Page 50 of Faithless
If I could see his face, I might have recognized him. Or maybe not, since he clearly hadn’t been part of the regular gladiator population for a long time.
Sometimes, if we needed disciplinary action, we weren’t thrown out in the middle of the pit right away. No, depending on the pitmasters’ mood, gladiators would be tossed into a windowless dungeon with no light or human interaction for months. On top of the isolation, they would be creatively tortured. I’d heard stories of electrocution, sleep deprivation, forced injections of drugs, and all manners of things that weren’t necessarily painful but fucked up a person’s mind beyond saving.
It made me think of Hudson, Devin and my friend who’d been left behind when we were shipped off to this place. He’d been separated from us weeks before to fulfill an esteemed, special purpose, as they had said. We never saw him again but had heard his anguished screams every day until they loaded Ghost and I onto the truck that brought us here.
The crazed knight stumbled out toward me, swinging his maces blindly. I couldn’t imagine he had a good field of vision in that helmet. He missed me by a mile, and the momentum sent him careening into the sand.
Uproarious laughter came from the crowd, making my skin prickle with discomfort. This man had undergone torture that they couldn’t even fathom, and they were laughing at him.
This type of fight was familiar to me, sadly enough. I was supposed to let the man bumble around like a court jester. He was little more than a rodeo clown, just some grim comic relief before I sliced him down.
He fell down more often than he was able to stand, run, and take swings at me. I couldn’t bring myself to laugh with the audience, not even to pretend. While dodging his wild swings, I tried meeting his eyes through the slit in his helmet. Did he recognize me? Would I ever recognize who he was?
He never said a word though, only mumbling and grunting as he came at me again and again.
At some point, he went sprawling onto the sand by tripping over his own feet. The crowd’s laughter was more subdued this time, which meant they were getting bored. Time to end this soon.
The man wasn’t getting up though, and the crowd started shouting and jeering at him to get up and fight.
“Come on, man,” I muttered under my breath. “Let me give you the respect of killing you standing up, alright?”
My gaze lifted, and I found myself looking at the blonde woman in the VIP box. Neither she nor her companion were laughing. She leaned forward, her shoulders tense. Her fingers were clasped so hard in front of her, the knuckles were white. Her eyes were glued to the armored man on the ground, eyebrows knitted together and her mouth a thin line.
Some motion caught my eye, and I lifted my gaze higher to see a white dove fly down to perch on the slanted roof of her private box.
In the sand at my feet, Tezca cautiously stalked over to the man on the ground and sniffed around his head. The jaguar then pressed his forehead against the man’s helmet, leaning in to run his cheek and neck against the man, nuzzling him as he so often did with me.
“Kill him! Bite his throat!” someone yelled from the crowd.
The taunts and shouts faded as I felt a sense of calm coming over me. A reassurance and settling I so rarely felt in this place. The only other time I had was the day I met my jaguar. The man’s body, which had been tense and twitchy since the moment he ran out, had calmed into stillness.
After a few moments, Tezca walked away, and the man pushed himself up to standing. He turned slowly to face me, his mannerisms completely different from the wild, uncoordinated lashing out from before. The eyes behind the slit in the helmet met mine, focused and lucid for the first time.
“Are you ready?” I asked, my voice tight.
He nodded once and I brought up my machetes, crossing them in front of my chest as I stepped forward.
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for, but it felt like something that needed to be said.
“Me too, kid,” he answered.
I slashed my blades down in two perfect arcs. A red X formed across the man’s torso. I made sure to hit the arteries in his neck too. Blood pumped out in steady bursts from the cuts, and after a few seconds, he fell once again.
This time, with dignity.
19
RORI
Icouldn’t take my eyes off of him.
The Butcher was swift and brutal as he fought, but there was a beauty to his movements, almost like a dancer. He moved with precision and confidence but nothing overly flashy. Aside from the entrance he’d made, he acted as though the audience wasn’t even there.
And when the pale man came out, dressed like a laughingstock of a knight and falling down everywhere, the Butcher made no attempt to humiliate him further. He ignored the crowd’s taunts to kick the other man while he was down, to shove a machete up his ass, and every other cruel, vile thing they yelled out. No, the Butcher waited until the man could stand up, and they even appeared to exchange a few words before he cut the man down.
I’d been so entranced with watching him, I didn’t even notice Torr’s eyes burning a hole in the side of my head until the staff dragged the knight’s body off the sand.
“What?” I demanded.
