Unwilling to Acquiesce – Part 13

Adamant and Yoshimo make their way down the narrow corridor. The wall on their left is panelled wood, on their right brick, and then dressed stone. The hall is lit by three oil lamps fixed to iron sconces in the brick and stone wall. Some way ahead there is a junction with another passage to the right. At the end of the corridor is a heavy, ironbound door. They are perhaps a third of the way down the passage when moans and other strange noises can be hear from behind the wooden wall. The two adventurers pause and listen.

“Whores, after all,” concludes Yoshimo quietly.

Adamant nods. “Apparently!”

“Secret door in the wall,” says Yoshimo, pointing to a seam in the wood which could easily be mistaken for an ordinary part of the panelling. The two keep on walking and the muffled sounds of consumer lust fade behind them. After another few steps, Yoshimo stops and points again at the wooden wall.

“Another secret door, I think,” he says and, pushing at the panelling for a moment, manages to open the door. Beyond is a similar passageway to the one they stand in, which leads a short distance to a set of steps. Yoshi and Adamant consider this for a moment and then shake their heads. Yoshimo closes the door again careful to be quiet.

Continuing towards the junction, the sound of shouts and cries can be heard coming from around the corner. Looking down intersecting corridor, Adamant and Yoshimo can see that it ends in another door. This one is slightly ajar and coming from behind it can be heard the sounds of a small but particularly vocal crowd.

“It seems we have found the entertainments,” observes Yoshimo as they head to the door.

No one guards this door to prevent access, and so the two step through and find themselves in a large underground arena. The shouting comes from a crowd that stands around a deep circular pit, surrounded by wooden railing. There is a sense of genuine excitement amongst the people, a unity of passion that has transported them from their individual identities into the persona of the crowd, the mob. Yoshimo notes with professional detachment that the crowd is substantially wealthier than the clientele of the Copper Coronet’s front taproom. He follows with curiosity as Adamant pushes his way through the crowd to the pit railing, an increasingly mistrustful and troubled look upon his face.

The pit is thirty or forty paces across, roughly circular and deeper than the height of an ogre. This last detail is readily apparent because there is an ogre on the floor of the pit, roaring intermittently above the cheers of the crowd and brandishing an iron-bound club. Also on the floor of the pit is a halfling woman, dressed in a ridiculous suit of leather armour designed to reveal more than it conceals; far from protecting her, it makes her look like an exotic harlot. In her hand there is a cheap iron small sword. She is talking to the crowd, pleading it appears, but her words are lost in the mass of cheers and the bellows of the monster with which she shares the pit.

The ogre steps up to the diminutive figure and hammers down with its heavy club. The desperate halfling woman does her best to step away and deflect the club with her sword, but her timing is askew and the club strikes her head a glancing blow. She falls insensible upon the hard packed earth. The crowd becomes almost hysterical, baying for blood. Eager to please his bloodthirsty audience, the ogre seizes the little woman’s body and begins to tear it limb from limb.

Yoshimo is sickened by what he is witnessing, for it is murder plain and simple. This pit fight lacks even the pretence of noble combat. He looks to Adamant standing at the railing; the young knight’s knuckles have turned white, he is gripping the railing so hard. He stares at the spectacle and his face is almost blank. Yoshimo is a gambler, and he knows to read the eyes; Adamant’s eyes burn with a fury so hot that Yoshimo wonders if he means to throw himself over the railing and engage the ogre in hand-to-hand unarmed.

Yoshimo places his hand on Adamant’s shoulder. “You can’t fight them all,” he says over the crowd.

Adamant continues to stare at the pit as two spear armed handlers take the ogre out through a door. When the ogre is gone, he turns to look at Yoshimo. The bounty hunter from a far away land is no coward and he has faced magic, demons and death in many forms, yet the utter hardness of the eyes he is looking into chill him in a way he cannot remember feeling before. He makes no move to stop Adamant as the paladin pushes past him. Adamant is almost back to the door before Yoshimo thinks to chase after him.

By the time he gets through the crowd and back out into the corridor, Adamant has already turned the corner to the ironbound door. About him there is the glow of some kind of magical force or power. Yoshimo has almost caught up when Adamant throws back the bolt on the door and pushes his way into the space beyond.

The area is instantly recognisable by the series of barred cells against the opposite wall, manacled prisoners visible in most cells. As Adamant steps into the corridor which links the cells, an armoured man wielding a mace confronts him.

“What are you doing back here?” demands the guard. He brandishes his mace threateningly.

Ignoring the mace, Adamant seizes the man by the throat and lifts him bodily into the air. The paladin’s momentum carries them forward and he slams the guard into the wall, nearly cracking his skull with the force of the blow. The man slumps unconscious to the ground and Adamant catches his mace as he falls. Turning and looking about with his newly acquired weapon held ready, Adamant’s eyes meet Yoshimo’s, standing in the doorway. From both sides, armed guards rush into the area. Adamant confronts two armed men with a third standing behind them. Yoshimo turns to his right, where an archer is nocking an arrow to his bow. Drawing his katana, Yoshimo disrupts the archer’s shot and engages the man in hand-to-hand combat.

Adamant attacks the man to his left first, a deceptive horizontal swing that drops at the last moment, passing under the man’s attempted parry and crashing into his knee. The man’s snapped leg buckles underneath him and he falls so heavily that he is knocked unconscious when his head hits the hard earth. His companion steps in close, to take advantage of Adamant’s low stance. The man’s own mace comes arcing downward in an overhead strike. Adamant knows that he cannot dodge the blow in time and so he does not even attempt to. Instead, he steps into the man’s blow, causing it to hit him earlier rather than later, before the full force of the blow has been generated. Also, he manages to force the mace to strike him by the haft, rather than the flanged head, and on the shoulder, instead of on the head. The blow is still painful but much less dire than it would have been. For his part, Adamant backswings his mace upward between the man’s legs. He collapses from the blow, the pain of it causing him to retch and then pass out.

The third guard has been lurking behind his friends, invoking spells of protection, for he is a mage. Once Adamant has dispatched the first two he is confronted by not one remaining guard, but be a whole crowd of them, each identical to the others. The crowd of mages laughs and with a cacophony of one voice, they mock Adamant.

“You did not know, did you fool, that you would face someone with the power of the Weave at his command,” mocks the mage, confident in his defences of illusion and misdirection. “Now you will suffer for your foolishness.”

The mage begins another enchantment, a swift one. He laughs as he launches four tiny bolts of magic energy which fly from his fingertips and strike Adamant about his body. Adamant’s only response is to grunt in pain. The mage laughs again and commences a second spell of attack. In response, Adamant reaches out with one hand, as if trying to grasp the air between the two of them. He then clenches his fist, and as he does so he pulls upon the threads of the Weave, causing all magic around them both to fail in an instant. The cocksure mage gasps as his foe dispels all of his protections. He staggers backward as Adamant surges forward, clutching him by the collar of his robe.

“I…I didn’t…I…,” stammers the mage, panicking for his life. “I…please…don’t hurt me.”

Adamant’s face contorts in disgust at the man’s craven display. Dropping his bloodied mace, the paladin punches the cowering man in the face, cold-clocking with the single hit. Yoshimo comes up behind him as the mage collapses to the ground.

“What now?” asks Yoshimo. From one of the cells comes a stranger’s voice.

“You there,” calls the stranger from the bars of his cell. “If you are no friends of my captors then perhaps you will aid me.”

“Who are you?” asks Adamant.

“My name is Hendak,” says the muscular semi-naked man in the cell. His dark skin is crisscrossed with scars, so many that he appears almost cobwebbed, or even scaly, like the skin of a lizard. “I am a fighter for the pit, and have been enslaved here for many years. Will you free me.”

“You and everyone else down here,” says Adamant with a conviction that allows no compromise.

“Then you must get the key from the master of beasts,” Hendak explains. “He can often be found in the pens on the other side of the pit.”

“Go and get the others,” Adamant orders Yoshimo. “And bring my sword. I’m going to see this master of beasts.”