Certainly there were those who cheered the pagan and his unorthodox martial system, hailing him as an innovative young warrior. They lauded his ingenuity and resourcefulness. They praised his audacity. They were a foolish minority. Most people looked upon the pagan and his corrupt martial system with disgust. Fox eliminated Dulce Aire’s paladín with an upward slash to the ribs, and then turned to the crowd, rejoicing in the jeers shouted at the pagan.
“Profaner!” a Kusini Watu man yelled.
“Abominación!” an Oestean woman yelled.
A chorus of Nord voices screamed that the trial be stopped, that the pagan be disqualified for sacrilege against Schöpfer, Creador, Muumba, and Seisakusha! His blasphemy knew no bounds! Vindication felt so very sweet. Even in the heat of battle, Fox had to laugh.
He laughed so hard he didn’t see the Raimei-Yama paladín attack until it was too late to parry, block, or avoid.
“Look out!” the pagan screamed.
In an instant of stomach-churning clarity, Fox realized he would not get the chance to humiliate the pagan. He would not be the first Santosian Black Spear. He had celebrated prematurely and his foolish arrogance would cost him the trial.
And Pía.
But then, in a display of disgusting heroics, the pagan intervened, using his bo staff to parry the Raimei-Yama boy’s cut.
“No!” Fox yelled, appalled that the pagan had saved him.
The effort left Del Darkdragón off-balance, and the Raimei-Yama champion retaliated, stuffing his boot into the pagan’s mailed ribs. As the pagan fell, Fox struck at the Raimei-Yama boy’s head, eliminating him from competition.
It was just the two of them now.
The pagan pushed to his knees with one hand and clutched his chest with the other. His bo staff lay on the ground next to him.
Fox had also taken some hurts and paused to catch his breath. His left eye was badly bruised and swelling shut. He would have to keep the pagan to his right, away from what would soon be a blind spot. Also, the little finger on his right hand was twisted backward at an ugly, unnatural angle. Still, with Pía watching and The One God’s blessings, he could defeat an army.
A roar erupted from the thousands of folks watching the Melee, the din so loud Fox wanted to cover his ears until he understood what they bellowed. It was mellifluous music that filled his heart with pride. If his ears did not betray him, half the folk in the arena cheered him. The other half mocked the pagan. The Prophet had been wise. The foolish rabble had unknowingly chosen a Santosian as their champion. He chuckled. Vindication was sweet.
But revenge, he knew, would be sweeter.
Chapter Thirty-three
El Momento de la Verdad
Paladin’s head felt like a sack of shattered glass. Every ragged breath pulled daggers into his lungs. He didn’t know if his ribs were broken again, but they sure as hell hurt. His vision wavered in and out of focus, and every inch of his body ached as though a giant cow had used him as cud. But that wasn’t the worst of it. For the first time since the Black Spear trial had begun, he understood what the spectators screamed at him, and Rebelde had been right. After witnessing the blended dance, the spectators spewed the most hateful slurs he had ever heard. He feared they might descend mob-like onto the game field and tear his limbs from his body. He thought he might vomit. It was almost too much, the pain, the nausea, and the fear of the crowd, but if he could take a moment to catch his breath, clear his vision, and focus, he would be fine. But he would never get that moment. Fox the Runt rushed him.
The Nordling was a blur of spinning bokken, and Paladin retreated, blocking cut after wicked cut.
“Stop running, híbrido!” Maga Cabróna screeched at him from ten feet away. “Stand and fight!”
He tried an el Combatedanza lunge, but the Runt slapped Sunderbones aside with one bokken and almost took his head from his body with the other. He backed off and then tried a Ngoma ya Kifo move, slamming Sunderbones into the Runt’s leg. The Nordling faltered for only a moment, then came back at him hard and fast.
He leapt at Paladin and slashed down, barely missing his head. The blow slammed into Paladin’s right hand, and would have broken several fingers had it not been for his steel-backed gauntlets. He retreated.
“Fight, coward!” Maga Cabróna shrieked. She ran next to him. “Cobarde!”
The spectators echoed her sentiment, screaming louder and louder, hurling rotten food onto the game field. The Caller ordered Maga Cabróna away from the fighting, but if she heard the Caller’s rebuke, she pretended not to.
With his many hurts and nagging fatigue, simply surviving the Runt’s assault was all Paladin could manage. He spared a glimpse into the Nordling’s face. The Runt’s left eye was swollen shut, which heartened him somewhat. If he kept to that side, he might gain some advantage. But then he caught a glimpse of the mockery in the Runt’s open eye. It made his blood run cold.
The Runt was simply toying with him.
He sensed Paladin’s weakness. His attacks were simply a tactic to wear Paladin down until he was utterly defenseless. It was a cunning strategy. One Paladin feared would soon prove successful.
He couldn’t run forever, and he could barely see straight, let alone form an effective offense with Maga Cabróna inserting herself into the action. He was in grave need of a respite, even a slight one. He could only retreat so far before his back was to a wall. He summoned every bit of will he could muster and focused on the fight. He saw a small opening in the Runt’s defense, pivoted his weight to strike, but stopped his lunge when the foolish Prosperidad Red Cloak got in his face, shrieking taunts at him. He silently cursed her and retreated from the Runt’s whirling bokken.
He backed away from several attacks, missing opportunities to counter because of Maga Cabróna’s interference. He considered bashing her in the skull, but that distraction would leave him vulnerable and the Runt would end him. It would be satisfying, but not worth losing the Black Spear.
“Stand still, híbrido!” she shrieked. She was so consumed by her own hatred, she didn’t realize, or didn’t care, how dangerously close to the violence she was. Several of the Runt’s attacks just barely missed her.
“Stop running or I will disqualify you, híbrido!” she screamed into his face. “Stand still!”
Paladin obliged.
He shifted his position, placing Maga Cabróna to his back an instant before the Runt launched a devastating slash at his head. He ducked, but the Nordling’s katana bokken blasted into Maga Cabróna. She tumbled backward clutching her face, crimson spraying out between her fingers.
“Hold!” the Caller bellowed. “Stop fighting now!”
The other Red Cloaks forgot about him and the Runt. They hurried to tend Maga Cabróna where she lay, writhing and moaning. Paladin took the moment to breathe and collect his wits.
And the Runt struck.
The Nordling’s katana bokken flew at his head. He just managed to avoid the full brunt of the attack, but pain exploded across his face and he went down.
Fifty thousand spectators howled their approval.
It was a blow that would have ended the Melee had the Red Cloaks not called for a respite, and had they been watching.
The Runt moved in to finish him, the second time he had tried to end Paladin’s life through treachery.
Paladin, his soul catching fire with anger, rolled away from the Runt’s advance and swung Sunderbones at his knees, sweeping his legs out from under him.
“I said hold!” the Caller screamed. “The next one of you who strikes will be disqualified. Do you hear me?”
“Sí, Maga,” Paladin said, crimson streaming from his nose.
The Runt growled, “Ja, Magieren,” and backed away.
Paladin did not take his eyes from the dog-faced Nordling. He could feel the arrowhead beneath his clothing, cold against his hot skin, as cold as the treachery it represented.
Something clanged against his helmet and bounced away. The Runt laughed.
Paladin wasn’t sure what had hit him at first, but he followed the Runt’s gaze until he saw it, a piece of fruit so rotten there was no way to tell what it had once been. He gazed up into the stands and saw nothing but faces—black, white, yellow, and brown—twisted with hatred, screaming disgust. He wanted to bellow his own anger right back at them. Gods be thanked he had not yet learned elemancy. He was so furious he thought he might incinerate them all with mance-fire if he could. He breathed and searched for his center, focusing his ki, lest his anger undo him.
Rage could be useful like fire. Properly harnessed, it could fuel him, sustain him through his injured body and soul. Or he could give in to it and be consumed. He ripped away the shreds that had been his new surcoat and sopped up the stream flowing from his battered nose, over his lips, and down his chin.
“I am going to kill you, pagan!” the Runt promised, yelling to be heard over the screams of the spectators.
Paladin said nothing. He shot a quick glance toward the western quad, looking for his parents. They had been sitting at the edge of the arena wall behind the dragón’s den, but nothing could be seen clearly through the blizzard of garbage.
Maga Cabróna came to, moaning pitifully while the other Red Cloaks finished their ministrations. She had a wicked gash running from her lower right cheek to just above her left temple. As she was escorted from the game field, she shot a hate-filled, poisonous glare at Paladin. He wanted to scream at her, unleash every bit of his anger at her. Instead, he forced a smile and blew her a kiss.
Maga Cabróna fell into paroxysms of outrage, her eyes nearly popping from her skull. She screamed curses at him in Lengüoeste and he smiled sweetly in response.
The Runt watched Maga Cabróna until she was nearly off the game field, then turned and sneered at him. “Are you ready to die, pagan?”
Paladin felt like his anger alone kept him on his feet. Fury was the blood pumping through his veins, the wheel turning his thoughts. It was crimson armor against the pain assaulting his body and mind. He fed those hurts into the fire of his rage. This was el Momento de la Verdad, the Moment of Truth. He would not be distracted by trifles like agony. His anger feasted on his hurts and consumed them. There was no pain. There was neither arena nor hateful, screaming spectators. That all faded into a blurry smear of color and bleak rumbling sound. There was only himself, Sunderbones, and the Runt, all viewed through the red lens of wrath.
The Battle Frenzy was upon him.
The Caller signaled them to fight. The Runt roared and charged. Paladin hurtled through the ether. They collided in the center of the arena, weapons clashing in a detonation of splinters. Paladin swept Sunderbones high, but the Nordling spun away, and flew at him, slashing madly at his head. He knocked the attacks aside and slammed a kick into the Runt’s hip, knocking him off-balance.
The Runt fell into a defensive stance, confidence etched across his pale, ugly face. He sneered. “You cannot win, pagan.”
Paladin advanced.
He swung high. The Runt blocked as he had expected, and he feinted to the right.
The Runt took the bait, throwing up his katana to block a strike that never came. At least not from the expected direction.
Paladin spun through the air and slammed a Ngoma ya Kifo kick into the left side of the Runt’s head, driving him hard to the ground.
The Runt staggered, but recovered quickly. He rolled to his feet and attacked, a blitz of slashes and cuts, back and forth, high and low.
Paladin kept to the Nordling’s left side, fluxing past the attacks like a river through jutting rocks. He jabbed at the Runt’s chest.
The Runt rotated away but was too slow. Sunderbones blasted into his arm and he dropped his wakizashi bokken.
Paladin advanced.
He swept Sunderbones low, Ashi-Kobushi-style. Given the Runt’s awkward positioning, there was no way for him to deflect the blow, not using Ashi-Kobushi. He either had to take the hit or leap over it. Paladin knew exactly how he would react.
The Runt leapt. He avoided Sunderbones, but crashed into Paladin’s gauntleted fist, thrown in a powerful Eisenfaust punch. His head snapped backward and he crashed so hard his helmet went flying.
Paladin advanced.
The Runt scrambled to his feet, assuming a two-handed hold on his longer bokken. The two-handed form provided for more powerful strikes and was the preferred style of many bushi, but the Runt seemed to take no solace from that. The confidence was gone from his pasty face.
As a loosed arrow is committed to its target, so too was Paladin a weapon of singular intent: the destruction of Zwergfuchs Großemänner Von Hammerhead. He kept to the Runt’s blind side and jabbed three quick thrusts at his chest.
The Runt beat back the strikes, and cut to Paladin’s head, just as Paladin hoped. Paladin knocked the cut wide and twisted under it until he was behind the Runt. He kicked him in the backside, propelling him forward, but before the Runt was out of reach, Paladin grabbed the loose end of the white scarf around his neck, coiled it in his fist, and jerked as hard as he could.
The Runt, yanked backward like an intractable hound on a short leash, dropped his katana bokken and threw both hands to his throat.
Paladin tugged on the scarf, spinning the Runt until he faced him. He planted his foot in the Runt’s chest and kicked him onto his back, and then he raised Sunderbones like a spear, and aimed it at the Runt’s heart.
Fox was weaponless. Both hands were busy at his throat, pulling against the constricting scarf. The pagan twined a hank of scarf around his fist and pulled harder, strangling Fox’s hopes for the Black Spear, killing any hope he might have for a future with Pía, humiliating him before his prophet and his god. Hatred was too petty, too minuscule a word to encompass his infinite loathing of the pagan.
He supposed it was The One God punishing him for pride. Indeed, he had been overconfident, toying with the pagan in the premature belief that the fight was finished. He would thank The One God for the lesson in humility and beg His forgiveness. But he would do that later. Right now, he had a rabid pagan to deal with.
The pagan knocked him onto his back and speared his bo staff toward his heart. Fox swatted it wide with his left hand and slammed his right fist into the pagan’s groin. The pagan grunted and dropped his weapon, his hands darting toward his crotch.
Fox reached for the pagan’s staff. It was closer than his weapon, and besides, ending the pagan with his own staff was a poetic type of justice. His hand was mere inches away from the staff when a boot entered his vision, hurtling toward his face. The world splintered into brightly colored lights of pain.
When he could see again, the pagan loomed above him, a curious look in his kohl-black eyes. It was ugly, the expression of a slavering mad dog the moment before it tears the throat from an innocent child. Fox kicked at his groin.
The pagan caught him by the foot and twisted until his ankle snapped. Agony blinded him. A scream tore out of his throat, then died suddenly when the air was blasted from his lungs. The pagan dropped heavily onto his chest and straddled him, pinning his arms to the ground.
“Yield,” the pagan growled into his face, his breath stinking of blood. “You’re beaten. I want to hear you say the words with your own lips. Yield.”
Fox twisted one arm free and used it to slam two solid punches into the pagan’s face. He launched a third, but the pagan caught him by the arm, yanked, and twisted. Fox gasped, a silent scream, the agony so great it stole his voice. There was a popping sound as his shoulder came free of its socket.
But he would not be beaten. He could not allow that to happen. He carried The One God’s honor on his back, as well as that of the Prophet and Pía. He squirmed and kicked and twisted until the pagan’s helmeted head flew at his unprotected face. He heard the bones in his nose shatter; molten fragments of pain detonated in his skull.
“Yield,” the pagan said, spewing crimson spittle.
“Nie! Du stück scheiße!” he shrieked, only dimly aware he had r
everted to speaking the Nordzunge.
Pain flourished into agony when the pagan head-slammed him again. But this was not just any head-slam. It was an Eisenfaust move called der Hammerhai, the Hammerhead, an attack made famous by his own mother, Schneeflocke. The irony—had it been happening to anyone else—would have been delicious.
“Yield, cabrón,” the pagan growled. “Just yield.”
Frustration and loss descended over Fox’s soul like a death shroud. Desperation grabbed his voice and hurled it from his throat, a feral shriek.
The pagan threw another bone-crunching Hammerhead.
The pain was less intense this time. He was going numb. He did feel something, though. It was small and hard and swam through the blood in his mouth. He explored it with his tongue. It was a tooth. Unconsciousness threatened, but he willed it away. He looked the pagan in the eye and spat a bloody, tooth-filled glob of defiance into his face.
Another Hammerhead.
Fox closed his eyes and listened to the pagan’s helmet crash into his naked face again and again and again. It did not even hurt, not exactly. He felt the Hammerheads as dull impacts. His face lost all feeling, but his mouth was a painful stew of blood, mashed gums, and broken teeth.
The edges of existence went soft and fuzzy. The grayness of unconsciousness opened wide its arms and beckoned. The pagan’s weight lifted from his chest. Even through looming oblivion, he realized the stinking infidel had gone for his staff. But Fox could not allow the pagan to beat him, not while there was breath left in his body. He tried to roll to his feet but his broken parts betrayed him. He collapsed face-first into the dirt. “Pía,” he managed to whisper. “Verzeih mir.”
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