I veered left instead, leaving him an uncontested path to the spears. I hardly glanced at the spiked gloves; lethal they might be, but to use one I’d have to get in Cla’s stabbing zone, and I’d seen how quick he was when he had an opponent up close. It was the fighting sticks I went for. Over several “playtimes” I’d gotten quite handy with them.
I grabbed one out of the basket, turned, and saw Cla already charging, the spear held low at his right hip. He swept it up, hoping to open me from balls to belly and end it fast. I stepped back and brought my stick down on his arms, hoping to jolt the spear loose. He cried out in pain and anger but held on. The audience pattered applause and I heard a woman, almost certainly Petra, scream, “Cut off his pizzle and bring it to me!”
Cla charged again, this time with the spear raised high over his shoulder. There was no finesse to him; like Mike Tyson in the old boxing vids I’d watched with Andy Chen and my father, he was your basic brawler, used to putting his opponents down with a brutal frontal attack. It had always worked for Cla before; it would work now against a much younger opponent. He had the advantage in both weight and reach.
According to the dream Leah, I was faster than I thought. I was certainly faster than Cla thought. I stepped aside like a toreador avoiding the charge of a bull and whistled the fighting stick down on his arm, just above the elbow. The spear flew from his hands and landed on the grass. The audience gave an aaahhh sound. Petra shrieked her displeasure.
Cla bent to snatch up his weapon. I brought the fighting stick down on his head two-handed, using all my strength. The stick shattered in half. Blood jumped from Cla’s scalp and began running down his cheeks and neck in freshets. The blow would have laid out any other man—Eye and Ammit included—but Cla only shook his head, picked up the stabbing spear, and faced me. No grin now; he was snarling and red-eyed.
“Come for me, you bitch’s child!”
“Fuck that. Let me see what you’ve got. You’re as dumb as you are ugly.”
I held out what remained of my fighting stick. Now the end facing Cla was a rat’s nest of splinters. It was hard wood, and if he ran on those splinters, they wouldn’t buckle. They’d punch into his gut, and he knew it. I feinted at him, and when he drew back, circled to his right. He had to turn his head to keep me out of his blind spot. He lunged and I stuck him in the meat of one forearm, tearing open a flap of skin and sending a stream of blood to the green grass.
“Finish him!” Petra screamed. I knew her voice now, and hated it. Hated her, hated them all. “Finish him, you great ugly hulk!”
Cla charged. I moved to the left this time, backpedaling behind the table with the fighting gloves on it. Cla never slowed. He was breathing in quick dry rasps. I threw myself to the side, the point of his spear barely missing my neck. Cla hit the table, overturned it, and landed on it, snapping off one of its legs. He held onto the stabbing spear, but that was all right with me. I moved in on his blind spot, jumped on his back, and squeezed his midsection with my thighs as he reared up. I put the remains of my fighting stick against his throat as he lunged to his feet. He clawed at me from behind, whacking my shoulders with his big hands.
What followed was an insane piggyback ride. I had my legs locked around his thick waist and my shattered three feet of fighting stick digging into his throat. I could feel each attempt he made to swallow. He began making a gurgling sound. At last, with no other option but unconsciousness followed by death, he threw himself on his back with me beneath him.
I was expecting it—what other move did he have left?—but it still blew the breath out of me. Three hundred-plus pounds will do that. He rocked from side to side, trying to break my grip. I held on even as black spots began to dance in front of my eyes and the sounds of the cheering spectators began to sound echoey and far away. The only one that came through clearly was the voice of Flight Killer’s consort, like a sharp needle stabbing into my head: “Get up! Break his grip, you great brute! GET UP!”
I might be crushed to death under the great brute, but I was damned if he was going to break my grip. I’d done a lot of pushups in my cell, and a lot of pull-ups on the rope-rings. I put those muscles to good use even as my consciousness began to wane. I pulled… pulled… and at last his struggles began to weaken. With the very last of my strength I shoved his top half off me and wriggled from beneath his bulk. I crawled across the grass, hair hanging in my eyes, taking in great whooping gusts of air. It seemed I couldn’t get enough, or get it down to the bottom of my abused lungs. My first attempt to find my feet failed and I crawled on, gasping and coughing, sure that fucking Cla, motherfucking Cla, was getting up behind me and I’d feel the spear going in between my shoulderblades.