He watched the old man stumble, fists dangling, waiting for Lamb’s knees to buckle so he could spring on top of him and put an end to it.
But Lamb didn’t fall. He tottered back a pace or two into the Circle and stood, swaying, blood drooling from his open mouth and his face tipped into shadow. Then Golden caught something over the thunder of the crowd, soft and low but there was no mistaking it.
The old man was laughing.
Golden stood, chest heaving, legs weak, arms heavy from his efforts, and he felt a chill doubt wash over him because he wasn’t sure he could hit a man any harder than that.
‘Who are you?’ he roared, fists aching like he’d been beating a tree. Lamb gave a smile like an open grave, and stuck out his red tongue, and smeared blood from it across his cheek in long streaks. He held up his left fist and gently uncurled it so he looked at Golden, eyes wide and weeping wet like two black tar-pits, through the gap where his middle finger used to be.
The crowd had fallen eerily quiet, and Golden’s doubt turned to a sucking dread because he finally knew the old man’s name.
‘By the dead,’ he whispered, ‘it can’t be.’
But he knew it was. However fast, however strong, however fearsome you make yourself, there’s always someone faster, stronger, more fearsome, and the more you fight the sooner you’ll meet him. No one cheats the Great Leveller for ever and now Glama Golden felt the sweat turn cold on him, and the fire inside guttered out and left only ashes.
And he knew this would be his last fight indeed.
‘So fucking unfair,’ Cantliss muttered to himself.
All that effort spent dragging those mewling brats across the Far Country, all that risk taken bringing ’em to the Dragon People, every bit repaid and interest too and what thanks? Just Papa Ring’s endless moaning and another shitty task to get through besides. However hard he worked things never went his way.
‘A man just can’t get a fair go,’ he snapped at nothing, and saying it made his face hurt and he gingerly pressed the scratches and that made his hand hurt and he reflected bitterly on the wrong-headed stupidity of womankind.
‘After everything I done for that whore…’
That idiot Warp was pretending to read as Cantliss stalked around the corner.
‘Get up, idiot!’ The woman was still in the cage, still tied and helpless, but she was watching him in a style made him angrier than ever, level and steady like she’d something on her mind other than fear. Like she’d a plan and he was a piece of it. ‘What d’you think you’re looking at, bitch?’ he snapped.
Clear and cold she said, ‘A fucking coward.’
He stopped short, blinking, hardly able to believe it at first. Even this skinny thing disrespecting him? Even this, who should have been snivelling for mercy? If you can’t get a woman’s respect tying her up and beating her, when can you fucking get it? ‘What?’ he whispered, going cold all over.
She leaned forwards, mocking eyes on him all the way, curled her lips back, pressed her tongue into the gap between her teeth, and with a jerk of her head spat across the cage and through the bars and it spattered against Cantliss’ new shirt.
‘Coward cunt,’ she said.
Taking a telling from Papa Ring was one thing. This was another. ‘Get that cage open!’ he snarled, near choking on fury.
‘Right y’are.’ Warp was fumbling with his ring of keys, trying to find the right one. There were only three on there. Cantliss tore it out of his hand, jammed the key in the lock and ripped back the gate, edge clanging against the wall and taking a chunk out of it.
‘I’ll learn you a fucking lesson!’ he screamed, but the woman watched him still, teeth bared and breathing so hard he could see the specks of spit off her lips. He caught a twisted handful of her shirt, half-lifting her, stitches ripping, and he clamped his other hand around her jaw, crushing her mouth between his fingers like he’d crush her face to pulp and—
Agony lanced up his thigh and he gave a whooping shriek. Another jolt and his leg gave so he tottered against the wall.
‘What you—’ said Warp, and Cantliss heard scuffling and grunting and he twisted around, only just staying on his feet for the pain right up into his groin.
Warp was against the cage, face a picture of stupid surprise, the woman holding him up with one hand and punching him in the gut with the other. With each punch she gave a spitty snort and he gave a cross-eyed gurgle and Cantliss saw she had a knife, strings of blood slopping off it and spattering the floor as she stabbed him. Cantliss realised she’d stabbed him, too, and he gave a whimper of outrage at the hurt and injustice of it, took one hopping step and flung himself at her, caught her around the back and they tumbled through the cage door and crashed together onto the packed-dirt floor outside, the knife bouncing away.
She was slippery as a trout, though, slithered out on top and gave him a couple of hard punches in the mouth, snapping his head against the ground before he knew where he was. She lunged for the knife but he caught her shirt before she got there and dragged her back, ragged thing ripped half-off, the pair of them wriggling across the dirt floor towards the table, grunting and spitting. She punched him again but it only caught the top of his skull and he tangled his hand in her hair and dragged her head sideways. She squealed and thrashed but he had her now and smacked her skull into the leg of the table, and again, and she went limp long enough for him to drag his weight on top of her, groaning as he tried to use his stabbed leg, all wet and warm now from his leaking blood.
He could hear her breath whooping in her throat as they twisted and strained and she kneed at him but his weight was on her and he finally got his forearm across her neck and started pressing on it, shifted his body and reached out, stretching with his fingers, and gathered in the knife, and he chuckled as his hand closed around it because he knew he’d won.
‘Now we’ll thucking thee,’ he hissed, a bit messed-up with his lips split and swollen, and he lifted the blade so she got a good look at it, her face all pinked from lack of air with bloody hair stuck across it, and her bulging eyes followed the point as she strained at his arm, weaker and weaker, and he brought the knife high, did a couple of fake little stabs to taunt her, enjoying the way her face twitched each time. ‘Now we’ll thee!’ He brought it higher still to do the job for real.
And Cantliss’ wrist was suddenly twisted right around and he gasped as he was dragged off her, and as he was opening his mouth something smashed into it and sent everything spinning. He shook his head, could hear the woman coughing what sounded like a long way away. He saw the knife on the ground, reached for it.
A big boot came down and smashed his hand into the dirt floor. Another swung past and its toe flicked the blade away. Cantliss groaned and tried to move his hand but couldn’t.
‘You want me to kill him?’ asked an old man, looking down.
‘No,’ croaked the girl, stooping for the knife. ‘I want to kill him.’ And she took a step at Cantliss, spitting blood in his face through the gap between her teeth.
‘No!’ he whimpered, trying to scramble back with his useless leg but still with his useless hand pinned under the old man’s boot. ‘You need me! You want your children back, right? Right?’ He saw her face and knew he had a chink to pick at. ‘Ain’t easy getting up there! I can show you the ways! You need me! I’ll help! I’ll put it right! Wasn’t my fault, it was Ring. He said he’d kill me! I didn’t have no choice! You need me!’ And he blathered and wept and begged but felt no shame because when he’s got no other choice a sensible man begs like a bastard.