Norras raised both hands and balled them into fists as if to instruct the heathen. He closed the distance between them, swift on his feet, jerking his head in sharp stutters designed to fool the eye and tempt an ill-advised swing. He looked rather like a chicken to me, bobbing his head like that, fists at his face, elbows out like little wings. A big muscular hen.
Snorri clearly had the reach, so Norras came in fast. He ducks his head, does Norras—takes punches on his skull. That’s what I was going to say. I’d seen men hurt their hands on the Teuton’s thick and bony head before. I didn’t have time to get the words out. Norras jabbed and Snorri caught the man’s fist in the flat of his palm, closing his fingers to trap it. He yanked Norras forwards, punching with his other arm, brushing aside the wild swing of the Teuton’s left with his elbow. The Norseman’s huge fist hammered into Norras’s face, knuckles impacting from chin to nose. The man flew back a yard or more, hitting the floor with a boneless thump, blood spattered on his upturned face, mixed with teeth and muck from his flattened snout.
A moment of silence, then a roar went up that hurt my ears. Half delight, half outrage. Betting parchments flew, coins changed hands, all informal wagers made in the moment.
“An impressive specimen,” Maeres said without passion. He watched while two pitmen dragged Norras away through the double-chambered exit valve. Snorri let them do their work. I could see he’d calculated his chances of escape and found them to be zero. The second iron gate could be raised only from the outside and then only when the first had been lowered.
“Send in Ootana.” Maeres never raised his voice but was always heard amidst the din. He offered me a thin smile.
“No!” I strangled back the outrage, remembering that I had seen lipless men even in the palace. Maeres Allus had a long arm. “Maeres, my friend, you can’t be serious?” Ootana was a specialist, with countless knife bouts notched onto his belt. He’d sliced open half a dozen good knife-men this year already. “At least let my fighter train with the hook-knife for a few weeks! He’s from the ice. If it’s not an axe they don’t understand it.” I tried for humour, but Ootana already waited behind the gate, a loose-limbed devil from the farthest shores of Afrique.
“Fight.” Maeres raised his hand.
“But—” Snorri hadn’t even been given his weapon. It was murder, pure and simple. A public lesson to put a prince firmly in his place. The public didn’t have to like it, though! Boos rang out when Ootana stepped into the pit, his hooked blade held carelessly to the side. The nobles hooted as if we were watching mummers in the square. They might hoot again tonight with equal passion if Father’s opera contained a suitably villainous party.
Snorri glanced up at us. I swear he was grinning. “No rules now?”
Ootana began a slow advance, passing his knife from hand to hand. Snorri spread his arms, not fully but enough to make a wide man wider still in that confined space, and with a roar that drowned out the many voices above, he charged. Ootana jigged to one side, intending to slash and dodge clear, but the Norseman came too fast, swerved to compensate, and reached with arms every bit as long as the Afriqan’s. At the last Ootana could do no more than attempt the killing blow; nothing else would save him from Snorri’s grapple. The exchange was lost in the collision. Snorri pounded into his man, driving him back a yard and slamming him into the pit wall. He held there for a heartbeat—perhaps a word passed between them—then stepped away. Ootana slid to a crumpled heap at the base of the wall, white fragments of bone showing through dark skin at the back of his head.
Snorri turned to us, shot an unreadable glance my way, then looked down to inspect the hook-knife driven through his hand, hilt hard against his palm. The sacrifice he’d made to keep the blade from his throat.
“The bear.” Maeres said it more quietly than ever into the noise of the erupting crowd. I’d never seen him angry, few men had, but I could see it now in the thinness of his lips and the paling of his skin.
“Bear?” Why not just shoot him with crossbows from the rail and be done! I’d seen a Blood Holes bear once before, a black beast from the western forests. They set it against a Conaught man with spear and net. It wasn’t any bigger than him, but the spear just made it angry and when it got in close it was all over. It doesn’t matter how much muscle a man may carry, a bear’s strength is a different thing and makes any warrior seem weak as a child.
It took them a while to produce the bear. This clearly hadn’t been part of the plan that involved Norras and Ootana. Snorri simply stood where he was, holding his injured hand high above his head and gripping the wrist with his other hand. He left the hook-knife where it was, embedded in his palm.