The Honor of Death

Kai emerged into the stifling heat to a reluctant applause from what he guessed was a middling crowd, but when he spared a sour glance up into the rows of stone seating, he found the colosseum brimming with patrons. He pulled on his tattered gear, peering up to the top levels to find tiny figures of men milling about in a rush beneath the crimson royal banners. “Damn them and the king’s bloody games,” he muttered into his shaggy beard, already growing tired of the festivities. His head slumped back down to study the sands shifting beneath his boots, as was his custom before any bout.

The arena was well manicured and raked for these events, but Kai continued his survey, having found life saving clues this way before. The beasts that were wrangled into the pit were savage creatures, and they often left traces of their nature as the hunters dragged them into the hold below. And, though the grounds crew was talented, one couldn’t blame them for missing a mark across the acres of sand during their preparations.

He drifted around the edge of the arena to the other gates, searching for signs that the beast had come through. Kai’s brow ticked up, and he hurried forward as some irregular patterns in the sand formed up ahead of him. He was crouching when the announcer cut his focus. “And now, the Knight of Light. The Sword of Kenth. Ser Lancel Umbril!”

Kai stumbled backward as the gate before him clanged open.

Ser Lancel emerged from the pits to a mighty swell of cheers and beating drums filling the stone ring of the fighting pits. Thousands roared his name, and he stood at the gates with his gilded arms raised out to them. He closed his eyes and tilted his chin skyward, drinking in the exaltation as one might the hot sun after a long, cold night.

After the rumbling applause simmered, he strolled over to Kai with a tight grin set impressively upon his stout jaw. “You know, you’d find a bit more admiration if you just…tried,” he said. “I can’t be certain you would make it to the Laurel fights, but the wardens might be more willing to throw heavier purses your way if you could stoke a crowd.” He patted Kai on his dull pauldron, creaking its hinges. “No one cares much for a cold-blooded killer; they leave that to the hounds of the hunter’s guild. What they want is a showman.” Lancel flashed his white smile to the stands and pushed off from Kai before he could grunt back something about the knight joining a troupe.

Kai looked back to the ground, finding more to the story he had begun deciphering. A few patches of sand were caked in rings of a regular pattern, each about a foots width. He followed the markings in loose groupings across the pit, paying no mind to the further announcements and the growing buzz of the crowd.

The closer Kai came to the center of the sand, the darker the color of the tracks. They grew increasingly thick beneath his boot heel, and his eyes widened with every step. By the time he halted in the middle of the pit, he had a good idea of what they were facing today. The sand was wet and stood firm beneath him. “Of course they would,” he said to no one, “but where in the hells did it get off to?”

…

“Daddy,” Celia said, keeping her focus on the arena below, “why’s it that the brute always acts so odd?” She pointed generally down in the center of the pit to where the silent warrior was plodding along in the sand and crouching down sporadically. “Kara says he’s gone mad and doesn’t know he’s in a fight until the beast nips at his leathers.” She giggled then. “I say the monster gets him this time. Dumb luck can only take you so far, yes?”

Celia’s father was laughing with his senate friends, raising golden goblets of summer wine and resetting the collar of his robes repeatedly into pristine position. He turned to look out from beneath the canopy afforded by the senate’s box seats. "Ah, ser Kai? Yes, he’s odd, but do not mistake him for an idiot.” He sipped heavily from his cup, “The man’s got hunter’s blood, to be sure.”

“Hmph,” Celia turned back to studying the field. Ser Lancel was magnificent, she thought as his white armor caught the sun like a radiant jewel. She stood when the knight made his turn to address the crowd, pushing out her figure and striking her most regal pose. Maybe she’d have ogled if she’d been a lesser woman, but she held true as Ser Lancel’s gaze fell on her and paused ever so briefly to admire.

“Broker,” she called to a short man in green robes looking rather self-important. “Ten crowns to the Knight, if you will.” He shuffled through a small sheaf of papers and jotted down her bets. After, he walked over and jutted out a hand. “One and one half to one odds, m’lady.” He cracked a dubious smile, “Feeling rash today, I see.” Celia handed over her purse and sneered. “I don’t need the funds, obviously.” She paused to look around the opulent canopy, draped in silk curtains and overflowing with carafes of wine and plates of food. “This tithe is luck to our finest warrior.” She blushed again at her quick wit, wondering what Lancel would think of her devotion.

A low rumble drew gasps as the crowd turned their attention to the pit below. There, in the middle of the floor, a hole was slipping open and sands spilled into the belly of the arena. The brute sprinted back to the wall to look on with the other dozen fighters.

The groans and clicks of the aperture’s mechanism squealed to a halt as a thirty-meter hole stood agape in the floor, revealing a pool of black water sloshing easily onto the sands. “Gods,” her father’s voice pulled her gaze into the pavilion, “the wardens found a kraken!”

…

Kai stood fifty meters away from the pool. “Gods,” he said, drifting closer to the wall. “The wardens found a kraken.”

The crowd went dead silent before the arena, and Kai heard the quickening breaths of the other knights around him. He noticed his own breathing had run away from him, so he took to swinging his gladius blades in whirling arcs through the air.

The other knights stood fixed in place, undecided between action or terror. Each looked rather foolish with their princely suits of plate and shirts of polished mail covering them in this gods forsaken heat, particularly now when the brewing danger struck the daring grins from their faces. Either way, Kai found himself wanting for possibly a bit more protection as he tugged at his boiled leathers and woefully incomplete set of plate armor.

One of the fighters found her own solution to the crippling fear by letting out a howl to the skies. The patrons and knights alike looked on silently as she charged forward, and a moment later the arena ignited into a deafening roar.

Many of the fighters charged on after the lady knight, riding on her surge of bravado. Kai pulled up the rear of the force as he rushed through some form of a strategy in his mind. “Wait,” he called out frantically. “Don’t rush it! Let it show us – “

No fighters had heard him over the drone of the crowd, but no amount of planning or shouting would have stopped the headstrong lady knight from being impaled a staggering twenty meters from the pool. An oily tentacle, barbed at the end with jagged bone, pushed through her torso like it were soft cheese, and the ivory tip dripped in thick blood as the knight’s body slipped from the tentacle and into the waters churning below.

Nine more tentacles emerged from the inky pool and shot out to all sides. The fighters were sent scrambling to the outer walls as the suckered arms curled in the sands, gradually wrenching the slimy body of the squid to the surface, revealing a long, pointed head and one glassy eye the size of Kai himself.

Soon, another knight was skewered and tossed screaming into the monster’s beak. “Form up,” called Kai to the others. “Don’t let it pick us all off!” A few of the warriors heard him and shuffled along the walls to form a pack. Others were either too far away to hear or scoffed at the brute, raising their weapons and stomping closer to the flailing limbs.

One massive fighter managed to hack a tentacle into three separate trunks of meat, drawing a boom from the crowd, before being impaled from behind and devoured by the beast.

The men and women on the opposite side of the ring continued to evade and fight, and the four that arrived to Kai’s call stood at attention and out of reach. Kai may be boring by arena standards, but the pragmatic fighters learned to listen to him over the years when chaos broke.

“We need to form a circle to press out unseen strikes. This way we all have protection, and with all our blades swinging, we can hack this thing to pieces while we close in.” Kai looked to Ser Lancel’s harried face for support. “Right,” said Ser Lancel. “I’ll take the rear while you two flank myself and the brute.”

“The others are wise to cling to Ser Lancel against the squid,” said Celia to the other maidens seated near her. She was on her feet and teetering out over the short wall of the pavilion. The senate box stood prominently against the beige of the general crowd, but frustratingly far from the sands. Celia was alone in her enthusiastic posture, talking back over her shoulder to the half-attentive ladies. “No doubt the brute is hoping for more luck at the good knight’s side,” she said with a sneer.

She followed the pod of warriors across the sands, taking glances back to the pool and the unfortunate lone wolves that the kraken feasted on in quick succession. Each body that slid from a spiked appendage into the hungry beak of the squid drew a bit more tension into Celia’s body. She was positively taught and leaned desperately over the wall in hopes her words could be heard by her knight below. “Strike true, Ser Lancel,” she screamed, hearing giggles behind her.

Celia turned, “And why is it that you’ve come to the hunt, fair ladies? To gossip, or find some lord to bed you by – “ she was cut short by the crowd’s roar. She whipped back to the arena, finding the kraken had lifted its monstrous bulk out of the inky well and onto the sands. Its body writhed about with eight remaining tendrils flailing against the ground like a nest of snakes tied in a knot around its black eye. Once that eye locked onto the circle of fighters, the beast began to shamble across the shifting sands towards them, letting out a sonorous shriek.

The fighters made use of their formation as the beast closed on them, lashing out at the tentacles and lopping off great hunks of squid meat. They managed the glancing blows well, and Celia’s grip on the wall seemed to ease for a moment. “A formidable foe,” she said, taking a deep drink from her cup, “but none can outlast the knight’s skill.”

The brute managed to shear off one whole tentacle, drawing up a wail from the kraken, and sending it rolling back across the sands. The crowd cheered its retreat and began a death chant. “Kill. Kill. Kill,” rang the voices as one, filling the ring of the arena with a reverberating tremor.

As the kraken escaped, its great eye looked up to the crowd, and amidst the chorus for its own death, the beast broke out of its roll and slithered in a line towards the senators’ box. In a few quick breaths, the beast’s slimy arms were latching over the lower walls and pulling the bulk of its head over behind them.

Doomed patrons flitted into its path, becoming greedily shoved into the massive beak. The monster’s hunger seemed endless as it climbed onward, blanching Celia’s face as she sought stability from those around her. “Ser Lancel will surely stop this, will he not?” she begged.

…

Kai was certain he would give out before reaching the monster in the stands. He was bleeding from a few small cuts, and his shoulders burned from repeatedly hacking at the weave of tentacles that had been assaulting their formation mere moments ago. Still, he huffed forward to finish the damn thing.

He was unsure of what now drove him, finding a small measure of satisfaction from the screams of terror in the crowd. Maybe now they’d come to understand that no one truly wants to fight these beasts, he thought, and that we saddle this fear for them each time we step into the ring. However, his humanity soon pushed over this vendetta, and he found, at his core, a motivation of sympathy. Sure, they were fools—the lot of them—but none of these patrons deserved a death like this.

He looked back over his shoulder, hopeful that he’d ushered forth some courage to continue, but he found only two of the three fighters coming up behind him. A pity the Knight of Light wasn’t more warrior than showman, he thought, straining a laugh to mask the absolute terror within.

The beast continued charting a particularly narrow course up to the box-level seating as it climbed. Kai thought that was fitting, as they were the most plump and juicy of the crowd. The kraken no doubt regretted its decision to eat some of the rags and bones of those at the bottom levels and was looking onward to the meaty meal the pavilion offered.

Kai finally reached the ledge of the outer wall and hauled himself up and over it. He stood to gather his breath while his two companions hurdled the wall to join him and watched on with wide eyes as the beast continued its rampage. Renewed with strength by the bloodcurdling wails of the victims and bolstered by the bravery of the men at his sides, he pushed onward, closing the span between himself and the beast.

When he reached within striking distance of the squid, he stabbed down on a tentacle with both swords while the others hacked away at it. This shocked the beast into a brief pause, and Kai smiled broadly, “Here you fowl animal. Come and fight.” Soon, though, the smile was wiped from his face as the tentacle wrapped him, swords and all, and hauled him up and over the great eye.

When he thudded down and his swords clanged across the steps below, Kai found himself only a few feet from the mouth of the monster. He scrambled backwards, finding one of his swords with his pawing hands, and swung it madly at the mess of limbs cracking down on him.

He continued fumbling up the steps backwards and slashing his blade until he bumped up against the pavilion walls. He was near blind now, hot blood running over his eyes and filling his mouth with the taste of iron, and his legs wobbled beneath him. His sword made lazy arcs above him as he began losing any hope of survival.

A few fresh screams stirred him, and he realized now that he was slashing at nothing. Through his bleary eyes, he saw the bodies of his fellow fighters slain before him and the great body of the beast hovering above, heading now for its prize pavilion.

Without another thought, Kai stood and pierced the belly of the squid, wrenching the blade cruelly to the side. The wail and flood of warm blood that followed brought Kai to his knees, nearly incapacitating him. However, he was alive enough in the end to see the black mass fall over him, and he gave up all his breath beneath the weight of the great monster.

…

Celia clutched her goblet tight to her chest, crammed at the back of the box with the rest of the ladies and lords. Tears stained her face black with crushed coal, and she rattled through her uncontrollable sobs. “Is it…dead," she asked the room. “Did he kill it?”

Everyone around her was stunned to silence, and the general shrieks of terror had bubbled down to just those of immense pain and sorrow. The colosseum was wild with scattered bloody flesh and crushes of people pushing to exit as quickly as they could. Celia took slow and uneasy steps toward the front of the box, sniffling away her hysteria and peering over the edge cautiously.

The black body of the monster lay heaped in coils there below her. So close it had come, yet the brute must have given it one last blow. What a tragedy he had been beneath it, she thought, looking out to the sands of the arena.

Ser Lancel sat in silence with his legs splayed out before him, staring at nothing. He’d no doubt put forth a great effort to slay the beast; she saw his chest heaving powerfully still. Shrewd he may be, but brave he was not, Celia decided. Her beloved knight was now no more than a mask.

Her true hero lay beneath the monster at her feet, she realized, and it was then that she wept for him. She cried both tears of sorrow for his sacrifice and tears of elation for having kept her life. “To the brute,” she whispered to herself. “May we find another as brave and true.”