amount Gerard had wagered was extreme. He found himself wanting the giant tattoo covered Seawardsman to win, just so that Gerard didn’t lose all of his money. He glanced at his brother. Gerard was on the edge of his seat with excitement radiating from him like heat from a forge fire. It made Hyden smile despite his concern over Gerard’s purse.
“I hope you win!” Hyden yelled, but Gerard didn’t hear him.
Hyden looked back to the fighting circle, and saw why Gerard wasn’t paying any attention to him. Shaella was down there among the fire breathers, wearing a hooded cloak that didn’t quite conceal the bulge of her sword hilt, or the swell of her ample bosom. She threw the hood back, and her face was the most beautiful thing visible in the entire crowd. She spoke a few words to Bludgeon, and then she was pulled out of the roped off area by another tattoo covered Seawardsman, just before the Wildermont Redwolf soldiers began clearing the circle for the Brawl.
As soon as the ring was cleared, the Redwolf guards took up positions spaced evenly around the battleground. Each of them turned their bladed pike to a horizontal position, and then passed the tip end of it to the guard on his left. When the synchronized maneuver was finished, each soldier had the butt end of his own spear in his left hand, and the business end of his neighbor’s spear in his right. The pike shafts created a waist high rail that was intended to keep the pressing onlookers out of the fray.
There were very few rules to the Brawl. The main rule was that were no weapons that were to be used by the brawlers. Other than that, it was a battle to the death, unless one of the fighters yielded, or was incapacitated due to unconsciousness, or severe injury. Once a fighter yielded, the other man couldn’t continue to beat on him. If a fighter went down, and lay still for any length of time, he could not be molested until he made it back to his feet. Biting, eye gouging, hair pulling, and blows below the belt, were sometimes booed by the crowd, but were all legal maneuvers.
A hush fell over the crowd as the two combatants began to slowly circle around each other. When his back was to them, Hyden saw that Bludgeon’s tattoos formed the skeletal shape of a winged creature, whose skull and beak climbed over the top of the man’s head. Its wings and body spread out across his back, the wing tips reached around the back of his arms to his elbows. When Bludgeon’s arms were held at his side, the wings looked to be pulled back, as if the creature were in a dive. When he threw out his arms to dart in at the Lion Lord, it looked as if the tattooed skeleton was spreading out its wings to take flight.
Bludgeon attacked first, feigning a grappling hold, and then throwing a looping right handed punch. The Westland Lion leaned back, letting the huge fist pass a hair’s breadth in front of his determined face. Then he ducked under with his head down, throwing a thundering flurry of blows to the bigger man’s gut. It sounded like a butcher’s tenderizing hammer, smashing into a thick slab of fresh meat. The Seaward Monster roared and flexed his body. He growled at the crowd, as he took each and every punch without faltering. Then, he brought both his fists down like war hammers into Lord Gregory spine, and sent the Lion Lord to his knees.
Gerard jumped to his feet, shouting his approval with thousands of others. At the moment, Hyden thought that his brother might have made a good bet. He only hoped that the steadily rocking scaffold they were perched on would hold until the fight was over. Already, it was rumbling and swaying more than he would’ve liked.
Lord Gregory seemed stunned, but only for a heartbeat. He lunged forward from his lower position, into Bludgeon’s knees, and lifted the big man’s feet clear of the ground. The thump of the Seawardsman’s body when he slammed flat onto his back, into the trampled grass, caused an audible gasp from the crowd. The onlooker’s collective intake of breath sounded in perfect unison with the whooshing exhale from the Monster. Since Bludgeon was still moving around on the ground, the Lion Lord didn’t hesitate to pounce. He leapt to the big man’s waist, straddled him, and began throwing violent hammer blows at his opponent’s head. Left and right, left and right, over and over, he pounded, to the cheers of the Westlanders in the crowd. Lord Gregory’s shoulders rolled with the force of his blows, and soon his hands were slinging blood.
Just when it began to look hopeless, Bludgeon somehow managed to heave, and bring a knee up into the Lion Lords back. With a scream of fury, he took advantage of the moment of imbalance, twisted, and rolled out from under the Lion, then staggered to his feet.
His face was a bloody mess. Already, one of his eyes was swollen closed. The white of his other eye was as red as the blood pouring out of the gaping gash above his brow. His nose and lips were battered flat, and a tooth was missing from his jaw. A triumphant cheer exploded from the groups of Westland spectators when they saw him.
“Come on Bludgeon!” Gerard yelled down at his fighter. His voice was but one of thousands urging the big man on. He glanced nervously at Hyden, who was already looking at him worriedly. They both cringed in unison and shared that old excited, anything can happen, look. Hyden turned back to the fight and yelled for Bludgeon to “Stomp the Lion!” Gerard joined in the call as the Seawardsman attempted another attack.
Bludgeon stepped in, just like he had the first time, throwing that same looping right handed punch that had missed. This time, when Lord Gregory leaned back to slip the blow, the Monster took another step forward and kicked out hard. His heavy boot hit the Lion Lord square in the chest, with such force, that the Westlander’s hands slapped his boot tips in midair as he was launched backwards. A cheer and a sympathetic “Oooh!' swept through the mass of people simultaneously when Lord Gregory crashed into the ground in a heap. He tried to roll to his feet, but ended up clutching his chest and yelling out in anguish. Bludgeon saw his chance and dove in at him.
Momentarily satisfied that his wager was safe, Gerard scanned the edges of the fighting circle for Shaella. If Bludgeon went on to win the fight, there would surely be a celebration. He wanted to be there to see her, to taste her lips again. He wanted to tell her that he was going to go with them to the Dragon’s Tooth Spire. In his mind’s eye, he had seen her betray him there, while the old crone had been telling him his future, but he knew in his heart that he could change that outcome. If he could make her love him, then there would be no betrayal. And if that didn’t work, he knew he could always use the ring to keep her from it. The other things he’d seen happen in that black rocky cavern were dark and grand, and far too tempting to resist. He pondered those vexing thoughts while he searched for Shaella. He looked at the faces, but didn’t see her again. He did, however, see a face that commanded his full attention.
“There Hyden! There!” Gerard pointed down at a person standing between the farthest two Redwolf guards that formed the pike rail.
“What are you pointing at?” Hyden was fully focused on the Brawl and glad that his brother seemed to be winning his bet. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“The witch that bought our eggs!” Gerard yelled, as he shook his finger towards the fighters below. “That woman, over there, with the whistle! She’s the one that tricked father and I this morning!”
Hyden looked around, and found her at the very edge of the pike rail. His focus zoomed in on her unexpectedly, causing his head to spin. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. She looked close enough to touch now. The wild visual shift was unnerving, but he didn’t let it distract his mind. He wanted to know what this woman was about. It wasn’t a whistle she held to her mouth. Was it a flute? A strange kind of smoking pipe maybe? What was it?
Suddenly, she paused, and looked up directly at the boys. It was as if she had sensed them staring at her across the great distance that separated them. Hyden swallowed hard when he saw her eyes. There were no whites at all, just jet black orbs that chilled his blood to the bone.
“Charm me will ya?” he heard Gerard say. He knew, without even looking, what his brother was about to do.
The witch jerked her head up a fraction and locked her eerie gaze on some other part of the crowd for a moment. Hyden realized what the tubular item in her hand was then. Her attention returned to the fight, and she put the thing to her mouth, and pointed it at the entangled combatants. Hyden watched on helplessly as she took in a deep breath and blew into the tube with a burst of force. A look of shock crossed her face then, and she twisted her black eyes up at Gerard, but Hyden didn’t see the gesture. He was looking at the tiny little needle dart protruding out of Lord Gregory’s shoulder. His attention was drawn from the dart when Gerard elbowed him excitedly, but not before he saw the Westland Lion swat the thing away into the trampled grass.
A gasping sound, as the entire crowd drew in a breath at the exact same moment, resounded again when the little witch ducked under the pike rail and stepped into the fighting circle. One of the Redwolf guards snatched at her robe and spun her, but she screamed out with wide, terrible eyes, causing the guardsmen to take a step back. The whole crowd fell silent then. Even the brawlers stopped, as the witch started spinning in a blurring circle, howling out with rage in a voice that was far from human. When she stopped spinning, she was no longer a
