There was a scattering of laughs, boos and jeers. Camling gave a long pause, chin raised, and treated the savages to a lesson in cultured gravity. The type of lesson he had been hoping Iosiv Lestek might administer, what a farce
‘Why give him one, then?’ More laughter.
‘—who has forged a dread name for himself across the fighting pits, cages and Circles of the Near and Far Countries ever since he left his native North. A man undefeated in twenty-two encounters.
Glama… Golden!’
Golden shouldered his way into the Circle, stripped to the waist, his huge body smeared with grease to frustrate an opponent’s grasp, great slabs of muscle glistening white by torchlight and reminding Camling of the giant albino slugs he sometimes saw in his cellar and was irrationally afraid of. With his skull shaved, the Northman’s luxuriant moustache looked even more of an absurd affectation, but the volume of the crowd’s bellows only increased. A breathless frenzy had descended upon them and they no doubt would have cheered an albino slug if they thought it might bleed for their entertainment.
‘And, standing for the Mayor, his opponent… Lamb.’ Much less enthusiastic cheering as the second fighter stepped into the Circle to a last frantic round of betting. He was likewise shaved and greased, his body so covered with a multitude of scars that, even if he had no fame as a fighter, his familiarity with violence was not to be doubted.
Camling leaned close to whisper, ‘Just that for a name?’
‘Good as another,’ said the old Northman, without removing his steady gaze from his opponent. No doubt everyone considered him the underdog. Certainly Camling had almost discounted him until that very moment: the older, smaller, leaner man, the gambler’s odds considerably against him, but Camling noticed something in his eye that gave him pause. An eager look, as though he had an awful hunger and Golden was the meal.
The bigger man’s face, by contrast, held a trace of doubt as Camling ushered the two together in the centre of the Circle. ‘Do I know you?’ he called over the baying of the audience. ‘What’s your real name?’
Lamb stretched his neck out to one side and then the other. ‘Maybe it’ll come to you.’
Camling held one hand high. ‘May the best man win!’ he shrieked.
Over the sudden roar he heard Lamb say, ‘It’s the worst man wins these.’
This would be Golden’s last fight. That much he knew.
They circled each other, footwork, footwork, step and shuffle, each feeling out the other, the wild noise of the crowd and their shaken fists and twisted faces pushed off to one side. No doubt they were eager for the fight to start. They didn’t realise that oftentimes the fight was won and lost here, in the slow moments before the fighters even touched.
By the dead, though, Golden was tired. Failures and regrets dragging after him like chains on a swimmer, heavier with each day, with each breath. This had to be his last fight. He’d heard the Far Country was a place where men could find their dreams, and come searching for a way to claim back all he’d lost, but this was all he’d found. Glama Golden, mighty War Chief, hero of Ollensand, who’d stood tall in the songs and on the battlefield, admired and feared in equal measure, rolling in the mud for the amusement of morons.
A tilt of the waist and a dip of the shoulder, a couple of lazy ranging swings, getting the other man’s measure. He moved well, this Lamb, whatever his age. He was no stranger to this business—there was a snap and steadiness to his movements and he wasted no effort. Golden wondered what his failures had been, what his regrets. What dream had he come chasing after into this Circle?
‘Leave him alive if you can,’ Ring had said, which only showed how little he understood in spite of his endless bragging about his word. There were no choices in a fight like this, life and death on the Leveller’s scales. There was no place for mercy, no place for doubts. He could see in Lamb’s eyes that he knew it, too. Once two men step into the Circle, nothing beyond its edge can matter, past or future. Things fall the way they fall.
Golden had seen enough.
He squeezed his teeth together and rushed across the Circle. The old man dodged well but Golden still caught him by the ear and followed with a heavy left in the ribs, felt the thud right up his arm, warming every joint. Lamb struck back but Golden brushed it off and as quickly as they’d come together they were apart, circling again, watching, a gust swirling around the theatre and dragging out the torch flames.
He could take a punch, this old man, still moving calm and steady, showing no pain. Golden might have to break him down piece by piece, use his reach, but that was well enough. He was warming to the task. His breath came faster and he growled along with it, his face finding a fighting snarl, sucking in strength and pushing out doubt, all his shame and disappointment made tinder for his anger.
Golden slapped his palms together hard, feinted right then hissed as he darted in, faster and sharper than before, catching the old man with two more long punches, bloodying his bent nose, staggering him and dancing away before he could think of throwing back, the stone bowl ringing with encouragements and insults and fresh odds in a dozen languages.
Golden settled to the work. He had the reach and the weight and the youth but he took nothing for granted. He would be cautious. He would make sure.
This would be his last fight, after all.
‘I’m coming, you bastard, I’m coming!’ shouted Pane, hobbling down the hall on his iffy leg.
Bottom of the pile, that’s what he was. But he guessed every pile needs someone on the bottom, and probably he didn’t deserve to be no higher. The door was jolting in its frame from the blows outside. They should’ve had a slot to look through. He’d said that before but no one took no notice. Probably they couldn’t hear him through that heap of folks on top. So he had to wrestle the bolt back and haul the door open a bit to see who was calling.
There was an old drunk outside. Tall and bony with grey hair plastered to one side of his head and big hands flapping and a tattered coat with what looked like old vomit down one side and fresh down the other. ‘I wanna get fucked,’ he said in a voice like rotten wood splitting.
‘Don’t let me stop you.’ And Pane swung the door shut.
The old man wedged a boot in it and the door bounced back open. ‘I wanna get fucked, I says!’
‘We’re closed.’
‘You’re what?’ The old man craned close, most likely deaf as well as drunk.
Pane heaved the door open wider so he could shout it. ‘There’s a fight on, case you didn’t notice. We’re closed!’
‘I did notice and I don’t care a shit. I want fucking and I want it now. I got dust and I heard tell the Whitehouse is never closed to business. Not never.’
‘Shit,’ hissed Pane. That was true. ‘Never closed,’ Papa Ring was always telling ’em. But then they’d been told to be careful, and triple careful today. ‘Be triple careful today,’ Papa had told them all. ‘I can’t stand a man ain’t careful.’ Which had sounded strange, since no one round here was ever the least bit careful.
‘I want a fuck,’ grunted the old man, hardly able to stand up straight, he was that drunk. Pane pitied the girl got that job, he stank like all the shit in Crease. Usually there’d be three guards at the door but the others had all snuck off to watch the fight and left him on his own, bottom of the bloody heap that he was.
He gave a strangled groan of upset, turned to shriek for someone just a little higher up the heap, and to his great and far from pleasant surprise an arm slipped tight around his neck and a cold point pressed into his throat and he heard the door swing shut behind.
‘Where’s the woman you took?’ The old man’s breath stank like a still but his hands were tight as vices. ‘Shy South, skinny thing with a big mouth. Where is she?’
‘I don’t know nothing about no woman,’ Pane managed to splutter, trying to say it loud enough to get someone’s attention but half-swallowing his words from the pressure.
‘Guess I might as well open you up, then.’ And Pane felt the point of the knife dig into his jaw.
‘Fuck! All right! She’s in the cellar!’
‘Lead on.’ And the old man started moving him. One step, two, and suddenly it just got to Pane what a damn indignity this was on top of everything else, and without thinking he started twisting and thrashing and elbowing away, struggling like this was his moment to get out from under the bottom of that heap and finally be somebody
