Blood Lands (Savage Lands #5)(30)
A roar from a lion snapped my attention back to the cages. Multiple tigers, boars, lions, and bears occupied the pens.
Istvan realized we wouldn’t battle each other and changed the battlefield to one we couldn’t protest by bringing in an opponent we had no choice but to fight.
The animals didn’t need to strip away the layers and find their primal instincts to survive. We did.
Kill or be killed.
The crowd of soldiers cheered as the metal doors unlocked with a clank, freeing the hungry, wild beasts.
My spine went ramrod straight, fear flushing through me, oxygen barely skimming my lungs. Warwick struggled to his feet next to me, stronger than he had been when he first came in, but still frail. We both observed the dozens of predators prowling out of their cages.
We were wounded, drained, and defenseless. Easy prey.
My attention went to my friends, all of them instinctively clumping together. Safety in numbers. It was true in some cases, building a wall of defense together, but there were times it made you more vulnerable, easy for them to circle and attack. Istvan once demonstrated this to Caden and me through a game of billiards. Grouped together, you could hit a lot at once, but once they were divided, you had to go after each singularly. Right now, the beasts had their kills all in one lump.
Warwick rumbled next to me, and without a word or look, I could sense he understood the same thing. We were the only two still alive who had fought in the Games, who understood the strategy of survival.
The art of war.
“Split up in pairs,” I bellowed, my arms waving. “Find anything you can to use as a weapon or shield.”
No one hesitated at my order. They accepted my strategy, darting in different directions, already confusing the animals, who cranked their heads in different ways, trying to pick out the weakest link.
I assessed everything in the stadium which could be used as a weapon. Roars thundered the massive room, echoing the heartbeat thumping painfully against my ribs. The tigers reacted first, swiping their claws at the closest victims.
“There.” Warwick huffed through his swollen mouth, pointing, his legs already moving for a torch on the outside of a gate. It was something we had once used to fight against each other in Halálház Games.
In Věrhăza, we stood together.
“Get up on a cage,” he yelled back at me, yanking the torch from its holder.
Right as I turned, my brain registered something leaping for me, a large orange and black mass, before the weight crashed into me, the claws sinking into my skin. The tiger and I hit the ground, the weight crushing me.
People always assume lions were stronger, when in actuality tigers were. With their condensed muscle mass and agility, they were a far more aggressive and faster breed.
My mind blocked the excruciating pain shredding through me, adrenaline and terror taking over as teeth snapped for my face, claws digging into my flesh.
“Brexley!” I could feel Warwick’s voice bellow within me, his fear and rage pushing out all his own agony and thrusting his energy into me.
A cry broke from my mouth, my fist cracking into the tiger’s throat, then its eye. The beast bellowed as Warwick singed its body with the flame from the torch.
Roaring, it bucked back in defense, retreating off me. Warwick’s palm fisted my collar, yanking me up. “Come on!”
Feeling wobbly, I got to my feet with no time to reflect on wounds or broken bones. I was alive, and that was the baseline to keep moving.
“Get up there!” He shoved me up on top of a cage before climbing up beside me. Blood soaked my uniform from the cat’s nails, turning the gray into a muddy brown, my limbs shivering with adrenaline, pain, and fear. The arena was a sea of movement, filled with screams and roars, chilling me to the bone. My attention swept over the pit.
Scorpion, Hanna, and Maddox had climbed onto a cage across from ours, their backs together, fighting off beasts from all sides. Kek and Lukas were on one farther away, while Killian, Sloane, and Rosie scaled one next to us.
Birdie, Wesley, Ash, and Kitty grabbed other torches and fought near the fire pits. Birdie and Wesley were amazing fighters and worked together well, but Ash and Kitty surprised me. Enthralled me with their movements as if it were a performance.
Whatever issues they had disappeared when they had to work together. Their unity was ingrained in their very beings. They knew each other so well; it was as though you were watching one person. They moved and fought like a dance; a rhythm so deeply-rooted they didn’t have to think. They just were. And through all the chaos and fear, the tiny little moment gave me hope. That no matter what, they were brothers, along with Warwick. And they would fight and die next to each other without question.
“We need more weapons.” Killian’s voice yanked me back. Puffing himself up, he struck his boot and swung at the lion trying to jump up on the cage with them. Rosie kicked at it as well. “We can’t sustain this.”
We couldn’t. They would wear us down and leap the moment our walls started to deteriorate.
Once again, my gaze shot around the space, trying to find anything we could use; otherwise, this was a lost cause. Even the gladiators got shields and swords. My attention darted up to the points board. This time, I noticed several HDF and Hungarian flags sticking out from the top of it. There were on wood poles.
It would take a nimble person to get up there, but we had to at least try. I turned to the only person I knew here who could scale things like a monkey.