L.E.Y. 3150

Riposte.

I winced as the Pommel slammed his fist into the girl, knocking her against the cage so hard her dark brown plait came loose. One by one the dark, liberated locks draped her down-turned face, enhancing her savage appearance. Steeped in sweat and blood, they clung to her skin or hung limp in the stifling air. The crowd driven into a frenzy by the renewed violence.

I saw something they did not, however.

Steadying herself as the Pommel pressed his advantage, the girl's rictus snarl had changed. I thought, perhaps, that she might even be smiling; a fated warrior's final grim leer of defiance.

She gripped her longsword in both hands, leveraging its long handle to double her strength and increase speed and control over the blade.

Ah, ah! This was the champion I had come to see.

" 'Tuli, look!" I cried, moving to the edge of my seat and reaching to grab for Pertuli's sleeve. Even across the room from the high seats, I recognized the mettle of an unbeatable warrior. If only she had more reach!

Tyella, whose bosom nearly took an elbow in my carelessness, patiently guided my hand to her knee. She knew how well I loved a good match—and indeed enjoyed them nearly as much—and had seen the look in Ivy 'The Untamed's' eye that said she just wasn't going to lay down, no matter what that monster Jav did.

The Pommel moved in, wary of his grinning opponent. Despite his pronounced brow, shallow cranium and excessive muscle mass, the pit fighter was canny. He sensed the shift in Ivy's attitude and advanced with scything cuts of long steel that made it perilous to face him. It wasn't an advanced defense, but could be effective against a timid opponent.

Ivy 'the Untamed Vine' wasn't.

She watched his blade with narrowed eyes and chose her moment. The Pommel's sword passed her face, cutting free a few locks of wet brown hair, and she shot forward. Momentum carried his blade wide, and though he had clearly been expecting a move of this sort, he was too late to recall the weapon before she was within his guard.

"Yes!" I shouted, suddenly on my feet, half the crowd seethed forward with me. The resultant din was deafening.

At such close quarters, Ivy's long blade was as useless, but her speed was excellent, and she used her advantage well. By the time The Pommel could retreat, slapping her away with his off hand, she had bashed his face almost concave with her cross guard. With each blow, increasing moans of delight or horror escaped the mob. Although I found the spectacle unsporting, I cheered just as enthusiastically. The cage had no rules contrary to such blows.

She stumbled away, retreating to her left against the bars, parrying the two blind swings hurled after her. He paused for a moment, gingerly probing at his face. He barked something angrily at her, and she spat venom in response, their obscenities impotent under the general roar of the crowd.

"You were right, she fights well," Tyella shouted in my ear. "The Pommel should have had her just now. But for all her enthusiasm I fear it is only a matter of time before 'Tuli wins."

Ell's breath on my ear sent a thrill of warmth through me that eclipsed the fight.

"...I am madly in love with Koray right now..."

In the cage, Ivy ducked under a slow swing and was suddenly inside the Pommel's guard again. This time her blade led the way.

"Arrhg!" the challenger cried as she cut into Jav's weapon arm, reducing his forearm to a flap of flesh dangling from the bone, halfway from wrist to elbow. His sword fell from nerveless fingers.

"Untamed!" I cheered, recalled to the match. I'd almost missed the turning point. Where had my mind been? It looked like The Pommel's career was on shaky ground.

"No!" a lean, balding man to my left cried. I only noticed because his sentiment flowed in opposition to the others around us. "Damn that bitch! She was supposed to lay down... it was supposed to be the Pommel!"

And presently, he had my full attention.

His tense body language told me he was rooting for Jav, but I had ignored him as inconsequential—just another middling merchant-class freeman with some extra coin and little standing in the world. Had I been mistaken? His words were suspicious.

"Ella," I said, nudging her side.

"Yes, yes," she answered, watching the fight. The Pommel had withdrawn, and Ivy guarded the path to his fallen weapon. Although she was flagging hard, she occupied her territory well, and didn't let her blade waver.

"Your wench is winning now," Ella allowed, "but there is time, and The Pommel could pull it off." Pertuli also had taken a sudden interest in the match, now that there was a good chance he could lose.

"Curtail thy unseemly bleeding!" he jeered. "If she killeth thee, never will I back thee again!"

"No, not that," I said to Ella, ignoring him. "Who's this man to my left—is he anyone I ought know?"

She glanced past me, as if to confirm what she already knew.

"Of course you know him—that's Tortelli," she said, returning her violet eyes impatiently to the ring. "Owner of the Cage? Honestly, Kor, you would forget your lieutenants if you didn't see them every day."

I cursed under my breath and, pretending to watch the fight, trained my ears on the heated conversation he was having with the immense dwarf sitting next to him.

"... My money is with you, Tortelli," the dwarf was saying, lowering cruel brows on him. "But if your shrew wins, there will be slag to pay!"

"Not to worry, Bozhak," the cage owner returned, "there are... contingencies... in place."

I didn't like the sound of that, and risking a glance his way, saw the significant nod he gave a guard near the cage. The thug returned the gesture, and stalked along the perimeter of the cage. He signaled...someone... with a jerk of his chin. I didn't see who.

I searched desperately, hoping to see what was happening before disaster struck.

"Yield!" Ivy barked at the large warrior.

"You wish!" he snarled back, pale and unsteady, but darting looks at the guards near the cage as if salvation would appear from outside the ring.

The Untamed Vine tensed to make her move, but froze instead. She backed away, eyes wide. Questing under her hair, her left hand found came away with something from the back of her neck, and the glare she turned suddenly our way was so withering I jerked back before I realized she was looking at Tortelli.

She knows. She's known the whole time!

Following her hate to its mark, I found a smug, satisfied expression on his face. Something in me burst. I was up and had my hands at his collar in an instant.

"You cheating filth!" I snarled.

"Kor, what?" Tyella gasped.

"Unhand me!" Tortelli snarled back, "or you won't leave this room alive."

The dwarf next to Tortelli caught my shirt with one ham-like hand. Even seated, the power in that fist was incredible.

"I do not know what you believe you saw, my lord," he rumbled. Even speaking low, the dwarf's voice vibrated like a hive of hornets. "But I suggest you put it from your mind. The match approaches its conclusion, and a wager lost is not worth more than your skin."

I glared at the dwarf, including him in the malice that had surged up within me. Pertuli sometimes called my code of honor my one great personal weakness—the thing that would one day get me killed. Honor or weakness; I didn't care what it was called, but the one thing I could not abide was a cheat.

"Call off the fight," I demanded, my voice dangerously low. "You do not know who I am."

"Found yourself a friend, have you?" Pertuli's voice chimed unhelpfully behind me. "Not satisfied with one losing proposition, you had to find another?"

"Enbis, 'Tuli," Tyella scolded in Tilwenic. "Kor, shiese ien'vu jatha?"

In the cage there were sounds of steel on steel once again, and no one in the stands was paying attention to us. The Pommel must have regained his sword. I sensed guards from every corner of the room making their way toward us.

"Tortelli has fixed the fight," I answered Tyella in Weighs, so Tortelli would understand. "At his signal, the Untamed Vine was drugged. A blowdart, I wager."

The cage owner's eyes narrowed for a moment before his face went slack, disinterested and emotionless. I had struck the mark. Accustomed to coolness in the face of danger, he would attempt to stall until his men arrived.

"Has he indeed?" Tyella said, her voice no longer carrying concern that I had lost my mind. She knew I never lied. "I admit, this revelation illuminates that whole situation admirably..."

She gestured toward the cage, and when I looked, Ivy was on her knees, her back to the Pommel, sword hanging on the ground in limp fingers. Her bloody mouth hung slack, and the room had grown quiet other than occasional awkward interjections of "Finish her!" or "Mercy!" that hung, obscene, in the filthy atmosphere.

The Pommel, longsword upraised in his off-hand, had paused before the finishing blow, contingent on the cage owner's customary decision of mercy. Consequently, nearly every eye in the room was on me, standing as I was with my hands at the cage owner's throat. And Ivy... Ivy "the Untamed Vine" still had that look of baleful hatred smoldering in her eyes, drugged or not.

That look dared Tortelli to kill her because if he did not, his days were undoubtedly numbered.

The guards were closing in, grunting and elbowing their way through the crowd.

"Not to press you terribly," Pertuli said, his affectation of disinterest strangely loud in the still room, "But if you will need limbs for whatever it is you are doing, I suggest you hurry."

I ignored him.

"I am Sir Koray Clasicant, Captain of the King's Guard," I seethed at Tortelli, "and you will call off this fight or I will empty the house and see you and your people in chains."

"Tut," Tortelli chided, unimpressed. "Is that any way to treat your host, Sir Clasicant? Of course I knew who you were the moment you sat next to me, but I assumed, as cage fights are illegal in Dragoskala, that you wished to maintain your anonymity and that of your friends."

"Without anonymity, my cover is blown," I countered, "and I would be forced to arrest you immediately."

"Well," Tortelli said, his disappointment obvious. "We can't have that, can we?"

"Then gi—" I started, but was cut off as the dwarf, still seated and using only the hand on my shirt, threw me. I had only a moment to reflect on his prodigious strength before I collided with the wall of oncoming thugs.

"Finish her!" Tortelli announced, loud enough for the room to hear. It erupted in a maelstrom of bloodthirsty cheers and despondent groans. I, caught and held by three men in whose arms I felt childlike and small, was promptly forgotten.

The Pommel's sword swooped down. Ivy paid him no heed. Smoldering with single-minded accusation at her patron, she waited for the blow.

It never came.

A dirk, thrown end over end with uncanny precision across twelve paces of smoky air took Jav hard in the side of the throat, and his sword veered off-course. My head spun, and to my surprise found Tyella throwing platinum hair over one shoulder and drawing her longsword.

"What?" She asked, seeing my amazement as I was released. "I wasn't about to let that brute kill her. Consider it a present, love."

Love. My heart soared.

"Mind you, I still won my bet," Pertuli argued, jerking his arms out to loosen his sleeves, then drawing his own longsword with obvious resentment. "The Pommel did win by the rules of the house; corrupt though they may be. I've got seventy silver scales coming to me."

"Incorrigible." Tyella smirked, rolling her eyes. She forced the guards to release me and kept them at bay with meaningful gestures of her steel. They, like most of the room's occupants, were unarmed, relying on their fists and leather bracers to communicate the house's displeasure as needed. Occupants of the upper class balcony were generally allowed to retain their weapons, on their honor not to draw under any circumstance.

My friends felt such constraints of honor were meant to be observed with some flexibility, but I left my rapier in its sheath. Tortelli, it seemed, was more of my friends' opinion. He drew a long, curved, single-bladed sword and stepped forth from the special seating area. Now that he was standing, I noticed a certain grace in his bearing. He was undoubtedly a swordsman, despite appearances to the contrary. Peasants jostled out of the way, opening a cramped circle between the iron bars of the cage and the high seats.

Tyella pressed two fingers between full lips and whistled loudly, cutting off all muttering and dissembling from the rabble.

"By order of the crown," She called, her crystalline voice splitting the air. "Tortelli's is now closed. Anyone still here in a hundred count will find themselves in irons!"

The rush of people was so overwhelming, the guards were caught up in the stream and forced to the exits, leaving the three of us to face Tortelli and his dwarven friend, who stood with a great groan and creaking of the stands under him.

"Right," Pertuli said cheerfully, sizing up the odds. "I'll save the girl."