He rolled away, clutching his staff, and rose to his feet as fluidly as his aging joints allowed. He blinked several times rapidly, glad that the lingering glare from the flash was fading. He considered unleashing his staff to the fullest, but decided against it, confident that he could still defeat Jolieni without killing her.
Jolieni stood opposite, still holding her sword, but not in the same martial stance she’d been in earlier. She rubbed one eye with the heel of her hand, and then the other with the back of her wrist. Cimozjen wondered whether she was daubing at sweat or tears.
He charged, swinging his staff overhand. She raised her sword to parry, deflecting the swing to her left, but Cimozjen used the shift in momentum to swing the staff around and strike again with the other end. She blocked that swing, and the impact jarred Cimozjen’s hands as it drove the sword down. He swung again and again, sweeping the staff around to strike overhand with either end in turn, beating down her defense.
At the last, she abandoned her attempt at defense and lashed at Cimozjen as the metal-shod staff came down. He struck her squarely atop her shoulder, and her blade caught the heel of his hand where it held the staff. Between the wound and the impact, Cimozjen lost his grip on the staff, but his powerful blow drove Jolieni to the ground. With a flick of her sword she spun the staff off her, and it landed close enough to her that any attempt to recover it could be lethal.
Instead, he stepped back and recovered his sword, for he had planned his angle of attack to drive her away from his primary weapon for just that purpose.
She started to rise as he grabbed his sword, so he lunged in and slashed at her ankle. The impact knocked her foot out from under her and set her down, supine. She started to rise again, but he stepped over her, planting one leg firmly on the blade of her sword. He inverted his grip on his sword and held it to her throat, one hand on the hilt and the other flat against the blade to steady it.
The yells and whistles of the crowd, which had been a fairly steady roar, began to pulse.
Cimozjen saw that Jolieni’s face was indeed spattered with tears. His heart hesitated with compassion, but then he disciplined himself to end the combat. It was truly the most merciful thing to do. “Yield!” he demanded.
She squeezed her eyes, trying to blink away her tears. “Give me Killien back!”
Cimozjen shook his head.
The pulsing noise became gradually comprehensible. “Kill her!” chanted the crowd. “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!”
“Rotting bastard!” She kicked at him to free herself, but he pressed the blade to the skin at the base of her neck.
“Yield, for the Host’s sake,” he shouted. “You fought well, but you’ve lost! Yield with honor!”
Her mouth worked for a moment, the noise of the crowd sounding like nothing so much as a vile, monstrous heartbeat. She gritted her teeth. “I’m sick of this,” she spat, and she shoved at Cimozjen’s foot where it stood on her sword. His foot slid down her blade, throwing him off balance.
His sword plunged into her naked neck.
The crowd roared so loudly that Cimozjen couldn’t even hear himself scream.
Chapter TWENTY-TWO
The Sharper Weapon
Zor, the 26th day of Sypheros, 998
Minrah awoke from her meditation before dawn. She rose, stretched like a spoiled cat, and sauntered over to the window, her bare feet making no noise as she walked. She pulled the curtain back and gazed at the sky, and her keen elf eyes noted the faintest lightening in the east-a slight warmth that crept beneath the cloud cover, the subtle promise of the coming dawn.
She turned and padded quietly over to Cimozjen’s bed, then drew up with a gasp. “Four?” she whispered. She heard the construct shift slightly. “Where is Cimozjen?”
“I presume he is still in the building where we left him.”
“I certainly hope not.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” she said weakly, “because I more or less figured that the fights between folks would, I don’t know, just be fights or something. Like wrestling match with swords. He was supposed to teach Jolieni a lesson about swords. No one was supposed to get killed …”
“Why would you think that?” asked Four. “I killed countless people in the arena.”
“Sure, but you were a prisoner. They didn’t care if you lived or died, so having prisoners fight to the death was fine.”
“As a prisoner, they owned me. Would they not wish their property to remain undamaged?”
“Yes …”
“So if destruction of their own property was acceptable, why would it be unacceptable for non-prisoners to fight to the death?”
“Just … because! It’s not the way they’re supposed to do it!”
“If they had skilled warriors as prisoners, why would they waste them fighting each other, and not free people? And if they wished their slavery to remain unknown, why would they treat any duel differently from any other?”
Minrah tugged at the hem of her jersey, face flustered. “Because that’s not what I thought the challenges were all about!” she wailed.
“What evidence or experience did you base your conclusions on?”
Minrah rounded on her companion. “Quiet, Four! We can’t waste time thinking about that sort of stuff now! Don’t you understand that? There are more important things. We have to find out what happened to Cimmer. If he hasn’t come back, then something really dreadful happened, like he got badly injured.” Her fury spent, she turned and paced helplessly, twisting her fingers around each other. “Or maybe he’s dead. We need to go back and see.”
“We cannot do that,” said Four. “They will not allow me in the building, so that is a part of the adventuring that I cannot participate in. But we can go back to the door together, if that is your wish, and then you can explore inside some more.”
“Without you?” whined Minrah.
“They will not admit me,” he said. Then, with his voice altered to imitate the doorman, he added, “ ‘We do not allow their kind in here. You will have to leave it outside.’ ”
“Fine,” said Minrah. “Let’s go.”
They wended their way back to the entrance to the arena. The rain had stopped some hours before, and only an occasional drip fell from the eaves overhead. Four concealed himself in the alley, while Minrah hesitantly stepped up and knocked. She waited.
And waited.
With a nervous glance in Four’s direction, she knocked again. Waited. Paced, her fingers writhing with impatience and dread. Finally she stopped and turned in Four’s direction. “Why won’t they answer?”
Four stepped out of the shadows. “Perhaps you are too timid in your knock,” he said. “Your muscles and bones are not particularly robust, and are thus ill-suited to making enough noise to attract the attention of the occupants. Permit me to demonstrate.”
The construct walked up to the door, battle-axe in hand. He hefted the weapon and slammed the butt end of the weapon hard into the door. Wham! … Wham! … Crack! And with the last blow, the wood of the door partially buckled under the impact. The warforged inspected the dent and the small split on the wood, nodded in satisfaction, then stalked back over to his hiding place, leaving Minrah staring agog after him.
The view slit in the door slammed open. “Hey!” barked a voice. “What in the ashes do you think you’re doing?”
Minrah whirled back around, and the eyes in the view slit grew wide. She gathered her frazzled wits and smiled as sweetly as she could, given her mental state. “I’m sorry, what was your question?” she asked, stalling for time.
“You-uh … you?” asked the doorman. “Um … you knocked?”
“Why yes, yes, I did. I … had to leave early last night. I wanted to follow up on how things developed.”
“Well, um … almost everyone’s gone, but … um … wait just a moment.” The view slit closed much more gently than it had opened, and after a short time, the door swung wide to admit her.