He pulled the other Andinna’s head down and threw punches at it, while two others just continuously rained pain on his ribs. One of them grabbed his horns and yanked, slamming his head into the wall.
It dazed him. Stars danced in his eyes as two more quick hits were delivered to his gut. They backed away from him and he looked at Mat, hoping his uncle was doing better. He wasn’t. His face was a bleeding mess and they had given him space too. For what? Rainev looked back at the other Andinna, raising his fists. He swayed, the hit to his head being a serious distraction.
Without words, the Andinna moved back on them, and this time, they kicked Rain’s legs out from underneath him. Rain knew better than to get up. Both he and Mat could only do one thing. They curled up and protected their vital organs from the onslaught. They were good warriors, but they were weaponless against eight men in a tiny, cramped room.
Rain grunted and groaned with every kick that hit his shoulders, back, head, and legs. He heard something crack and snap.
“You broke the shit’s horn, stupid. Oh well. Now he’ll remember the day where he realized he wasn’t the hottest shit that walked in the pits.” An Andinna male laughed, and that made them all laugh as they kept kicking.
It felt endless.
Blood began to cover Rain’s face. They were kicking his head down into the floor. Rain could only keep his hands on either side of his ears, hoping it was enough cushion and they didn’t crush his skull. He wished he knew how Mat was doing, other than the groans coming from nearby, nearly covered up by the laughter and taunting being done by the gang over them.
He went unconscious with one particularly brutal kick to the forehead.
“Illi bodyr? Oh, Rain.” A feminine voice tried to pull him out of the dark. “Rain?” It sounded hurt. “You two have to be okay. If they killed you, I’m going to kill them. I’m going to rampage through their numbers and kill them all.” He was scared of the temper, the anger that the female dripped with, something he wasn’t used to. “Rain? I know you’re breathing. Please. Please wake up. I need to get Mat, too.”
At Mat’s name, he opened his eyes, groaning. Above him was Mave, looking terrified. He’d never seen such fear on her face before. He didn’t believe it, either, wondering for a moment if his head was too badly injured.
“Oh, illi bodyr. Oh, I should have come with you both. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She touched his face and he groaned louder, trying to pull away from the touch. He liked it, but it fucking hurt.
“Mat…” he got out, trying to sit up to see his uncle. His only family from his youth that was in this hell with him.
If Mat was dead…
“I’ll get him. You lie there. Everyone else just started the afternoon training. I lost track of time and you weren’t here when the bell rang…I thought you were just taking a moment to have a private talk or something. I didn’t know.” There was so much guilt in her words. Pain. His heart hurt from hearing it. She cared about them. Mave moved away from him and Rain saw her kneel over another body. “They snapped off nearly a quarter of his left horn,” she whispered. “Damn…”
Rain tried to push himself up, to a sitting position at least. He could hear the rage and sadness in her voice. Everything about Rain hurt, including his heart. Mat’s horn would never heal. It was broken for good, and he hoped it was the only thing. “We…need to move…”
“We do, but I don’t think Mat is going to wake up from the healing sleep and I’m not sure you can walk. I can’t carry you both.”
“I can walk,” he mumbled, rolling onto his hands and knees. She was at his side in an instant, helping him stand. “Can you…” He pointed down to Mat. He wasn’t going to be able to carry his uncle.
“I got him. We’ll need to hurry. There could still be one or two wandering down here, trying to go unnoticed and skip the training.” He watched Mave lift Mat, only a grunt to give away just how hard it was. Mat was a heavy male. She wrapped his arms over her shoulders to keep him leaning on her back. His feet dragged on the floor, but Rain thought it was the smartest way she could probably do it at that point. “Let’s go. You need me to slow down, tell me. I’m not going to leave you even behind a corner, illi bodyr.”
“You can call me little brother,” he said, chuckling weakly. He was dizzy. “I like it.”
“You’re the only family I’ve had in a thousand years. I wasn’t going to pass it up.” She said it like it was a dirty secret, something to be ashamed of. Like she wasn’t strong enough to pass it up. “Let’s move.”
He followed her, limping and swaying. His head hurt so fucking much. It was throbbing in a way that made him wonder if it was rattling his brain. Every heartbeat made it hurt, then add in the fact that he was walking? He had the feeling he was going to drop the moment he made it to her room.
It was slow, the walk. So slow. She carried Mat without a word, his broken horn a telling sign to the damage they did to him. It was like they beat him up more. Rain had a feeling it was because he was the one who went and called them out, saying the Ivory Shadows would never condone them, accept them. Gladiators who did this to their own people.
No, Rain would never accept them and neither would those who raised him. Mat, Luykas, Alchan, his father, Mat’s uncle. None of them would ever accept these pathetic disgraces of Andinna. They can all rot down here for eternity, those cheap cowards.
A blaze of rage was in his chest now. One he was sure was matched in Matesh on a regular basis. Rain normally didn’t have so much of a temper, being a mutt, but this…this brought out every single piece of Andinna in him, including the unbridled anger.
The guard opened the door in silence to her little hallway, but his eyes went wide at the sight of them.
Mave spared no time, forcing Rain to really work to keep up with her to get in her room. He watched her slowly drop Matesh on her cot and begin removing his armor.
“Get undressed and carefully go clean up,” she ordered. “Keep your head above the water. I’ll be listening so if you go under, I’ll know. Can’t have you drowning while I look him over. If they broke anything, I need to know to set it before letting you both continue the healing sleep.”
“Okay…” He liked her dominant nature now. It made it easy for him to just drop his leather armor off and stagger into the other room, with the pool. He sank into the water and sighed, soaking in it for a moment. It was heaven. A tiny piece of heaven in their hell.
Once in the water, he tested himself. Moving his arms to see where his range of motion started and ended. He prodded his ribs, looking for breaks. His face felt fucked up, but his nose, while swollen, wasn’t broken. It was all tender, all bruised, but the damage could have been worse. He got out fairly well. Nothing felt busted up in his abdomen either.
It was one thing he had on other Andinna. As a Clan mutt, his healing was even better. He didn’t need the healing sleep. His body just kept regenerating, no matter if he was awake or down for the night. It's why Mave could wake him up and Mat was down for the count.
He finished rinsing the blood and dirt off and staggered back into the main room. What he saw made his heart ache. She was leaning over Mat’s now nearly-nude form. She was looking over his injuries, then stopped at his mangled face, slowly cupping one of his cheeks.
“Why does he not want me as family?” she asked softly.
“He doesn’t want to think of you as family.” Rain could only offer her the truth. “But…I think getting involved with those sorts of feelings and wants right now is a bad idea.”
“Ah. You’re right. It is. I was just curious.” She looked back at him. “I’m going to get him into the pool and clean him off. You sit down and rest. Nap, don’t nap, I don’t care, but you need to get off your feet.”
“I know,” he said. He watched her heft his uncle up and when she was gone, he leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor. Wings didn’t make anything easy, but he made due. He didn’t want to take the bed when she was going to c
ome back with Mat.
His eyes were closed when he heard splashing and snarls. He jumped up, ignoring the pain, and moved for the pool. When he pushed inside, Mat and Mave were snarling at each other.
“She found us, Mat. It’s okay.” Rain moved closer and realized why she normally only let one of them in there at a time. It was much too tiny for all three of them, wings hitting the walls, slipping on wet earth around the pool. “It’s okay.”
“Let go of me,” she snarled. “Or I’ll take your cock and feed it to the other gladiators.”
Rain’s eyes fell to the hands Mat had wrapped around her throat. He looked down to see her right hand holding the very thing she threatened.
“Both of you calm down,” Rain said quickly. He definitely wasn’t getting between them.
Slowly, Mat looked over her face then down to his crotch. He removed his hands from her neck and she backed away quickly, leaving the room without a second glance.
“I freaked out, waking up with someone touching me.”
“She was cleaning you off so I could rest,” Rain explained.
“I figured that out, thanks. I’m going to apologize. What…are we in any trouble?”
“No. She found us pretty quickly. The afternoon training is still going. She found us right after lunch ended.”
Mat nodded and stood up gingerly. Rain reached for him, catching him as he swayed and listed hard to the side. “Fuck, my ribs.”
Rain’s hand moved over Mat’s ribs at that. Sure enough, there were a few fractured. That was bad. Could cause some complications if they weren’t given a few days to heal in sleep.
“You can probably sleep until the evening training. We’ll skip dinner, since we showed up for lunch and breakfast.” Rain tried to remain calm. This was ugly, though. They had done a real number on Mat. “Also…they broke your horn.”
Mat growled and reached up too fast, making him wince. He tried again slower and touched the good horn then moved to the other one. Nearly a quarter of it, snapped off. It took a serious amount of strength and force to manage that. Mat had a type of ram’s horns, in a way. They wrapped around and pointed out to the front. Breaking off the end of one of his horns meant they tried to shove his face into the ground. They were also nearly grown. They wouldn’t be getting much bigger since Mat was fourteen hundred. They normally stopped growing somewhere between one thousand and two, and the rate was slower every year after reaching adulthood at one hundred. There was no fixing the horn, and the way they looked now would probably be how they always looked.
“Damn the Skies,” he mumbled.
Mave took that moment to look back in. “You’ll be staying here now permanently, consequences be damned. I’m not losing you two to a jump. Come back in here when you’re done and rest. When dinner is nearly over, I’ll make sure we’re up for a quiet evening workout. We need to be careful though. Can’t have you two getting jumped again.” She closed them in and Mat growled softly.
“She’s so aggravating,” he muttered, glaring at the door.
“She’s pretty much saved our asses too. Deal with it.” Rain patted his shoulder softly.
My big sister can be as aggravating as she wants. I love that she cares enough to be aggravating.
He couldn’t say that to Matesh.
“You don’t want her and want to strangle her at the same time.”
“No, I don’t. To both of those.” Rain smiled weakly. “Any other injuries I need to know about, uncle?”
“No. The ribs are the worst. I’ll need to treat them carefully for a few days.”
“You will.” Rain left the bathing room and found Mave was gone. Just gone. He sat down on the cot. If he left, he wouldn’t be allowed back in because she was gone, so he just waited, worrying about what she was up to. Matesh walked out soon and sat next to him, looking like he refused to ask where she was.
Eventually, Mat laid down, his tail wrapping over himself and he was asleep in seconds. Rain was glad for that.
Mave walked back in and dropped what she had on the floor. Cot mattresses. Four of them. “There. No need to leave now except to train, eat, and shit. In that fucking order.” Her eyes fell on Mat, sleeping on her cot. “I will apologize to him for scaring him when he awakens.”
“You’re learning,” Rain said, chuckling. All parties in the Andinna apologized a lot - for losing their temper, or causing another to. It was just the way they were, or rather, the way they were supposed to be.
“Yes.” She moved the cot mattresses around, laying them out. “Rest. I’ll stay awake.”
“I don’t need the healing sleep.” It wouldn’t hurt, but he didn’t need it.
“I’m not asking,” she clarified. Rain nodded slowly and moved to two of the mattresses. He lay down and she sat on her chest, watching him in silence. He closed his eyes, hoping she would stop staring.
Instead, she started to sing. The same lullaby he sang to her.
He never told her what the words were, but he wondered if maybe she remembered it from her childhood. Either way, she sang it, word for word, in an enchanting and unsure soft voice that wanted to take him under.
Fly, little one,
Far above
Up in the stars.
Fly, little one,
Knowing I’m here,
To kiss your scars.
Fly, little one,
Up in the clouds
Far above us all.
Fly, little one,
Knowing I’m here,
To catch you when you fall.
Fly little one,
And know my heart goes with you,
No matter how far you go.
“Rain, up. It’s time for dinner to end.”
Rain groggily came awake again to see her over him. The area around her eyes was red, as if she’d been crying. That troubled him, but he knew better than to ask if she had. Maybe she was just exhausted.
What has made her cry? I wish I could ask.
“I’ll get Matesh up,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
“I’m already up,” Matesh said. He was still tired, though. Rain could hear it in his voice. “Waiting on you.”
“Well, fine.” Rain grumbled. He still ached. “So, now we hit up training like it didn’t happen?”
“That’s exactly what we do,” Mave told him, sounding somewhat sad, like she felt guilty for saying those words. “There’s nothing else you can do. Fearing them only gives them the power they want over you. Hiding gets you in trouble. We’re lucky this happened during a time where we can miss things. It’s probably what set them off, seeing us miss training, knowing we’re set to fight without needing to prove ourselves. The lenasti aren’t mean to us. It pisses them off.”
I figured as much, but that doesn’t excuse them. It doesn’t excuse any of this.
“Maybe we should make the lenasti mad at us.” Mat crossed his arms and looked at her. “I don’t exactly like that we get favors from them.”
“It won’t change anything. The other gladiators will still hate you, and Rain, and me. You would just be making more enemies. I’ve never considered the lenasti allies, but they aren’t outright enemies. Just there. Stay out of their way and do your best, and they will stay out of your way. Win, and they like you more. We’re property of the Empress too, so they need to make sure we aren’t broken and useless for their Empress. They have their own shit they need to deal with.” Mave was shaking her head and looked away from Matesh to Rain. “Come on, illi bodyr.”
“You need to start saying it in Common or you’ll get in trouble,” Matesh said forcefully.
“I don’t say it outside this room, or where anyone can hear me, so it doesn’t matter,” she snapped.
Rain couldn’t help but notice their once cold and detached ally wasn’t so cold or detached anymore. She lost her temper more, showed more on her face. Walls were crumbling around her, showing them what the female underneath was like. She still talked in that formal Elvasi way, clear and
punctuated, with little accent except the Elliar one. But she was acting more like an Andinna the longer they knew her.
He liked it. He knew Matesh did too.
She cares about us. That’s fine. We care about her, too.
“Let’s just get to training, you two,” Rain said, pushing himself off the cots. He didn’t want to hear them arguing while Mat was going to be at his worst, healing.
He left the room first, noticing his limp was gone. He didn’t need a healing sleep, but it had helped anyway. Mat and Mave followed, their bickering over, but he could cut the tension between them with one of Mave’s swords. As she became more Andinna-like, those two only got worse, not better.
He knew better than to make a joke about how uncle and big sister were fighting, though the idea brought a tiny smile to his face. He had to make sure it was gone before he saw other gladiators, and the wrong words would start a brawl.
They walked through the chow hall, ignoring everyone who watched them. Some made comments to their friends about the state Rain was in, or Mat’s newly-broken horn, but none of them said anything to the trio directly. The tension was still too thick.
They were in the training area right as the bell rang. Rainev still couldn’t figure out just how Mave’s schedule was so exact. She was never late, never too early. Always she was right on time, where she wanted to be exactly when she wanted to be there. A thousand years on a rigid schedule probably helped, but he figured it was more her internal clock. She had strong and decent instincts.
Mave handed her blades to a lenasti, the only people trusted to hold her steel for her. Rain had once asked about practicing with her blades. He’d gotten a hard no. Another slave wasn’t allowed to take her steel, nor could she let anyone else even hold it. It was a rule or the privilege would be revoked. If they were stolen, the thief would lose their hands and wings then be thrown on the sands to die. Mave said it had happened once. Only once. It had been enough for no one to ever wish to steal again.
The Gladiator's Downfall Page 15
