Shang? POV: Day 86
Current Wealth: 307 gold 2 silver 33 copper
Aja the Pit Hound was a big guy. Not Argar big, but he was upsettingly close to it. Six foot three, maybe six-four. Rippling with musculature that I hadn’t even known people in Redacle had the nutritional and training quality to build. His hair was black, greasy, and frizzy like mine, eyes dark, face darker. All twisty skin and scar tissue, pulled at in a dozen different directions by the puckered knots of mangled flesh and seemingly trapped into a permanent, snarling grin.
He walked like a panther, as if his own weight was nothing at all, and I couldn’t help but take a look at his Stats. Couldn’t hide my horror as I did.
Nineteen for Strength and Toughness, seventeens in Speed and Alertness. High Intelligence, massive Stamina. I could see now why he moved as if his body weighed nothing at all, because from his perspective it probably did. Even with all the glinting plates of…Metal?
“Draconian Bronze.” Solitaire breathed, staring at the coppery-coloured strips of lamellar and mail as if they were some giant pack of animals barreling for him. Byror only smiled wider.
“Correct!” He proclaimed, as if speaking to some little kid who’d done something clever. “Impressive eyes, you have their, my friend, and admirable knowledge for a mercenary.”
By the look on Solitaire’s face, he was trying to figure out if Byror really meant to say “mercenary”. I decided to speak up before he decided the noble hadn’t, and did something Solitairish in response.
“Expensive for a pit fighter.” I noted.
“Oh, the Anophes insist on keeping their little monsters draped in only the finest.” Byror laughed. “And believe me, the result is rather impressive.”
I jumped to my feet, intending on storming down to warn Helena of what we all knew was coming. Just as I turned to the door, though, I found more than a few men barring it.
“Terribly sorry.” Byror sighed. “But you won’t be getting to her, just sit back and enjoy the show.”
The Pithound strode towards Helena just as the match was called, and he lashed out with some giant, curved weapon. A khopesh, I think it was called. Didn’t seem like the kind of thing that’d get through armour, but his strength was mountainous, and its edge seemed to…Glow. Incandescent in my sight, like someone had taken a blowtorch to it and left it bright with heat.
Helena caught it, her shield twisting up high. She was equipped with something similar to a Hoplite’s aspis, though we’d reworked it from tool steel, made it thinner and lighter while still adding a bit of strength to a typical example. It did stop the Pithound’s swing, but barely. The metal trembled at the impact, sparks flying out, and as Helena stumbled back I glimpsed the sight of a deep gouge in her shield’s face. She regained her footing just in time for him to lash out again.
Helena had the range, with her shortspear, but her enemy had been so quick in his first strike that he’d gotten past its length before she could thrust. Now he just lashed his weapon against the wall of steel between them.
It didn’t look like a fight, more like a giant psychopath trying to sledgehammer his way through a concrete wall. And the wall was cracking, every impact sent Helena stumbling a half-step farther, each space between the next swing and her shield adjusting its position was by a narrower breadth. Every dent that rested in the tool steel of her aspis was deeper. Whether she broke first or the shield did, it looked like a breaking would be on its way no matter what, and not one that helped us.
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But this wasn’t just some meathead, it was Helena. She was one of ours, smart, tough as boot leather. She lasted a good while before her body started to slow and weaken with the strain of keeping her enemy back, and while she lasted, she thought. Between each impact the straps on her shield grew a shade looser, until finally she cast the thing off and sent it whipping for her enemy’s face as a thrown projectile.
As far as hurled metal went, it wasn’t the most effective attack. But it kept the man’s reflexes focused on the one big, glinting object coming for his face, so much so that he didn’t quite step back in time to keep Helena’s spear from finding the joint of his hip.
Tool steel, that was what Solitaire said the alloy had been called. I saw why. In an age of piston-driven mechanisms capable of grinding stone to powder, the requirements of metal tools had become extreme. Pressure resistance, impact resistance, an unyielding, unbreaking strength that was to the primitive metals of this world as they were to raw iron. Helena’s weapon bit in, carving through mail and sending her enemy back a step, beads of crimson running down the armour just beneath where she’d skewered.
But only beads, not a river. My own blood went cold as ice at that, and I heard Byror exhale.
“She had me worried for a moment there.” The man grinned, leaning back, folding his hands behind his head. “But the Anophes seem to have put some Draconian Bronze mail beneath the plates.”
Helena didn’t get even an instant to breathe before her enemy was coming at her again, his fury redoubled, as if the injury had somehow offended him. This time, though, she was ready for him.
Even without her shield, Helena kept her distance and lashed out at the man’s face and neck, forcing him to abandon the all-out assault he’d used before.
Her own body was struck plenty, metal screeching as that bronze khopesh carved rents out of the steel, I felt Solitaire wincing at the sight. Helena kept fighting, though, kept circling. And for just a moment, she even gave me hope that there was a chance.
Then the Warhound’s khopesh found her elbow, cracking the carefully articulated joints and cutting deep. Blood fell in a sheet, but it had barely even hit the ground before Aja’s second stroke caught Helena’s knee, leaving her to collapse as the leg gave out under her. He kept swinging, blood kept flying, her body kept changing.
It should’ve taken the announcers maybe a few seconds to get over their shock and call the match off, but instead they waited for minutes. Minutes of Helena writhing around, slowly ruined more and more as one piece after another was stripped off of her.
When the match was finally brought to an end, she barely even looked human. Just a pile of mangled meat lying in armour. Still alive, I saw, still fucking alive. Moving around like a maggot on the ground.
Slowly, I turned to Byror, and found him grinning. Fucking grinning. His eyes were as pointed as ever, teeth on full display as he smiled.
“Consider this a learning experience, my boy.” He beamed. “The Velaharos were old enemies of my family, once. No longer. For the same reason that the rats in my privy are not counted amongst my foes. You’ve risen fast and well, and so I imagine you actually let yourself feel some measure of hope that you might overturn me, perhaps even goaded on by that pretty little whore you married for a title. Now you know better.”
My heartbeat was in my ears, and so loud that I could barely even hear the crowd as they screamed away in the distance. The world was a dark, tight tunnel, and Byror sat alone at one end of it.
“Oh, you don’t need to say anything.” He pressed, still smiling, “I just wanted to make sure we understood one another. That the rules of noble engagement, as they were, do not make you untouchable. Good day, my boy.”
Byror got to his feet, slithering away and leaving me and Solitaire alone. Instantly I turned my eyes to my friend, opened my mouth to speak. And froze.
Solitaire looked through me as if I was made of glass, and I knew, instantly, there would be no reaching him. No dissuading him.
He wore the same face he’d had on after staving that bandit’s skull in with the hammer, after gouging that orc’s eyes out, after every casual cruelty I’d ever seen him do. But moreso. It sent a shiver down my spine, and left me feeling an unmistakable sense of vertigo.
“Let’s go and find Corvan.” He said, slowly. “And see how much he can do for Helena.”
Mouth dry as a desert, I just nodded.
