City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [8]
The one with the sabre began to slash at him with force in a combination of moves, and Malum seemed to struggle for a moment before he wedged his blade into the creature’s flank. The following slash of the sabre would have brought off his head had he not changed position. There was something disturbing about his speed, which seemed almost inhuman. Malum’s muscles flexed, tendons bulging, his torso glimmering with sweat and still he grinned.
Brynd couldn’t be sure if it was a trick of the light, but it almost looked as if he had fangs.
The creature with the mace was now limping at the perimeter of the ring, and as it presented its back to Malum for a moment, the man sprinted up to it and dug his blade in and along the spine. As he wrenched it down further, the cross-breed collapsed and began to spasm. Another cheer arose, another one down. Malum turned back to regard the last creature, clearly the best fighter of the three.
He ripped into it with all his skill and poise, dazzling all with artistic flourishes to the way he moved. Right then he might as well have been operating in some different dimension of time.
The hybrid received a gash to its arm, then to its flank, then to its face, and it began to wilt like a dying flower as Malum forced it stumbling back over one of its fallen comrades. Finally, Malum severed the hand that held the sabre clean off its arm, and drove his messer blade through its chest. A second or two later, it shuddered into stillness.
Malum stood there, breathing heavily, covered in unnatural shades of blood, then turned to face the cheering crowd and let them know by his stance that his position had been well earned, absorbing impassively the shouts and whistles coming from all around, as if to tell them not to ever question his worth. He even began to lick at the blood spattering him, as if savouring the taste.
Someone shouted, ‘Next – you and you,’ and two men pushed themselves up from the front row, massive triangular-torsoed figures, eyeing each other in readiness for bare-knuckle combat.
‘Interesting,’ Lutto declared, ‘that no matter how sophisticated a culture we achieve, there is always need to prove how tough people can be, no? So, I assume you’ll now wish for me to arrange a meeting, commander? You think he’ll be of use?’
Malum had been astonishing and mesmerizing and brutal. His skills were the equal of any soldier that Brynd had encountered for a long time, perhaps surpassing them all. Men like him could prove invaluable when it came to it. There was no point in considering such a question further: he needed all the help he could find.
‘I do indeed,’ Brynd admitted. ‘And if there are other men as able and as talented as that one, I would like to be made aware of them too. They might make the difference between your city surviving or finding itself reduced to rubble.’
‘Lutto understands clearly,’ the fat portreeve replied, ‘and will make the appropriate enquiries.’
THREE
‘My sweeeeetheart is a soldier, as handsome as can be-e-e,’ sang Arletta, stage vixen of Villiren, forty-six years old, broad about the beam, and still making the most of those curves. From the unrevealing sanctuary of his red bauta mask, Malum watched her sashay about the stage in a bulging sparkly size-too-small gown, while fetchingly wrapped in lantern light and candle