Angry shouts and boos fill the arena. Nice to know exactly where the crowd stands. Assholes.
I ignore them and focus my attention on the beast, who is sniffing at what’s left of its tail. The dismembered piece has stopped wiggling—thank the gods. There’s a small pool of blood around the severed nub and a little over here where I sliced it, but not nearly as much as I would have hoped. It stops sniffing, and gazes back at me, the promise of death in its eyes. I watch in horror as it twists around, takes the broken end of its tail between its teeth and rears back, tearing the last bit of shell free. It hurls the severed limb aside, then slowly turns back to me. Its eyes are narrow slits, lip curled into a silent snarl. Great. Now I’ve just pissed it off. I push off the barrel and lift my sword, waiting to see what it will do. The creature crouches and scrapes its front paw back, scoring the ground with its claws and flinging sand. Its muscles bunch and twitch and the remainder of its tail flicks from side to side, as though nothing at all happened to it.
I’m watching that tail move, just waiting for a new one to spring from the end, because that would be my fucking luck. I take a few steps away from the barrel to give myself swinging room, though I fully intend to jump back behind it if need be. The creature stalks from side to side, eyes never wavering even as its body shifts directions. I don’t know what that means. Is it trying to confuse me, trick me into thinking it's going one way so it can come at me from the other?
I see it, though, the moment when the beast decides to strike. Its front half lowers as it prepares to pounce, and I’m ready for it. Itpractically flies through the air, going as far, if not farther, than the first time it came after me. It kicks up a cloud of sand as it lands, and without missing a beat, continues its path of terror straight for me.
And I wait. Sword up, feet planted, heart in my fucking throat. At least if I die here, I die fighting. I can live with that.
It’s practically flying at me, closing the distance between us so fast, it’s a big, brown blur. I stand perfectly still. I have no idea what I’m going to do, but it’ll have to be quick and at the last minute so that clever bastard doesn’t catch on. My heart’s pounding, blood rushing, the sound so loud it drowns out the screams of the crowd.
Closer.
Closer.
Closer.
It lunges. I hop backward and thrust my sword into the space my body just vacated, hoping the creature will impale itself. For a split second, I think I’ve got it, then the beast extends one paw and sweeps the sword right out of my hands. The damn thing goes flying, and I’m running for my life. I race around the barrel and shove it at the creature, but it jumps out of the way, easily.Fuck, fuck, fuck.I’m hauling ass for my sword, but there’s no way I can outrun this thing. It’s so close, I can feel its breath heat the back of my neck. I dodge to the side, hoping it will be hindered by its own momentum and it works—sort of. The beast does, indeed, slide across the sandy floor as it tries to stop and switch directions, but my plan falls apart when my foot lands in a puddle of gore and slips out from under me.
I fall hard, my already ravaged back screaming as the sand tears into my wounds like a thousand tiny shards of glass. I have to getup, have to move. I roll onto my knees, barely stifling the urge to scream as my entire back lights up, the pain morphing from stinging to stabbing with every twist of my spine or shift or my shoulder blades. The creature is bearing down on me. No time to run. I grab a handful of sand and hurl it in its face. Shrieking, it comes to a sliding halt, just short of where I’m crab crawling away. It collapses to the ground and frantically paws at its eyes.
The snakes on its head go mad.
They writhe and swing around, blindly lunging and snapping at each other. A few even attempt to sink their fangs into the creature’s skull. It howls and rakes its claws across its own head, shredding a swath of the snakes into bloody bits.
The arena is spinning, and I stumble to the side, eyes scanning the floor for my sword. I catch a glint of silver and stagger toward it. Every step sends tendrils of fire streaking through my body. I breathe through the pain, shoving it aside, detaching myself from it the way I was taught. I reach the sword just as a low rumble sounds from the creature’s throat. Its scalp is mangled, its face a bloody mask. One eye has been torn free of its socket and dangles from its skull like a grape on a string. Still, it draws back, ready to strike. I adjust my grip around the hilt, my arms trembling against the urge to raise my sword. Instead, I leave the tip resting in the sand. The noise, the crowd, the arena all fade into the background as the moment stretches on. This is my last chance. If I fail, I’m dead. The beast lunges, its massive paws raised into the air. Dropping to my knees, I lift my sword at the last moment.
The blade hits home, skewering the creature through the chest, its own weight doing more damage than my arms alone probablycould have managed. The hilt is torn free from my grasp as the beast crashes to the ground beside me in a cloud of dust.
By the grace of the gods, I manage to push back to my feet. I limp over to the creature. It’s lying in a pool of its own blood, the hilt of my sword jutting from its chest. A few snakes remain, wriggling and hissing, but most have either been ripped off completely or shredded apart, their little corpses dangling limply from the poor beast’s skull.
It’s as good as dead, but still, the thought of killing it now, while it’s virtually defenseless, turns my stomach.
Then again, sometimes death is a mercy.
My foot against its shoulder, I grasp the hilt of the sword and jerk it free from the creature’s chest. It lets out a roar of pain, then quickly slumps back to the ground, its breaths coming in short bursts.
Its remaining eye blinks up at me. There’s a sadness and intelligence there that makes my heart ache.
“Be quick,” it’s saying.
I raise my sword high, praying momentum will do the job this shitty blade can’t accomplish on its own.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, the words barely a grumbled whisper.
Something tells me, it already knows.
I bring the blade down with all my remaining strength, and it cuts clean through, parting the creature’s head from its neck, killing it instantly.
The crowd erupts into applause, then I fall to my knees, and everything goes black.
33
Ican’t get to the slave camp fast enough. Raiden made us watch the rest of the bouts—of which there were many—then took his sweet time getting back to the boat. I’m certain he did it on purpose. He was not pleased when I called out to Aemon in front of all his “friends.” Now, my face feels like it got trampled by an elephant, but I can handle pain. It’s Aemon I’m worried about. I was so elated when he killed the manticore, then he passed out, and I didn’t know what to think.
Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
Leina holds my hand as I watch the boat crawl through the water with ever-increasing agitation.
