INTERLUDE 8E: THE SHOW
“Patience. Do you comprehend what it takes, to know the future’s design, to watch it unfurl like a sail to catch the breeze? Hasty is the hand that snatches at the rope before the wind is ready. I will not see the sail torn free. I will guide this boat. And I will see it safely to shore.”
– from ‘The Notes of Timesnatcher’, recovered after the Fall
Before a bout began, each gladiator entering the arena would first be checked for pre-applied enhancements. Dispels were used to counter any such effects, and even the mere presence of magical augmentation was frowned upon, taken as an attempt at cheating – it was often a factor in deciding to ban a contender outright. Only after they’d gone through the cleansing ritual would the correct spells be placed upon the gladiator, depending on the fighter’s position in the games. The earliest bouts of the afternoon, conducted when the sun was at its hottest, would usually offer no such quirks other than a divination screen – but when the day began to fade, the slaves would be put back in their chains and the veterans would be unleashed, with increasing amounts of magical aids. Twelve-foot titans would clash, swords longer than most men were tall, the clamour of the encounter deafening. Men and women with whips and spears of living fire would meet in ferocious combat, seeming to dance a lethal dance upon the sands, as the crowds chanted and roared. Healing-spells and workings that increased endurance, durability; these were always given to the last warriors of the day, the most skilled, those whose match the crowd would want to last more than five minutes.
Abathorn feared that his wouldn’t be a very long combat. He and Ovax had been chosen for the final game. And Ovax was going to lose in less than sixty seconds, Abathorn worried, unless he did his best to drag it out. Despite the augmentations making it difficult to be permanently harmed, his opponent was overly-concerned with his appearance. Abathorn always tied back his glinting, rust-red hair in order to better display the lines of his wounds, criss-crossing his proud, narrow face, but Ovax was handsome, a tall, buff, blond spectacle of a human. A few lost body parts, a few ugly scars, and the coward would be raising his cupped hand palm-up, the sign of submission to the director of the games to halt the match and declare the victor. Arch-druidry would regrow the severed limbs, as good as new, but, whether by incompetence or deliberate policy, they’d always leave scars behind. Gladiators were supposed to be scarred, tough-looking… Ovax was relatively new to the games, but was doubtless an experienced warrior, with serpentine reflexes and the frame of a demi-god. Yet it was a matter of attitude – the human was no true gladiator. He would be better suited to the morning games, performing for the children with the actors.
No. Ovax was no Abathorn.
Abathorn built his legend upon the skulls of his foes. Fourteen times, the elf’s opponents had perished under his axe-blade and the heel of his iron-shod boot. Fourteen times – an unprecedented tally in living memory. It wasn’t that the Thorn, as his fans called him, was particularly brutal. It was just a matter of technique. It was his job, to win fights, and to make it look good while he did it. It wasn’t his job to worry in the moment of action about whether or not the druids would be able to fix the injuries he inflicted on his opponents. That could come after.
I will cut his face, Abathorn decided. A slash across the mouth, opening both his pouting lips, and he will raise submission. Another enemy defeated for the Thorn.
The elf stood in the privacy of the dusty corridor, looking out through the wooden slats at the women currently fighting on the sands.
The tattoo-covered knife-wielder in leather and her heavily-armoured opponent were crowd-pleasers, agile and deadly in their own way, equipped with both the tools and the finesse to draw whoops and hollers from the assembled thousands – but they weren’t capable of the same feats as the men under equal enhancement. Abathorn was lithe, his elven anatomy streamlined like an eagle’s; he was no muscle-bound lead-brain, but when the druidic strength was in his veins he was more powerful than any orc, his narrow limbs becoming tight knots of steel; and Ovax would be stronger still.
Strength is for amateurs, for pleasing the ladies, he thought with a wry smile on his face. The killer-instinct – that is what separates the wheat from the berry from the bramble.
As he watched on through the slats, the tattooed knife-fighter slipped through her opponent’s defences, darting in to slice at throat and face. He could see that this was a feint – the chain hauberk and lowered visor made the success of such blows improbable, if not impossible. But the armoured gladiator’s instincts misled her, forcing her to twist away, an automatic reaction that betrayed her –
Exposing the unarmoured armpit, baring the entry-point for a weapon that could seek the lungs, even the heart…
The tattooed woman sank her longer blade, the serrated dirk, deep inside the armoured one’s chest cavity. She danced back out of range as her opponent growled in pain and dropped to one knee, red wine fountaining from beneath her arm.
The moment the loser released her hold on her mace, dropping it to the sand in order to grab at the dagger’s handle and yank it loose against all wise advice – in that moment the knife-fighter danced back in.
The shorter blade drove in at the loser’s face, angled to slip beneath the visor –
Ah. Not the loser.
Abathorn raised an eyebrow as a mail-gauntleted fist gripped the tattooed woman’s wrist – she tried to switch knife-hands but the motion was too clumsy, too desperate –
The metal visor went crunching into tattoo-girl’s face as she received the super-strength head-butt full on, destroying her nose, sending at least two or three teeth flying, glinting like chips of mica in the dying sunlight. The thunder of the blow resounded across the filled stands; the short knife was dropped to the sand.
Another headbutt and its wielder joined it, the leather-clad woman now motionless on the ground.
The armoured gladiator threw off her helm and raised both fists to the sky in victory, roaring like a lion, the blood pouring from her armpit slowed now to a trickle. Healers rushed forth from their gate onto the sands as the crowd’s jubilation was made manifest, a drumming of feet against boards unlike any other, a great uproar of voices lifted in acclaim and unrest – unrest, from those whose bets had turned against them, those who’d gambled on the lightly-armed gladiator and lost.
Abathorn smiled thinly. He liked the upset. The shock, the surprise. The arena wasn’t just blood and sand and screams. It was intrigue. It was a contest, not just of skill and sinew but sweat. Resolve wasn’t something that could just be taught. The willingness to enter the fray was only half of it. You had to be willing to kill. Willing to die. Willing to do anything to win. And even then you would lose, lose, lose. The other guy wanted it more. The other guy was a gladiator.
Abathorn, undefeated in seven years, knew well the burning need, the desire that was as a chariot, horses crazed with fury, running amok over every inch of his thoughts, untrammelled, trampling all in its path until his mind was a clear pane reflecting only blood. He was the chariot, he was the madness in the horse’s eye. Death was his gift. He would offer it to all who opposed him.
He didn’t wear much by way of armour; in that he and Ovax were alike. But where Ovax exposed his body out of vanity – going almost topless with just a single shoulder-guard, his helmet, bracers, belt, loincloth and boots – Abathorn did so out of practicality. The elf wore clothes, like any rational creature ought. His kind, like the dwarves, suffered less than humans when subjected to extremes of temperature, but wizardry was employed to keep the arena of Firenight Square climate-controlled. As such he just wore a long-sleeved black tunic, black hose and boots. Rain falling on the grounds was evaporated fifty feet up, and illusory illumination was used when, like now, the sky was anything less than epic. Abathorn and Ovax’s contest, being the last of the day, would be bathed in bloody dusk-light. Already, now that they were approaching the final matches, the false sky was subtly changing.
He wondered whether Ovax was at his gate, whether he was waiting, watching the sky deepen towards red… No. He would be signing bits of paper, talking it up with the crowd from his booth.
Cretin.
Abathorn had no doubt about it – Ovax was the more-popular fighter, despite his status as a relative newcomer. He was up-and-coming, his name on the lips of the noble and merchant alike. Abathorn was old news, a reliable dog past its prime. Or would’ve been, by now, had he been human. But Abathorn wasn’t even a hundred yet, and for his kind that made him a positive youngster. He had decades of combat left in him, he was certain – unless someone gave him an irreparable injury, or decapitated him, like he’d done to a fellow elf back in ninety-five…
Extended supernatural lifespans meant little when you were down one head.
He could remember, the redebonwood of his home, the Rhintaphril Dome of Drathdanis that preserved the skies of the otherworld in all their splendour. He could remember, the long years of his adolescence. The martial training, the magical schooling. Once it became apparent it was all a joke – that the archmages of his kind ruled in every field, and that it had always been so, curse the Leafkeepers! – he’d abandoned Etherium’s mirror, the glades and gloom, in favour of this. The grime and glory of Mund. Sure, the place was packed with archmages, but humans had a disdain for mages that wasn’t evident amongst his own kind. Here he could stand out. The arena of heroes. A place he could be someone, a man with a fearsome reputation, despite the fact he could never quite master the subtleties of elementalism, mesmerism, restoration and the rest… For him it had always been the sword and shield, the two-handed axe.
He looked down at his weapon, rolled its haft between his thumb and fingers and released it, flicking so that it spun briefly in the air, catching it again, re-familiarising himself with its weight, the best spots to place his hands. He practised with it every day, but it never hurt, especially after it’d been re-spellbound with new effects.
The axe’s metal-core shaft was a little over three feet long, designed to be wielded with hands spread as well as hands together, black leather-bound grips dotted along its length. The head was overlarge and looked far too heavy for someone with Abathorn’s slender frame to swing more than two or three times a minute – but the eldersteel was lighter than oak, its edges sharper than diamond. Edges plural: whilst there was a single primary blade, it sprouted a mass of jagged, almost random-looking points and curves, cleverly designed for both maximum intimidation and maximum cutting-power. It was an elf-axe, designed to funnel flesh and tear apart bone, capable of slicing through men like they were already ghosts on the air.
And that was before the thunder-spells had been bound to it, before the dark storm-cloud was set to linger about the head. The magic set little arcs of lightning crackling between the tips of its hooks and along the arc of the main chopping-crescent. It would strike with the hurricane-force, bowl over his opponent with every blow that landed against Ovax’s weapon or invisible shield.
The invisible shields… they were a new-fangled invention. Isiol, Abathorn’s manager, had promised him he wouldn’t have to wear one – he had no need of it – but he knew he’d be equipped with one all the same, just like last time. A buckler, a disc of wood and steel no more than twelve inches across, strapped to his forearm.
It was stupid. They never made him use a buckler before they’d invested in invisible ones. Now they insisted. ‘Makes the crowd go wild!’ ‘Is he gonna die, or isn’t he?’ Abathorn understood the point – the mystery in the moment, the anticipation, whether the seemingly lethal blow might be turned aside by the unseen barrier – but he saw it as a step too far on the slipperiest of slopes. What was next – invisible weapons? Invisible opponents?
He watched awhile longer, noting every minute mistake of positioning, every overly-zealous step and swing; then he went back to his room to take a cup of chilled water from the scantily-clad serving-girl. He sat down on his couch and let her work out some of the kinks in his neck muscles, closing his eyes, entering the meditative trance familiar to all true-blood elves.
The leaves upon the trees that do not fall.
The wind about the leaves that does not falter.
The starlight in the wind that does not fracture.
The wings riding the starlight that –
He heard the trumpets, ringing clear across the arena. He stood, thanking the girl quietly and returning along the short corridor to the gate, to hear the announcement.
Hodan Finchalain, the director of today’s games, was at the front of the central balcony reserved for the most-esteemed of the guests: Lords and Ladies of the Arrealbord and those few guildsmen and geniuses who rivalled them in influence. The director held up his hand, the pink gems of his rings flashing in the sunset’s glowering illumination.
“People of Mund, rejoice! For now upon the day’s long-awaited Apex we have a firm favourite of these stands! An axe-thirster unparalleled! A deft blade unlike any other! He has been called the Bloody Thorn, the Crimson Killer, the Head-Taker! We here who know him best, call him what we have since the day he first walked these sands! The Red Elf! Yes, ladies and gentlemen! We welcome Abathorn, the Red Elf, and invite him once more to walk the path of death!”
The chains behind the walls rattled as they were pulled, and the gate drew back. He stepped out into the ruddy brilliance and swung his axe overhead. The mild breeze caught his ponytail, whipping his sparkling ruby mane about.
He roared, an incoherent sound. The crowd roared in response.
The Thorn inside him came to life.
Mages ran forward from a side gate to outfit him with his invisible shield, his complement of augmentation-spells. He stood there like a statue, gazing at Ovax’s gate, feeling the enhancements trickle into meat of muscle and marrow of bone. He growled, narrow chest heaving.
“Aaaand his opponent. You all know who it is. You’ve all heard his name whispered about the city these last weeks! Here he is – graciously stepping in for the absent Ovax – the Wanderer, the Dragonslayer, the Mystery Man… it’s Phanar of N’Lem!”
The crowd roared, maybe even more loudly than they had for him.
“What?” Abathorn barked.
“Didn’t they tell you?” one of the assistants said with something of a grin. “Ovax is ill. Upset stomach.” The young mage started fastening the invisible bucker to his left arm. “Nothin’ we’ve come up with is shifting it.”
“Nerves, I reckon,” another assistant said, wearing a similar grin as she dusted Abathorn with some silvery powder. “Ain’t got nothin’ fer that.”
The gladiator just smiled in wry amusement.
Of course it’s nerves.
“Your manager’s supposed to have filled you in… Can’t believe they got Phanar at the last minute, can you? I hear the bookies are having a square day.”
“Har-har. I heard a while back that he was angling for a career in the games.” The mage tested the buckler’s fastenings. “But jumping right to the front of the queue like that –”
“He knew Feychilde, and Killstop.” The mage winked knowingly as she stowed her magic dust. “Last I heard, they’d left the city on a secret mission to kill a dragon fer him…”
“Don’t be daft. You heard Everseer.”
“Yeah, like that was actually her.”
“Come off it, Mur. We’ve been over this twice already…”
Abathorn let the magic-users’ conversation slip into the background, focussing his thoughts on his opponent. He could castigate Isiol later, laugh about Ovax’s cowardice later too. For now, he had to concentrate.
He could see Phanar out there on the sands opposite him, being ministered to by his own group of assistants, his invisible shield being fitted to his arm. Abathorn’s elven eyes made the fifty yards between them more like twenty, allowing him an opportunity to study this new foe.
They’d both been augmented with druidry in terms of their size, stature: the Dragonslayer was almost as tall as the elf, at a little over ten feet at the shoulder. He had a frame like Ovax’s, only narrower at the hips, and his physique was hidden by a long, belted gambeson. His raven hair was tied back, like Abathorn’s, and his gaze was cool, calm, despite the burning darkness in his eyes. That gaze went piercing right back at Abathorn, as though he weren’t the only one gifted with elvensight.
Here was a true warrior, he knew. An adventurer with the killer-instinct. A man used to getting his hands dirty with dragon’s blood.
But did he know what it was to be a gladiator? To get his hands dirty with men’s blood? To focus that killer-instinct, not at a fearsome monster, but at an honourable fighter like himself? No. No, he did not.
Abathorn smiled, resolved that this change of opponent would prove to be a pleasant surprise.
Phanar was about to get the shock of his life. And it could well be his last.
What will they call me when I’m done? the elf wondered. Dragonslayerslayer?
Ismethyl power my hand. Let my axe fall cleanly. Let the steel drink deep, and be satiated.
“Shall the cupped hand be raised – or more than a few cups of blood?” Finchalain’s gem-studded rings gleamed again as he shook his fist, bellowing the words from the high balcony. “What shall the gods make of meeting of Slayer and Killer? You alone shall watch with living eyes this climactic showdown! Let the Apex begin!”
The vast ring of Mundians cheered and brayed and howled. The mage-assistants hurriedly withdrew. And Abathorn took a long step towards his target.
Phanar matched him, step for step, until they were just twenty feet apart. When you’d been almost doubled in height, twenty feet started to look like ten.
Abathorn eyed his opponent’s warhammer. It was no common weapon, as far as weapons went in general, but, from a man with such an illustrious (and short) adventuring career, the elf had expected something more. It was clearly taken off the racks in the arena armoury, an old, plain thing with a heavy block-end for battering, a pick-tooth on the other face for piercing. Neither would be impactful here – the poor newcomer had handicapped himself before he’d even begun. Even the hammer’s icy ensorcellment was of more use against an armoured foe.
“Interesting choice of weapon, Dragonslayer,” he called, circling.
The dark-eyed, dark-haired man reciprocated, circling in like fashion, but in response to his words he received only a slight shrug.
Quiet one, then, Abathorn thought. Good.
Talking was for poseurs. There could be some value in a decent taunt but fighting was what the crowd had come to see, so fighting was what he’d give them.
Spades of it. Enough to bury the human.
His first strike was a whirling trick; he launched himself into the air, barrelling forwards, and in the moment of weightlessness he twisted, using the force of his swing to propel his body about, carrying his axe-blade towards his foe’s neck at stupendous speed while he stayed out of range. It was a move that only fatigued his muscles to a small degree – he could perform the manoeuvre a hundred times in a row, at least – yet it looked flashy, and had been known to catch opponents off-guard.
Not Phanar. The Dragonslayer didn’t back away as did most when confronted with such a sudden assault; Phanar seemed to know exactly what Abathorn was doing. He raised the tip of the icy warhammer in his hands to ward off the blow, jarring the grip in Abathorn’s hands, and stepped in instead, driving the butt of the hammer-shaft up at the elf’s sternum.
Abathorn landed early, leaning away to avoid getting his breastbone shattered and to recover his balance. He skipped back, circling again, reassessing.
The next three times axe met hammer, it was Phanar slapping away Abathorn’s testing swipes, Phanar defending against Abathorn’s slowest slashes. They weren’t even attacks that deserved to be parried – the adventurer needn’t have wasted his energy, could’ve just slipped aside – but the Dragonslayer appeared to be overly-cautious. He didn’t have the mannerisms of a warrior used to fighting man-on-man like this; his reflexes were those of someone conditioned to fight monsters, to stay back, avoid being struck at all costs.
Not a bad line of thinking, exactly, but not something that would preserve his life in the gladiatorial arena. This space required decisiveness. The only way out was through – through a shower of your enemy’s blood.
Circling. Circling.
Abathorn let that need, that desire for decisiveness grow in Phanar’s mind. The elf stayed on the offensive, continually offering trivial attacks, seeking to lull his opponent into a false sense of security, trap Phanar in a passive state until his first action could be drawn out of him.
Five. Six. Seven more times, metal rang out against metal. More and more, now, it swept through empty space that until moments earlier had contained an arm, torso, head.
The Dragonslayer made his move, an amateurish swing at Abathorn’s neck with the blunt side of the hammer-head.
As the elf easily darted inside the swing, he realised the human’s move wasn’t so amateurish as he’d first gathered. Phanar was stepping around too, as if he’d expected Abathorn to move in, and he’d arrested the over-swing, bringing the pick-end back down at Abathorn’s temple. The weapon trailed a cloud of blue-white frost, arcing down at the elf.
Not quite so amateurish, but still amateurish. The elf easily slipped aside. Phanar hadn’t left himself open to a mortal strike but Abathorn’s axe-head sank deep into the man’s spell-reinforced ribs.
The thunder rang out with the axe-head’s fall, a hollow boom and a rush of cold wind – and the Dragonslayer was tossed across the sand. Phanar somehow twisted in the air, landing on his feet – an impressive trick, to be sure – but he was still skidding, still off-balance.
Still wounded.
A vast ‘oooh’ went up from the crowd.
Phanar was instinctively pressing his elbow against the blood seeping out of his gambeson, giving up the utility of his shield-arm just to put pressure on his injury.
Does he not even comprehend the magical protections under which we have been placed?
Abathorn cocked his head.
“You do not need to do this,” he said plainly to Phanar, pointing with the axe to the Dragonslayer’s side. He was speaking too quietly for the crowd to hear; they’d think he was mocking his opponent or something. “The spells, they will stop the bleeding.”
The adventurer’s dark eyes regarded him warily, and the arm pressing against the wound didn’t falter.
He believes I attempt deception.
Humans… Honourless humans.
He raised his voice.
“You send these untried morsels to face me, to face the sting of the Thorn!” Abathorn sighed, then pulled at the straps on his forearm. “Doubtless he is a brave man, but a gladiator?”
He saw Phanar’s disbelieving, worried eyes as he undid the final strap and hurled the invisible buckler aside. The sound of it landing was unmistakeable.
The crowd cried out, half enthusiastically, half in alarm.
Phanar glanced down at his side, and slowly moved his arm, as if testing the truth of Abathorn’s earlier statement.
“You send them to die!” the elf roared.
Uncaring how Phanar reacted, whether he reacted, Abathorn threw caution to the winds and swung meaningfully for the first time, right at the man’s neck.
Phanar tipped his head back at just the last moment, the axe-blade screaming through the air just in front of his face – the storm-cloud carried by the weapon blinding him momentarily –
The elf, noting this, spun on his heel, bringing the axe about again. This time Abathorn crouched as he whirled rather than leaping, fearful of a counter-strike while his back was turned, and reticent to reuse the same techniques more than once.
As he completed the motion, coming around to see his opponent again, he was disappointed to find his axe was cutting through empty space – Phanar was mid-leap, springing over the attack –
The very end of the warhammer – the blunted tip – gave him a poke right in the brow, and Abathorn fell back, sent sprawling in the sand with frostburn searing across his forehead.
Phanar landed like a cat, instantly resuming a stance of perfect equilibrium.
“I thought we were to give them a show,” the newcomer said levelly, no hint of breathlessness in his charcoal voice. He patted his injured side.
He mocks me! Abathorn hissed internally, looking up at the Dragonslayer. First he steals Ovax’s Apex; now he feigns weaknesses he does not possess!
We shall see what weaknesses you do possess, Phanar of N’Lem. We shall see them, expose them for all the world to witness!
When Abathorn got to his feet, it was a liquid flicker, a twist of rust-red hair and crackling steel. The axe fell, again, and again.
The stranger, the Mystery Man, the dropping Slayer of Ord Ylon – Phanar parried, evaded, and responded, warhammer flying.
In the end the contest was one the crowd could scarcely see, but that didn’t stop it being the highlight of the day’s games. Only the most battle-hardened amongst the spectators would be able to discern the delicate placement of the contestants’ feet, the patternless figures described by their weapons’ dance – and such combat veterans were themselves a rarity in Mund, especially amongst the well-to-do audience drawn to the arena. All this, Abathorn knew. But little could he care. He would prefer that they couldn’t follow the action. That they couldn’t see the way the human outdid him, dancing faster through the forms, weaving the warhammer such that every instant was to Abathorn a work of art.
More than once, as he twisted to avoid receiving a tremendous blow that would’ve stopped the fight, the elf almost caught himself stopping and staring, so beautiful was the Dragonslayer’s command of his brush, the mastery with which he painted lines of death.
In any other circumstances Abathorn might’ve respected the man, but it was insult upon insult, to have this brought about on his head, him, the Thorn himself –
This is what indignity feels like.
The crowd were screaming. He felt the weight of their expectations, and his own. That weight crushed down upon him, upon his mind, worse than the blow of any warhammer, any sledgehammer. It broke him more completely than his spine being snapped.
Not one strike had landed, yet he’d already lost.
The very instant respect gave way to enmity, hope gave way to fear – and he started getting sloppy. As Abathorn writhed away from the spike the Dragonslayer reversed the swing, and the elf felt the crunch, the vile, nauseating sensation of Phanar’s weapon striking home –
The coldness. The blunt face of the hammer’s head smacked him directly in the left shoulder-blade. Ice was instantly spreading through the bruised bone, stealing his breath, limiting his movements; before he could catch his balance he was stumbling, and Phanar swept his feet out from under him with a single lazy arc of the warhammer.
He growled, gasping for air, and his enemy slowly paced away, giving Abathorn chance to get himself together.
In the elf’s experience the crowd usually howled for blood, usually looked on any effort to show mercy as a crime. But this was no mercy. This was degradation. And so for Phanar they whooped and shrieked, men and women roaring in glee, all of them seemingly in support of the newcomer’s casual retreat.
They approved of him. They wanted him to humiliate Abathorn. To take one of their heroes of the arena and make him crawl.
If that is what they want of me… I shall… disappoint them!
Anger overrode fear, and Abathorn pushed himself back up to his feet.
“You are a skilled fighter, Dragonslayer!” he cried, rolling his injured shoulder, freeing up some of the frost caked onto his tender skin. “But don’t think I’m done yet.”
“I had thought you would stay afoot for longer,” Phanar said dubiously.
That did it.
There was only so far that professional rivalry could take a man. Only a fraction of a warrior’s true potential came to the surface when fighting a foe in the arena, and it was the gladiator’s art to fan that candle-flame into a roaring bonfire, feel the need to destroy the opponent.
Now Abathorn was aflame. Now he fought not for the spoils or the crowd’s approval. Not for honour or prestige.
He fought because he wanted to cut Phanar’s head off.
The axe sang, a lightning-borne song of lamentation, and it drank deep of the adventurer’s blood.
Again and again, Phanar took injury, suffering for the crowd’s sport. His gambeson was torn across the front, back, under the left arm…
“You see, Dragonslayer!” Abathorn grinned, pursuing his retreating prey across the field of sand. “The gods croon, and not for you! For your soul! I seal your fate.”
Phanar suddenly parried his next swing, raising the warhammer with such immovable solidity that Abathorn almost lost his grip when the two weapons met, the shaft of the axe almost jarred from his hands. The elf skipped back two paces.
I need to find an opening for his head, his neck… Naught else will suffice.
“Come, then, Manslayer,” Phanar replied. “Do what you might to avert my fate. I fear it was sealed long ago, before your birth, before the birth of your grand-sires. I was not made to test an axe’s edge.”
Abathorn spat on the ground between him and his foe.
What did this insolent human know of elvenkind? Elves could only procreate for a brief period, once they entered the synonadine trance, around their centenary. It was true that his grandparents were probably dead by now – they’d been old when Abathorn was born, and elderly before he left the lights of the Dome behind to explore the world. But they’d been over three hundred years old.
The Dragonslayer really is full of himself, isn’t he?
The elf pressed the attack – three heavy, overhand blows, the last disguised by a shifting of his weight that made it look as though he were about to follow the second with a horizontal chop. Phanar only just caught the third with the rim of his shield, and for a moment Abathorn thought he really was about to cleave the Dragonslayer’s head in two.
The human’s black coat was drenched in his blood, and yet when Abathorn danced away for a momentary reprieve Phanar merely started unstrapping the shield on his own arm.
“This thing, it is cumbersome.”
Abathorn, panting for air, heard Phanar’s murmured explanation, the dispassionate distance of the adventurer’s voice, and stared on in dismay as he ripped the thing from his wrist.
The crowd sucked in their breath, an anti-sigh, suspense itself made manifest –
“And useful.”
Phanar brought his hand down in a whipping motion.
The elf ducked, his reflexes fast-enough to let him slip below the spinning, unseen shield that was zooming at his teeth –
The instant he recovered from the evasive manoeuvre, Phanar was there. Right there, in his face. Or rather, his warhammer was.
It was the mercy of it that smarted worst, he decided later, once his teeth had been replaced, his jaw realigned. He’d been left lying there in the healing rooms while the crowd hailed the victor, his frustrations left to bubble on the stove of his mind. Phanar might’ve used the sharp end. He might’ve granted him a good death, a proud end – a gladiator’s glory. But no. For all his surprising showmanship, for all his martial expertise, the human from ‘N’Lem’ was no gladiator. Phanar used the blunt end. Phanar spared him for this – this life, this pointlessness. A tarnished existence. A broken tally.
I had to lose, in the end.
There was no other conclusion, was there? No winning streak went unbroken. No gladiators died of old age.
But the hatred! He’d never felt it like this before. Had it truly come to this?
The end?
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