Chapter 6: Blood In The Mist

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Blood In The Mist

Night settled over the Tribunal Kingdom like a held breath.

The fighting bands had been chosen. Weapons checked.

Ochre and ash painted across chests and faces.

Fires burned low so the light would not carry far toward the river.

Korr followed Vara into her cave as the last of the daylight died.

The tribe needed to see it the Matron taking her claimed gladiator to her furs on the eve of battle.

The message was as sharp as any flint: this man fights for her, bleeds for her, and returns to her.

Inside, the fire was already lit.

Vara did not undress him with slow hunger this time.

She pushed him down onto the furs, straddled his hips, and took him inside her with a single heavy drop of her body.

She was already wet.

The urgency of the coming fight had left her restless, and she used him for it riding hard, hands braced on his chest, breasts swaying with every roll of her hips.

The bone necklace clicked in time with her breathing.

Korr gripped her thighs and met her thrusts. There was little tenderness in it.

It was claiming and grounding and the fierce need to feel something alive before the spears flew.

When she came she bit down on his shoulder to muffle the sound. He followed moments later, spilling deep while her body clenched around him.

Afterward she lay against his chest, fingers tracing the older scars and the newer bruises.

"Tomorrow the mist will rise off the water," she said quietly. "Use it.

The River men know the current better than we do, but they do not know how we fight when the ground is ours.

Stay alive, Korr. I am not finished with you."

He slept only a few short hours, her weight warm against his side.

They left before true dawn.

The run to the old crossing took most of the day.

Korr moved with the first band twenty fighters, hard-eyed and quiet.

Elka led the second band along a higher trail that would let her drop down on the River Tribe’s flank if the fight locked.

Vara and a small group of archers and elders took the ridge path.

From there she would see the whole field.

By late afternoon the air grew heavier with the smell of water and wet earth.

Mist was already forming in the low places, pale and thick.

The old crossing was a wide shallow stretch where the river slowed and the banks flattened into packed sand and scattered stone.

Perfect for canoes to beach.

Perfect for blood.

Korr’s band settled into the reeds and low scrub on their side of the water.

Axes and spears ready. No one spoke.

The only sounds were the soft rush of the current and the distant call of a night bird.

They did not have to wait long.

The first canoes slid out of the mist like dark animals.

Then more. Twelve in all, just as the scouts had said. Warriors packed the hulls faces painted white and blue, spears and clubs in hand.

They beached hard, jumping into the shallows with splash and shout, forming a rough line on the sand.

A big man at the front raised a long spear and bellowed something in the River tongue. The challenge was clear even without the words.

Korr stepped out of the reeds first.

The rest of the band followed, spreading into a loose fighting line.

For a moment the two groups stared at each other across thirty paces of open ground.

Then the River warriors charged.

The mist swallowed the first collision.

Korr met a painted man with a stone club, ducked the swing, and drove his axe into the side of the neck.

Blood sprayed hot across his arm.

He ripped the blade free and turned to the next.

Around him the air filled with grunts, the crack of wood on bone, the wet sound of flint finding flesh.

A spear glanced off his ribs, leaving a burning line.

He answered by burying his axe in the spearman’s chest.

The River men fought with the ferocity of people who had come to take and not to leave empty-handed.

They pushed hard, trying to break the Tribunal line and reach the higher ground. Korr’s world narrowed to the next enemy, the next swing, the need to stay on his feet. He killed a second man.

A third staggered him with a club to the shoulder before Korr opened the man’s belly and left him screaming in the sand.

From the ridge, shouts and the whistle of arrows began.

Vara’s archers had found their range. River warriors started dropping with shafts in their thighs and throats.

Then Elka’s band hit them from the side screaming war cries, smashing into the exposed flank.

The River line buckled.

Korr saw the big man who had shouted the challenge trying to rally his fighters.

The River leader was taller than most, broad, a necklace of fish teeth across his chest.

Their eyes met through the mist and the chaos.

They closed on each other.

The River leader’s spear was longer.

He used the reach, forcing Korr back with quick, jabbing thrusts.

Korr gave ground until his heel hit a half-buried stone, then dropped low and surged inside the spear’s range.

The flint axe took the man across the forearm, cutting deep.

The spear fell. The River leader pulled a short knife and slashed.

Pain bloomed across Korr’s chest.

He ignored it, stepped in, and drove the axe up under the man’s jaw.

The fish-tooth necklace snapped.

The big body folded.

A roar went up from the Tribunal fighters. The remaining River warriors broke.

Some tried to push the canoes back into the water. Others simply ran along the bank. Elka’s band cut many of them down.

Arrows from the ridge took more.

By the time the mist began to thin, the sand was littered with the dead and the dying. Only a handful of canoes escaped downstream, half-empty.

Korr stood over the River leader’s body, chest heaving, blood running from the cut across his ribs and the earlier spear graze. His arms felt heavy.

The axe was sticky in his grip.

Elka strode through the carnage, a long smear of blood across one cheek, eyes bright with the fight.

She looked Korr up and down, then gave a sharp, approving nod.

"Still standing. Good.

The Matron will be pleased."

Vara came down from the ridge as the last of the light died.

She walked through the bodies without flinching, her archers and Gron behind her. When she reached Korr she stopped and took in the wounds, the blood, the axe still in his hand.

She reached out and dragged two fingers through the cut on his chest, then brought them to her mouth and tasted.

"The crossing holds," she said, voice carrying to every fighter still on their feet. "The River Tribe came in force and left in pieces. Let their survivors carry the story home."

Her eyes locked on Korr’s.

In them was pride, possession, and the open promise of what would come once they returned to the caves.

"Bind his wounds," she ordered the nearest healer.

"He runs with us back to the kingdom tonight.

I want him alive when I take my victory from him."