Ironhold, Trial One (Ironhold #1)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Perhaps I should simply stand there. If I cannot win, if I cannot defeat it, eventually I know the creature will manage to kill me. Maybe I should stop delaying the inevitable. Maybe I should simply stand in one place and allow that great metal horn to transfix me, thrusting through my body so that I am like a butterfly pinned to a page.

I can't bring myself to do that, though, to simply give up. I dodge the next charge, abandoning my trident, since it seems to have no hope of piercing the creature’s hide. It is only slowing me down. I dance around the Ironhide instead, trying to keep out of the way of its head, so that it cannot impale me on its horn.

It tosses its head this way and that, trying to get to me as I move behind it constantly. I snatch up my net, knowing I am not strong enough to bring the creature down but hoping I can do something with it as the beast tires.

Yet, it does not seem to be tiring. For all its size and bulk, the creature is not slowing down. It is not a beast that is going to use all its energy in a few charges and then be helpless. It rushes me again and it is learning my patterns, feinting one way and then attacking the other with its horn. I barely twist aside in time, the horn scraping along my side, drawing blood.

The crowd roars again in response to that, some of them leaning forward in anticipation of the kill to come.

I am not about to let it happen so easily. The next time the Ironhide rushes at me, I throw my net around its horn, using it to try to swing up onto the creature’s back. I drag myself into place, feeling the momentum and the strength of the beast beneath me, impossible to control.

I realize I have made a mistake. I had thought I'd put myself in the one place where it could not attack me, out of reach of its horn and its trampling hooves. But it means I have committed to riding a creature many times my size, a creature I cannot hope to overpower.

I might as well be riding a boulder in the middle of an avalanche. The Ironhide thunders forwards, its feet making the ground shake. It bucks and twists, trying to dislodge me from its back, so that it is all I can do to hold on using my net around its horn. I try to pull on that net to steer it by turning its head, but I might as well try to change the course of a river. It is implacable, far too strong to overpower.

It must have some weak spot, but I cannot see it. If there is a gap into which I can slip my small fishing knife, then it is impossible to find when I'm so busy trying to hold on for dear life. In any case, it did not choose this; it was pushed into this place, its fury stoked until it was only natural that it would charge at the first person it saw.

But if it's a question of life and death, I might not have a choice. I reach for my knife again, hearing the calls of the crowd around me. Some of them are cheering for me. Some of them sound amused, enjoying the spectacle of me trying to ride this beast, even as they know it will do me no good. Some of them are booing and jeering; they clearly want me to fight it head on, so that my end will be quicker.

I try to ignore them, try to get to my weapon, but the bucking of the creature is so furious that I need both my hands to hold on. It tries to roll, and now I have to leap clear if I am not to be crushed beneath its bulk. I hit the sand and come up, my knife my only weapon now. My net is still tangled in the creature’s horn.

It moves forward steadily, not charging now, but cutting me off instead, so that I will not be able to get past it without coming into range of its horn or hooves. It is stalking me as surely as a cat stalking a mouse. It backs me closer and closer to the wall of the arena.

I tense looking for any opportunity to dodge past it, but I am moving more slowly now, and I can't see any opening I might be able to get through unharmed. Can I at least get past while only suffering minimal injuries?

And then what? I will have to do it again and again. It will wear me down until I am finally too slow. Then it will kill me, as inevitable as the crushing weight of stone in a cave in. Is this the moment when I must try something desperate, when I must try to use my knife against its eyes or one of the joints between the plates of armor that make up its skin? If it has come to that, then I am truly about to die, and the fear of that starts to fill me, flowing in even over the pain and adrenaline that I feel.

The crowd seems to be hushed now, as if sensing that the end is near. They seem to know that I have run out of options. Briefly, I glance around, looking up in the direction of the emperor's box in the hope that perhaps he will decide to show mercy. But there is no sign of that. He is watching for the kill as eagerly as all the others.

In desperation I try to reach out for the Ironhide, talking to it the way I did with the shadow cat and the bear.

“I am not your enemy,” I say. I hold my hands out, dropping my knife.

I can feel its anger, its pain, its fear. I can feel all that it is feeling as some part of me reaches out to it directly, connecting to it, mind to mind, being to being. In that instant it is as if some energy rises up from deep inside me, from somewhere down below the fear and the pain, from some hidden well I did not know existed.

That energy forms a kind of bridge to the Ironhide, and I am connected to it in a way that goes beyond simply being able to talk to it.

I can feel that it is lashing out blindly. This creature is not a carnivore. It has no interest in eating me. Its impenetrable armor and vast horn are just there to defend it against attack. It has been thrown into this place to face a human who is clearly there to hurt it like all the others.

I see then some of the ways the creature has been harmed. I see the moment when it was taken out in the wild from its mother, brought back to the great city in the stinking hold of a ship. I see it as it grows from a calf into a bull, see the way the trainers force it to do as they wish with painful magics, because their whips can do nothing against its hide.

I see it tethered and caged for hours at a time, see the nobles walking past it, staring at it in fear, then laughing, because they are free and it is not. I see the moment when it is pushed out onto the sands for the first time.

It has killed before, driven out here into the arena and then left with people trying to kill it, hitting at it with swords and spears. Those do not hurt, but the magic does. It knows that it is too strong for them, able to withstand everything they throw at it. I see it charge through the best attacks of those put before it, lifting them speared on its horn, and then shaking them off to die on the sands. Once it does that it's allowed back into its pen, where there is grass to eat, and where the trainers wash the blood from it and tell it that it has done well.

I see myself as it sees me, as something small and fragile. Something it will trample before I can hurt it. Then it will go back to its pen and be happy again.

“You don't need to kill me to go back,” I whisper into its mind. “We don't have to kill each other.”

There is a hint of confusion in its mind, but I can feel myself pushing past its resistance, deliberately soothing the anger and the need to kill. I have already reached out with my mind, but I do so physically now, reaching out one hand to touch it, as gently as if I were touching a scared kitten.

“Shh,” I whisper to it, “it's all right. We can be friends.”

I keep whispering to it, feeling a magic wash over it that I did not know I possessed, at least not to this degree. I soothe it, and it lets me swing up onto its back again now. It trots forward, as obedient as a prancing horse, heading for the gate that leads back to the pens.

I dismount in front of the gate, waiting pointedly with it. The Ironhide is making no move to harm me now, and the whole colosseum seems to be holding its breath, trying to work out what is happening.

Every eye there looks up to the emperor as if waiting for his decision about what is to happen next. He stands there for several seconds, then his voice rings out. His own, this time, rather than that of the announcer.

“The gladiator Lyra is victorious.”

The gate swings open to admit the Ironhide. Around me, the colosseum erupts in a mixture of cheering and booing, as if people aren't sure whether to celebrate my victory or to condemn the manner of it. They haven't seen the blood they were looking for, but right now I don't care. I collect my weapons and head back to my side of the arena, stepping back into the darkness beneath it. The guards there take my weapons, and I head to the healers. One of them closes the wound in my side with a hint of magic.

Almost as soon as he's done, one of the trainers is there.

“What are you still doing in here?” he demands.

“I was-”

“There’s no time. You're wanted upstairs. The nobles want to see you.”