“Kill your enemy!” Aaron shouted it, his voice buzzier than ever.
Eris swung her stick. Hamey parried. She came at him from the side and Hamey parried again, but weakly; if she had swung with real force （she didn’t）， she probably would have knocked him off his feet.
“Take him down!” Kellin shrieked. “Take him down, you useless cunt, or I’ll take you down!”
Eris swung low. Hamey made no effort to parry this time, and she cut the legs out from under him. He landed on the grass with a gasp and a thump. The whole people in the box cheered more lustily. Eris bowed to them. I hoped they were far enough away not to see the look of disgust on her face.
Aaron whipped Hamey’s butt and legs with his limber stick. “Up! Up, you pile of dung! Up!”
Hamey struggled to his feet. Tears were rolling down his cheeks and snot hung in double runners from his nose. Aaron raised his limber stick for another slash, but Kellin stayed him with a single shake of his head. Hamey had to stay in one piece, at least until the contest commenced.
Eris was kept on for another opponent. There was a lot of parrying, but no hard hits. They stepped back and the next pair took their place. It went like that, with a lot of thrusting and swiping and parrying, but there were no more cries of take him down or kill your enemy. Stooks and Fremmy, however, got whippings from one of the other night soldiers for laziness. From the way they took it, I thought it wasn’t the first time.
Eye went at it with Tom, Bernd went at it with Bult, and in the end there was just me and Ammit. My guess is Aaron had seen the shoulder-check Ammit had given me on the running track and wanted it that way. Or perhaps Kellin had seen it from wherever he’d been before coming out on the field.
“Sticks!” Aaron shouted. God, I hated that buzzy voice. “You two now! Sticks! Let’s see how you go!”
Ammit held his by the end: offense. He was smiling. I held mine by both ends, cross-body, to parry. At least to start with. Ammit had done this before and expected no trouble from the new kid on the block. Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t. We’d see.
“Kill your enemy!” This time it was Kellin who shouted it.
Ammit went at me with no hesitation, rocking from side to side on his bowlegs, hoping to pin me between the drinks table and the basket that held the fighting sticks, which the previous sparring partners had replaced after their contests. He raised his stick and brought it down. There was no holding back in that swing; he meant to give me a concussion or worse. Putting me away made a certain kind of sense. He might be punished, but the population of the dungeon would be back down to thirty, meaning the Fair One would be put off until two more whole people could be found. He might even have seen it as taking one for the team, but I didn’t believe that. For whatever reason, Ammit had decided he didn’t like me.
I dropped into a semi-crouch and raised my own fighting stick. He hit it instead of my head. I rose from my crouch, pushing his stick and driving him back. Dimly, I heard a spatter of applause from the VIP box. I stepped out from between the basket and the table, crowding him, forcing him back into the open where I could use what speed I had. That wasn’t much, granted, but with those bowlegs, Ammit was no greyhound himself.
He swung his stick first at my left side, then at my right. I parried easily now that I was in the clear. And I was angry. Very. Angry the way I’d been at Christopher Polley when I broke one of his hands, beat him up, and then broke the other one. The way I’d been angry at my father when he retreated into booze after my mother died. I left him alone, didn’t complain about Dad’s drinking （much）， but I expressed that anger in other ways. Some I’ve told you, some I’m too ashamed to tell.
We went around in a circle on the grass, stepping and bending and feinting. The prisoners watched silently. Kellin, Aaron, and the other night soldiers were also watching. In the VIP box, the cocktail-party chatter had ceased. Ammit was starting to breathe hard, and he was no longer as quick with the stick. He was no longer smiling, either, and that was good.
“Come on,” I said. “Come at me, you useless fuck. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He rushed forward, raising his stick over his head. I slid one of my hands down my own stick and jammed the butt end into his belly, just above the groin. The blow he’d launched came down on my shoulder, numbing it. I didn’t pull back. I dropped my stick, reached cross-body with my left hand, and snatched his away. I hit him with it in the thigh, drew back, and hit him in the hip, really putting my own hips into the swing, as if trying to hit a line drive straight up the right-field power alley.