The Empress and the Bandit King

The roar of the crowd droned through the mighty coliseum walls, the tumultuous waves of red and gold swelling, rippling and undulating like the evening tides of the Blackknife Bay. Another warrior cut down in one sweep of the blade, his body buckling at the crook of the knee and the inner curve of the spine, backwards, spilling over the dirt. His assassin, a towering colossus of gnarled muscle stood unyielding, presenting the sword wrapped around a bulging, sinuous arm to the audience. Teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, veins throbbing, he howled in a primal rage - demanding another sacrifice to quench his insatiable bloodlust.

The empress held her composed façade. Sat aloft her throne - above her citizens with a eagle's view of the arena, she tensed her hands under her chin, disguising the quiver of her lip. With the tip of her head, they would unleash another to fight the good fight, and hope to put an end to that monster's reign. Yet he had cleared her prisons, painting the arena sands red, and tangling viscera around its mangled ironwork. The pit below may have been the battlefield for a great and violent war, the sour, metallic stench summoning ravens to circle and sweep for their spoils when at last the stands would empty.

He meant to threaten her reign. The brute king of the bandit raiders that had scourged her empire since her father's time. He had demanded trial by combat - an honourable compromise to spare her subjects from indiscriminate slaughter and the seizure of her capital. Instead, desperate, she offered him her empire should he find victory in the arena. The terms were agreed - he alone versus all the undesirables the dungeons had amassed over the years, each beast taken from the wilds to offer glory to champions, and finally, her best warriors. Though she had hoped it wouldn't go that far. The carcasses of lions, bears, crocodiles, wolves, and bulls plastered the ring in furred or scaled barricades some had used to shield themselves from the king's wrath - mute testimony to his indomitable fury.

With fear dancing in her eyes, she gave the signal to order her guardsmen into the ring. A single, un-armoured man, though hulking and menacing as he may seem, should surely fall to her champions clad in plate and chain with polished shields and blades... The king bore a violent grin, with yellowed fangs itching to sink themselves into flesh. His monstrous sword, forged from Vile Steel, captured the final grizzly screams of his prey in its reflection, hacking limbs from torsos, and carving through the company as a woodsman through coppice. When the last fell limp, body still hung on his blade, he shot a look to the empress one last time, peeling the corpse away with his foot. With a flourish, he turned the edge to her. Splashed blood and dirt decorated his bare skin. None was his own, he had yet to meet the touch of a razor.

The empress's advisors crowded her, offering solutions for how to eliminate him. Send her armies, direct her archers upon him from the stands, her agents, her assassins, pour oil and tar. But any would violate their terms. It was then that she stood, stepping down from her vantage and dividing the crowd in her path. A hush fell over them, and her entourage begged her to return to safety. The king of the bandits watched amused as she slid down the wall, landing in a pool of damp, crimson sand.

She was not the size or stature of a trained warrior. An empress indeed, though only in her early teens since her father's unexpected demise had promoted her. She had at her thigh a sheathed dagger, the blade carved from the sting of a manticore, and therefore venomous. Her hair was a curled, gilded apricot, a wreath of laurel for a crown, and her skin soft and bronzed. Her tunic was clean, white silk, with a sash of her empire's gold over her shoulder. He, by contrast, was a giant of a man, with a deep tan, covered in brown stubble, oiled, and scarred. The king met her gaze, finding his chin on his collar to reach it.

With a gulp, her words trembled across the silence, each syllable punctuated by the pounding of her heartbeat. "Victory is almost yours, king of bandits, and so I offer you a choice. Name your final foe. This empire's entire army, bolstered by the might of every champion to have found glory on these hallowed sands... Or me."

His weathered brow, etched with the ravages of battles past, furrowed into a deep frown. "Is this some jest?" His voice, thick with fire and grit, echoed the menacing growl of a sphinx. "An empire for the life of one child? Where is the glory in that?" He scoffed, amusement lacing his words as he turned his back on her. "... And yet..." He split the air with his blade, catching a twist of her hair as she leapt out of its path. The stands erupted in a cacophony of screams, pleading for someone to step in and rescue their empress. Champions ripped the gates open, ready to flood onto the sands to take her place.

"No!" The empress cried, holding her hand to stop them while dodging the man's advancing strikes. "No one is to intervene!" She studied his form, his angle of attack, the power of each swing. She had been watching from her vantage, but up close, she could better gauge his strength, and anticipate his strategy.

Keeping a distance, she used his battle-worn fatigue to her advantage. Her heart pounded, playing to the rhythm of the war drums. Each sharp breath cut like a knife, her limbs fuelled though threatening to freeze. Beads of sweat speckled her shuddering arms. He swung high, she ducked. He swung low, she bounced backwards. Inch by inch, step by step, she was forced closer to the towering walls surrounding the arena. Blood roared in her head, drowning out the crowd. She used the body of a slain bear as cover to get around and back into the open. Her opponent turned and followed, smile widening, muscles tensing. She would soon tire. She would slip, fall, or trip - failing to evade his deadly swing. That was when he would close in for the kill.

She deciphered his plan as he backed off. He sought to regain control, employing her own tactic against her. Drawing her knife, she caught her breath, shrinking beneath his shadow as he raised his blade over his head, his silhouette eclipsing the sun. As his arms came down, she dashed to the side, too fast for him to twist around, and grazed her weapon against his left arm. She drew blood. The venom would take effect quickly - paralysis setting in the muscle. He retaliated, swinging his soon to be useless arm into her head.

The empress was knocked to the floor, her vision darkening in waves. He had met the socket of her eye, cracking it, with red seeping into the white. Still, the venom took hold, and he was forced to lift the two-handed weapon alone in his right hand. There would be less power in each swing, though power nonetheless. Holding her head, the child staggered into a run, seeking refuge as she banished the lingering dizziness. 

He yowled, thundering over to her. His sword split through the rear of the bull she sheltered behind, but stuck fast, and she aimed low with her knife to slice at his calf as she brushed by him. His knee buckled, still he held steady on his remaining foot, using his weapon as a crutch once it was free.

Her disorientation should surely seal her fate. Each step was taken with a stagger, her jaw tingling, her vision flickering with lights that sparkled and dimmed. A change of stance - she spread herself to even her weight, staring, heaving, blood chilling as he stumbled between his one good foot and his support.

He swung wide and clean, yet it was a mere feint. Backing away, her posture was too rigid to find distance in time. The blade abandoned his hand, sinking into the dirt, and his fist twisted at her garb. Her body was no burden to his strength, lifting her - feet dangling and flailing. And then he hurled her to the floor. Under such force, the pillow of sand may have been stone, rattling her skull with a blow that gurgled bile up from her stomach to her throat. Her vision was framed to his immensity, though calls of support sang over the noise in her ears.

His foot met her chest - before it could be squashed, she coiled her blade into the flesh, squirming away in the moment that he recoiled. He cried out, with colour boiling in his face. Collapsing, he lashed with his good arm, in efforts to keep her from getting in close. She rushed to stand, zipped around his left, and scaled his back as if it were the side of her horse. Though he reached to throw her off, she kept out of his range, and with a gasp, plunged her blade into his throat.

The king of bandits' growl became a grunt, his swinging elbow little more than a weight on a line. He gagged and choked, his teeth washed in red and dribbling down his chin. Body trembling, he caught sight of her again on his shoulder. Words and breaths drowned, the rage in his brow easing to terror. And he fell.

The empress toppled with him, led on her side, curls dusted in sand. She tugged her hand free, the blade following, with the tip dipped in blood and all that kept the rest within his bulk. Like a cork popped from a cask of drink, his fluids poured and glugged, soaking into the dust. Still the empress did not receive the applause of her audience until minutes later, when finally the droning in her head ceased. Her guardsmen rushed to aid her, soon to be followed my physicians. She may have won the battle, though it had cost her dearly - the numbness of her mind assured her of that. And yet, she had won nonetheless. She drew a breath, and bathed in the glory of her victory.