Chapter 59

The Cage

I want to say watching Resh fight is a pleasure but it would be a lie. Don’t get me wrong my friend is poetry made motion, his skill is dazzling, his speed impossible. He easily flows between techniques no one else would even consider trying. The issue is there just really isn’t all that much to see.

My eyes are sharp, and I can track him better than most yet even I lose track of the aptly named ‘Rush’ once he gets going. So if you attend a Resh fight hoping to see pitters exchanging flurries of intense blows you will be disappointed.

Rather than clashing blades and roaring warriors what you get is a small boy who suddenly vanishes and reappears somewhere else on the sands, while his enemy just kind of falls over. I know people like winners and all that. Saffron's golden balls, no one respects his record more than I do. One hundred and six up, and One hundred and six down, myself included.

That doesn’t make him fun to watch in a regular match though. Today at least Resh is against five guys who are battle-hardened and used to working together. There is some possibility they guessed who they would be matched against and devised a strategy to counter him. After all, I was able to do it and there is only the one of me, and I’m not really that smart.

“Ooop no,” I mutter to myself.

Resh explodes into movement, his speed transforming him into a blur like one of those heat hazes. Before I can even blink he reappears and one of the men dies. Head removed from his shoulders in a single lightning-fast strike. The Rush didn’t even seem to slow down until he reappears on the other side of the pit.

The little rat boy or ‘mongoose’ as he claims offers the crowd a little flourish and vanishes again. In the center of the arena, the four remaining condemned men have pulled in close together, forming a back-to-back defensive circle and trying to cover each other.

I understand the logic behind the decision and against anyone else it might even work. However fighting Resh defensively is a terrible idea, it just gives him time to understand your timing and trap with his speed. I let out a little sigh and shake my head.

“You think these guys have a chance to hurt him?” Comes a yelled question from Mauri above me. That makes me snort, everyone knows Resh will win. The only question anyone has is how hard will these doomed men make it?

“Nah” I call back. “This is already over.”

In a few moments, he and everyone else will see why. Resh begins his assault on the grouped men, a blurring swarm of violence attacking from all angles. The men are talking, even if I can’t hear them it's obvious what's happened by the way their tactics change from defensive to aggressive.

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It doesn’t matter now, they are too late. It only took a few heartbeats of the group of men standing still for The Cage to slam shut around them, poor bastards. It must seem like the impossible has happened. Resh, despite being outnumbered, has somehow cornered a group of men who are surrounded by nothing but open air.

I know what they are going through,it honestly feels like there are a dozen of him working together so that no matter what you do one of them is there unleashing a flashing blade to punish you.

They try to escape but the area around them that Resh has occupied is impenetrable. There is a reason he calls it The Cage, and the name is absolutely appropriate. Every attempt to move from the back to back circle costs one of the men blood or limbs.

Like Xael, Resh’s style might seem intentionally cruel. He picks and pecks at his enemy wearing them down with light cuts well before he goes for the killing blow.

I know he doesn’t enjoy torturing his enemy like this, if Resh could he would absolutely finish the remaining four with clean precise strokes that killed them with as little pain as possible.

Unfortunately he only really has that opportunity right at the start of the fight. Besides he isn’t about to abandon the style of fighting that makes him all but impossible to land strikes on, just to save a little pain and fear for his opposition.

In my mind’s eye I can see the circle of The Cage contract, slowly stealing more and more territory that the condemned men can occupy without being sliced to pieces. It's like the men are standing in the eye of a hurricane and no matter how ferociously they struggle the slicing winds will not let them out.

It likely seems slow to the group of men enduring cut after shallow cut, but in no time all the group of men begin to wilt. The pain, the blood loss, the hopelessness of it all. No one can reasonably be expected to stand up to that. To their credit they try, lashing out against a foe they only catch glimpses of. It isn’t enough, it could never be enough.

First, the tall man with the spear falls, a few heartbeats later a more stocky convict wielding two type one light axes joins him convulsing as the last of his lifeblood stains the sands around him.

The remaining two try a side by side surge forwards in a last desperate attempt to escape the impossible trap. It doesn’t improve their position even the slightest bit, but at least the aggression allows Resh to kill them clean. Like magic the little cursed boy appears behind the pair of men and hacks into the unarmored backs of the necks.

With a twirl of both weapons, The Rush flicks the blood and grime from his blades, before resheathing them in on his sides. Resh then proceeds to offer a series of little bows to the crowd in each direction.

I shake my head ruefully one last time at the inhuman display of speed and skill.

‘I guess you really can’t stop The Rush.’

It won’t be long till my match now, I’m sure Muraab is already coming to let me out of my own little cage and arm me before my match. With a little sigh I pour the last of the waterskin into my mouth before the guards can come take it off me.