Rend Stripclaw's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

By dawn, word of Rend's win had spread across the island. Prowlers came in packs. They wanted to see the lion who stripped Marcus Strongpaw bare. The benches filled fast. Then more came. They pressed against the ropes until the ropes bent. Rend stood in his ring and watched the crowd swell past its edges. The yard could not hold them all. Patch pushed through with his trunk, breathing hard. "You have your crowd now," the elelion said. "Too much of one. They'll trample the ropes flat." He was right. The back rows shoved forward. A bench cracked under too many feet. The ring Rend had built was breaking under its own success. Rend grabbed a stack of loose rope from the tailor's cart. "Then we make it bigger," he said. He and Patch worked fast. Patch lifted the corner posts with his trunk and dragged them wide. Rend lashed new rope across, doubling the ring. The crowd flowed into the new space and settled. The ring held. Now it fit everyone. But a bigger ring meant a bigger fight. The crowd wanted blood. They chanted for a match, and Rend had no opponent. He turned, scanning the packed faces for a challenger. At the far post knelt a figure the others gave space to. A giant tiger in cracked black armor. He gripped a broken sword by its snapped blade and stared at the dirt. He did not chant. He did not cheer. The crowd near him went quiet, uneasy. Rend had heard the name whispered at the market. Lorn Thade, who had guarded some ruined shrine and lost it, and now knelt wherever he stopped. Rend stepped close. "You're taking up ring space," he said. "Fight or move." Lorn Thade lifted his yellow eyes. "I don't fight for scraps of cloth." His voice was low and dry. "I fought for something once. It fell anyway." "Then you've got nothing left to lose," Rend said. "Stand up." The tiger rose slow, armor grinding. He towered over Rend. The crowd sucked in a breath. Lorn Thade set his shattered sword against the post, gently, like it still mattered. Then he raised both fists. Rend circled. The tiger was huge but stiff in his plate. Rend feinted, ducked under a slow swing, and hooked a claw beneath a strap of armor at the shoulder. He yanked. The cracked plate slid free and thudded in the dirt. Lorn Thade froze, bare-shouldered. For one moment his stone face broke. He looked down at himself, then at the roaring crowd, and something in him seemed to wake. He did not stalk off like Marcus. He picked up his broken sword, studied it, and dropped it in the dirt for good. "Maybe I've knelt long enough," he said. Rend had won. But he had also raised something that had been buried, and now the whole island wanted a piece of the ring.