Ironhold, Trial One (Ironhold #1)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“ Let me help you with your armor,” Naia says, already starting to strap me into it.

Not that there's much of it. It seems deliberately revealing. I get a few scraps of iron scales, a shoulder guard on my left arm, light vambraces, and a helmet in the shape of a fish with its mouth open wide. Naia helps to fix each piece into place, her movements sure and certain.

She looks me in the eye as she completes her work. “You can't hold back in this, Lyra. You must do anything you can to stay alive.”

She straps a dagger to my waist, a curved fishing knife similar to the ones that fisherfolk back in Seatide would have used to gut fish. She hands me my trident and net. I take them reluctantly, although even now I know that I will not be able to bring myself to thrust the trident into Vex's body, will not be able to kill him, even as he tries to kill me.

There is a doorway just a few paces away from me, sealed with an iron gate. There are trainers stunning to either side of it. They do not look confident in my abilities.

“A waste,” one mutters as I step up to the gate. They open it, pushing me so that I stumble through.

This is not the same training pit as before. Ironhold seems to possess a multitude of such training spaces, but this one features high stone walls with wooden stands set over them and a rough stone floor. Chains are strung across the mouth of the pit, like the web of some great beast. Above, I can see the other trainees of Ironhold watching. Rowan is there, looking down with worry. Alaric is sitting in a cluster of wealthier gladiators, each wearing noble robes or dresses since they are not training or fighting right now. He looks my way and nods.

Lord Darius is seated on a platform overlooking the pit, looking down at me without any give in his expression. I hear the creak of a gate opening, and Vex steps into the fighting pit from the opposite side.

He is wearing a sculpted breastplate, iron greaves and skirt of leather strips with iron scales woven into them for protection. He has a belt with what must be a dozen knives stuck into it, he smiles across at me cruelly.

“I'm going to take my time with you,” he promises.

“We are gathered here for a training bout,” Lord Darius says. “But it is a bout with live steel, and it will continue until I decide it is done. The owned gladiator Lyra refused to fight before. If she does not do so now, she will die for it.”

He pauses to let those words sink in, then looks straight at me.

“In the colosseum, not every fight is to the death. The emperor, or in his absence, the master of the games will decide whether a combatant lives or dies. It is possible to lose and still excite the crowd enough that you are permitted to survive. It is the same here. If you show me that you have the willingness to fight, the desire to kill, then I may show mercy if you lose.”

The problem is I don't possess those things. Even with Vex’s taunts, even with the fact that he's going to kill me if he can, I don't feel as though I can try to kill him in return.

“Begin the bout,” Lord Darius says.

I lift my trident and net, starting to circle Vex. I want to at least give him the impression that I'm ready to fight. He starts to draw his daggers, tossing them into the air like a juggler, only they don't come down again. They hang there, suspended in the air, like a glittering shoal of razor-sharp fish. This must be his talent for controlling objects.

He sends a knife darting towards me, and I barely dodge in time. It circles back to him, like a loyal dog waiting for another command. Another knife comes at me, and I bat it aside with my trident, hearing the sound of metal against metal as I do so.

Above me, the others are cheering, or jeering, or calling out suggestions to one or the other of us.

“You need to close the distance, Lyra!” Rowan calls out.

“Kill her slowly!” someone shouts from Vex’s side.

More knives come at me, and I throw myself into a roll, ignoring the impact of the hard ground as I come up to my feet. Already, the knives are swooping around for another pass, and I barely deflect them in time.

I can tell that Vex is toying with me. He has sent only a couple of knives at a time so far, the others hanging back as he probes my defenses. The best I can say about what’s happening is that at least it looks as though I’m trying to fight. He just isn’t giving me a chance to mount any meaningful offense.

The knives come at me again, and now I’m reduced to using my net more like the fishing implement it is than like a weapon. I whirl it around, trying to snag the darting knives that come at me, the way I might haul a load of fish out of the water. I manage to bring down a couple, but there are more coming, and I must keep dodging.

“Close in and use your trident!” Zara shouts. “You need to kill him before he kills you.”

I can't do it, though. I can't even imagine thrusting at the points of the trident home in Vex, seeing the light fade from his eyes. I will not be what this place wants me to be. I will not become a killer just because Ironhold demands it of me.

I throw my trident in Vex’s direction instead, although I know it has no chance of hitting him. The weapon is too cumbersome to carry with me if I don't intend to use it. It clatters to the floor of the fighting pit, then seems to stand on end, coming up to join the knives as they float in a threatening formation.

I concentrate on using my net, trying to snag more of the weapons, bringing them to the ground. My hope is that Vex cannot keep this up for long. Maybe if he loses the strength to keep the weapons in the air, I might be able to tangle him in the net, wrapping up so that he is helpless. It's the only hope I have of coming through this alive, because as it stands, I'm not prepared to draw my own blade and stab him.

“She should be bleeding by now!” A voice from the stands calls. “Make her bleed, Vex!”

It seems to be all the encouragement he needs. Now, he doesn't send just one or two knives at me. Now they dart at me in a great mass, seeming to cut at me from every angle at once. I'm forced to dive and roll and twist, dodging in every direction I can to avoid them, while I try to use my net to tangle them.

It is not enough. One knife comes through to score a cut across my thigh. Another classes off my vambrace. A third traces a line of blood down my cheek. Pain flares in me, anger at what is happening following quickly. I hate this. I hate the fact that Vex can stand there and cut me to pieces, and while this is happening people are cheering, baying for more blood.

My anger at that flares up, even as I cry out in pain. That cry seems to echo around the fighting pit and beyond. It is not just something physical, but seems to reach out in ways I don't quite understand.

An instant later, something moves up above, appearing from the shadows. I see the moment when the shadow cat stalks along the chains above the fighting pit. It is healthy now, and it is deadly.

It roars, the sound echoing my cry of pain. It's enough to make Vex look up, obviously wondering what is happening. That is when the shadow cat pounces, leaping down onto him from above, in a whirlwind of claws and teeth that mean Vex is the one screaming now.

He falls back, trying to stab at the shadow cat, but the ferocity of its attack is too great. Vex loses control of his blades, and the cat is still on top of him, still attacking. I call it back, and it looks my way then pads to my side, letting me run my hands through its fur briefly, before running over to a patch of shadow and stepping through it as easily as if it were a doorway.

“That is enough!” Lord Dorian calls out, standing. “Someone get Vex to the infirmary.”

Figures rush into the fighting pit, grabbing Vex and lifting him to carry him out of there. I’m left staring up at Lord Darius, wondering what will happen next. Will he decide that the shadow cat invalidates the contest? Will he make me fight someone else? Worse, will he decide that, since I was not even trying to attack, I have failed? Maybe he will simply have me killed.

Even as I think it, he nods to me.

“It seems that you have power after all, and even if you lack skill with blades, a beast can be a powerful weapon. A beast whisperer. I never thought we would have a beast whisperer here.”

It takes me a moment to catch his meaning. He thinks that I’ve somehow done all of this deliberately, that I set the shadow cat on Vex, that I was in control of it the whole time.

He gestures to me. “I declare the gladiator Lyra to be the winner.”