Dan Micklethwaite - [BCS265 S02] - How the Mighty (html) Read online

  “Bloody hell,” Corda says.

  Boden gulps back what remains of his beer.

  The contest is getting scrappier, looser, harsher. Branco attacks but without much of his usual grace or control. Which is understandable, Boden thinks, given that a flap of his cheek’s hanging off.

  The Pankezi fans are no less noisy, though somehow at the same time a lot more subdued. Their green flags still flutter, but they’re no longer held so high nor waved quite so wildly as the yellow ones that are scattered in and amongst them. Most of their shouts are for a quick kill now, and damn the entertainment—they want him to dispatch this upstart and get himself fixed. Women nearby in the crowd are appalled. Men as well. Some are holding their betting slips nervously, twisting them, cursing when they see they’ve smudged the ink with their sweat.

  Boden knows how they’re feeling.

  Corda beside him is still sipping his beer, looking a little more comfortable, a little more smug. Parrus doesn’t look well, though. And Tallow looks worse.

  The boy’s turned paper-white, ghost-white, and Boden can tell right away what he’s thinking. That if he hadn’t have screamed when the axe came down, that if Boden hadn’t grabbed him and spilt the beer, then Branco wouldn’t have been caught off-guard. He’s thinking how his hero was only trying to help them, and now his hero’s the one who’s been badly hurt.

  Boden reaches for the shoulder of his son’s replica tunic, but Tal shrugs him away, and the few little tassels slip through his grasp.

  The Drum pushes back again, blocking the Champion’s sharp jabs, hammering down blow after blow of his own. One is deflected, but only as far as Branco’s left forearm, gouging the muscle, leaving him no choice but to fight on one-handed. He drips a bloody trail as he stumbles back to regroup.

  Tal holds the doll like a flickering candle, steadies it, keeping the faith. “Comeoncomeoncomeon,” he says, audible to Boden even under the deafening roar. “Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon.”

  Boden feels wretched. He knows that what his son wants, what’ll make him happy, is all that should matter. But he’s thinking of the slip in his pocket too, and the gold he can win. The gold that he’s got to win, for a whole lot of reasons. He’s sick at himself. He knows he should be making the most of this time with Tal, this chance, but he’s all too aware of what else is at stake.

  He can’t take his eyes off his son, but he can’t take his eyes off the action either.

  “Comeoncomeoncomeon,” Tal breathes, as Branco makes a leap and launches another attack.

  “Come on!” Boden shouts, as Branco’s sword evades the block and strikes the Drum’s chest.

  The challenger topples backwards, a deep groove in his torso, blood welling out of it, spraying the Champion’s sandals as he moves in for the kill.

  But he moves in too slowly.

  The challenger’s already back on his knees.

  The crowd bay for a beheading, but through a neck that thick it’d usually be a two-handed maneuver, and Branco is struggling to lift even one. That last jump seems to have sapped whatever strength he had left; the mid-air feint, the unpredictable thrust. His knees almost buckle.

  “Comeoncomeoncomeon,” Tal whispers, as he holds the doll upright, willing the same for the man.

  Boden’s own legs feel weak. He puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, both to steady himself and to reassure Tal. The boy’s knuckles are white as well. Boden wants the chance to lift him up in celebration, the way his own father did the first time they came here; to sing the chants together in victory. That’s why he’d brought the boy, isn’t it, to share that experience. If he’d just wanted the money, he could have shown up alone.

  “Come on, Branco,” he pleads. “Come on...”

  The Pankezi fans take up a chorus of the Champion’s name.

  They beat on their wood blocks and blow on their horns.

  They shake their green flags, and they cry for a win.

  Branco looks up at them, through them, beyond them, as the challenger’s battle-axe smashes into his gut.

  For a moment, Boden can only stare dumbly as his son vaults the barrier and sprints out across the sand, through the footprints and blood-spatter, the doll limp in his hand as he homes in on the corpse.

  Dom ‘The Drum’ Wharrey is clear of the scene, saluting his fans in the far left corner. One of them hands him a banner, another a yellow flag with the local sigil; he ties them both round his chest to try staunch his own wound.

  Oblivious to his triumph, two guards bustle past him and race towards Tal, raising their pikes.

  Boden kicks into action. He jumps at the barrier but crashes through where the axe hit and slams face-down in the sand. He gets up, not pausing to brush himself off, even more dust and dirt on his clothes. His nose feels broken, but there’s no time to check. He doesn’t even stop when he feels his back seize.

  He just about gets there at the same time as the soldiers, but they’ve already realized his son hasn’t come out to steal. He’s actually put something down, like a burial gift. It’s his doll, laid beside Branco, carefully beyond the puddle of gore soaking into the sand.

  Tal is just staring. Just trying get the picture right in his mind, so that he never forgets.

  And he won’t, Boden thinks. Because there’s nothing at all like your first trip to the fights.

  “Come here with you,” he says, and lifts Tal into his arms. There’s a look on the boy’s face that Boden’s never seen before, not once, and hopes he never sees again, even as he knows that he will. Then Tal throws his arms around Boden’s neck and presses that face into the filthy tunic and weeps.

  The guards look around awkwardly and then down at the body, which they suppose they should move before others approach.

  Boden turns and sets off for the gap in the fence; sees Corda grinning at the betting slip that flaps in one hand, reaching out with the other to muss his crying son’s hair.

  Boden might have torn his own slip up by now, if his arms weren’t full with carrying Tal. As it is, his other worries will have to wait. The pressure on his lower back gets worse with every step, and his nose hurts like hell, but he can hardly blame the boy for that now, can he? It’s one of those things that he’s just got to take.

  © Copyright 2018 Dan Micklethwaite