by Brom Kearne
22
Thorn could barely stand as he was dragged to the pit. The entirety of the gang had gathered around for their nightly dose of bloody entertainment. Court Raleigh was standing high and mighty on his throne, framed by the skulls and the torches, looking as though he had been giving a speech. From the way everyone booed as Thorn appeared, he didn’t have to think too hard on what the topic of that speech had been.
They had left Thorn hanging from the wooden frame while they put on their skeleton outfits and had returned after participating in the opening act of the show by playing the drums for Court’s grand entrance. Melina Bann, as well, had put a skeletal design on her clothing in the same glowing amber paint. She met Thorn as he was carried out of the tent, and she lowered the staircase over the wall of jagged metal so Thorn could be thrown down it.
Everyone cheered when he fell face-first onto the sandy floor. He landed hard. Every breath he drew felt like he was breathing in hot ash. He didn’t want to think about how many ribs were broken. They had really done a number on him. Probably above and beyond what they did to the others they threw in here. Thorn was in too much pain to appreciate the back-handed compliment. If he didn’t have that residual opiate working its way through his system, he might have blacked out entirely. He tried to push himself to a standing position, but he didn’t have the strength.
“I give you,” Court Raleigh said in his deep rolling voice that sounded like the wind over the edge of the ridge, “hailing from inside the crystal walls of Crimson City, the man that Len Dietrich the Fourth hired to kill me, the hero of the Western Frontier: Thorn the Bounty Hunter!”
The Amber Bones jeered and booed.
“And he will be facing my right arm, the oldest member of the Amber Bones Gang and the man I trust more than anyone else in the entire world: Tom Marron!”
The Amber Bones cheered wildly, and Tom raised his arms triumphantly. He stepped over the metal stairs and descended slowly. Thorn looked up and saw through his blurred vision the amber skeleton descending upon him. He was death, in the metaphorical and literal sense. Once his black boots were on the sandy floor of the pit Melina raised the metal staircase and took her place beside Court Raleigh, opposite David Scontz, to watch the show.
“Tom Marron,” Court called down into the pit, his amber skull glowing against the dark sky like the moon above them, “destroy him.”
It was a simple and direct command, but the implications were clear. Tom Marron was acting on behalf of Court Raleigh, carrying out Court Raleigh’s direct orders, and showing off Court Raleigh’s strength, just as the rest of the gang would be ordered to do tomorrow when they attacked the Browning Trade Caravan. Tom Marron nodded, then turned to the gang, walking the perimeter of the pit with great purpose, getting them involved in the coming fight just as Melina had done, getting them prepped for the coming victory and bloodbath. They cheered for him, each member of the Amber Bones eagerly anticipating Thorn’s death on the floor of the sandy pit.
There was just one problem: Thorn had no intention of allowing himself to be defeated.
He was in pain and he could barely move, it was true, but he had been in pain before. In Collective City he had been tortured and experimented upon, and through those harsh and brutal conditions he had been able to harden himself to much of the effects of torture, mainly because he had discovered a way to let his mind escape his body, to view himself as if from outside of it. He didn’t like doing this, because psychologically it took him back to a time he desperately wanted to forget. It took him back to a time when there was no light, and only darkness. He would much rather escape into the bliss of a bottle of whiskey, or an injection of opiates. He didn’t have the luxury of a bottle of whiskey at the moment, and the injection of opiates had mostly worn off by now. And it had done nothing for him except dull his senses and make him act stupid. Thorn regretted that he had ever taken it in the first place.
Thorn pulled himself into a sitting position, crossing his legs and straightening his back. He took in a deep lungful of air. It burned and his chest burst with splintering pain as it expanded, but he did it anyway. He forced himself to do it. It was for moments like this that he forced himself to go running when he was in no condition to run. It was for moments like this that he trained to the utmost limits of his own endurance.
And he focused. He focused on a spot just outside of his forehead, as if he were throwing his consciousness out there. He pictured himself, as if he were seeing his body from above. The pain lessened and his next breath came more easily.
Thorn had another advantage on his side, and that was that Tom Marron was soft. He was used to being fed injured opponents who couldn’t fight back. He had not been truly tested in a long time, if he ever had been. Tom was expecting an easy victory over a mortally wounded opponent, and while Thorn was injured, he was by no means easy.
Tom had his back to him when Thorn opened his eyes. He was still playing for the crowd. Thorn licked his lips and charged, nailing Tom with a sharp elbow in the small of his back. Thorn had been aiming for his kidney, but Tom had heard him coming and had turned slightly, throwing off Thorn’s aim. Tom fell forward with Thorn on top of him.
If Thorn were in better condition he would have been able to lock in one of his chokeholds and finish the fight at that moment. Tom Marron was soft and didn’t know how to fight. He thrashed wildly and Thorn was slower to respond than normal. Tom managed to grab him. He was trying to get his legs around Thorn’s midsection. If he were able to do that it would all be over. Thorn fought to free himself and rolled away. He couldn’t grapple with him, not in this condition.
Thorn’s breath was becoming painful again. He couldn’t take a full breath, and being short-winded was killing his endurance. But despite the pain this is what he enjoyed about fighting, and what had attracted him to the life of a bounty hunter in the first place. When he had first tasted free air after escaping from Collective City, he was as rambunctious and wild as anyone. He had put Arnold Keech to shame. For the first time he had been living completely on his own and without any responsibilities, and the thrill of danger had excited him to take risks. To test himself.
And now he was being tested again. If he failed he would die. So what if he needed a little bit of a handicap to make the fight fair for his opponent?
Tom scrambled to his feet and they began circling each other. He reached out, tapping, testing Thorn. They were feints—tap, tap, tap, then a dive for the legs. Thorn anticipated the shot and pushed Tom to the ground by the back of his neck while keeping his legs out of reach.
The effort was surprisingly painful. Thorn gasped, taking breaths in short, quick spurts. But Tom was back on his feet. He was tapping again, pushing Thorn back. He was dragging Thorn into a war of attrition. And Thorn couldn’t breathe. He wouldn’t last much longer.
Thorn’s boot bumped against something. He had backed against the jagged metal in the wall. He didn’t have much room to maneuver in here.
Tom took advantage of the half second that Thorn was distracted and attacked. This time Thorn couldn’t block him. He dodged to the inside, away from the jagged metal that would have torn him to shreds, but he was too late. His balance was upset. Tom grabbed his ankle and he was falling.
Thorn covered up, bringing his elbows together as Tom leapt upon him with his fists swinging. Thorn managed to block the worst of it, absorbing the pummels in his forearms. Tom stopped punching and went for Thorn’s throat. His fingers were claws as he reached under Thorn’s arms. Those claws found Thorn’s throat and clamped down.
Thorn began seeing stars blinking in front of his eyes. He was close to passing out. He was dimly aware of the Amber Bones cheering his opponent. They wanted Thorn’s blood and they were going mad for it. His feeble attempts to stay alive had only driven their bloodlust and made the fight so much more interesting than what they were used to.
The effort to breathe was becoming monumental and those starbursts in his eyes were threatening to take his entir
e vision and consciousness with them in each burst. But dimly, Thorn thought to himself that if neither of them could breathe, then Tom Marron would no longer have the advantage.
Thorn dug his fingers into Tom’s hands as he pulled his legs up to his head. He tried to hook Tom’s neck with his ankles, failed, and tried again. He managed to hook them the second time.
The world was going black around him. He could no longer hear the shouts of the Amber Bones. He could no longer picture himself out of his body. All he could see was a tunnel of darkness.
He was in a ball. He couldn’t feel pain anymore. His chest had compressed so he couldn’t breathe even if Tom did release his throat. The world had closed in around him. He was barely drawing any breath at all. But he had his ankles locked around Tom’s neck and he was squeezing. He felt as though his entire being were in his legs, squeezing with all the force he could muster, strangling Tom as Tom was strangling him.
Tom’s grip intensified, at first, but he was losing breath too and soon he began slacking off. Thorn could feel the vice around his neck start to weaken. He was able to take small, wispy breaths. It wasn’t much, but it was something he could hold onto. It was something he could focus on. He used that extra breath to squeeze even more tightly, pressing against Tom’s throat.
It was a battle of wills, each man struggling to maintain his grip, each one trying to outlast the other, each one threatening to black out at any moment.
Tom was the first to flinch. He tried to release his fingers from around Thorn’s throat so he could fight the ankles around his own, but Thorn wouldn’t let him. Thorn dug his fingers even more tightly into Tom’s hands, drawing a trickle of blood and preventing them from withdrawing. When he was unable to break his grip on Thorn, Tom began to panic. His fingers had loosened to the point that the only thing still holding them around Thorn’s neck was Thorn himself.
Thorn saw the end of the tunnel of darkness. At first Tom’s face seemed impossibly far away. Then it seemed impossibly close as he came into focus. Thorn was able to straighten his torso enough that he could draw a slow breath, using his grip on Tom’s hands as leverage to cinch his choke even more tightly. As soon as Thorn was able to draw in a long, painful breath, he pushed his advantage. He realized that he could feel pain again. And the realization made him feel alive. He pushed into Tom Marron, clamping down with all the strength he could muster. His legs burned almost as much as his chest and Thorn relished every moment.
Tom Marron was coughing and sputtering. The veins around his eyes were popping out. His eyes rolled back up into his head and went red. Then he went limp.
Thorn released him, allowing his unconscious body to slump over onto the blood-stained sand.
Thorn lay back on the ground. He was taking in deep gulps of air, breathing hard, and every one of those breaths was so painful that he felt as though, despite everything, he could still black out at any moment. He couldn’t control his breathing. He needed the air. But the pain suddenly no longer felt good. It hurt, and at that moment Thorn would have given anything for another one of those shots of opiate. But all he could do was lie there and suffer.
He thought, at first, that he had blacked out because there was no sound over the thumping of his heart in his ears. Then he realized it was because the Amber Bones were dead silent. All eyes were on him. His fight wasn’t over yet.
Thorn rolled onto his chest and tried to push himself up. He realized that he wouldn’t be able to, and so rolled back over into a sitting position. If he couldn’t stand, the least he could do was sit straight. He looked up at Court Raleigh, who was standing motionless on his throne.
“Is that the best,” Thorn started, but the words came out raspy and guttural, as if they weren’t words at all but chokes from the back of his throat. He cleared his throat and said a bit more loudly, although the words retained their hoarseness, “Is that the best you’ve got?”
Court Raleigh remained motionless. It was impossible to read his skeleton face, although the wide amber eyes again contained that boiling rage that Thorn had seen the previous night.
“Kill him,” Court finally said.
“No,” Thorn answered.
A murmur spread through the ranks of the Amber Bones.
“You are too weak to take a life!” Court said. He planted his foot on the arm of the throne and was about to continue when Thorn cut him off with another loud hacking sound from his throat.
“No. I have no problem taking a life. I refuse because you wish me to. Why don’t you come down here and I’ll show you how willing I am to kill a man.”
Thorn was bluffing. He couldn’t even stand. There’s no way he could survive another fight right now. But the challenge had the desired effect. The Amber Bones Gang were talking loudly now of Thorn’s show of defiance. The commanding figure on the throne of skulls no longer seemed as commanding.
Court’s amber eyes went wide as he glared at his gang. Melina stepped forward and volunteered herself.
“I will kill him for you,” she said.
“Hiding behind a woman now?” Thorn asked.
Court turned his gaze on Melina. She had been trying to help, but had inadvertently helped to make him look weaker. “No,” Court said slowly. “You are to be congratulated, Thorn, on your victory. Tom Marron was weak, and was unworthy of serving me. I am grateful to you for exposing his weakness, and thus strengthening the entire gang. We all owe Thorn a debt of gratitude.”
He leaned to whisper something to Melina and David, then pointed to a couple of the gang members near the front of the crowd. “You two, please escort Thorn back to his cage.”
Melina lowered the metal staircase and took a spear from one of the two gang members. She held Thorn’s gaze steadily with her icy blue eyes as she stepped past him. The two gang members took Thorn under his arms and helped him to his feet. He grimaced at the way they were holding him, but he couldn’t stand without them.
Melina never took her eyes from Thorn, and for a moment when she raised her spear he thought that she was going to use it on him. But she didn’t. She impaled Tom Marron through the heart. He cried out, looking up at Court Raleigh with beseeching eyes, and then fell silent. There was no cheer from audience. Their mood was confused and sour as Thorn was carried back to his cage.
