Had he remained in place.
The crowd gave a singular gasp when Azarion let go of his sword and dropped into a tuck and roll that carried him under the galloping mare’s belly. The Savatar roared when the mare stumbled and a short spray of blood spattered the ground as Azarion sprang up on the other side, hands cupped under Karsas’s left foot. He heaved upward, sending the startled rider flying off the horse’s back.
Karsas hit the ground hard. His horse galloped several paces away before a Savatar caught her reins and brought her to a halt. Disoriented, the ataman staggered to his feet, still clutching his sword.
Azarion bolted toward him, a bright flag of blood cascading down his back on the left side. Gilene spared a quick glance at Tamura. “Why is he bleeding?”
Tamura shrugged, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. I think the mare’s hoof caught him when he rolled under her.”
Azarion crashed into Karsas, arm slamming downward to smash the sword out of his hand. Karsas fell to his back, and Azarion followed, keeping enough of his balance to stay on his knees and pin his enemy down. He grabbed the other man by the ears, using them as grips to slam his head against the ground.
“Ten years,” Azarion snarled. The open-palm strike he landed against the side of Karsas’s head made the other man grunt and spit blood. Gilene’s heartbeat thundered in her skull at the sight, at the sound of animalistic rage in Azarion’s voice. “A slave to the Empire.” Another blow, this time to the other side of Karsas’s head. More blood to mingle with the crimson flow that spilled from the open wound on Azarion’s shoulder to water the grass.
With a guttural roar, Karsas lunged upward, freeing one arm long enough to punch Azarion in the side and clip the underside of his chin with his head. Azarion fell away, only to spring to his feet. Karsas did the same, and the two men rushed at each other.
Lean and quick, with the powerful leg muscles earned from a lifetime of skilled horsemanship, Karsas used those strengths, landing a pair of kicks on Azarion in quick succession: one against his arm, another to his hip, followed by a knee to his groin. The last made the crowd groan as one.
Azarion never fell, never flinched, and Gilene noticed something in the violence of their match. He took the hits on purpose. Karsas had aimed for Azarion’s knees and his ribs, vulnerable spots that, once broken, would have abruptly ended the fight. Azarion absorbed the kicks but twisted his body in such a way that Karsas’s lethal strikes landed against his arm and hip. The groin hit might have taken another man down, but not a Pit gladiator. She’d seen some of the fights from a cell during the Rites. Strikes to the ribs, the liver, or the kidneys disabled opponents. Groin hits didn’t.
While Karsas was fast, Azarion was equally so and also trained. It took the other man only a moment to realize Azarion had allowed the kicks to go through. He leapt back, but not quickly enough.
Azarion delivered a round of blows to Karsas’s face and torso. Measured, swift, meant to bloody and bruise but not immediately disable, those blows spun Karsas one way and then the other, driving him back to where his sword lay in the grass. It became obvious to the crowd that Azarion was playing with his adversary the way a cat played with a rat.
Blood saturated Azarion’s tunic from his shoulder to his hip, seeping from the wound made by the mare’s hoof. He looked pale but undaunted by the injury as he swatted his cousin across the makeshift arena, eyes flat, expression murderous.
Karsas staggered, wiped a hand across his face that left a bloody smear, and lunged for his sword. He swayed on his feet, waving the blade in front of him with threatening swipes. “I am ataman,” he declared before spitting out a gobbet of blood. “You are nothing but a Kraelian thrall.”
Azarion halted and watched him for a moment before backing away to where his own sword had landed. He kept his gaze on Karsas and casually bent to grab the blade. A fleeting humorless smile played across his mouth when Karsas charged him.
Just as casually, he countered the attack, his years as a Pit fighter evident in the ease with which he handled the sword and fought his cousin.
Gilene steepled her fingers and pressed them to her mouth, hardly daring to breathe as Azarion and Karsas battled.
“I was enslaved, thanks to you,” Azarion said. He caught Karsas across the chest, leaving a shallow cut that split the other man’s leather tunic but didn’t draw blood. “Beaten, raped, degraded.”
“One,” Tamura breathed in a soft voice. Gilene spared her a puzzled glance before turning her attention back to the fight.
Karsas’s own swings were clumsy, his movements slowing. Exhaustion, mixed with fear, turned his features gaunt.
Azarion landed another cut, this one on Karsas’s leg. Like the first, it was shallow. Unlike it, blood welled above the slash in the fabric. “Who else did you ambush or murder to keep your secrets and hold your power?”
“Two,” Tamura said.
Others nearby turned to look at her. Realization dawned on Gilene, and her heart ached for the man who would likely find his justice but not his peace when this was over.
Another slash, this one across Karsas’s abdomen.
Gilene joined Tamura. “Three.”
A cut for every year Azarion had been enslaved because of his cousin’s ambitions and his cowardice.
“Four.”
Karsas cursed Azarion, calling him every filthy name in Savat as well as trader’s tongue, bloody spittle glossing his lips. His eyes were wide, his stare frenzied and hate-filled. He no longer seemed to notice when Azarion cut him, painting him a little redder each time.
“Five.” The crowd joined its collective voice to Tamura’s and Gilene’s.
A grueling, excruciating count that ground out in blood, sweat, and pain.
“Six.”
Gilene prayed it would end soon. She felt no pity for Karsas, but his children stood across the field, their faces buried in their stoic mother’s tunic. Justice and vengeance. The merciless speed of the first had become the prolonged savagery of the second.
At the seventh slash, she no longer counted out loud. By the eighth, she found herself praying, not to gods but to Azarion himself. “Finish it,” she said under her breath. “Please.”
As if he heard her plea, he altered his stance and struck with a sweeping arc of his blade.
“Nine,” the crowd said in chorus, their voices lowered to a grim murmur.
A gout of blood spilled through Karsas’s fingers, and he fell to his knees. Gilene closed her eyes against the sight of his entrails bulging from the gaping wound that split his gut. Azarion had nearly cut him in half.
She opened her eyes in time to witness Azarion end his cousin’s suffering with a hard, clean slash that severed the man’s head from his body. The head rolled in one direction as the body tipped to the side and hit the ground with a dull thud.