The lords on the rim and the poors in the rafters roared when he hauled back on the [bosun]'s chin and again when the neck snapped. He dropped the body and stepped back. The sawdust flitted over his bare feet. In his torn trousers he stood in the pit's bottom where he'd labored this past month. Around the rim screamed those men and women whose servitude was plain in their bloodlust and hate and fear but only dimly known to him. He looked down at the body. The letters tattooed across the pale knuckles and the mud under the fingernails from clawing at the walls. He knelt and ran his hand through the damp black hair matted to the scalp. Lastly he palmed the head and lifted it to the crowd, the half lidded eyes and broken nose, the dislocated jaw, the bloodied finery. The whole place erupted.
Beyond their rapturous faces and the hooded lanterns he saw the sliver of sky was a moonless oblivion. In the cell off the pit a greenskin groaned. He stood with the head in his hand. Its quieted face so near. "I'm sorry," he said.
The crowd never heard over their clamor. He tossed the body onto the floor and went into the cell and shut the door.
The others shrank away from him. He walked to his corner and covered his eyes with his hands and imagined he was back in the orchard on the [brigadier]'s estate: paper thin leaves rustling in the breeze, earth-scented olives decaying between the rows, their subtle sour taste, his fingers purple from harvesting. He stood in his corner with his hands over his eyes like an icon against evil. But he was the evil.
He gripped the cell's iron bars and waited. From above came the scrape of chairs and tables across the floorboards and the lords catcalling the [barmaiden] and the guffaw of the [sheriff] who'd procured the condemned for whom justice was as loaded as the [bookmaker]'s dice. Finally came the [rage] that pinned his feet to the floor and bored out of his gut like a meteor out of the sky, its pale fire tailing back to that last day in the orchard. Its plasmic line of bodies between then and now seared into his memory one after another like fenceposts along the seaway. Its inevitable explosive end that would be his end rendered in white hot flame and regret. He stood holding the iron rods in his hands as the greenskins huddled and wailed in their corners until his [rage] passed finally to silence.
He opened his eyes and looked at the greenskins as they wept and gnashed their little fangs. They covered their faces with their hands and they pushed themselves against the bars to get away from him. They were the closest thing to kin he'd ever known. He opened the door and returned to the pit.
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The [bookmaker] looked down from the rim when he entered. She was on her knees sweeping dry vomit off the edge with a straw brush. "Doing better, Orc," she said.
He walked over the body of the condemned and sat with his legs crossed beneath him like a ropemaker. The sawdust under him was a kind of mud paste from the spit and ale and spilt blood.
She nodded. "Ya getting a knack for drama now. Don't pay no attention to them naysayers."
He looked back at the body.
"Hey now I seen that look before and ya best not be feelin bad for him. Sheriff says this one was some sorta sailor got caught hitting on his kid and wife up north aways. I got him cheap. But cheap ain't covering costs unless ya prolongerate it. Ya need to give them marks a reason to keep showing up. Maybe even get one or two to bet against ya. Hell. Last it twice as long and I'll feed ya twice as much. Here's an advance."
She threw down a half eaten lion steak as she walked away. It landed at his knee, sawdust sticking to it as it flopped over. She'd made him kill the lion too. An animal that didn't do anything but step in a human’s snare. An animal like him.
"Lion meat," he had heard the marks say. "Killed barehanded by your orc? No fooling?"
"Plenty of fooling," he had heard her say, "but no tricking."
They had eaten it during the greenskins' bout and they ate it still when the [sheriff] paraded in the [bosun]. They started eating faster as the hands were tied together and faster as Orc had taken the life out of the [bosun] as quick as he could and at that moment they stopped eating altogether with their eyes only on his movements and their greasy fingers clenching their plates and their mouths open and salivating around half chewed meat and breaths held until the crack of the vertebrae made them spit up everywhere.
Afterward the dogman helped him dump the body in the place they always had. At the time he didn't think it mattered.
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> Name: Orc
> Race: [Orc]
> Class: [Pitfighter] You best keep back.
> Attributes: [Renown], [Rage]
>
> +1 [Renown]: Blood trades for blood and boy yew ain't never seen so much as what this brudder of mine spilt... (1/10).
> [Renown] Title Gained: [Noname of Nobody] Denotes he who is without legacy.
>
> +1 [Rage]: He was only a child then. How was I to know what he would become... (1/10).
> [Rage] Title Gained: [Raised By Humans] Denotes he who is provoked easily.