Perilous Travels (The Southern Continent Series Book 2) (20 page)

Chapter 14

Grange stayed at the embassy later than usual in the morning.  He skipped his regular ritual of going to the armory, and waited until his time was up, then went directly to the site of his first round contest in the tournament.  The tournament was a well-known, highly-anticipated, and greatly watched form of public entertainment, he discovered, as he saw large crowds ringing the sites of other opening battles, with vendors selling food and drink, and even some fans waving pennants for competitors they supported.

He also found out he had quickly earned a nickname for the tournament, one that he picked up in his very first match.  His opponent was an older man who fought bravely, but not for long, against Grange in a first round contest that only lasted two minutes.

The crowd wasn’t large for the early battle; it was much smaller than many Grange had seen as he had walked through the contest fields.  But among the crowd was someone who had seen Grange and Grace perform together on the very first night Grange had been at the palace, when he and Shaylee and Layreen had arrived at the end of their journey from the village.

“I thought the foreigner was a musician, but apparently he’s more than that,” the observer had said, and thereafter, the fans at the tournament named Grange “the Musician”.

He found that he had to wait for long periods between matches, especially in the early rounds of the tournament, as hundreds of matches were contested around the city to cut the size of the field in half.  By the time he began his second match, it was almost noon.

Bartar and Astel found him several minutes before the second match, and they waited in the moderately-sized crowd that lined his small contest arena.

Grange had little trouble dispatching the arrogant young swordsman who he faced in the second round.  The hotshot had won his first match and seemed to consider himself an inevitable finalist in the tournament’s championship match, until he ran into Grange’s sword.  Grange disarmed the man three times in the first minute, and won the match easily, as the crowd cheered for the Musician.

“You’re the crowd favorite!” Astel told him excitedly when Grange rejoined the others after the match.

“My next match will be in just an hour, at a different location,” Grange reported.   “I better head that way.”

When the three Palmland visitors reached the site of the third-round match, they discovered that Grange had moved up to a more prominent arena, one that had actual bleachers for a larger number of fans to sit in.

In the stands, Grange noted that Shaylee was sitting with a number of young people.  She smiled and waved wildly when they made eye contact across the open space, and Grange waved back as he waited for the umpire to call the two contestants onto the mat.

When the contest began, the opponent was cheered wildly by those sitting in the seats where Shaylee and the other youngsters from the palace sat.  Grange didn’t have time to look for Shaylee though, as his opponent charged at him aggressively, got inside Grange’s defenses, and used his greater weight to press Grange backward with a chest bump and a hard knee in Grange’s thigh.  Grange wheeled as Shaylee’s father Lastone had taught him in hand-to-hand battle, then Grange assumed a new defensive stance, and waited until the palace champion came at him again.

Grange watched his adversary more carefully during the second phase of the match, all the lessons Ariana and Brielle had taught him coming to the fore.  He feinted with his right foot, then threw his left hand outward, before striking with a hard right-handed thrust of his wooden practice sword that struck his opponent hard enough to knock the man down.

Grange immediately pounce and pressed his sword point against the man’s throat.

“Do you surrender?” Grange asked.

The defeated man looked up at him with angry, blazing eyes.  “You cheated,” he accused.

“No, I just beat you,” Grange answered heatedly.  The man had fought dirty, and Grange had been caught off-guard before he had fought back.  The match had antagonized Grange, and he was determined to beat this opponent and the next one as well. “I beat you because I was better.”

He lifted his sword, then turned his back on the downed man and walked away, as the audience began to cheer.  Grange reached his designated spot, and was recognized by the umpire as the victor.

While the man raised Grange’s arm triumphantly in the air, Grange looked over at where the palace contingent sat, and he saw to his relief that Shaylee was standing and applauding him, even though the others in her crowd were clapping politely, at best, if they clapped at all.

“You’re done with matches for today.  You’ll resume tomorrow morning.  The Grand Melee will start in two hours,” the umpire told him as he released Grange’s arm.  “Good luck if you go, and watch out – you’re a marked man now.”

“What?  Why?” Grange asked.

“You just beat the royal favorite, Asloe’s son Persole.  They’ll be eager to see you lose,” the official said before he walked away.

Grange stood in his spot as Persole glared at him before leaving the mat.  Bartar and Astel came down to join their champion.

“There’s interesting chatter in the stands,” Bartar commented.

“That I beat the palace’s favorite?” Grange asked.

“And that you put your blade to his throat.  That’s apparently a very aggressive thing to do in a tournament match,” the ambassador said.

“I didn’t know,” Grange protested.  “I just knew he fought dirty.  It made me mad, so I made sure he knew I won.”

“What’s done is done,” Bartar said.

Shaylee came down alone from her seats and reached Grange just then.

“You did so well – you surprised them all,” she gushed as she stood very close to him.  “I wasn’t surprised at all, of course!

“Will you go to the melee now?  I guess that all the competitors do,” she spoke.  “But be careful Grange.  There are some sore losers, or sore friends of losers,” she warned.

“I’ll see you at the melee or at the dance tonight,” she told him, then waved at his companions as she hurried off to rejoin her own friends.

Chapter 15

Grange decided to join the melee.  He was walking with Bartar and Astel across the fields when Jadie shouted his name, and induced him to join her and Casey on the yellow team, one of the three teams that would compete with one another in a large amphitheater to protect their team’s banner from capture by the other two teams.

The arena they entered for the competition was larger than any Grange had seen before.

“We go down this way,” Jadie held Grange’s arm to lead him towards a tunnel.  Grange said farewell to the ambassador and his page, then followed the girl to a crowded passageway beneath the stands.

“We always join the Yellow team,” Jadie advised as they found an open spot and leaned against the wall in the dim space.  “Most of the members of our armory join this as well.  The Blue team is mostly from the east side of the harbor, and the Red team is the palace and the nobility,” she explained.

There was a grinding sound when a large gate opened, allowing light to flood in, as the members of the Yellow team began to move out, each receiving a loose, sleeveless yellow jersey to don as they left the passage.  Casey found them and joined them as they passed through the gate into the slowly fading light of the early evening on the grounds of the melee stadium.

“He’s our flag bearer,” Casey pointed to a man holding a large yellow square of material.  “We have to protect him so that no one can steal our flag, and at the same time we have to go try to steal the other teams’ flags.

“The flag bearer is our captain,” she explained.

Grange looked at the man, who was directing several of the people wearing the yellow jerseys.  He looked around the arena, and saw that the other two teams likewise were wearing colored jerseys as well to identify themselves, and then Grange recognized that the captain of the Red team, wearing one of their jerseys and holding their flag, was Persole, the son of Asloe and arrogant fighter Grange had beaten in the earlier tournament match.

“I’ll help fight against the Red team,” Grange said out loud to Casey and Jadie.

“They always win.  They have the best fighters, and they get a bigger team than we do,” Casey cautioned.

“I haven’t seen the Red team lose in the last five years, since I started fighting in the melee,” Jadie added.

“Maybe we can change that today,” Grange smiled grimly.  He walked over to the flag-bearing captain of the team to offer his services.

“You’re the Musician?” the man asked as soon as he saw Grange’s light complexion.  “I’ve heard you’re good.”

“I’d like to fight against the Red team,” Grange offered.

“Go do it.  If you can keep their forces tied down to prevent them from attacking us, we’ll send a large group against the Blue team,” the captain explained.  “Pick a small crew you trust, and go take your position in front of the defense,” he told Grange.

Grange tapped Jadie and Casey on the shoulders on his way to his position.   They both gleefully agreed to join him, and each brought along two other fighters they vouched for as good additions to Grange’s squad.

The group took their spots behind a chalk line on the dusty surface of the arena and waited for the starter’s horn to sound.  Grange looked around the arena and saw the large crowd that filled the stands, many of them wearing the colors of the team they supported.  A broad yellow field rose up the level of stands behind his own team, he saw, making him grin at the enthusiasm of the city.  The residents of Kilau brought great energy to the competition, he realized, more than he thought he had seen for public events in Palmland or Fortune.

He was bemused to realize that only a year prior he hardly even knew how to handle a sword.  And now he was regarded as a very good swordsman.  The relentless training regime of the two jewels, Ariana and Brielle, had given and honed skills that allowed him to be a high-level fighter, and just as importantly, they had given him the habit of practicing regularly.  They were even with him still, in the enchanted knife and sword that he didn’t carry with him at the tournament, but that sat waiting for him in the embassy.

Grange looked down at his arm, and pulled up the sleeve.  Two jewels still were embedded in his skin, while three faint marks showed the jewels that had left.  He knew where the blue and red jewels had gone, who they had become and how they had transformed to help him.  But he didn’t know where the black jewel had gone, or what its role was.

There was a general increase in the noise in the arena, interrupting Grange’s wandering musings.  He saw that the starter for the melee had stepped out on a platform that rose above the rim of the arena floor, and all eyes were upon the man.  He said something that Grange couldn’t distinguish over the distance between them, then the man raised a long trumpet to his lips, and Grange felt the energy in the arena suddenly rise.

Hands thumped his back encouragingly, support from members of the small squad he had been given to command, and then the sound of the horn’s notes echoed across the floor of the arena, and chaos erupted among the fighting forces.

Grange and his attacking squad set out on foot, running towards the red team’s position, as they saw a matching, though larger, squad of red forces come pounding towards them.

Grange moved to the front and center of the Yellow squad and led them into an immediate skirmish.  The Red forces were large men and women, fighters who seemed specially chosen to be able to intimidate, outreach, and overpower opponents.  A trio of the fighters seemed to home in on Grange as the others spread out to fight the rest of his squad, and he immediately stopped and began desperately battling, dodging, and dancing towards safety, while piercing his opponents’ defenses with his jabs, ripostes, and slices.

“Hey!” he shouted, as he struck one Red fighter solidly in the chest with his wooden sword.   “You have to leave the arena!”  It was the widely known rule, that a fighter struck with a deadly blow was obliged to remove themselves from the field.  Yet the Red fighter was violating the rule, and he grinned mockingly at Grange to show that he knew, and didn’t care.

The man tried to attack Grange, just as one of the other fighters, a woman on his right, also launched an attack at him.

Grange whirled towards the woman, slid his body down atop the dirt floor and then into her legs, knocking her with a flipping motion that carried her up into the air, then down upon the first attacker, causing them both to land in a heap on the ground.

Grange sprang up, turned on his one remaining immediate opponent and soundly struck the man’s head from the right and the left, making him drop his sword and grasp his bleeding ears as he knelt in pain.  In the meantime, Grange wrenched the swords away from all three opponents, leaving them unarmed, before he began to help the others in his squad, fighting with two swords in each of his hands as he dealt devastation upon the other Red fighters who were within his immediate vicinity.

He felt driven by his outrage at the blatant cheating of the first Red fighter, as well as Persole’s earlier transgression.  He was fighting in a passionate rage, with a purpose, fighting hard for the first time since the demon attack in Palmland, but fighting now with more training, more experience, more understanding of different weapons and different styles and philosophies.

“Don’t kill them Grange!” Casey said loudly, grabbing hold of his arm as he was about to strike a downed man.

He withheld his blow.  “Take his weapon, and take all their weapons back to where our flag is,” Grange told one of his followers.  “It seems  the only way to knock them out of the battle is to disarm them,” he judged.

“They always have cheated,” Jadie said indignantly, coming up with a pair of swords in her hand.  She handed them to the man Casey had designated to secure the swords, then looked around.

Their portion of the field was temporarily conflict-free, the entire Red squad having been disarmed, while no new Reds were rushing over to enjoin battle.  A sizable group of the Red fighters remained in a semicircle around the perimeter of the Red flag’s territory, where Persole held the flag and screamed commands to his followers.

Grange felt his anger hit a hotter, new standard.  “I’m going to go get that flag – who’s coming with me?” he asked.

“There’re just six of us left,” Casey pointed out.

“We may need everyone we’ve got,” Grange dismissed the concern.  “Are you ready to go?” he shouted the challenge to the handful of followers, who shouted their approval.

They all took up the challenge, raising their swords high in salute, then followed him as he began to jog towards the base where the Red flag was held.  For several long seconds there was no reaction, as the Red defenders dismissed the appearance of the small band of Yellow fighters, but Persole turned and stared at the light-skinned leader, then suddenly bellowed his fury.

“Go kill that man!” he shouted to a dozen of the men who were defending the flag with him.  The group of men in red immediately detached themselves from their positions near Persole and advanced, as Grange saw to his horror that a trio of the men were carrying real blades, metal, not wood.  They carried the blades purposefully, clearly intending to use them to the detriment of everyone else in the mock warfare of the arena.

His recollections of the ancient language of the energy were far in the back of his mind, something he had not considered or been prepared to use in the melee.

“Grange, what do we do?” Casey asked as he stopped his squad’s progress before they clashed with the deadly weapons.

“Llafnau metel, hedfan i ffwrdd!” Grange recollected, then shouted, the words he needed, and he simultaneously motioned with his free hand, flinging it upwards in the air in a point of emphasis.

The arms of those who were carrying metal swords suddenly swung upwards, then the men, unprepared for the unexpected action, released the deadly weapons that were ripped from their grips as the swords flew upward into the sky, disappearing from view after several seconds.

The disarmed men shouted in fear, then anger.

“Evil!  Evil enchantments!” one of them shouted, as Grange and his group started approaching the Red forces once again.

The men who had lost their illegal weapons turned and ran away, along with a few others, so that the odds were nearly even when Grange and his forces engaged with the remaining Red attackers.  The encounter was a quick and decisive victory for the Yellow squad, who disarmed their opponents and started moving again, now much closer to the Red flag, which was only weakly defended.

The arena crowd was in an uproar over the battle.  Grange could feel the ground beneath his feet tremble from the noise and stamping and excitement that the onlookers were producing.  He had no idea how the other battles were going, the fight against Blue, or the defense of the Yellow flag – he was focused only on his own determined charge into the heart of the Red domain.

Jadie cried out from her spot just behind him in the charge, and Grange whirled around to see what had happened to his friend.

She was writhing in the dirt, a jagged knife protruding from a growing bloody spot on her leg, the result on an illegal attack launched from someplace nearby.

“Os gwelwch yn dda, gwnewch to i amddiffyn ni!” Grange waved his arm in a sweeping arc over his head, an instinctive motion and request for the use of the power, as he reacted to the sight of his wounded friend.

A bright yellow, translucent shield snapped into place over his squad, one similar to the protective device Grace had created to protect the prince at the square in Palmland, at a time that seemed long ago.

Even as the dome formed, there was a clanking sound, as another knife struck the dome and slid to the ground, thwarted from its attempt to wound or kill another member of the Yellow squad.

Grange looked in the direction on the side where the knife had struck; it had come from somewhere in the audience, he could tell, but he wasn’t sure exactly where.

He looked down at Jadie, tears streaming down her cheeks as she grasped the bloody wound in her leg.

“Before you ask,” she said through clenched teeth, as he knelt down beside her, “no, I’m not ‘okay’!” she tried to laugh as she cried from the pain.

“You’re going to be okay,” Grange told her.

He raised his head, suddenly aware that the power he possessed as a wizard-in-training was limited only by his own limitations.   He thought of how Grace had projected her voice to travel long distances.

“Please, make Grace hear me! Let me hear the girl,” he spoke to the energy, seeking to converse with his fellow apprentice.

“Grace, can you hear me?” he asked immediately, sending his voice, he hoped, to where ever the better-trained girl was.

“Who are you talking to?” Casey asked as she knelt beside Grange and grasped one of Jadie’s blood-slickened hands tightly in hers.

“Grange?  Is that you?  Are you projecting from the arena floor?” he heard Grace’s voice clearly, as if she were under the yellow dome with him.

“Where is that from?” Casey asked in wonder.

“I’m on the arena floor,” Grange answered Grace.   “My companion is hurt,” he explained.

“I can see that,” Grace said.  “I’m in the stands, up in the Queen’s box.  What’s happened?  You’re wrecking the whole melee!”