Redemption of the Dragon

Act 2 – Prophesy or Conspiracy · Chapter 3: Spectacle

The day of the fight began with oil.

Not blood. Not shouting. Not the roar of a crowd or the creak of iron gates. Oil first, warm between Sello's palms and stinking of bitter herbs as he rubbed it into old wounds, stiff joints, and places where men had once been broken badly enough that the body remembered even after the mind tried not to.

"Hold still," Sello said.

Tom sat on a low stool in the infirmary shade while the old healer worked his right hand. Sello's thumbs pressed along the knuckles, found each ugly knot, and worried at it until pain flashed white behind Tom's eyes.

"I am holding still."

"Your face is moving."

"My face is allowed."

Sello grunted. "Not in the arena."

Across the room, Jory sat bare to the waist while Boro bound his shoulder with linen. Not to hold it useless. To remind it of its limits. That was how Boro explained most things: as reminders delivered before consequence. The shoulder had mended, more or less. It moved. It bore weight. It let Jory strike high again, though not as often as he wanted and not without asking payment later.

Boro pulled the binding tight.

Jory did not flinch.

"Too tight?" Boro asked.

"No."

Boro pulled harder.

Jory's jaw flexed. "Still no."

"Good. Pain makes honest men if nothing else can."

Mera leaned in the doorway, sharpening a short practice blade that was not meant for her bout and therefore not meant to be useful. She had painted a black line beneath each eye, making her look half amused, half dead.

"That is a poor saying," she said.

Boro did not look up. "Win your fight and you can correct my poetry."

"If I win, I intend to drink."

"Then lose and stay sober."

Mera smiled at Tom. "He grows tender on fight days. Like bad fruit."

"I noticed."

Boro pointed the tail of linen at both of them. "Talkers die tired. Quiet men die after them."

"Silent men die bored," Mera said.

Jory said, "Dead is dead."

The room quieted for half a breath.

Mera's smile faded just enough to become real. "That it is."

There were eight bouts scheduled at the little arena near the warehouse hollow. Vorys called it a private evening, which meant the crowd would be smaller, richer, drunker, and closer to the sand. Men with coin preferred to watch death where they could hear the breath leave.

Tom and Jory were last.

The main event, Vorys had said.

He had delivered the words as if they were a gift wrapped in silk.

Boro had delivered the truth afterward.

"Main event means they paid to see you," he said while the fighters ate before dawn. "Not to see you win. Not to see you die. To see whether either happens interestingly."

"What are we fighting?" Tom asked.

Boro chewed once, swallowed, and looked at Vorys.

Vorys smiled over his wine. "A lion."

No one at the table spoke.

Even Mera stopped moving.

Jory turned his head slowly. "One lion?"

"For now," Vorys said.

Tom disliked those two words more than the lion.

"You said controlled pairings."

"It is controlled. The beast will enter from the north gate. You will enter from the west. You will have spear, shield, and short blade. Jory will have spear and sword. The arena masters know their work."

Boro's face had closed during this explanation.

Tom noticed.

Vorys noticed Tom noticing.

"Do not look so betrayed," Vorys said. "A lion is expensive. That means I expect you to live."

"That is comfort," Jory said.

"It should be. I am very careful with expensive things."

"No," Jory said. "You are careful with profitable things."

Vorys lifted his cup in salute. "Even better. Profit is more reliable than affection."

Now, hours later, oil on skin and bindings tight, Tom stood in the equipment room while Boro inspected the weapons.

The spear was ash, eight feet, with a leaf-shaped head bright enough to show that someone had polished it for the audience. The shield was round, wood faced with hide, rimmed in bronze. Too light for war. Good for speed. Bad for a lion if the lion decided wood was only a pause between teeth and flesh.

Jory tested his spear with one hand, then the other. His sword was short and straight, Myrish steel, plain hilt, no beauty wasted on property.

"Do not split," Boro said.

"We know," Tom said.

"You know words. I speak of doing."

Jory set the sword in his belt. "One draws, one kills?"

"One holds. One bleeds. One kills if gods are drunk enough to permit it." Boro tapped the spearhead with one thick finger. "Lion goes low before it goes high. Faster than man thinks. Do not think. Move. Shield to face if it leaps. Spear to throat if it charges. Eyes lie. Watch shoulders."

"You have fought one?" Tom asked.

"No."

"Then how do you know?"

Boro's grin showed yellow teeth. "I watched men die."

That was likely the best answer they were going to get.

The fighters were taken to the arena before sunset.

They went by covered wagon, not because Vorys wished them comfort, but because crowds liked surprise and owners liked preventing escape. Iron rings lined the wagon bed. No chains this time. Guards walked alongside anyway. Tom sat with his spear across his knees, shield by his foot, and felt the city around them through sound and smell.

Myr at evening was heat leaving stone reluctantly. Cookfires waking. Oil lamps being lit. Voices lifting as work ended and appetite began. Wheels over paving. A donkey braying. A woman laughing. Somewhere, bells. Somewhere, prayer. The city did not care that men were being taken to fight for its amusement. Cities rarely cared what they were fed.

Jory sat opposite him.

"A lion," Tom said.

"Aye."

"You ever see one?"

"On a shield."

"Helpful."

"It was a very fierce shield."

Tom looked at him.

Jory looked back.

For one breath, the wagon seemed less dark.

Then the wheels turned over a rut, Mera cursed in Tyroshi, and the moment passed.

The arena smelled different before a fight.

Tom had watched from behind the iron screen before. That had taught him noise. This taught him hunger. The place thrummed with it. Men and women filled the close tiers beneath awnings striped red and black. Servants moved with cups and trays. Guards held passages. Musicians near the east wall played pipes and drums loud enough to make thought stumble. Above the common seating, private boxes leaned out over the sand like open mouths.

Vorys's box sat above the west gate.

Empty when Tom first looked.

The red priests were nowhere to be seen.

That should have eased him.

It did not.

The first bout was Mera's.

She fought a man twice her weight with a net and a hooked blade while the crowd shouted advice that would have killed her if she had been foolish enough to accept it. She cut his thigh, then his wrist, then his pride. The last bled longest. When he stumbled, she put the hook behind his knee and dropped him to the sand.

The crowd roared for death.

Mera looked to Vorys's box.

Vorys had arrived by then, seated in blue silk with bronze cups beside him. No red robes flanked him. Only a merchant with curled hair, a woman in green, and two bodyguards.

Vorys lifted one finger sideways.

Mercy.

Mera stepped away.

"Crowd hates mercy first," Boro muttered behind the screen. "Loves it later if you make them wait."

The second bout ended badly.

One of the Volantenes, the one who had once been called Fire-Eater, faced a Norvoshi with an axe and too much calm. It should have been quick. It was not. Fire-Eater slipped in blood from a shallow cut he had made himself by accident, and the Norvoshi's axe took him below the ribs. He lived long enough to be carried out and died before the next bout began.

His enemy, the other Volantene, sat with his back against the wall and laughed once.

Then he put his face in his hands.

The third and fourth bouts blurred into noise. A spear match. A shield match. Men circling. Sand darkening. The crowd rising and falling like weather.

Still no red priests.

Tom watched the entrances. The boxes. The shaded arch near the far passage where he had once seen a red-robed youth watching the fighter screen.

Nothing.

Jory noticed him looking. "Mayhaps they stayed home."

"No."

"No," Jory agreed.

Boro stood between them, arms crossed, face carved from old scar and bad patience. He had said little since they arrived. That troubled Tom more than shouting would have.

The fifth bout put Tall Spear against two men with short swords.

He won beautifully.

That was the only word for it, though Tom thought Tor would have called it ugly just to keep the sky from getting proud. Tall Spear moved like music had gotten into his bones and chosen violence. One swordsman lost his blade. The other lost blood. Neither died. The crowd cheered anyway.

When Tall Spear returned behind the screen, sweat bright on his dark skin, he looked at Tom's spear.

"Do not chase the lion," he said.

"I had not planned to."

"Plans are frightened things. They run when teeth come."

Jory said, "So what stays?"

Tall Spear's smile was tired. "Feet."

Boro grunted approval.

The sixth bout was a comedy by arena standards, which meant no one died and everyone laughed at someone else's fear. The seventh was cruel enough to make up for it.

Then the sand was raked.

Fresh sand was spread over the worst of the blood. Lamps were lit along the wall though the sky still held a narrow strip of evening blue. The pipes stopped. Drums began instead, slow and deep.

Boro turned to Tom and Jory.

"Now."

Tom lifted his shield.

His hand closed around the spear.

Jory rolled his shoulder once. Just once.

"We fight together," Tom said.

"Aye."

"We live."

"Aye."

"We listen."

Jory's eyes moved to the arena gate.

"And if the lion has something useful to say?"

"Then you listen first."

Jory almost smiled.

The west gate opened.

The crowd became a wall.

Tom had thought he knew loud. Battles were loud. The Twins had been loud, even under music and rain. But this was different. War shouted because men were afraid. Crowds shouted because they were not. That made the sound worse.

He stepped into the sand.

Jory came beside him.

And the red robes appeared.

Not walking in. Not entering with ceremony. One moment the private boxes held silk, jewels, painted faces, cups raised toward blood. The next, red stood among them like coals uncovered in ash. A hooded woman beneath the south awning. The old priest with the white beard near the east passage. The young one with braided hair in the shadow behind the musicians. Two men in red beside Vorys in the honored box, close enough that their sleeves nearly touched his blue silk.

Tom's skin went cold.

Jory saw them too.

"There," he said.

"Aye."

Vorys leaned forward in his box.

He did not look pleased.

That was new.

The north gate rose.

The lion came low.

It did not roar at first. That was the first wrong thing. Singers and shield painters made lions roaring beasts, all gold mane and open mouth. This one came silent, shoulders rolling beneath tawny hide, head low, eyes fixed. Its mane was darker than Tom expected, almost brown near the face. Its paws pressed into sand without hurry. Scars marked one flank. The tail flicked once.

The crowd quieted.

Not fully.

Enough.

Tom heard his own breath.

He smelled musk, blood, old meat, and hot sand.

"Do not split," Jory said.

"I remember."

"Good. I hate repeating Boro."

The lion stopped twenty paces away.

Then it roared.

The sound struck Tom in the chest harder than any club. It was not loud in the way men were loud. It was deep, old, and certain of itself. It made the spear in his hand feel very small.

The lion charged.

Fast.

Too fast.

Tom barely had time to set his shield before the beast struck. Weight slammed into wood. Claws tore through hide and scraped bronze. The force drove Tom backward three stumbling steps. His spear point went wide. The lion's breath hit his face, hot and rotten with meat.

Jory's spear flashed in from the side.

The lion twisted before the point found throat. It took the strike along the shoulder instead, shallow but enough to enrage. One paw caught Jory's shieldless side and sent him spinning into the sand.

"Jory!"

The lion turned toward the fallen man.

Tom drove his spear into its flank.

Not deep.

Enough to take its attention.

The lion came for him.

Tom had fought men. Men lied with eyes and shoulders and feet. Men feared pain before it came and sometimes after it should have mattered. The lion did not lie. It wanted what it wanted with all of itself.

That made it simpler.

Not easier.

Simpler.

Tom gave ground, shield high. Claws struck wood. Again. Again. The third blow ripped the shield rim sideways and numbed his arm to the elbow. He thrust low. Missed. The lion's head snapped toward the spear haft, teeth closing with a crack that splintered ash.

Jory came up behind it, blood dark on his side.

"Left!" Tom shouted.

Jory moved left.

The lion moved faster.

Its tail lashed. Its hindquarters bunched. It leapt not at Tom, but back toward Jory, twisting in a way no beast that large should have managed.

Jory dropped flat.

Claws passed over him.

Tom drove forward.

His broken spear haft struck the lion behind the foreleg. The point slid along rib and found flesh. This time it went deep enough.

The lion screamed.

Not roared. Screamed.

The crowd answered.

Jory rolled, came up on one knee, and thrust his spear under the beast's jaw as it turned. The angle was bad. The point glanced off bone and tore through the side of the mouth. Blood sprayed black in lamplight.

The lion struck him.

Jory's spear flew from his hands. He hit the sand hard and did not rise.

Tom stopped thinking.

He threw the ruined shield into the lion's face.

It was a stupid thing.

It worked because it was stupid.

The beast flinched, blind for half a breath. Tom used that half breath. He drew the short blade from his belt and crashed into the lion's wounded side with all the weight he had. Pain tore through his ribs. Claws raked across his thigh. He did not fall.

He stabbed behind the shoulder.

Once.

The blade went in badly, caught in muscle.

Again.

The lion twisted.

Tom lost the blade.

Teeth snapped near his arm.

Then Jory was there.

No spear. No shield. Sword in both hands.

He drove the short sword into the lion's throat from beneath, up and hard, the way a man killed something larger than himself when pride had no room left to stand.

The lion convulsed.

Tom grabbed its mane with his bad hand and held on because letting go meant falling beneath it. Jory shoved deeper. Blood poured over his hands. The beast's claws tore trenches in the sand. Its body hammered against them once, twice, three times.

Then the weight changed.

Living weight fought the world.

Dead weight surrendered to it.

The lion collapsed.

Tom went down with it.

For a moment there was only heat, fur, blood, and the terrible labor of breathing.

Then sound returned.

The arena was breaking itself with noise.

Tom pushed himself upright. His thigh burned where claws had opened him. His hand shook. Jory knelt beside the dead lion with both hands still on the sword hilt, his face splattered red and blank as winter stone.

"Jory."

Jory blinked once.

"Aye."

"You alive?"

"Mostly."

"Good."

"You?"

Tom looked down at himself. Blood. Sand. Torn flesh. Nothing pouring fast enough to terrify him yet.

"Mostly."

Jory let go of the sword and sat back hard.

The crowd chanted something in Myrish. Tom did not know the words, but he knew the shape. They had enjoyed it. Whatever the red priests had wanted, the crowd had gotten blood.

Tom looked up at Vorys's box.

The two red priests beside him were on their feet.

One had both hands raised, not in blessing. In demand. His face was sharp with anger. The other leaned over Vorys, speaking so close that spittle caught lamplight. Vorys sat rigid, smile gone, one hand gripping the carved rail.

Tom could not hear them through the crowd.

He did not need to.

They were arguing.

Angrily.

Vorys said something and cut one hand sideways.

The red priest with raised hands struck the rail with his palm.

Below the box, near the eastern gate, an arena master looked upward.

Then he looked away too quickly.

Tom felt the air change.

"Jory," he said.

Jory followed his gaze.

The south gate opened.

Then the east.

Then a low iron door beneath the north wall.

Boro's voice came from behind the fighter screen, distant and furious. "No."

The first beast through was a boar the size of a small horse, bristled black, tusks capped in dull iron. Two lean striped cats came from the east, lower than the lion but quick as thrown knives. From the north door poured three hounds, starved-looking things with scarred muzzles and eyes too bright.

The crowd screamed.

This time it was not all delight.

Tom reached for his spear.

Half a spear answered.

"Run?" Jory asked.

Tom looked at the open gates, the beasts spreading, the walls too high, the guards at every passage.

"Where?"

"Thought so."

The boar lowered its head.

The hounds came first.

Tom took one with the broken spear haft, jamming the splintered end into its open mouth and driving until it choked on wood and blood. Another hit his leg, teeth closing above the wound the lion had made. Pain tore a shout from him. He smashed the pommel of his short blade down into its skull again and again until it let go.

Jory met the third with the sword pulled free from the lion.

He killed it cleanly.

Then one of the cats struck him from the side and knocked him down.

Tom turned.

The boar hit him.

Not fully. If fully, he would have died. It clipped him with shoulder and tusk, spinning him off his feet. The world became sand, lamps, blood, and sky. He landed badly, breath gone. Something warm ran down his side.

Above, Vorys was shouting now.

Not at the arena masters.

At Boro.

"Boro!" Vorys roared, voice cracking through the crowd. "Now!"

The west fighter gate exploded inward.

Boro came through first with an axe.

Not a practice axe. Not blunted. A real axe, broad-headed and ugly, in the hands of a man who had once been paid to live by knowing where death stood. Behind him came Mera with twin blades, Tall Spear with his spear, the surviving Volantene with a shield and sword, the Norvoshi with tattooed bells down his arms, and three others Tom barely knew except by sweat, bruises, and the shape of their breathing in the yard.

The crowd lost its mind.

Boro did not look at them.

"To Tom!" he shouted.

No one questioned him.

That, more than anything, told Tom what Boro had been before the limp.

Tall Spear reached Jory first.

The cat atop him had one paw hooked into his shoulder binding and jaws snapping for his face. Tall Spear drove his spear through its ribs and pinned it to the sand. Jory rolled clear, blood running from his temple.

Mera came for the other cat.

She did not fight it like a woman fighting a beast. She fought it like a knife fighting a shadow. It sprang. She slid aside. It turned. She cut. It sprang again. This time it took her down, claws tearing across her leather. She screamed, but the scream had anger in it, not fear. Her knife went into its eye.

The boar charged Boro.

Boro stood.

The old fool stood.

"Move!" Tom shouted.

Boro did not.

He waited until the last heartbeat, stepped sideways with that bad knee of his, and brought the axe down behind the boar's ear. The blow would have killed a man. The boar only screamed and turned. Its tusk caught Boro across the thigh, opening him from hip toward knee.

Boro fell.

The boar came down after him.

Tom moved because there was no time to decide not to.

His leg nearly buckled. The hound bite burned. The lion wound burned. Everything burned. He found the dead lion's sword in the sand, or Jory's sword, or anyone's sword. It did not matter. He took it in both hands and drove it into the boar's side as it bore down on Boro.

The blade sank half its length.

The boar turned on him.

Then the surviving Volantene hit it with his shield from the other side, cursing in a voice hoarse with grief. The Norvoshi struck with his axe. Tall Spear's spear flashed. Jory came in low and cut behind the foreleg.

The boar finally went down.

It took the Volantene with it.

One tusk punched through his belly as it fell, lifting him for a breath like a man caught on a hook. He looked surprised more than afraid. Then the boar rolled, and he vanished beneath it.

"No!" someone shouted.

Mayhaps the other Volantene, though he was already dead.

Mayhaps Tom.

There was no time to know.

The last hound had gotten past them.

It found a girl named Resha, one of Vorys's newer fighters, slight and quick and too young to have learned how little quickness mattered when trapped by walls. She had come in with the others carrying only a spear too long for close work. The hound took her by the throat.

Mera killed it a moment later.

A moment was too late.

The arena gates slammed shut again.

Not the fighter gate. The beast gates.

Guards flooded the sand with crossbows raised, because men with crossbows liked courage best after danger had tired itself.

"Back!" one shouted in Myrish.

Boro tried to stand.

His leg failed.

Tom caught him under one arm before he hit the sand.

Boro was heavy.

He was also bleeding badly.

"Fool," Boro said through clenched teeth.

"You?"

"All of us."

Jory appeared on Boro's other side. Blood marked one side of his face, but his eyes were clear.

"Can you walk?"

Boro looked offended. "I can kill."

"Not what I asked."

"Then ask better."

Tall Spear pulled the dead Volantene free from beneath the boar. Mera knelt beside Resha and did not move for a moment. The crowd had gone strange. Some cheered. Some shouted questions. Some were trying to leave. In the honored box, Vorys stood nose to nose with one of the red priests, his face white with fury.

The priest pointed down at the sand.

At Tom.

No.

At the bodies.

At the dead beasts.

At Jory.

At Boro bleeding between them.

Tom could not tell.

That was worse.

"Move," Boro said.

They moved.

The fighters gathered their wounded and their dead under guard. No ceremony. No cheers now from those who mattered. The arena wanted its sand cleaned and its story shaped before morning. Men paid well for blood, but not for confusion. Confusion belonged to owners.

Tom and Jory carried Boro through the west gate.

Behind the screen, Sello was already shouting for linen, wine, needles, fire, and quiet. No one gave him quiet. Mera came in with Resha's blood on both hands. Tall Spear followed with the Volantene's body over one shoulder. The Norvoshi walked last, axe still in hand, daring someone to tell him to put it down.

Vorys arrived before the wagon.

His silk was disordered. One sleeve had torn at the cuff. There was blood on his cheek that did not look like his.

"You live," he said to Tom and Jory.

Tom stared at him.

Jory said, "Two do not."

Vorys's mouth tightened.

For once, there was no joke ready.

Boro laughed from the table where Sello had begun cutting away his trousers.

It was an ugly sound.

"Bad accounting, master."

Vorys turned on him. "Be silent."

"Hard when bleeding."

"I told them one lion," Vorys said.

No one answered.

The words landed badly in the room.

Not because they were false.

Because they might have been true.

Tom looked at Vorys then and saw something he had not expected.

Fear.

Not for them. Not purely. Vorys was not made of sudden mercy. But fear all the same, sharp and angry and dressed in ownership. Something had happened in that box that Vorys had not chosen, and men like Vorys hated the world most when it reminded them choice could be taken.

"The red priests," Tom said.

Vorys's good eye snapped to him.

"Rest," he said.

"They did this."

"Rest."

Jory stepped closer. "Did they?"

Vorys looked from one to the other. Behind him, guards shifted uneasily. Behind them, the arena still roared, though now the sound came muffled through stone.

"You are alive because I chose to protect my property," Vorys said.

Tom's hand tightened on the sword he had forgotten he still held.

Vorys saw it.

So did Boro.

"Put it down," Boro said.

Tom did not move.

Boro's voice roughened. "Tom."

That did it.

Not Vorys. Not guards. Boro, bleeding and pale on the table, using his name as if it belonged to him and not the man who owned the room.

Tom set the sword down.

Vorys watched him for a long moment.

"Back to the ludis," he said. "All of them."

"The dead?" Mera asked.

Vorys closed his eyes briefly. "All."

They returned in three wagons.

No covered surprise now. No neat procession. The wounded lay on straw. The dead lay wrapped in cloaks. Boro cursed every bump in the road until Sello threatened to sew his mouth shut after finishing the leg. Mera sat with Resha's covered head in her lap. Tall Spear held the Volantene's hand, though there was no one left inside it to know.

Tom sat beside Jory near the back.

Neither spoke for a long while.

Myr passed around them in lamplight and shadow. Somewhere people sang. Somewhere people ate late suppers. Somewhere a child begged for a fig and was refused. Somewhere red priests were arguing in rooms Tom could not reach.

"They wanted us dead," Jory said at last.

"Mayhaps."

"Those beasts were not accident."

"No."

"Vorys did not know."

Tom looked toward the front wagon, where Vorys rode on horseback beside the guards, rigid in the saddle.

"No."

Jory leaned his head back against the wagon boards. "That should comfort me more."

"Does it?"

"No."

"Good."

At the ludis, the gates opened before them.

For once, the place looked almost like shelter.

That was how tired Tom was.

Sello took Boro first. Then Jory, despite Jory's protest that his wounds were not worth the old man's time. Then Tom, whose thigh had begun to stiffen badly and whose side had opened where the boar had clipped him.

Needles went in.

Wine went down.

Pain made the night simple.

Later, in the cell, Tom lay on his mat and listened to the ludis fail to sleep.

No one laughed. No one sang. No one argued over dice or insulted the food or cursed Boro's stick. Men breathed. Women shifted. Somewhere Mera spoke softly in Tyroshi, perhaps to herself, perhaps to the dead girl who would not answer. Tall Spear prayed in a language Tom did not know. Boro groaned once and then bit the sound in half.

Jory lay awake across from him.

Tom knew by the shape of the silence.

"Resha," Jory said.

The name came so quietly Tom almost missed it.

He turned his head.

"Aye."

Jory stared up at the dark. "Her. The Volantene. Boro's leg, mayhaps. Us, if those gates had stayed open longer."

Tom thought of red robes appearing all at once. Of priests angry in the box. Of beasts pouring through doors. Of Vorys shouting Boro's name like a man calling for a shield after selling every shield he owned.

"For what?" Tom asked.

"That is the part I dislike."

Tom looked toward the barred window. No stars showed. Only a square of Myrish dark and the faint red pulse of some lamp beyond the yard.

The dead had followed him from Westeros.

Now Myr had started adding its own.

"We live," Tom said.

Jory did not answer at once.

Then, from the dark: "Aye."

"We listen."

"Aye."

Tom closed his bad hand. It hurt. It worked.

"And when we know what they want-"

"We decide what it costs them," Jory finished.

The words should have steadied him.

They did not.

Outside, somewhere beyond the walls, a bell rang once. Then again. Then stopped.

No one in the ludis slept for a long time.

Previous Chapter | Chapter List | Next Chapter

---

Disclaimer: Frostfyre is a non-commercial fan fiction project inspired by a Realm of Thrones campaign for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. All rights to those original settings and characters remain with their respective owners.