Page 30 of Court of Talons
“You were here?”
“I was here.”
He ducks his head and reaches for my hand, pulling me into a thicker knot of people. “We’ll never get there if we keep following this crowd. This way is shorter.”
I grimace as he threads his way behind a series of tents. A small canal trails below, and the water stinks of rotten vegetables. I squint down the length of it, and Caleb tugs me on. “Canal system starts farther up the mountain, with snow runoff. They say the cisterns beneath the First House are epic—that there used to be a whole network of aquifers through here, back when this plain flooded on a regular basis. As it is, we still get enough. Water dumps through here and eventually makes its way to Murky Creek, which feeds into the Grand Garrapy River. The few weeks of wear the canal gets from the tournament it can handle, but it helps if we get rain.”
The skies stretch out above us, cloudless. “So, this is going to get worse before it gets better,” I say.
“A lot worse. But it’s still quicker to cut through this way.”
He’s right about that. We climb out of the trench a few minutes later, and I realize we’re right behind the coliseum. There’s no one entering through this archway, which leads to a steep set of steps. “Where is everyone?”
“Not here. The pits are all ground level—well, not really pits, like I say. But cordoned-off fight zones. These stands were carved to watch the Divhs, not the fighters. Much easier to be on the ground for the pit fights. Lots more to see.”
As if to reinforce his words, a cheer sounds dead ahead, and Caleb darts off toward another door. I find myself staring high at the immense coliseum walls. “They use this only once a year?”
“Yes, but it’s maintained the whole year through,” Caleb says, his gaze also going up, though for just a moment. “Otherwise, they run the risk of animals and squatters, which creates its own problems. Can’t have a bunch of squatters here. Men with no good work to sustain them, and the women! Can you imagine a hundred or so of those, all of ‘em with squalling babies, cooking and making a mess of everything? It’d stink to the sky inside of two weeks.”
The comment is so off-handed, so casually disdainful, it nearly takes my breath away. “I hardly think—” I begin, but in truth I don’t know what to say. How would Merritt respond to such a comment? Is this how my brother spoke with the other boys?
Caleb’s now several steps ahead of me, and he shouts back excitedly. “Come on then! Here we are.”
Before I can stop him, he races down a short corridor, where we have the briefest respite of darkness. Then suddenly we’re out into the wide-open tournament field, filled with fighting men.
And it’s madness.
Chapter 12
The entire length of the great tournament field is teeming with cheering, shouting people. The place smells of sweat and hysteria. Tight around my left bicep, my warrior band begins to chafe against my skin, and I shake the feeling off. This is not my place.
Easily a hundred platforms have been erected across the space, each surrounded by rings of people. There are no women here, I notice instantly, but men and boys of every age, all seeming to shout at once.
“Look, look!” Caleb tugs my arm and points to the nearest platform. Two boys, barely older than fifteen, grapple with each other in an almost brutal frenzy. “You have to be twelve to enter the pit fighting rounds for the first time, and no older than twenty-five.”
“Twenty-five?” I look at him in horror. “They can’t put those children against grown men.”
“They don’t. There’s an overall winner, but also age winners. Everyone gets a chance, if they’re good enough.” His smile goes a little sideways. “Well, almost everyone.”
A scream to my left draws my attention. One of the boys struggles upright, wheeling away from the first and holding hisnose. Blood gushes between his fingers, and his eyes are wide and glazed with pain. My stomach churns as the first boy also staggers to his feet. He clenches his hands into unsteady fists, but a bell clangs to the side as he surges forward. Both boys stiffen, and a man wearing gold and black swings up onto the platform. He says something I can’t make out over the cheering crowd and points at the boy whose nose wasn’t broken.
While that one lifts his hands shakily above his head, the other boy seems to come back to himself. With a snarl of pure rage, blood still streaming down his face, he launches himself at the first boy again, and the two of them go down, kicking and punching. Caleb pulls me away as I see the first boy’s head crack against the surface of the platform once, twice.
“No good can come from that,” he says. “Let’s move on.”
“But the fight—it had stopped,” I protest. “How can they keep fighting if the fight had stopped?”
He shoots me another odd glance, and once again I realize I’ve said the wrong thing. Panic pools deep in my stomach as Caleb eyes me, clearly expecting me to say more. When I don’t, he fills in the suddenly fraught silence between us as if there’d never been a pause.
“You’re looking at it the wrong way. Pit fights are supposed to mimic war, not some stupid game. While men still stand, they can fight. The official was slow and stupid, or he had a dog in the hunt, to handle the end of the round that way.”
“A dog.”
Caleb shrugs. “If he bet on the boy with the busted nose, he would’ve wanted to see him win. But once a fighter is dazed like that, the fight should be called. It’s not interesting to watch anyone pummel a sack of meat.”
Despite my best efforts, I make a face, but Caleb isn’t looking at me anymore, thank the Light. He’s on his toes to see the next platform. “If he wanted the boys to keep fighting, he got hiswish, is all I’m saying. We should come over this way. There’s something strange up there.”
Conversation proves impossible as we plunge back into the crowd. Since we’ve entered in the center of the stadium grounds, we’re relatively close to the two large wooden towers and stone overlook where the Lord Protector had loomed above the banded soldiers in the first Divh battle. I stare up at the towers, stunned by their size. They’d seemed big from my vantage point in the stands, but with me on the ground, they dwarf me. Everything at the tournament is built to an impossibly large scale.