Nobul stood up, feeling the first spark of the pain, letting it feed the rage a little. The edge of the pit was surrounded now with jeering onlookers. Someone spat at him and missed, but Nobul wasn’t too bothered about that. He was more concerned with the iron grille set in the wall. From behind it he could see something thrashing and snarling, spitting its fury at the bars.
‘Remember,’ shouted a voice, and Nobul looked up to see Friedrik looking down with a grin, waving his knife like he was conducting an orchestra. ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight … it’s the size of the fight in the dog.’
Nobul wanted to tell him to go and fuck himself with his little knife, but before he had the chance someone pulled the grille up.
A hundred pounds of angry pit bull came tearing at him. Its ears were pinned back to its head and strings of slaver covered its snout. Nobul just about had time to back up to the wall of the pit before it leapt at him. He ducked, rolling away and came up on his feet but the pit bull was already after him. From above came the sounds of people cheering the dog on, willing it to tear his bollocks off.
He took a step towards it and kicked out, but the beast was faster, ducking his foot and lunging at his outstretched leg. It bit at his thigh, but got more of his trews than the flesh of his leg. Nobul tottered as it pulled backward, its thickly muscled haunches doing their best to drag him over, but all it managed to do was rip away a mouthful of cotton and some of his leg with it.
The crowd roared in appreciation of first blood, and Nobul gritted his teeth against the pain. He had little time to spit his curses before the dog was at him again, this time aiming for his ankle. Nobul jumped back, doing a stupid fucking dance around the pit as the animal tried to take another lump out of him. There was laughter from above, a shrill woman’s laugh that only served to make him angrier, and as the dog came in again he stamped down. His boot hit the pit bull’s head and it gave a yelp, scrambling back before attacking again.
It jumped at him and Nobul twisted, not quite far enough. Jaws clamped around his arm pulling him off balance and the weight of the pit bull sent him sprawling. It let go, and Nobul knew what was next — it would be after his face. He tried to twist away, but the dog was too fast. It went for his throat, but only got his ear. As the beast ripped half his lobe away Nobul grunted at the searing heat of it and could hear the snarl right down his earhole.
Fury bubbled up in him.
Fuck this bunch of bastards and their jeering. And fuck this dog.
Nobul kicked out with his legs as the dog reeled back with his ear. Before it could come in again his head shot forward and he bit down — his teeth clamped just over the pit bull’s eye. There was a pained squeal as Nobul brought up his knee, driving it into the dog’s ribcage. It howled again as a rib cracked. Scrabbling away in panic, the dog ripped its eyebrow away from Nobul’s jaws and fled to the other side of the pit where it slunk in fear and pain.
Nobul staggered to his feet, spitting out the dog’s flesh and heaving in a laboured breath. The pit bull cowered, whining in one corner and the crowd’s noise seemed to subside for a moment. There was shouting from above and someone bundled their way through. Another snarl and there, at the lip of the pit, was someone big and grim, holding another fucking dog on another bloody chain.
‘Get in there,’ he commanded, wrenching the chain from round its neck. It needed no more encouragement, jumping in and coming on as ravenous as the first had been.
Nobul’s mad was up now. He had tasted blood. Had raw flesh between his teeth. There was no fear — this was battle, plain and simple. Kill or be killed.
Nobul rushed at the dog, heedless of its slavering jaws. It leapt at him, aiming for the throat and they smashed into one another, both of them going down, writhing in the dirt, snarling and biting and screaming. The dog bit his shoulder and he sank his teeth into its paw. It yelped, wrenching its limb away, but Nobul was in no mood to let it escape. As they rolled around on the floor of the pit, even with his hands behind him, he somehow managed to tangle the chain fastening his wrists around the dog’s throat. It struggled in his grip, trying to escape, chewing at his forearm as Nobul arched his body and squeezed the chain tighter. He gritted his teeth, pulling with all his might. The dog strained every muscle taut, desperate to escape.
The revellers looked on in disappointed silence when the pit bull finally went slack in his grip, tongue lolling from its mouth like a raw slice of steak.
Heaving in ragged breaths, the pain starting to leach into the wounds the dogs had left, Nobul rose to his feet. They all looked down at him now, every face seeming disappointed. He wanted to remember all those faces, wanted to keep them in his mind’s eye so later he could find every one of them and make them pay for what they’d watched.
Not much chance of that, though. So maybe he’d best give them something else to remember him by.
The first dog still cowered in the corner of the pit and Nobul walked towards it as it whined in panic. It had nowhere to go, nowhere to run.
‘You cunts want a show?’ Nobul yelled. ‘You want to see a fucking dogfight?’
The pit bull yelped as he struck it with his boot and tried to make itself smaller and smaller as he kicked it again and again. It didn’t even try to defend itself or make a run for it as he slammed in with his boot, grunting, spitting blood, eyes wide, seeing nothing but hurt and pain and death. Before long the dog wasn’t moving no more.
Nobul turned back to the crowd to scream at them that he’d won, that he didn’t die so easy, when someone threw something over his head.
In a moment he’d been wrestled to the ground and his legs bound. There was nothing he could do but just lie there and wait to be kicked to death just like that dog. But it didn’t happen.
They just left him lying in that pit with the two dead fighting dogs, as the sound of the disappointed onlookers slowly drained away.
TWENTY-ONE
Magistra Gelredida’s requests were often cryptic. Despite the time he’d spent with her, Waylian could find it difficult to decipher much of what she asked of him. It was strange then, that, on this occasion, she had given such clear instructions for his tasks.
Waylian had been ordered to the Northgate Orphanage for Boys, in whose care was a certain Josiah Klumm. Upon finding the boy Waylian was to present his documents of adoption to the proprietor and accompany the lad to a house in Dockside.
What could be simpler?
Only as Waylian made his way north through the city streets did he begin to think that perhaps this task actually wasn’t quite so simple as it had first seemed.
When last he’d trod the streets of Northgate he’d been in the company of his mistress and two Raven Knights. Now, alone, he was conscious of his vulnerability to the depredations of beggars and thieves. At every corner there seemed to be someone watching him, assessing him for the kill. He’d tried pulling his hood up to try to blend in, but that only reduced his field of vision, making it easier for someone to creep up and cosh him over the head, then drag him away to do Arlor knew what …
Get it together. You’ve survived the road to Silverwall. Battled beasts in the Kriega Mountains. Travelled league after league in the company of hard-bitten warriors. Surely the streets of Northgate are a piece of piss.
Two young boys chased one another across the street in front of him, their mother shouting at them from a window above. If two young lads like that could play in these streets, surely he was safe enough. So Northgate was rough, no one could deny that, but it wasn’t as if there was a murderer on every corner.
Feeling a little more at ease, Waylian carried on. His mission was for the good of the city, or so he assumed. He could brave the dangers of Northgate for that. If he didn’t feel safe on Steelhaven’s own streets how was he going to react when the Khurtas got here? Hide under his bed and wait for them to finish with all the rape and pillage?