Prince of Fools. Mark Lawrence

      I saw his game then. Three hundred was just half what I owed him. The bastard meant to see Snorri die and keep a royal prince on his leash. There didn’t seem to be a way past it though. You don’t argue with Maeres Allus, certainly not in his cousins’ fight hall and owing him the best part of a thousand in gold. Maeres knew how far he could push me, minor princeling or not. He’d seen past my bluster to what lies beneath. You don’t get to head an organization like Maeres’s without being a good judge of men.

      ‘Three hundred if he’s not fit to fight wagered bouts tonight?’ I could slip back after Father’s ridiculous opera and buy into the serious fights. This afternoon’s exercise had only ever been intended to whet appetites and stir up interest.

      Maeres didn’t answer, only clapped his soft hands and had the pit-guards raise the opposite gate. At the sound of iron grating on stone and chains ratcheting through their housings the crowds came to the rail, drawn by the pull of the pit.

      ‘He’s huge!’

      ‘Handsome fella!’

      ‘Norras will ugly him up.’

      ‘Knows his stuff does Norras.’

      The beefy Teuton came out of the archway, rolling his bald head on a thick neck.

      ‘Fists only, Norseman,’ Maeres called down. ‘The only way out of that pit for you is to follow the rules.’

      Norras raised both hands and balled them into fists as if to instruct the heathen. He closed the distance between them, swift on his feet, jerking his head in sharp stutters designed to fool the eye and tempt an ill-advised swing. He looked rather like a chicken to me, bobbing his head like that, fists at his face, elbows out like little wings. A big muscular hen.

      Snorri clearly had the reach so Norras came in fast. He ducks his head, does Norras – takes punches on his skull. That’s what I was going to say. I’d seen men hurt their hands on the Teuton’s thick and bony head before. I didn’t have time to get the words out. Norras jabbed and Snorri caught the man’s fist in the flat of his palm, closing his fingers to trap it. He yanked Norras forward, punching with his other arm, brushing aside the wild swing of the Teuton’s left with his elbow. The Norseman’s huge fist hammered into Norras’s face, knuckles impacting from chin to nose. The man flew back a yard or more, hitting the floor with a boneless thump, blood spattered his upturned face, mixed with teeth and muck from his flattened snout.

      A moment of silence then a roar went up that hurt my ears. Half delight, half outrage. Betting parchments flew, coins changed hands, all informal wagers made in the moment.

      ‘An impressive specimen,’ Maeres said without passion. He watched while two pitmen dragged Norras away through the double-chambered exit valve. Snorri let them do their work. I could see he’d calculated his chances of escape and found them to be zero. The second iron gate could be raised only from the outside and then only when the first had been lowered.

      ‘Send in Ootana.’ Maeres never raised his voice but was always heard amid the din. He offered me a thin smile.

      ‘No!’ I strangled back the outrage, remembering that I had seen lipless men even in the palace. Maeres Allus had a long arm. ‘Maeres, my friend, you can’t be serious?’ Ootana was a specialist with countless knife-bouts notched onto his belt. He’d sliced open half a dozen good knifemen this year already. ‘At least let my fighter train with the hook-knife for a few weeks! He’s from the ice. If it’s not an axe they don’t understand it.’ I tried for humour but Ootana already waited behind the gate, a loose-limbed devil from the farthest shores of Afrique.

      ‘Fight.’ Maeres raised his hand.

      ‘But—’ Snorri hadn’t even been given his weapon. It was murder, pure and simple. A public lesson to put a prince firmly in his place. The public didn’t have to like it though! Boos rang out when Ootana stepped into the pit, his hooked blade held carelessly to the side. The nobles hooted as if we were watching mummers in the square. They might hoot again tonight with equal passion if Father’s opera contained a suitably villainous party.

      Snorri glanced up at us. I swear he was grinning. ‘No rules now?’

      Ootana began a slow advance, passing his knife from hand to hand. Snorri spread his arms, not fully but enough to make a wide man wider still in that confined space, and with a roar that drowned out the many voices above, he charged. Ootana jigged to one side, intending to slash and dodge clear, but the Norseman came too fast, swerved to compensate, and reached with arms every bit as long as the Afriqan’s. At the last Ootana could do no more than attempt the killing blow, nothing else would save him from Snorri’s grapple. The exchange was lost in the collision. Snorri pounded into his man, driving him back a yard and slamming him into the pit wall. He held there for a heartbeat, perhaps a word passed between them, then stepped away. Ootana slid to a crumpled heap at the base of the wall, white fragments of bone showing through dark skin at the back of his head.

      Snorri turned to us, shot an unreadable glance my way, then looked down to inspect the hook-knife driven through his hand, hilt hard against his palm. The sacrifice he’d made to keep the blade from his throat.

      ‘The bear.’ Maeres said it more quietly than ever into the noise of the erupting crowd. I’d never seen him angry, few men had, but I could see it now in the thinness of his lips and the paling of his skin.

      ‘Bear?’ Why not just shoot him with crossbows from the rail and be done! I’d seen a Blood Holes’ bear once before, a black beast from the western forests. They set it against a Conaught man with spear and net. It wasn’t any bigger than him but the spear just made it angry and when it got in close it was all over. It doesn’t matter how much muscle a man may carry, a bear’s strength is a different thing and makes any warrior seem weak as a child.

      It took them a while to produce the bear. This clearly hadn’t been part of the plan that involved Norras and Ootana. Snorri simply stood where he was, holding his injured hand high above his head and gripping the wrist with his other hand. He left the hook-knife where it was, embedded in his palm.

      The fury the crowd had shown at Ootana’s entrance flared to new heights when the bear approached the gate, but Snorri’s booming laugh silenced them.

      ‘Call that a bear?’ He lowered his arms and thumped his chest. ‘I am of the Undoreth, The Children of the Hammer. The blood of Odin runs in our veins. Storm-born we!’ He pointed up at Maeres with his transfixed hand, dripping crimson, knowing his tormentor. ‘I am Snorri, Son of the Axe. I have fought trolls! You have a bigger bear. I saw it back in the cells. Send that one.’

      ‘Bigger bear!’ Roust Greyjar shouted out behind me, and his fool brother took up the chant. ‘Bigger bear!’ Within moments they were all baying it and the old slaughterhouse pulsed with the demand.

      Maeres said nothing, only nodded.

      ‘Bigger bear!’ The crowd roared it time and again until at last the bigger bear arrived and awed them to silence.

      Where Maeres had procured the beast I couldn’t say but it must have cost him a fortune. The creature was simply the biggest thing I’d ever seen. Dwarfing the black bears of the Teuton forests, overtopping even the grizzled bears from beyond the Slav lands. Even slouched behind the gate in its off-white pelt it stood nine foot and more, and heavy with muscle beneath fur and fat. The crowd drew breath and howled its delight and its horror, ecstatic at the prospect of death and gore, outraged at the unfairness of the killing to come.

      As the gate lifted, and the bear snarled and went to all fours behind it, Snorri took hold of the hook-knife and pulled it free, making that curious turn of the blade at the last moment necessary to prevent the wound from becoming larger still. He bunched the injured hand into a scarlet fist and took the blade in an overhand grip in the other.

      The bear, clearly some arctic breed, came in unhurriedly on all fours, swinging its head from side to side in great sweeps, drawing in the stink of men and blood. Snorri charged, stamping his great feet, arms wide, roaring that deafening challenge of his. He