The Certainty of Blood by Tim Frankovich

Author:Tim Frankovich [Frankovich, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Warpsteel Press
Published: 2023-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Then

Orgina was right, of course. The story of how Clanless fought an entire pack of wolves and a lizard monster and a foreign sorcerer spread quickly and did not fade away. Nor did the part of how he had used some form of magic himself. As the story was told and re-told in the weeks to come, the details became less… factual. In every telling, it seemed Clanless’s injuries grew worse, and still he fought on. His mysterious power grew in the telling as well. In some versions, fire erupted from his eyes to consume the sorcerer who’d killed his friend. In others, his moonblade glowed with the fire of the sun as it severed the sorcerer’s head. Those who had been there and watched the fight tried to explain what they’d actually seen, but many seemed to prefer the exaggerated versions over the facts.

When Clanless returned to the sands three weeks later, the stands were packed. He faced off against three barbarians this time. The battle lasted a good six or seven minutes, but the outcome was never in doubt. Free to use the Taint, Clanless didn’t need as much effort to succeed. In fact, he found it freed him up to perform more crowd-pleasing stunts he ordinarily wouldn’t risk doing. Between the Taint’s guarantee of winning (assuming he could make the enemies bleed), and the skill of the arena’s healer to restore any wounds he did suffer, Clanless made every battle a spectator’s delight from then on. He never failed to entertain the crowd, though some of them griped that he needed better opponents to truly display his skills.

That became the hardest part for Orgina. She searched farther and wider to find deserving enemies. Every so often, they employed magic in their fighting. Some used healing in the middle of a fight; others used blood that magnified their speed or strength. The strong ones didn’t add much to the challenge, but the speedy ones proved more difficult. None ever used the power the foreign sorcerer had employed. Clanless found it curious that none of them combined multiple magics. He never fought anyone with both speed and strength magnified. Yet the Hawk King used many magics, or so the stories told.

As Orgina expected and predicted, Clanless at once became the arena’s primary crowd draw. If he wasn’t fighting, people wanted to know why. People even tried to demand refunds for their entry fees when they discovered he wouldn’t be fighting on a particular Arena Night.

In this way, time passed. Clanless fought hard and kept mostly to himself in between battles. He ventured into the city maybe once every month or two. When he did, he hated the attention his fame brought him. Every so often, some tough guy would challenge him on the street. It never ended well for the challenger.

Orgina purchased new fighters to replace Patch and Allaka. Clanless and Zaluu found themselves in the unfamiliar role of mentors to these younger warriors. Clanless did his part to teach them everything he could, hoping to keep these two alive as long as possible.

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