Chapter 40
The Whirlwind
The ten-year-old kid more than overstays his welcome but I manage to keep calm and talk to him in a friendly manner. His family has come south from Near Mantys to oversee some longer-term investments he knows very little about. Not actually caring why his family are here I don’t press and we mostly talk about the fights. He tells me his family and their various attendants will be watching every leg of the Storm Herald Invitational. At that, I force a smile and playfully insist he cheers for me the whole time. Mauri promises vehemently that he will.
I’ve basically run out of things I think are appropriate to say to a ten-year-old when finally a bodyguard working for his family collects the boy. The man in question is a massive cursed bearing the main and fanged maw of a big cat. He seems nice enough, but something about the way the big man smells makes my fur stand on end.
Xael and I bid the kid farewell, and I slump back onto one of the benches in the cage. It’s a good thing that the bodyguard guy came when he did. I can see the huge hourglass hanging above the pit floor, which shows roughly how long until the next match. It has less than a tenth to go.
Once the boy and his protector are out of earshot Xael shoots a mischievous smile my way.
“They should change your name to the babysitter of BloodRock. Much more appropriate no?” At the foreign boy’s words, I glare daggers his way but Kalon and Tota burst out laughing.
“You, You can’t,” Says Tota through his laughter. “You can’t say something like that without warning us while we are trapped in a cage with him.”
Kalon snorts and replies to his pit partner. “Why are you worried? North has clearly gone soft.” He proceeds to impersonate me asking insultingly stupid versions of the things I had said.
“That is so interesting kid, was the thousand-mile trek here long?”
I don’t want to admit that I’m almost as amused by the display as I am irritated. So I offer a half-hearted glower from one side of the cage to the other. “When this tournament is over I’m putting all three of you in the tower.”
When the hourglass hits the end I watch the shouting announcer lady make her way out onto the balcony of the judge viewing box she occupies. She is richly adorned in a fancy purple dress of classic Far Mantyian design. That is to say no sleeves and a plunging neckline.
The crowd quiets a little in anticipation as she takes a drink of something and waits for the first team of youth pitters to make their appearance.
It isn’t a long wait as a pair in BreakWill blue-painted armor emerge onto the sand. One is a human boy about my age, and the other is some sort of cursed with a tail and thick plates of flat scales over most of his visible skin.
From the opposing gate comes a team I recognize. Corlin the SkyBlessed and his long-term fighting partner Arium the pig cursed. They are clad in light but well-made armor sporting the noose icon of House Tariff on their chests. They have been out of the city for a while but I remember both watching them fight and speaking to them a few times when I was sent to the Tariff compound. Nice kids but more importantly a very dangerous team.
“Fighting on behalf of House BreakWill,” comes the high-pitched voice of the announcer.
“Son of the famed killer known as the Atash street butcher, searching for his fifteenth straight win. “ She takes a sharp inhale that I can see but is for whatever not enhanced like her speech. “THE MONSTEEEERRRRRRR’SSSSSS SHAADOOOOW!! DATUUUUNNNNNN VEERRRRRROOOOOOO!!!!” She has a way of rolling her ‘r’s that I don’t think I could replicate with a lifetime of practice.
“Joining Datun is a boy who needs no introduction!” Having never seen this guy before I’m inclined to disagree.
“The Youth pitter who has faced more animals, and been fed to more monsters than anyone else still breathing!”
‘Fed to?’
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“TOLEEEEEEEEEEEEBBBBB THE BLOOOODDDLLESSSSS!!!!”
'Ah'
it's Toleb, that makes sense. I've never seen the Armadillo boy before, but I do know of him. If there is a youth in all Far Mantys with more stone inside him than me. It has to be Toleb, supposedly he even survived having his stomach tube things ripped out by a pair of lions.
The crowd’s cheering for the BreakWill team has only just begun to die back down when the announcer lady starts up again.
“Freshly returned to Far Mantys after their utter domination of the Upper GrassLands are their opponents. Fighting on behalf of House Tariff is a pair that has never lost together! With over forty doubles matches under their belts, Known to the centaurs as ‘The Rock and The Storm’. “ She takes a deep inhale.
“ I GIVE YOU ARRRRRRRRIIIIIUUUUMMMM THE BREAKER AND THE WHIRLWIND CORRRRRRRLLLIIINNNNNN VAAAASSSSSSPPPPPPPAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!”
I almost feel bad for Toleb and Datun. They are good fighters, they really are. If Xael and I fought a match with them it would likely become an absolute war of a contest. They aren’t fighting us though they are fighting Corlin and Arium. Which as it turns out is not quite so furiously contested.
I’ve been nursing a sneaking suspicion that the local boys might be a little out of their depths and when the shout to begin comes I am proven more than a little right. Of the four combatants three are armed with spears of some kind. Corlin has a long spear more than twice his own height in length, Toleb is armed similarly, while Datun has a short spear and another two on his back looped through a piece of rope wrapped around his torso. Only Arium is armed entirely differently; the tusked and heavily muscled pig boy carries a pair of war hammers.
The crowd lets out a series of gasps and ‘ooo’s as the reason these two are undefeated together is revealed. Arium bursts into an immediate sprint at his opponents, with the green-haired Corlin only a half-step behind. Things don’t stay that way for long though. Well before the two teams collide The SkyBlessed boy slams the but of his long spear into the ground, there is a rush of air toward him and he uses the weapon as a lever to vault upwards.
This is a little different from what I remember. When they were younger Arium would make a sort of step out of his hands and throw Corlin, launching himself this way is a lot faster and gets him a lot more height. What is the same is the result.
I have never claimed to have a good understanding of the blessed or their abilities. Still, this one in particular has always struck me as unusual. The SkyBlessed boy doesn’t come back down. It’s like he deftly lands on a platform in the air that only he can see or touch. He does slowly descend but most matches are long over by the time he's anywhere near the ground.
This one isn’t any different. Simply walking across the empty space Corlin begins his assault on the BreakWill pair. Attacking from high above with his long spear it looks just like how I imagine someone would spearfish. Toleb and Datun try to use the range of their own weapons to fight back against the SkyBlessed but Arium comes charging into them. The pig boy’s little hammers a blur as he attacks with abandon and surprising speed.
Once Arium closed that distance the fight is all but over. The pair of BreakWill boys are clearly skilled as they attempt a solid fighting retreat. It isn’t enough, being forced to fight on so many angles at once is simply too much. Any attempt to focus on one threat results in the other instantly taking a punishing toll.
Datun dodges well, and Toleb more than lives up to his reputation for durability but in no time at all their wounds are piling up while the boys from House Tariff remain virtually untouched. Bleeding all over the place and clearly outmatched the BreakWills eventually make the smart choice and surrender.
There are always a lot of boos from the crowd when we ‘take the easy way out’, but fuck them, they aren’t the ones down here losing blood. Better to be a loser than dead, even if being one too long will get you killed anyway. I would rather be neither, and watching this near execution masquerading as a fight has sent my mind tumbling down all sorts of paths as I try to think of a solution to what I just saw.
For some reason I’m nervous about it, but after a few moments reminding myself I know what I’m talking about I broach my thoughts to the other three boys in and near the cage. We bounce a few ideas on how to potentially defeat the Tariff pair. By the time the event is we are back in the wagon all three of us are almost certain we have the answer.