The sun beat down, fiery and relentless.
Moon Xeator glanced up and around at the arena. The crowds cheered and jeered from all sides, pumping their arms, their sweat a bobbling sheen.
He shuffled sideways to the edge of the battle ring circled by a short palisade, sand grating the sole of his caligae.
Before him, a brawny young man vaulted up the stage. Large but agile, he had broad shoulders corded with muscle and ebony hair in a bowl cut. His round eyes were the color of flint, hooded but bright with youth. Only a few months since he joined the League, he had already made a name for himself – the invincible Felix Nipius.
Invincible as he might be, Felix had a hard time grappling with the concept of the game. Xeator dropped his eyes, contemplating his opponent, the sword in his left hand shadowing his steps.
Other than fists or steels, it was the number of bets that dictated the winner at the end of the day, and the number today demanded Felix to lose to him on purpose so the Leagus could rake in more denarii. But the boy wanted too much to win. Thumping a fist at his chest, he reared his head and roared, his patience rubbed raw with bellicosity.
Xeator positioned himself.
Steels whistled, flinging out of their sheaths. Felix charged. His sword whizzed across the air before biting into Xeator's blade.
Xeator parried, then swung his arm backward as he ducked sideways, causing his opponent to tumble. Pivoted on his heel, he swiveled.
Clank.
Felix dropped to a knee as he held the blade diagonally over his head, his teeth gritting, eyes glaring.
"Take it easy, boy," said Xeator in a whisper. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Fuck you!"
Xeator sighed. Wielding his sword earthward, he pedaled back a step. The flat side of his blade hit the boy on the flank.
Felix limped to his feet, releasing a feral snarl as he spun back.
Xeator didn't clash but ducked again, his sword arm circling to the back. Steels glinted under the glaring sun, parallelling each other like two radii motioning in their parameters. He cut Felix on the legs sooner than the boy could parry and lifted before the blade could tear to the bone.
Felix reeled aside. Blood spurted in rivulets, wetting the dry sand. A cry of rage trembled the battle ring.
"Kill him off!" the crowds rumbled and howled. "Finish it!"
"You alright?" Xeator wheeled himself around.
The boy spat, looking daggers. He charged again, his sword slashing down in a deathly drone fraught with menace.
Steels clunked.
Xeator fended off the attack, holding his blade level with his eyes. A smile accompanying a snort tilted his lips. Leaning sideways, he lessened the force in hands. As he let his blade slip close to the other's hilt, he swung up an elbow and knocked the boy's sword off his grip. It spun and fell on the haft, stabbing right through a hole between the palings, its long blade slanting up.
Blinded by rage, Felix hurled himself at Xeator.
"Quit it," Xeator grunted, parrying with his forearm. "It's over!"
"Says who?" the boy barked.
Snatching at Xeator's sword, he triggered unintentionally a device hidden in the hilt. A long iron chain attached to a small weight wooshed out.
Crowds gasped, holding their breaths.
Felix snickered. Cracking the chain like a whip, he caught the other end as he whirled, throwing himself back to back with Xeator.
Xeator held up his sword just in time before the slithering iron wound around his neck. Tugging hard at the hilt, he forced a gap between the chain and his throat. But the boy wrenched harder, sapping him of his strength. He groaned for breath. The sun blazed, blurring his vision. He booted at the boy's leg where he had slit.
Felix wailed.
The moment he loosed his grip, Xeator pushed his blade forward and whirled.
The chain flew off the boy's hand as he reeled headlong.
Xeator caught the hissing iron and flung the end with the weight at Felix.
It swooshed, spiraling up the boy's ankle. A sudden tug spun him around and pulled him away from the palisade.
Another gasp boomed from the auditorium.
Felix was thrown on his hip. Half a stride behind him, the blade that was slanting out between the palings glinted like a long fang.
The master of game in a maroon tunic walked up, thudding a rod crested with a statuette of a three-headed eagle.
Amidst boos and yells, the fight had ended.
Xeator tossed away his sword and stooped with both hands propping on his lap. He glanced up, his eyes panning the auditorium.
"Why?" Felix hissed, lying still on the flagstones.
"Why what?"
"Why saved me, what else?" He pushed himself up on an elbow, his other hand clutching his chest.
"If I had not saved you, I'd have killed you." Straightening his back, Xeator coiled the chain around the crook of his thumb. "I have no reason for it," he added, glancing slantwise over his shoulder, then exited the battle ring.
Rather than returning to his seat, he headed out through an arch gate that went under the auditorium and passed the betting booths where gamblers fumed in epithets.
"That cucksucker cheated!" a man spat. "Someone must pay for my loss! Our loss!" Skewing around on his heel, he regarded his fellow gamblers.
Having found justice in their sheer number that defied truth, they pumped their fists. Their necks reddened, as did their cheeks.
Xeator snorted. Tucking his chin to the shoulder to avoid being seen, he quickened his feet.
Near the southern tip of the arena, he turned west into a warren of bold masonry and arrived at a quadrangle, where dreams of pugilists pulsed and ceased. A deep forest sprawled behind it, abutting a winding ridge covered in gnarls of branches and roots. Somewhere about halfway up the ridge, under thick foliage, hid a deserted stone hut slathered with moss.
Xeator squinted in the direction, then turned his eyes to the parapet. A sentry with a sturdy build glanced down, slouching over a crenel, his face hidden behind the visor hinged to the helm. "Where're the others?" he yelled.
"Let me in, Gallus."
The sturdy man pulled up the visor. Well in his forties, Gallus was a retired pugilist with pale blue eyes and reddish skin. "Did you dash off again to avoid Paccius' screed?" A broad grin revealed his crooked teeth. He headed over to the winch by the front gate.
"Clear the way!"
As he bellowed, a large basin was lowered from the wall. Iron wheels and bars drummed the earth, shaking the bricks that held the bailey on either side while the lattice grille went up a groove at a time.
Xeator ducked into the shadow of the narrow gate. He glanced around, surveying from the bottom while the iron fangs were being hoisted. If he tried to sneak out at night, little chance there he could succeed by force. Nor would a disguise do, given how everyone knew everyone else behind these walls, and no one was allowed to leave after curfew.
Stepping into daylight, he glanced up again at the parapet. Against the scorching sun, all he saw was a man in silhouette. "What do you mean by again?" he shouted back, his hand shading over his eyes. "I wouldn't miss Paccius' wisdom for ten denarii!"
"That cheap?" The silhouette of a man chortled, the warm breeze carrying his voice like a wave. "Then why are you back already?"
"Why, I can't come back and gussy up like a champ?"
"You won a staged battle, you brazen cunt!"
"Keep the portcullis up for me, will ya? I won't take long."
"How long?"
"A blink of the eye." Turning on his heel, Xeator rushed up the rickety teak stairs. Gallus' voice tailed him,
"I just did!"
He allowed himself a chuckle. Ducking through the door to his unit, he bent close to the floor while he tapped under his bed and retrieved two bronze plates about the size of a grown man's palm, amulets of citizenship that belonged to Anthony and Drusilla. They looked exactly as they were before, each a square plate of bronze embossed with a different serial number. He hid them under his tunic and leaped to his feet.
"What did you come back for anyway?" Gallus hollered from the wall when Xeator sprung down the stairs.
"For the amulet," he deadpanned. "You know how they need it to recalculate our ranks?" Halting before the gate, he fumbled for his own bronze plate and raised it for Gallus to see.
"They didn't check before the battle?"
"They did," he replied. "But when they searched me, and I realized I forgot mine, it was too late. Couldn't keep the spectators waiting, so they let me on."
"Yeah right," Gallus japed, his helmed head jiggling up and down. "But don't go elsewhere, you hear me?"
"Where else can I go?"
"Oi, Xeator!" Gallus shouted after him when he reemerged from the other side of the gate. "Thanks again for saving my boy."
Proscribed for seducing a patrician girl, Gallus' son had been sentenced to death by fighting a pugilist. The League pointed Xeator to the task, and as was his wont, he did the unexpected.
On the day at the battle ring, he scanned the spectator at large. "May the Gods bless this man for his loyalty and bravery," Xeator proclaimed, pointing at Gallus' son. "Never a fighter, he held his ground nonetheless and accepted his sentence because he didn't want to betray his love. That's right," he paused, taking a gulp as he measured the repercussions of the lie hanging on the tip of his tongue. "I'm his lover. And I was too afraid to come forward with the truth, fearing how it would affect me as a pugilist. But as I stand before him now, and in the scrutiny of the Gods, I can no longer hold my silence. I cannot kill this innocent man, this brave man, this devoted man! And I implore you, citizens of Renania, to think again, for how could he seduce the highborn girl while he didn't even like women?" Amidst the roaring guffaw, he whirled to the boy he had only just met and clasped him in his arm. "Play along if you want to live," he whispered. "Once your girl learns about this, she'll give up on you. The less she cares, the less eager her family will be to have you killed. Understood?"
Pardoned by the demand of the crowds well-entertained, the boy was then sentenced to five-year labor at a construction site overseen by House Gaius. And to pay the price, Xeator was estranged. He was dropped from the top list of candidates for the Favorite this year. But never had it been his aim to be the Favorite. He aimed for a favor.
Glancing over his shoulder, he smiled in reply at the man on the wall and ran the way he came.
Somewhere in a warren of masonry, he made a sharp turn into an alley between desolated yards and dove southeast into the woods. Sidestepping as he zigzagged his way up the ridge, he found a deserted hut squatting in the thicket.
The dusty, rough-hewn door creaked as he pushed through. Nothing inside but a pile of mildewed straws sagged against the back wall. Xeator groped out an amulet. The small bail at the top of the plate where the chain spliced also worked now as a toggle. Narrowing his gaze, he swung an arm sideways at the dilapidated door and flicked. A diminutive karambit slung over the space and bit into the wood with a muffled thud. Outside the hole in the wall, shafts of twilight in pastel violet sloped down over the holt. He walked up to the door and plucked out the blade. Inserting it back into the amulet, he waited.