The Hidden City Preview 3

“I wish you good fortune,” the middle-aged LaoZhang said with steel in his eyes and no honesty to the words.  They were ritual, formulaic; to him, necessary.

  Garruth met his second opponent upon the well-bloodied reeds in the center of the sparring circle, where GuiDong again administered the opening of the match.

 “You as well,” Garruth answered politely.  He could see that LaoZhang’s courtesy was a mask that poorly concealed the indignant rage with which the martial artist viewed their coming bout.  But he didn’t see any point in arguing about it.

  It was an assessment with which GuiDong, as it happened, did not concur.  “Your luck ends now, foreign dog.  Master LaoZhang is not some young pup, eager to impress and governed by emotion.  You will not cheat your way into an easy victory this time.”

 “GuiDong,” the Master said with reproach.  The older man pouted, but was obediently silent.

  But Garruth knew: LaoZhang did not scold the mediator of their contest because he disagreed with him.  He just doesn’t think I’m worth the bother.  He could see it in the malignant stare, the offended set of his shoulders, and tight, tersely clenched lips.

  The old referee had been right about one thing, though: LaoZhang isn’t going to make it easy for me.

  When the tea leaves were dropped from GuiDong’s upturned palms, LaoZhang did not attack as YongXiang had done.  Instead he stepped back into a defensive posture similar to the one Garruth had used, only he squatted down quite low to the ground with his legs spread wide.  Yet the mercenary could see that the master was carrying most of his weight on his back leg.  He saw through the ruse instantly: he’s trying to bait me into coming within reach of that front leg.  From LaoZhang’s current position, he could whip an attack out with a frightening speed.  I’d be hard pressed to defend against it, I wager, if I let him throw it.  The idea was to appear vulnerable on that lead leg.  Whether it was the seemingly-older man’s common stratagem, or one he had chosen to apply for this match, Garruth could not say.  But it didn’t matter: because I’m not taking the bait.

  Instead he circled around towards LaoZhang’s open hips – away from that leg - so that he would have to twist across his body to land a kick, altering the angles significantly enough to drastically reduce its resultant force. 

  But LaoZhang was no novice, and had anticipated the maneuver.  He threw his left hand out in a sort of hooking claw, trying to force the mercenary back to his center.

  Garruth parried the strike, dodged a second identical jab, and then leapt backwards as he saw LaoZhang shift his weight from his right leg to his left.

  The WuHan master swung that right leg out in a wide arc, aimed at Garruth’s head.  Except it did not even come close to landing. 

  It was only after LaoZhang placed his weight once again on his back leg – now his left – that Garruth understood: he wasn’t trying to hit me.  He was just reversing his stance, to prevent me from passing his guard. 

  And then the WuHan master leaped forward, throwing a kick with that front leg at Garruth’s chest. 

  The mercenary blocked it easily; but then, it had only been a distraction, anyway.  For as soon as his foot returned to the ground, the seemingly-older man stretched both arms out, lashing them at Garruth’s face. 

  Unable to stop them both, he tried to roll his face back as far as possible, so it would strike his cheek.  The skin there had a tendency to tear, and the bones to break; but a direct blow on the temple or under the chin could drop me.  Luckily, he managed to create enough distance to avoid most of the contact; and what little he did feel, fell upon his ear.  It stung, and was sure to turn red.  But that’s just pain.  He sustained no real damage. 

 “Now you will see…” LaoZhang whispered menacingly, an ugly scowl breaking out across his face.  “You thought you could worm your way into our city, into our tournament?  You are not worthy of this tournament.  You are not worthy of me.  You don’t even deserve to wash the hair on my loins.”

 “You need someone else to wash the hair on your loins?”  Garruth countered with a disgusted look on his face, noticing how quickly LaoZhang had reversed his position on the comparative value of rhetorical combat.

  “I need you to die, you contemptible cur,” LaoZhang spat.  The WuHan master pressed his attack now, thinking he had gained an advantage.  He swung his right arm up towards Garruth’s chin, but the mercenary tucked his head down into his chest and deflected it with a forearm.

 LaoZhang followed immediately with his left knee, which the mercenary was only barely able to avoid by jumping backwards and rolling his back shoulder away. 

  Yet it seems that this was precisely what LaoZhang had been waiting for, for he immediately struck with a heavy foot directly upon Garruth’s exposed kidney.

 “We are not all sex maddened whores, looking to jump onto the first unknown lap we see,” the bitter old fellow said, spitting out a gob of saliva onto the mat.

 “But those are the best kind,” Garruth grunted in response, as the impact of LaoZhang’s kick forced him to grimace.  The foot struck his kidney, but the mercenary felt it shoot up and down his spine; but I have not been idle, either.  Garruth, of course, knew that the insult was meant for LuQing; but he also understood that the old man – vile and arrogant as he was – was really just trying to throw him off balance.  To force him into a state of aggravation, so that he stopped fighting tactically and began fighting emotionally.  This wasn’t the first enemy that Garruth had faced an enemy who landed more insults than punches; and he’s not even particularly good at it.  So he ignored him, and focused on the bout.

  The blow to his kidney was painful; and the crowd once again roared to life as they anticipated the coming victory of their recently anointed favorite – patriotic fervor being fickle, and hollow as it was.  They had loved YongXiang, until he had lost.  And they loved LaoZhang now, because he might still win.  But ultimately they cared little for the actual person; so long as they are fighting me, and so long as I lose.  It didn’t bother the mercenary in the slightest: because he had been baiting the older man into that exact attack.  He had known that LaoZhang was hoping for just such a window in which to press his attack; and he saw by the way the WuHan master was positioning his hips that he meant to follow that first knee with a kick.  It was supposed to be a trap; and it turned out to be.  Just not for me…

  That kick brought LaoZhang’s face within perilous reach of Garruth’s right elbow, as he had known it would.  So he threw it back at the Wuhan master, twisting as he did to apply the full force of his arm, his shoulders, his waist.  He dug his feet into the reeds and planted himself on that right leg to pivot slightly, just enough to open up his hips and allow for the extra force that would be the difference between a glancing blow and critical one.

  It landed just as he had hoped.  LaoZhang was unprepared for the counter attack, so the hard, unforgiving bone of Garruth’s elbow smashed into the soft, brittle bridge of his nose with devastating effect.  The nasal bones first cracked, and then shattered.

  LaoZhang hardly noticed it: because it knocked him unconscious in an instant.  He was lifted off his feet – seeming almost to follow the arched canopy of blood which exploded up from his crushed face – and then fell back down, flat on his back.  He groaned piteously, with his eyes rolled back into his head, and his tongue lolling just out of the corner of his mouth.

  And then GuiDong was in the middle of the ring, once again declaring his mortal enemy Garruth as the victor of this, the semi-final match.  He was not happy about it, the mercenary could plainly see; but then, I didn’t get into this business to make miserable, rotten old bastards happy, anyway.

  He sauntered back to LuQing’s box, careful to hide the pain in his side with each step.  He could not, however, hide the large, purple welt that had already begun to swell up on his ribs.

  The sorceress looked at it and immediately understood.  She smiled faintly and shook her head.  “You let him do that to you?”

 “It was worth it,” the mercenary defended himself.

 “Not if any of those ribs are broken.  You could have just defended against the kick and worn him down.”

 “He irritated me.”

 “Isn’t that what you said about YongXiang?  Perhaps the problem is not at the stream, but rather its source…”

 “Whatever the hell that means,” Garruth scowled.  He had come over to calm his nerves; and instead was getting a lesson on ethics.  And he was angry all over again.

 “My point exactly,” the ShaeYan said calmly with an incline of her head.

  Garruth understood, of course.  She was responding more to his mood than to his words.  He was silent, furious and scowling.

  Then she laughed, and for some reason it was all better again.  “It’s not an irredeemable shortcoming, of course.  Although it can be dangerous in battle to let oneself be overcome by their emotions.”

 “This isn’t battle,” Garruth countered, pulling his shirt back over his chest.  “It’s a game.  And sometimes a gambit is worth it.”

 “I fail to see how bruising your ribs is going to help you.”

 “Because LaoZhang wanted to sit behind his guard and drag the match out for as long as possible.”

 “One rarely suffers broken ribs in such a contest,” she responded.

 “But one also wastes a disproportionate amount of energy trying to win it.  I’ve still got one more round to go; I didn’t have time to waste it chasing that miserable old shit around the ring.  So I took the kick to end the fight early.”

 “I hope you made the right decision,” she said with another demure little smile.  “So, too, does my chamberlain, who nearly fainted when he learned how much gold I wagered on you winning this tournament.”

 “Tell him your gold isn’t in any danger,” Garruth answered.

 “What about the rest of me?”  She asked.

  He had been looking at her the entire time; her face hadn’t moved.  He would have sworn any number of oaths that she hadn’t moved a single muscle on that porcelain mask.  And yet it looks entirely different than it did just a moment before…

  He didn’t trust himself to answer.  He just turned and walked back to the cot which awaited him down in the bowels of the arena.