could hear a far off crackle. The woods are burning he thought to himself, I have to get free of them. He walked on a few steps and then stopped frozen to the spot, head held high sniffing the air. He heard the sound of something large pushing its way through the under growth and heading in his direction. He tried to move and his feet seemed embedded in the ground. An orange glow bounced off the trees ahead. Branches snapped and broke as the shape continued to come forward. He could not move. A thick layer of bushes burst into flame as a figure burst forth.
A black bear was on all fours and engulfed in flames. Sitting atop the bear straddling its shoulders was a man with a scarred face. The flames touched the man’s skin and didn’t seem to effect him. He raised a hand and pointed directly towards him. The bears paws dug into the forest litter and he charged forward. The flames shot up higher as he increased his speed. His black eyes flickered in the flames as he charged. The man held his arms up as the sped towards him, both bear and rider looking directly at him. He could feel the heat from the flames singe his skin as the bear approached, its heavy footfalls vibrating under the Nasaks feet. The bear charged and at the moment of impact the Nasak opened his eyes.
Nasak looked down at the ground below him. The sand was tacky with blood and a swarm of black flies buzzed around the sticky mess. His legs dangled free of the earth and blood streaked both of them. Nasak raised his head slowly and looked around in a daze. His eyes finding it difficult to focus. His arms felt like they were on fire and burning sensations emanated from his shoulders. Nasak looked over at his outstretched arms and tried to understand what he was seeing. His wrists were tied with rope and attached to a wooden beam above him. His arms were fully extended on both sides. His head fell heavy against his chest as he tried to hold onto consciousness. His feet swayed gently below him. I’m strung up, he thought to himself as a searing pain tore through his back from his neck to the base of his spine.
He lifted his head again and twisted to try and look over his shoulders. The pain flared in his broken wrist and he clenched his jaws tight as he tried to stave off unconsciousness. He twisted painfully and looked at his shoulder. A thick metal ring was threaded through the flesh of his shoulder and attached by a rope to the beam above. Another ring pierced the flesh on the other side.
A roar escaped his lips, a half mad sound of a young man struggling to comprehend his situation. Blood ran from wounds all over his body and pain ripped through him from multiple points of his broken frame. “Help me.” He said in a cracked whisper. He looked around and all he could see was smeared blurs from every direction. “Cut me down.” He begged as tears ran down his cheeks cleaning a thin path through the caked on blood.
A sound like a swarm of angry bees buzzed in his ears, he shook his head weakly. He could feel the sound wasn’t coming from around him but inside his head. He arched his back and shouted as hot spikes of pain ripped through his body. His body swung back and forward on the ropes and the metal rings moved wetly in his flesh. The buzzing increased inside his skull. He could feel the bones in his wrist began to move under his skin as shattered ends reattached themselves and hardened at the break points. He roared again at the pain as his wrist repaired itself. A half human half animal sound erupted from inside him. What is happening he thought to himself as he began to jerk around on the ropes trying to free himself. The buzzing increased to a deafening wail inside his skull. He felt like the top of his brain was going to ram through his skull.
The tips of his fingers on his right hand split open as new sharp claws emerged from the surging red of the torn flesh. Nasak yanked and jerked like a trapped puppet against his ropes. He could feel his internal organs move and shift inside his body, a warm liquid pulse as they rearranged themselves into a new configuration. The dull snap of multiple bones breaking and knitting themselves together filled his mind. I’m going mad he thought to himself as he felt the vertebrae in his back crack and move.
Thick course white hair began to sprout on the back of his clawed hand and Nasak tried to shout again. It came out in a burbled and bloody roar as his gums bled and several tee
th fell out as new ones pushed them out from below. He twisted and jerked against his bindings begging for it to end, he couldn’t take any more of the searing pain, the breaking bones and the images of screaming faces dancing in his mind. “Please make it stop,” he said, his lips pulled back in a snarl. He was engulfed in a hurricane of pain and he could feel his sanity slipping away and the darkness spilling back in as his body was ravaged by the changes tearing him apart.
The buzzing in his head stopped suddenly replaced by the sound of his blood pumping in his body. It was like he could hear every inner and secret part of him working together to bring forth the change. He arched his back as a devastating wave of sheer pain tore through him. This is the end he thought to himself feverishly. His body sagged and spasmed for a few seconds as the last throes of pain left him. He had closed his eyes tight and then he slowly opened them. The pain was gone, the sound of his heart beating didn’t blare in his ear, the organic tide inside him had ceased moving.
He raised his head and his vision began to clear, one side still had a milky blur running from top to bottom. The people surrounding the pit came into focus. Women covered their children’s faces against their bodies, men’s mouths hung open in wide O’s as they stared at Nasak. The crowd was completely silent and frozen in place waiting and watching. He looked across the crowd and Nasak could see the mens surprised expressions quickly darken and turn to out right rage.
“He’s a mongrel,” a man’s voice shouted from the back of the crowd.
“Cut him down,” shouted a woman’s voice.
“Banish the freak,” shouted a gang of men with blood red faces.
Nasak looked at the crowd, hoping to see a familiar face, someone, anyone that could help him. “Help me,” he said and his voice came out sounding foreign to his ears. It was deeper than before, more commanding with a slight snarl at the end of his words.
“We don’t help freaks,” someone else shouted.
People near the edge of the pit spit onto the sand below them.
“Father,” Nasak cried in a long and ragged roar.
“Enough,” a voice shouted. A voice Nasak and everyone in his clan knew. It was the leader of all white bear kind, Tannis.
Nasak twisted painfully and looked in the direction of the leader. He stood flanked by his two commanders. On his right stood Nasaks father, his face unmoving, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons stuck out like steel cables in his neck.
“Please Father help me,” Nasak wailed.
The crowd erupted into a jeering and mocking laugh as they shouted obscenities at him and cursed his existence.
“Enough,” The clan leader bellowed and the crowd immediately stopped.
“You father cannot save you Nasak. You know the rules of our tribe. You are a mongrel, a beast so low that you have to be cast out and banished from the clan forever. Broken and twisted creatures like you cannot exist within the walls of the clan. Your presence is an abomination, you are an aberration. We are a just clan and we do not kill our own, to do so would make us no better than a rabid animal. This law we uphold above all others. We even extend it to mongrels like you Nasak. Be thankful you live in such a just society. Our half brothers the black bears would show you no such mercy, those savage beasts would have you ripped you limb from limb and your internal organs served up to your family and everyone you have shamed,” said the clan leader in a deep bellow. “Mark this mongrel before he is banished for he shall never return to us. Never make contact with one of the clan. He will forever be a mongrel, a low born twisted creature that we have nothing but pity for,” he said nodding to a man in black standing at the edge of the pit.
The man clad in black from head to toe pulled a hood over his face and turned to the fire burning beside him. A long metal pole with a stamped iron brand sat in the flickering blaze, the metal white hot. The man pulled the pole out of the flames and held it by its worn wooden handle. He walked up behind Nasak who screamed. “No, don’t do it. Father please don’t let them do this to me. Father please,” he shouted jerking and twisting his body.
“Brand the mongrel,” the crowd shouted in unison again and again.
The man dressed in black jabbed forward with the pole and the white hot brand sizzled against the flesh of Nasaks lower back. He threw back his head and groaned in pain as his flesh bubbled and burnt beneath the searing hot metal. A sickly sweet smell of burning flesh filled the pit. The man dressed in black stood back and admired his handiwork while the crowd shouted, “Mongrel, Mongrel,” over and over again.
The man in black took a long pole with a blackened steel tip and cut the ropes binding Nasak to the cross beam. He fell to the ground and his legs collapsed out from under him, all strength drained from his body. Nasak lay in the sand panting as pain continued to wrack his body. He lay there looking up at the crowd shouting, he knew they would never refer to him by name again, he was a mongrel and deserved no respect from the tribe. He rolled onto his side and tried to prop himself up into a sitting position. His clawed hand throbbed and blood ran from the ripped flesh that the nails protruded from.
He looked wildly around the crowd and picked out his father watching him from his position beside the clan leader. “Father please don’t do this,” he said in a ragged plea. His fathers face was a stone faced mask which betrayed no emotions. He turned and walked away pushing through the crowds until Nasak could no longer see him. “No,” Nasak screamed in agony. The clan leader nodded and then turned to leave. Nasak did not notice the man in black walking up behind him. The last thing he remembered was the world exploding in a bright flash of colour and then fading to a pinprick of darkness.
A noise like someone flicking heavy sheets of paper crept into Nasaks mind, the sound was repetitious and increasing in speed. Something landed on his eyelid and then his cheek and then his forehead. The blackness of unconsciousness folded away like a concertina and he awoke lying on his back in a forest. Rain spattered down from above. He opened his mouth and the rain tasted like sweetened water as it slacked his arid throat. Every part of him ached, the brand on his back was a burning nexus of pain. He sat up and his joints and tendons popped painfully.
Someone had taken him out of his blood stained rags and dressed him in a simple shirt and trousers. Beside him was a leather satchel and inside was a roll of money and a picture of his father giving a rare smile to who ever was taking the picture. Nasak flipped it over and written on the back in his fathers block like scrawl was the word sorry.
Nasak sniffed the air and breathed in the scent of loamy earth, pungent blossoms and the sweetness of tree sap. There was something else under the rich scent of the forest,he had smelt it only a few times before, he could smell the acrid stench of people. Nasak was being watched from the woods.
“Who’s out there,” he shouted as he rose unsteadily to his feet. “Show yourself.”
A tight clump of fronded ferns rustled up ahead and Nasak headed in its direction.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tulimak & The Pit
Tulimak walked across the raised walkway that circled the fighting pit. Blood stained the sand floor of the main pit in the centre of the wide open barn. “How is the new meat coming along?” he asked Slattery who was walking beside him with a notepad and pen in his hand.
“Very good, Sir. We have a bull of a man who was on death row. He was months away from the lethal injection. He is hungry for life. He came so close to it he could practically see it over his shoulder. I have no doubt he will put up a mammoth effort. For something a little different I have a man who was one of the most notorious burglars in his city. This guy used to scale the side of buildings with nothing more than his bare hands and a small pouch of talc. He’s small and compact and extremely wiry. His reflexes are second to none. He should be a very interesting opponent and quite different from the usual brawlers you face,” Slattery said.
“Very good,” Tulimak said circling the main pit again. “How are the youngsters coming along in their
training?”
Slattery flipped through the pages of his book and ran his finger over a list of names and said, “Eight out of the ten understudy class will make excellent soldier material. The other two are possibles leaders. Both are strong, smart and have a wild viscous streak.”
“Do I know them?” Tulimak asked.
“The young man, Tray Lanin I think you are familiar with. You had had his father disembowelled in front of the whole family when the uprising was squashed five years ago,” Slattery said.
“This young man joined the corps even after what we did to his father?”
