The sharp whistle of a throwing axe, and I chastised myself for the momentary distraction. I threw up a hand and let my magic loose, a shield not a second too soon before the wedge could embed itself in my flesh. You know better, Ryiah.
One of the mages had drawn closer since the last time I looked. And he still had magic.
The man threw another axe, and I deflected it only to have the ground cave out right underneath my feet.
I struggled to catch my balance but my injured leg roared in protest. It went down and the rest of me followed. My balance was off and the slippery sand sent me flying on my back.
The mage took off at a run, and as I tried to push myself up off the ground he sent another rush of magic that slammed my head against the sand. My vision blurred and every part of me ached as I pushed up onto my elbows just as he closed in, magic casting an iron grip against my throat and another on my limbs.
“Surrender,” he said.
Clearly, the young man had been conserving his castings.
I pretended to mutter the words, squabbling gibberish that wasn’t hard to fake. Not when I was choking.
He drew closer, cautiously. One casted dagger in hand.
A couple steps closer and then his russet eyes hardened. “Surrender, now. Or I put this blade into your ribs. I won’t ask you again. Raise your hands if you can’t speak.”
He released my arms from their invisible chains just far enough to lift. I could feel them vibrating, softly. His magic was waning.
I bit down on my cheek until I tasted blood. My casting sent him careening to the sand a couple feet away. His magic lost its hold, and I shot up and lunged. Pain was just a distant memory as I threw myself at the mage, a knife in hand.
The boy scrambled to rise and call up on a magic of his own when I was seconds away—but nothing came. His whole face was white and pooling sweat by the time my blade was against his throat.
“Surrender.”
“I…” He coughed up blood, and I realized he was already bleeding heavily from a couple wounds at his sides. He’d had the good sense to bandage them with strips of his tunic and cover up underneath his mail, but now I could see why he had been so desperate to use magic to keep me at bay. “I s-surrender.”
My knife vanished from my fist, and I quickly pulled away, gingerly shifting my leg as I stood. It was then I noticed the arrow was gone. Huh? I ripped off the hems of my breeches and wrapped them around my leg as tight as I could. I had barely made it two feet away before I saw two red-robed healers hurrying over to treat their newest victim.
There was another healer on the other side of the arena, half-carrying a different candidate—the one with the burns who was now bleeding heavily from his head. That explained my arrow’s absence. But it also meant pools of blood were now seeping through my makeshift bandages every moment I stayed in the arena. A good blow is not what usually kills an opponent—it’s a loss of blood. My stomach started to turn and I looked away, breathing deeply through my nose.
Four of us left.
I could see the three others from where I stood. A tall mage with black braids, dark skin, and a limp was farthest away. A bit closer was a stocky man in a full set of chainmail and leg plates, even a helmet. He had to be sweltering about now. The two were eying each other, but so far had made no move to attack.
The closest was a young man one hundred yards away who was bleeding heavily in—well, I wasn’t sure where exactly; he was coated in sand and blood and clutching a wooden shield to his chest—the easiest defense, and also the weakest.
If no one else was going to lead the attacks it was going to have to be me. Time to make it three.
The throwing daggers whizzed through the air faster than my breath.
One caught the bleeding man in the shoulder, the other in the leg. Magic sputtered in front of him—the makings of a blast of fire—but it extinguished before it crossed even half the distance between us. The mage crumbled, and I skirted forward, watching as he tried again only to have the flames flicker and die at the tips of his fingers. He swore at me, raising his palms in surrender.
The other two met my eyes across the stadium as the announcer declared yet another candidate down. They had started to inch closer during my attack. All of us knew victory was bare minutes away.
I waited, gulping heavy drags of air in an effort to prepare. My lips were cracked, and sweat was pouring so hard and so fast that I had to keep wiping it away lest I go blind.
The wound in my leg? It ached worse than any injury I had ever encountered during my apprenticeship, possibly even more than that dagger to the ribs during the battle as a fifth year in Ferren. That had only lasted a couple minutes before I lost consciousness—this had lasted thirty minutes and counting. All my movement had tugged and pulled at the head so that my whole thigh was shiny red and tender at the slightest touch. I was quite sure with my pain casting earlier I had scraped against bone. The pain was even worse because it was only increasing every time I moved.