A familiar man stepped out of the crowd onto the arena floor, the one they called “Driggs”, the red-haired man who had taken Atticus away when we’d arrived in Paducah. Driggs pointed into the crowd then and the noise died as another man stepped out onto the arena floor, stood before Driggs, between Atticus and his opponent. This man looked important, the way he carried himself: how high he held his chin, the dignified poise, the confidence in his face. And when he raised his hands into the air, the crowd went wild: the whistles were more strident in my ears, the shouts more deafening as they went from one side of the room to the other in a boisterous wave.
Driggs never introduced Lord Maxima, the leader of Paducah, by name, but a man like him needed no introduction.
I sat next to Kade with my hands folded on my lap; my teeth clamped down on the inside of my cheek. I kept my eyes on Atticus, but I prayed he would not keep his eyes on me. Not even for a moment. I wished I could turn back time and not yell his name from the bleachers so maybe he wouldn’t even know I was here.
“Sounds like the people want a gauntlet tonight!” Maxima shouted over the crowd, and in response the crowd shouted back, hooting and hollering and war-crying. He raised his arms high above him again, gestured his hands to provoke the crowd, and they shouted and whistled and stomped their feet.
Maxima pointed into the bleachers where I was seated, and I looked behind me, following the gazes of everyone else who already seemed to know what, or who, he was pointing at.
A woman, tall and lean and beautiful with a cascade of wavy blonde hair that fell past her waist, stood from the seat six rows behind me.
Kade put his hands to the sides of his mouth, his fingers steepled beneath his nose and he shouted, “Gauntlet!”
“Gauntlet! Gauntlet! Gauntlet!” the gymnasium joined in.
The woman stood, her chin raised even higher than Maxima’s, her poise more majestic, the confidence in her face stronger, more influential.
“What do you say, Ravinia!” Maxima shouted over the crowd at his wife.
A profound hush fell over the room then, like a calm before a storm. Ravinia took her time, looking out at the people, and when she slowly raised her arm out in front of her, teasing the crowd, the hush deepened and it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. Ravinia’s fisted hand turned at the wrist, and in true Roman emperor fashion, she unfolded her thumb from her fingers and pointed it skyward, and the hush over the crowd broke, and the people went wild in celebration of her decision.
“Gauntlet! Gauntlet! Gauntlet!”
Kade pumped his fist, his nose scrunched up in his face, and he looked over at me, delightedly.
My heart sank into my knees; had I been standing I would have collapsed. I looked back out over the heads of the people in front of me and focused all of my attention on the man I loved and feared I would lose on this night. A gauntlet. I knew the definitions of the word, but not what it meant in Paducah to these people. It could only mean something terrible.
People made bets:
“My case of Jim Beam on the one in the black pants,” said the man on my right to Kade. “And for the gauntlet, I’ll throw in my Harley if you throw in the girl.” His gaze slipped over me.
“What am I gonna do with a Harley?” Kade argued. “Can’t drive the damn thing without gas.”
“But it’s still a Harley!”
“A useless Harley—no deal!” Kade grabbed my waist and pulled me closer. “She’s brand new,” he told the man. “I’d like to try her out first, see what she’s worth before I bet with her. I’ll put in Drusilla, if you can come up with something better.”
The man’s smile broadened.
I sat there, disgusted by their exchange, glad that—hopefully—Drusilla was long gone by now. But Kade and the man and even Drusilla, I had no time for. I watched Atticus from afar with a heavy heart, and I witnessed him change, saw the part of him I’d only seen a couple times since we’d met, take over the part of him that made him human. He stood solidly, his eyes fixed on the floor, his hands wound tightly into fists at his sides; his bare shoulders rose and fell in a relaxed, eerie motion—if I ran through the crowd and stood in front of him, he wouldn’t know I was there. I never would have wanted to see him like this, but I accepted it, and I approved of it in my heart, and I told myself over and over in my mind that he needed to be this way if he was going to get out of this alive and so I drew hope from it. The other fighter had a knife, after all. And Atticus had nothing. Only the demons he carried on his back.
“Why does that man have a knife?” I asked Kade, concerned.
Driggs and Maxima walked off the arena floor together, leaving Atticus and his opponent alone.
“Probably because he asked for it,” Kade answered. “Or demanded it.”
Demanded it? My eyebrows drew closer together. I needed more information, but the fight was to start any second now and it was difficult dividing my time between it and Kade’s half-answers.
“How can a prisoner demand anything?” I asked, but it came out more as a statement.
“Shut up and watch the fight,” Kade said without looking at me.
Just then all heads turned in the same direction again—behind me—and seconds later, Ravinia strode down the bleacher steps in her tall back boots, past me, and made her way onto the arena floor; the thick crowd that blocked it parted like the Red Sea so she could pass.
“Gauntlet! Gauntlet! Gauntlet!”
Ravinia raised her hands above her and silence fell over the room like a heavy blanket.
The fighter with the knife bounced shortly on the front pads of his bare feet, unable to stand still. The baleful grin he wore gave me chills—he was more than ready to kill Atticus. But seeing Atticus, how he looked at no one, how still his body and how lost he was in his own savage mind, further filled my heart with hope. And sadness.
Ravinia dropped her arms.
“Your Main Event tonight,” she began, her voice carrying over the room, “is another fight to the death! But a special fight to the death!”
The crowd shouted and whistled and then fell silent again.
“In the event,” she went on, “the winner of the fight refuses to put his opponent out of his misery, he forfeits his win, and his opponent will have one opportunity to do what he would not do, or they both die. So none of that taking-a-stand-against-death bullshit! You kill or be killed!”
Whistles splintered my ears; shouts deafened me; the stomping of feet shook me.
“Gauntlet! Gauntlet!”
“Yes! There will be a gauntlet!” she shouted over the chanting. “So bet well, and bet big, boys and girls and boy-girls, because one of these two men”—she pointed at Atticus and then his opponent—“if he survives, will make you very rich tonight! Or very poor!” She laughed, and the crowd laughed with her.
“Why is a gauntlet so special?” I asked Kade, expecting him to practically ignore me again.
“Because it only happens about once a month,” he told me, still looking out ahead at the arena. “And the rule is that everyone here has to bet half of what they own. Or leave.”
“Go big, or go home,” the man to my left put in.
I looked into the crowd then and saw only about a quarter of those in attendance shuffling through the four exits.
“They’re the smart ones,” the man to my left said. “They know when to quit gambling—is that Mr. Royce leaving?”
“Yeah”—Kade laughed—“He’s the richest man in Paducah for a reason!”