Chapter 418: The Back Door

The mound was only knee-high, but it gave Glitch something to stand on and Jin something to crouch behind. Beyond it to the east, the white boundary line was about fifteen metres away.

To the south and west, the lanes were broad and empty for the moment.

Another whistle went. A flag went up on the north side, then another on the west. He didn’t know whose they were.

Across the arena, on the far western side, he saw Lucian.

It was only a glimpse, through a gap between two timber walls. Lucian was standing behind a barrier block, stave low, perfectly still, while a big grey cat-like beast and somebody’s hound tore at each other three metres in front of him.

Kite circled above the clash, comfortably below the flight limit.

Lucian didn’t move. He waited until the hound’s tamer stepped out to call his beast back, side-on and not looking.

Stormstep carried Lucian across the gap. He checked his momentum beside the tamer, stave ready as the other boy turned.

Then Jin lost sight of him, but he’d seen enough to recognise it.

Stay, he thought. Then go. He’s actually doing it.

To his right, a boy was fighting a girl with a long-legged wading bird near the southern mounds, with his back to Jin, maybe twenty metres away. Glitch could have been on him in four strides.

Jin looked at the lane between them, wide and flat and open on three sides, and let it go.

Along the eastern boundary, a wiry fourth-year with a short staff chased another contender past a waist-high block. The other student escaped around its southern end. The fourth-year stopped on the strip between the block and the white line, two metres from elimination.

His brindled hound was farther inward, snarling at somebody else’s lizard. He called it once, impatiently. It didn’t come.

Jin checked the route. The fourth-year could get back through either end of the strip, but both routes were narrow. There was room for Jin at the southern end and Glitch at the northern one, provided the hound stayed busy.

That one. Before he notices how far he’s gone.

"Flicker. Keep the hound turned away. Clear shots."

She swept across the hound’s approach, placing a restrained Ember Shot on the sand ahead of it. It checked, then snapped toward her as a second shot struck its outer shoulder. She curved away into the arena, drawing it after her without crossing any student’s path.

Jin ran toward the block. Glitch approached its northern end, filling the gap beside the boundary. The fourth-year saw the drake and immediately turned south, toward Jin. He understood the danger and meant to get out before it closed.

Jin reached the end of the block just in time to meet his staff on the spear shaft.

The impact jarred his arms. He had expected a desperate rush; the fourth-year gave him a quick high feint instead, then struck low at his guard. Jin caught it late. The staff scraped his padded forearm, and he almost let the boy through.

He stepped across the opening, keeping the block at his left shoulder. The fourth-year tried a second approach, this time driving the spear aside to make space for his own body.

Jin yielded a little. He couldn’t win by standing here and trading blows until the hound came back.

The boy put his weight into the next step, intending to push past. Jin pulsed Gravity Press beneath that landing. The step shortened under the sudden weight, upsetting the rhythm of the staff’s forward drive.

Jin released the pressure and turned his shaft across the boy’s guard. Instead of meeting the push straight on, he stepped around its outside and redirected it toward the boundary.

The fourth-year recovered after one stumbling pace. He was still inside, with the line close behind his heels. His staff came up between them again.

Jin felt his arms starting to shake. He kept the spear across the guard and advanced a short step, denying the direct route back to the block.

The boy shifted north, looking for space to pivot. Glitch moved with him, keeping his own feet well inside the line. The fourth-year couldn’t turn that way without presenting his side to the drake.

He tried to reverse the movement. Jin followed the change with his shaft, keeping pressure on the guard while the boy’s feet were still crossing. The fourth-year took a hurried balancing step onto the red band, then another that carried him wholly outside.

The referee raised a flag. Jin stopped pushing at once.

For a moment the boy looked down at the line as though it had moved. Then he drew his staff back and called his hound.

"Should’ve brought him with me," he muttered.

Jin said nothing. He was busy making sure Flicker had heard the stoppage and broken away safely. She circled above the retreating hound, then came back to the block.

Jin stood beside the barrier block with his arms shaking and the spear still up. Flicker landed on the block beside him, panting.

One, he thought. Then he made himself turn round and look at the rest of the arena, because it hadn’t stopped.

The arena had changed while he wasn’t looking.

There were gaps now. The noise had broken up into separate fights, and officials were walking eliminated tamers toward the gates in ones and twos.

Jin moved them away from the boundary, back to the earth mound, and crouched behind it.

His left forearm had a hot, swollen line where the fourth-year’s staff had caught it. His legs felt heavy at the hips.

He still had energy to draw on, but his arms and legs were tiring. The new Star hadn’t made those staff blows any lighter.

Glitch stood beside the mound, breathing hard. There was a long scrape across his shoulder plates where the ox’s horn had dragged, and a smaller cut along his jaw. Flicker sat on Glitch’s back with her beak open, panting.

Rest. Thirty seconds. Then move.

He got twenty.

The attack came round the southern side of the mound.

A broad-shouldered fourth-year with a padded practice mace came in low and fast, with a big rangy wolfhound running ahead of him. The hound went straight for Glitch’s flank. The tamer went for Jin.

He’d waited for the moment Jin crouched down.

The hound hit Glitch at the shoulder, right on the fresh scrape. Glitch snarled and Hardened, and the hound’s jaws skidded on stone-hard plate.

The mace came at Jin.

He got up too slowly. The first blow caught the spear shaft high, near his hands, and drove it back into his own shoulder. The second he took squarely on the shaft. He gave ground, a step, then another, round the side of the mound.

Don’t go back. Behind you is open lane and then the line.

The fourth-year knew it too. He was pushing Jin east.

"Flicker," Jin said. "The hound. Turn its head."

Flicker rose from Glitch’s back and curved toward the hound’s exposed side. A restrained Ember Shot struck its outer shoulder. It twisted to snap at her, giving Glitch room to step across its approach.

The drake checked it with his shoulder and turned it onto its side. Jin immediately sent a warning through the bond: hold, don’t crush.

Glitch planted his feet wide and kept his weight on his own limbs, using his chest and foreleg to restrict the hound’s shoulders. When it tried to roll, he shifted with it. Its hindlegs scrabbled in the sand; the referee moved closer to watch.

The fourth-year saw it. He hesitated, half a second, eyes going to his beast.