Page 2 of Trapped to Tame
‘I don't understandwhy you've dragged us to this hole of a fucking place,’ Priest muttered as they picked their way down the muddy main road of yet another town that looked like every other one in this realm.
‘We're here because she is here.’
Behind him, Priest snorted, brushing his dark hair away from his face. ‘We should already be at the entrance to the Underhill, trying to get through. Instead, we waste time on fools’ errands.’
Drax looked over his shoulder at his Brother. ‘The portals are gone. That's common knowledge now. If we want to find out what happened in the Underhill, we need help to get there. We need this woman.’
Priest shook his head. ‘And who isthis womanthat we're so desperate to find? All we have is vague prophecies – your dreams, Brother. Who's to say she truly exists, that she can even assist us?’
Drax scowled. ‘Shut your mouth. You’re not the leader here, Priest. Not any longer. She’s no more a figment of my mind than you are and she’s close. I can feel it.’
Priest shook his head, but didn’t speak again and Drax was glad, though his Brother would probably sulk for the rest of the day now. Fie, the third of their unit, eyed them both with a tired expression, but, as usual, elected to stay silent while Drax and Priest argued.
They walked slowly down the main thoroughfare, houses and businesses lining both sides. This town was larger than some, but when the portal in this area had disappeared two years before, the surrounding lands were cut off from the profitable Dark Realm trade routes and more than one noble family had been reduced to poverty overnight. This town had clearly fallen on hard times in the wake of that catastrophe.
‘Come,’ he said, squelching through the thick mud where the road hadn’t been repaired in some time.
There was a chill in the air. Though it wasn’t yet winter, the nights were cold, and they’d already traded their thinner cloaks for their fur-lined ones in preparation for their trip north.
‘This way.’
Drax walked down towards the river, noticing that the buildings became more and more broken down with casements falling off their hinges, houses without doors and rotten timbers making roofs sag.
They heard the dim roaring of the men watching the fights in the pits and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was where they would find the female they were seeking. His gift was foresight and, though at times it was maddeningly vague, some visions – as this one had been – were so clear in his mind’s eye that there was no misinterpreting them.
‘There's only one manner of woman who’d be in this part of the town,’ Priest muttered and, though Drax secretly agreed with him, he sent his Brother a warning look.
They approached the rings, seeing that the fights had already begun for the evening, and Drax was taken aback to see there was a tiny woman fighting a great bear of a man. He stopped to watch, and it looked as if she was holding her own though she was so much smaller than her opponent.
Interesting.
Drax stepped closer, watching her fight the man who was at least three heads taller than she and practically as broad as a building where she was a tiny, bony thing. He grabbed her around the throat, laughing as he cut off her air and she flailed.
He was playing with her, Drax thought. Perhaps that was why she wasn't lying face down in the dirt already. But she surprised him by pulling one of the great man's meaty fingers back and levering his hand from her neck. Clearly, her small stature belied a greater strength. Drax cast his eyes over her thoroughly, even more intrigued.
She was painfully thin and short with light hair that was plaited out of her way. Dull, brown eyes were vacant and showed little. In truth, she looked like every other downtrodden human woman in this realm who’d had a hard life; nothing out of the ordinary.
She pulled her arm back and struck the man in the face hard enough for him to fall over. The crowd shouted and booed, but he recovered quickly and backhanded her in kind, causing the men around them to thunder their approvals. Clearly this woman wasn’t well liked.
She staggered and slipped in the mud, and her opponent approached with a jeering laugh. But she kicked out at him as soon as he was close enough, striking him in the knee. He bellowed in pain, stumbling back a step, and holding onto his leg.
He growled something, and she bared her teeth before she unstuck herself from the muck. Again, he advanced on her, arm raised to swat her as if she was a gnat to crush. She ducked, her short stature making it easy to avoid the giant as she stepped close and delivered an uppercut to the underside of his chin so hard that he flew off his feet and landed some paces away, unconscious.
The men around them jostled, deafening, in a frenzy as their favorite lost. Money was changing hands rapidly and a few men at the front looked very angry indeed. The fight had not gone their way, it seemed.
Drax watched the woman walk to the edge of the ring. A tall man dressed in rags came to stand next to her, surveying her unmoving foe and giving her a scowl that she ignored.
The announcer called for another to fight her, and no one stepped forward, the unruly crowd quieting oddly. They feared her. Drax didn't hesitate, however. He strode into the pit, passing his tunic and belt to Fie.
The woman rolled her eyes as she saw him but met him in the middle of the ring as if she was simply humoring him. He almost smiled at her arrogance. Soon she'd know what real strength looked like, felt like. She'd not find him so easy to beat as the man she had just fought.
When the fight began, Drax began by taking her measure, letting her move around him. He watched the way she darted in and out, saving her strength. She was slender and gaunt. How she'd overpowered the other man, Drax didn't know.
She was staring at him now that he was closer with an odd look on her face. He watched as she shook her head slightly, banishing whatever thoughts had been stealing her focus, and she stepped forward again.
He let her get a strike in, though he could easily have blocked her fist. Pain exploded in his jaw. She was strong for a human woman. He grinned, disconcerting her as he sprang and, quick as a snake, hit her across the face with the back of his fist. Her head snapped to the side, and she fell into the dirt with a cry, looking up at him with a mixture of fear and surprise.
‘Aye,’ he murmured under the sound of the men gathering closer, clambering to watch. ‘No one’s hit you that hard before, have they, woman?’
