Blood for the Masses

by B. L. Morgan

  The kid was done.

  He was out.

  I wiggled the toes of my right foot to make sure I hadn’t broken one of them. They were OK.

  I raised my arms to the blood thirsty mob in the stands to a smattering of applause.

  Well, at least I’d got the attention of a few of these sick sons-of-bitches.

  The body brigade came out and loaded up the kid and as they carted him away I found out why I’d been given such an easy opponent.

  My next opponent made his appearance.

  So that was how it was going to be, I realized now. They were going to keep having me fight until either one of these guys got lucky or I fell apart from fatigue.

  The new guy was one of the older men from the school in Micea. I recognized him.

  He was a little smaller than me; a little shorter and thinner. His black hair had streaks of gray in it. His face was weatherworn like just about everybody here except for the very young. For a guy his age, he was in damn good shape.

  I’d sparred with this guy and knew offensively he was no threat. He couldn’t punch too hard and his hands were not terribly quick. He also never attempted to throw any kicks.

  The problem with him was, he could slip punches damn good and he instinctively seemed to know to not move straight backwards. He moved from side to side really well.

  In a straight up match I’d just track him down and force him into exchanges that he couldn’t win and knock him out. It might take a while, but I knew I could do that. The thing is with the way things were set up, I couldn't fight him straight up. I didn’t have the option of waiting and using up the energy it would take to chase him down.

  Not with another opponent coming right after him I didn’t.

  I waited for my opponent to come out to where I was then moved toward him. He moved backward, away and to his left. Coming after him, I moved forward but I didn’t just go straight at him. I stepped to my own right. That way, for him to move in a circle out here he’d have to take three steps for every one step I took. He’d have to be moving very fast too, otherwise I’d run him into the wall eventually.

  I was just giving him a lesson from Boxing 301: Cutting the Ring Off. In a twenty foot ring I’d have this boy in a corner in less than a minute. Out here in this football field sized arena, it would take longer.

  He wasn’t seeing what I was trying to do until we were close enough to the wall for me to look past him and into the area where he’d come out of. Past the gate of crisscrossed metal bars I saw a long line of fighters standing there with the caestus tied to their fists. From that quick glance I figured there were at least ten guys waiting in line to come out and try to knock my brains out.

  Suddenly the opponent I was fighting at this moment didn’t seem very important. How fast I tracked him down or not didn’t matter, I wasn’t getting out of this arena alive unless I did something about this setup.

  Caesar Lanista and the tall slim built woman were seated directly above where the fighters were. I stopped there, totally ignoring my opponent and pointed at Caesar Lanista.

  “This is between you and me,” I shouted to him. “Guess you don’t have the balls to fight your own battles.”

  He stood up. “You are nothing!” He shouted. “I would not dirty my hands with the likes of you.”

  I hadn’t totally forgotten my opponent. While I was having this little talk with Lanista, he was creeping up behind me.

  “I call Caesar Lanista a coward,” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  The woman beside Lanista gave him a look of pure venom. “You call yourself Caesar?” She hissed at him.

  I knew I’d gotten this boy in some shit now.

  “In my home country, where he steals women, he called himself Caesar,” I shouted to the lady. “I don’t know what he calls himself here.”

  My opponent chose that moment to charge me from behind. I wasn’t as oblivious to him as he would have liked.

  I threw a spinning back fist that caught his onrushing face square. The studs from the caestus crunched the cartilage of his nose. Blood and snot flew through the air.

  He went to his hands and knees. His ruined nose looked like a stomped on tomato.

  Lanista shouted to the guards, “Seize him and kill him!”

  CHAPTER 31

  Close Cut

  The guards were coming at me fast so I figured it was time for me to make my exit. The Iron Gate and wall in front of me were a combined nine feet high. That’s all that separated the fighters from the spectators.

  I scaled the gate and the wall easy. I was just reaching the top of the wall and was pulling my head up when a guard on the other side of the wall above me took a swipe at my head with his sword. I hadn’t seen that boy from the arena floor. I ducked and he missed so close I didn’t figure I’d be in need of a haircut for six months.

  He stood above me and with an evil grin took aim at my hand with that sword of his. I didn’t feel like wearing the nick name of nubbins for the rest of my life so I let go and went flying backward.

  I landed in the sand on my back and all the wind was knocked out of me.

  Guards were starting to come out of doors. That was when I heard a woman’s voice shout, “Do not harm him!” It was the woman beside Lanista.

  The guards froze. Evidently when she spoke it carried more weight than when Lanista spoke.

  I was climbing to my feet when Lanista started to say something and a look from the woman silenced him.

  The guards were looking back and forth between me and the woman. She was the obvious authority figure here. She was the one who would be giving the orders on this day. I was kind of hoping she’d say, “Game’s over, everybody go home.” But that wasn’t what happened.

  She smiled at me, a warm inviting smile. I smiled back and blew her a kiss. She spoke directly to me. “I want to see how far you can go,” she said. To the guards she said, “Let his fights continue as before.”

  Ain't this a bitch, I thought. I was figuring I'd just impress her with the Dark dick and everything would be all right. Evidently, seeing blood spilled got her off better than a good orgasm.

  My next opponent came out of the slave holding area. It was that big Viking Torstan. This was not going to be easy.

  CHAPTER 32

  Fighting George Foreman

  The sun beat down on our heads. It felt like gravel being ground into my skull. There wasn’t a breeze in the air, but it felt like I had all the maniacs in the stands breathing down my neck. To make it short, it was hotter than a mother fucker out there.

  Torstan walked across the red sand toward me. He wasn’t hurrying, he wasn’t creeping along either. He moved like a guy out on an afternoon stroll. He had a smile on his face.

  “I wish I were not a part of this,” Torstan said when we were close enough to talk and indicated where the line of slaves with caestus wrapped hands stood. “I would enjoy a good clean fight against you. But this has no honor."

  “You take what you can get,” I told him.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ll make it a good one, but not for them, for us!”

  Then he came at me.

  If I had to describe Torstan’s style by comparing it to a boxer most people in America are familiar with I’d have to say he moved like a young George Foreman. He came in with a pawing jab trying to set up huge right hands and roundhouse left hooks.

  He wasn’t as fast as the younger guy I’d fought, but he wasn’t as stupid either. And Torstan was one strong, tough, son of a bitch.

  After a few minutes of feeling out sparring I started circling around him stabbing him with quick left jabs when Torstan let fly with a crusher of an over-hand right over one of my jabs. Since I’d been expecting it I ducked the right and turned to slide away to the left and found out the first punch was just a lure.

  I ran straight into a left hook that caught me square in the pit of the stomach. In my old days of hard drinking every night, that body blast would have made me shit
down both legs and vomit into the air at the same time. As it was, the punch knocked the wind clean out of me.

  I crossed over a neat right hand that caught Torstan above the left eye and opened a mean looking cut. I backed off and moved out of range to catch my breath.

  The people in the stands applauded our exchange. I looked down and saw that Torstan’s caestus had torn the skin at my stomach. Blood ran down the front of me. This was the first time any of these guys marked me.

  Torstan reached up and dabbed at the blood from his cut eyebrow. He looked at it then wiped it on his chest in a big X painting himself. He turned and looked at the Romans in the royal box.

  “May all of your mothers be fucked by dogs,” he shouted at them.

  Hell, I was beginning to like this guy more every moment. Too bad I was going to have to fuck him up.

  He came at me again.

  That first exchange told me there was no way I wanted to be standing still and slugging it out with Torstan. He had the kind of raw power where I could land twenty punches and all he’d have to do is land one or two to erase whatever I’d done by putting a serious hurt on me.

  I moved and circled.

  Torstan came at me with his big slow thudding punches.

  After a few more shots with the caestus, Torstan had cuts over both eyes and his nose was bleeding. He did land some glancing blows on me so that my lips were busted and my right cheek was gashed open.

  Even though he kept a warrior’s grim half smile on his face, I could tell Torstan didn’t like the pattern I was forcing him into. He would come at me and if he threw only the controlled punches like a jab or a short hook or a straight right, I would just step away from him. When he tried one of the killer punches that threw him off balance and left him open, I’d step in with a counter and rattle his teeth.

  It was a hot day and Torstan was starting to breath hard. I wasn’t feeling very fresh myself and the heat was getting to me too when Torstan gave it a do or die charge.

  He went from calmly stalking me to running at me like a madman so suddenly that he caught me off guard and got me with a good left hook that split my right eyebrow wide open.

  Stars danced in front of my eyes but I still knew what was going on so when he tried to finish me I did something I hadn’t ever tried before and threw a foot sweep.

  His foot being kicked out from under him surprised the hell out of Torstan, who found himself on his hands and knees before he knew what happened. From there, he dove at my legs and got hold of one of my feet.

  As I fell backwards I drove a hard right fist down into the side of Torstan’s head nearly tearing his ear loose. That blow had to have stunned Torstan good, but he kept that hold on my ankle until I rained three more crushing shots to the same spot.

  The instant Torstan’s grip loosened I slid away from him and got to my feet.

  Maybe Torstan didn’t have enough practical experience in arranged fights to know to stay down when you’re hurt bad, or to at least stay in a posture where you couldn’t easily be attacked. Or maybe Torstan was just too stunned to be able to think about anything at that moment.

  Whatever it was, he lurched to his feet staggering around like a drunk. I came in, showed him a right hand and ripped a double left hook to the body then head and followed with an overhand right.

  Torstan’s eyes rolled up into his head but it took another hellacious left hook to put his ass in the sand.

  At this point I know any boxing match in the twentieth century would have been stopped. But we weren’t in the twentieth century and the bastards in the stands were thirsty for blood.

  Torstan rolled over and spit a mouthful of blood into the sand along with a few teeth. He laughed and looked up at me from all fours with a crazy gape-toothed grin.

  “Stay down!” I told him.

  He just laughed some more. “You’ll have to do better than that,” Torstan said and reeled to his feet once again, his legs as unsteady as a sailor on the deck of a ship in the middle of a hurricane.

  My breath was coming in harsh barks too. Even though Torstan was still barely ticking he was taking one hell of a licking. I was wearing myself out beating on his thick Viking skull.

  Torstan came at me with his lips shredded, one eye closed and his nose broken. Blood flowed from a dozen cuts all over his face. Through the pain he kept that crazy ass grin plastered across his face.

  He swung a wide overhand right at me.

  “You stupid son-of-a-bitch,” I yelled at him and countered with a right hand of my own that snapped his head back.

  Taking Joe Louis’s advice, I didn’t wait for Torstan to fall. I kept nailing him with quick punches in a rat-a-tat-tat series of combinations until he collapsed onto his face in the sand.

  When Torstan went down face first I knew this fight was over. I stood there with limp tired arms hanging from my shoulders like slabs of lifeless meat.

  I looked around the arena into the faces of the cheering maniacs in the stands. I wasn’t sure what they were cheering for. They didn’t know who I was. They only liked the show I was putting on.

  I looked up into the royal seating and Lanista was gone. Only the tall nice looking woman surrounded by guards and slaves was there now. I looked into that woman’s eyes and gave her my best smile. With all the blood pouring from the cuts on my face I doubt I looked very appealing but I tried anyway.

  She smiled back and raised a bright red handkerchief in front of herself. What the fuck this was about I wasn’t sure, until a guard ran out and tossed a dagger at my feet that I picked up.

  So, this was the old thumbs up or thumbs down thing.

  The woman raised her other hand beckoning an opinion from the spectators. A chorus of, “Kill him! Kill him!” answered her.

  With that sweet smile on her face she let the red cloth fall.

  CHAPTER 33

  Midday Snack

  A deafening cry went up throughout the arena. The mob wanted death.

  I looked down at Torstan. He was on his back now. He looked up into my eyes. That same grim, half smile, played across his bloodied, crushed features.

  “Do it,” he mouthed.

  The woman in the royal box and the mob all wanted the same thing, for me to kill for them.

  Standing over Torstan, I held the knife above my head and looked into the eyes of the lady in the royal box. She had that same look of anticipation that a woman who likes to fuck gets on her face just before you drive the meat home.

  She’d have to use someone else to get her rocks off today.

  “When I kill,” I shouted to her and everyone else in the arena. ”I kill for me! No one orders me to kill!”

  I threw the knife into the stands.

  She didn’t seem very surprised by me doing this. Her smile never left her face.

  I was exhausted and my next opponent came running out to meet me.

  * * *

  That ugly, scarred-up, sadistic bastard Pugnax was the guy who came out. Pugnax had matching knots on both sides of his head from where I’d tagged him with the right hand and Johnny had cracked him with his left hook. On him, the lumps looked good. Anything new on his head had to make him look better. There’s no way he could look worse.

  The crowd was still booing me for not killing Torstan when Pugnax raised his arms over his head and shouted to them, “I will crush this one’s skull for the glory of Rome.”

  That got him a loud cheer.

  What a fucking idiot, I thought. You’re doing this for the glory of Rome and then you’ll go back to your cage like everybody else who’s just fighting to survive.

  The adrenaline rush from the last fight had worn off. I felt dead on my feet. When a second wind is mentioned on a boxing match what they are talking about is when the first rush of energy has burned off fatigue sets in, then the body draws off of inner resources to keep going. The inner resources being used up are the second wind.

  I was past my second wind.

  After two quick f
ights and one blood and guts slugging match, this engine was running on fumes. There weren’t any fuel reserves in my body to draw off of anymore. I was dogged out tired and knew the only thing that would help me would be a good meal and some sleep. I doubt that these guys would give me that kind of a break.

  Pugnax knew I was tired too. There wasn’t any way to hide it. He came at me in a half crouched, hands out in front of him type of a wrestler’s stance.

  I snapped a jab off and slid to the side. My feet were heavy. My movements were slow.

  Pugnax stepped with me. He knew how to cut off a ring. I realized this at the same instant that he dove at me.

  We went down in a tangle of legs and elbows. Before we even hit the ground, Pugnax ripped two hooks into me, one to the body and one to the head.

  It was my worst nightmare. I was on my back and this sadistic son of a bitch was raining blows down on my head.

  I took five, six, seven … ten or fifteen shots before he actually knocked me to a position where he couldn’t keep pounding me.

  Stars were swimming around my head. The world tilted crazily. There was no up or down, just everything crooked. Black spots danced in front of my eyes. Blood washed into my vision.

  Everything cleared for a moment. He was trying to grip my face with his left hand to slam me with the right and accidentally wiped the blood from my eyes.

  I turned and twisted my head just as the right came down. He missed, overextending the punch, he hit the sand.

  Pugnax fell forward on top me.

  His face was at my face. His nose was at my mouth. I snapped my teeth shut onto his nose.

  Pugnax screamed. He jerked away, couldn't get away.

  The crowd shouted for blood.

  I ripped away at his nose, my teeth bit deeper. I wrapped my arms around his head and held on like a star high school quarterback riding his favorite cheerleader.

  Pugnax climbed to his feet and lifted me in the air. I bit down harder and felt the cartilage part and tore backward with my head.