Chương 90: Chapter 89 – Nine Chances to Get It Wrong

The board changed while nobody was watching it. One moment the great panel over the registration tents read REDMOOR — MAHKIR in steady amber lettering, and the next it dimmed, flickered once, and resolved into a fresh line: OATH OF DEFIANCE — STRIATA, the letters snapping into place all at once the way every other system-fed display Ant had ever seen tended to.

"That's us." Ray was on his feet before the letters had even settled, rolling his shoulders like a man limbering up for a fight he wasn't the one fighting.

"Come on then, love. Let's not keep the good people waiting." Striata rose from where she'd been sprawled in a patch of shade behind the rail, unfolding the way something twice her apparent size shouldn't be able to, and pressed her head briefly against Ray's hip before padding for the handler's gate.

Amber coat, black stripe-work catching the light — Ant had seen her often enough that the size of her still managed to surprise him each time, the way she seemed to take up more room standing still than most Kithren did mid-fight.

"You nervous?" Duncan asked, loud enough that half the rail turned to look.

"Course not." Ray straightened his coat, an affectation, since nothing about it had come loose.

"I have complete and utter confidence in that magnificent creature — absolute equanimity, thank you very much." He said it already walking, Striata falling into step beside him toward the gate. Rebekah, at Ant's shoulder, murmured, "One day he's going to get one wrong and none of us will catch it because we'll all be too busy being impressed he knew a word that long."

"Wouldn't put money against it," Ant said. She didn't move away after, and he didn't ask her to. Lem sat between them, tail curled neat around his own paws, watching the sand with half-lidded eyes, like the outcome had already been decided somewhere and he was only waiting for the rest of them to catch up. Andy came to stand at Ant's other side without a word, arms folded over the rail, gaze already tracking the far gate a good ten seconds before anyone gave a reason to look there.

"You know something," Ant said.

"Nothing worth saying yet — just watching." Andy didn't take his eyes off the gate.

"You did that during Mahkir's fight too, didn't say a word the whole time."

"Cub wasn't worth the words." Andy's eyes had gone to the far gate the moment Ninetail cleared it, that faint glow settling over them the way it did whenever he actually bothered to look.

"This one's different, though. Feels close to hers, if I'm honest, and I don't say that about many fights — could go either way on skill alone." Ant let it go. Pressing Andy rarely got him anywhere faster than waiting did, and the horn was already sounding somewhere behind the gate, low and short, the crowd noise dipping the way it always did in the seconds before something actually started.

Hot dust and trampled sand carried up off the arena floor on the wind, mixed with the char of a vendor's grill somewhere behind the stands, and Ninefold's entrant came out of the far gate low to the ground and armored — that was the first thing Ant's eye caught before Appraisal had even finished resolving the rest of it.

Nine overlapping rings ran the length of its spine from skull to tail-tip, each one a segment of dull grey-brown plate loosely jointed to the one before it, the whole creature moving less like a body and more like a chain someone had decided to make walk. Ninetail (Common — Nine-ring beast).

"What in the hell is that supposed to be," Duncan said, leaning so far over the rail Sam had to get a fist in his collar.

"Armadillo," Rowan offered.

"Whatever it is, I'd wager it's built to take a hit far better than it's built to land one." The rings weren't just armor. Ant watched the thing curl its spine in a slow test-flex, and each ring moved independently of the ones beside it, grinding, rotating along its own axis a fraction before passing the motion on to the next — nine separate plates working in sequence rather than as a single shell.

"That'll cut," Kalsar said, low, arriving at Ant's other shoulder without either of them noticing him cross the distance.

"Edges on those plates — not made for biting, made for rolling into a target and coming out the other side of it." Andy said nothing at all, which from Andy usually meant he was already three moves ahead of the fight everyone else was still watching start. Down at the sand's edge, Ray had already settled onto the handler's strip beside Striata, the same real distance from the rail that had kept Andy silent through Hexa's fight and Kalsar tight-lipped through Xylock's.

Whatever he was telling her now, none of them could hear it. The horn sounded. Ninetail didn't charge so much as gather, the rings compressing toward its spine, and then it uncoiled into a roll — fast, faster than a body built like a wheel had any right to move, a grey-brown blur of grinding plate cutting straight for where Striata stood. She didn't meet it head-on.

She'd never once, in anything Ant had watched her do, met anything head-on — she went low and sideways instead, a blur of amber and black, and the roll tore past close enough that Ant heard the edge of it hiss through the space where she'd been a half-second before.

"She's fast," Rebekah said, an actual note of interest in it now, the teasing gone out of her voice entirely.

"Faster than that thing, anyway." Kalsar didn't sound convinced that would matter.

"Question's whether faster's enough." It uncoiled a second time before it had even finished its first pass, whip-fast, a move Ant hadn't seen coming and clearly neither had Striata — she took the edge of it across one shoulder, a line of red opening dark against the amber, and the sound she made wasn't quite a roar so much as an offended, furious hiss, ears flat, tail lashing once against the sand. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Small and distant across the sand, Ray's silhouette went rigid at the handler's strip, one hand half-raised before he caught himself and let it drop again.

"He's not calling her off," Duncan said, watching the same thing Ant was.

"Wouldn't matter if he tried." Kalsar didn't look away from the sand.

"Once she's committed to a read, she finishes it. He knows that better than any of us." She didn't charge back. She circled instead, wider than before, reading it the way Kalsar had taught all of them to read anything — testing which side favored the joints, which angle the rings couldn't rotate fast enough to cover.

Ninetail rolled a third time, tighter, correcting for her last dodge before she'd even made it, and this time she didn't get fully clear — took a glancing scrape along the flank that had a ripple of noise go up and down the rail, nobody quite agreeing on how bad it looked from this far back.

"That's got to hurt," Rowan said, low.

"Or it's shallower than it looks from here," Rebekah offered.

"Hard to tell at this distance." Nobody had a way to actually know, and nobody could ask. Striata didn't circle away from the next one. She went still instead — fully still, haunches low, tail flat against the sand — and let Ninetail come. Ant leaned forward over the rail without meaning to. Across the sand, Ray hadn't moved either — no shout, no gesture, just standing at the handler's strip with his whole body gone taut, watching the same thing Ant was watching and just as unable to do anything about it.

The roll built speed across the last stretch of open ground, and at the very last possible moment she didn't dodge sideways at all. She went up, over, claws finding purchase along one exposed ring-joint mid-roll and using the beast's own momentum to flip herself clear across its back, twisting in the air to land facing the soft unarmored belly the roll had, for one half-second, left turned toward the sky. She hit it once. Hard.

Claws raking a line from foreleg to haunch before Ninetail could uncurl and correct, and the beast screamed — a strange, grinding sound, half animal and half the plates themselves shrieking against each other as it thrashed to get its rings back between itself and the tiger currently standing on top of it. It bucked her off before she could land a second strike. She rolled clear, came up already circling again, breathing hard now, the cut along her shoulder still weeping but her stance nowhere near broken.

"That's the fight," Kalsar said, approval plain in his voice for once.

"Wasn't going to win it head-on — had to wait for it to open up on its own, then take the one window it gave her." Ninetail didn't roll a fourth time. It seemed to have learned something from the belly-strike — stayed low and coiled instead, rings bristling, refusing to commit to the charge that had cost it.

For a long, ugly stretch neither of them moved much at all, circling, both reading the other, the crowd noise dipping the way it always did when a fight stopped looking like a fight and started looking like two things deciding whether it was worth the risk. Striata broke it.

She feinted low — a real move, her full weight dropping into it like she meant to follow through — and when Ninetail's rings tightened to meet a strike that wasn't coming, she was already gone sideways and around, fast, faster than the thing could rotate its plating to track, and came in from the exposed flank a second time before it had finished correcting for the first mistake. This one didn't glance off anything.

She had it by the throat before the rings could close, and held on through one last furious, grinding thrash that dragged them both half across the sand, until the thrashing stopped. Forfeit called. Round 1 — Oath of Defiance. Striata came off the sand favoring the shoulder, blood dried dark along one flank, and dropped her head against Ray's chest the instant she was close enough, a low rumbling sound in her throat that wasn't quite a purr.

"There she is." Ray had both hands buried in the fur at her jaw, all the performance gone out of his voice for exactly as long as it took him to check the cut himself.

"Good girl. Good girl, that's it, let's have a look —""It's not deep," Rowan said, already crouched beside them, fingers light along the wound's edge.

"Wants cleaning and a wrap, not stitches. You did well to keep her circling instead of trading straight hits with those plates."

"I do have a modicum of tactical acumen, thank you." Ray didn't look up from Striata's jaw. Rowan opened his mouth, paused, and shut it again.

"... that one's right too.""'Course it is." Duncan leaned over the rail to get a better look at the wound, whistling low through his teeth.

"Thought she had it easy for a second there. That thing nearly took her shoulder off."

"Nearly," Kalsar said, "isn't the same as did. Watch what she did after the bad hit, not the hit itself — didn't panic, didn't press it either, just circled and waited for the mistake to come to her." He looked over at Ant when he said it, holding the look a second longer than the sentence needed. Ant filed it away without comment. He'd have plenty of chances to do it wrong himself before he learned to do it that well.

Rebekah laughed, short and real, and Ant felt it more than heard it, close enough at his shoulder that the sound carried through more than just the air between them.

"Two for two today. Your clan's having a good tournament."

"Two fights," Ant said.

"Long way to go yet."

"Suppose so." She didn't move off, watching Ray fuss over the tiger, his hands gone careful in a way Ant had only ever seen from him around her, and Lem pressed in against Rebekah's leg like he wanted a piece of whatever this was too.

"Still, nice while it lasts." She glanced sideways at Ant then, close enough that he caught the woodsmoke still clinging to her sleeve from that morning's fire.

"You did well not to flinch when she went still like that. I would have."

"I flinched," Ant admitted, "just didn't let it show."

"Good." She said it like it settled something, and didn't explain what. Across the sand, the great board over the registration tents dimmed and flickered again, the day's next names snapping into place all at once. Ant caught Ray's own name near the top of the fresh column before the board had even finished resolving — Round 2, no opponent listed yet, the slot still blank where a name hadn't been drawn.

"Fast turnaround," Ray said, following his eyes.

"They're not wasting daylight, are they."

"Never do," Kalsar said.

"Get her wrapped. We've got hours yet before anyone calls your slot." Ray was already turning back to Striata before Kalsar had finished the sentence, murmuring something low and useless and entirely for her benefit, and for a while nobody moved to break it up. Far up in the stands, in a row that had gone quiet well before the rows around it did, two figures sat with their attention nowhere near the sand.

"So he finally managed to get himself a Kithren, then." The words came out unhurried, almost pleased, pitched low enough that no one nearby would catch more than a murmur.

"You were right to call me." The other one hadn't looked away from the rail below in some time, where Oath of Defiance's colors stood out purple and orange-red against the dust.

"He's built himself a clan as well, it seems."

"Has he." A pause, the kind that didn't need filling.

"Well. Let's see how he gets on, then." A folded slip of paper changed hands, unhurried, unremarkable, the way a hundred other small transactions were happening all across the stands at that exact moment.

"Take this back to the leader." Only one of them left. The other stayed exactly where they were, settling back into the row like they'd never moved at all, attention returning to the sand in time for the next match to start.