FROM PITS TO THRONE: A Crown Forged In Chains

Chapter 6: Champions and Betrayals

The next opponent arrived in chains of silver instead of iron.

His name was Sereth, once a knight of the Etoibardian royal guard, stripped of title and condemned to the pits for treason. Tall and golden-haired, he moved with the grace of a court swordsman, and the crowd loved him for it. Jarrett had paid a king’s ransom to bring him from a rival arena in the north as proof that the bargain was being honored in name only.

Laim watched from the training yard as Sereth was led through the gates. The knight’s eyes swept the compound with calm disdain, lingering on Laim for a moment before moving on. Even in captivity, he carried himself like a man who expected deference.

Garrick spat. “Pretty boy will carve you slow if you let him. Fights with rapier and dagger. Likes to strike the face.”

Laim flexed his injured leg. The muscle still pulled with every step serving as a constant reminder. Three weeks had passed since the Red Bear; the limp was less pronounced, but far from gone.

“I won’t let him,” Laim said.

The fight was scheduled for the grand games, a festival day honoring the sea god. The arena swelled to bursting nobles in shaded boxes, merchants in the middle tiers and common folk packed shoulder-to-shoulder above.

Jarrett milked the moment, rising in his box with arms outstretched.

“Citizens of Korthos! Today, two champions clash! Sereth the Golden, once sworn sword of kings against Laim the Unbroken, the foreign devil who has defied death itself! Steel against steel to the yield or the death!”

The crowd thundered in approval.

Laim entered to cheers that shook the stone. Sereth followed to equal roar. They were armed alike: rapier and main-gauche dagger, light round shields. No armor beyond leather bracers and vests. Jarrett wanted blood to be visible enough.

The horn sounded.

Sereth attacked immediately, a blur of precise thrusts and cuts. His footwork was flawless court training against Laim’s patchwork of royal drills and pit brutality. Steel rang like bells.

Laim gave ground to test Sereth’s skill. Sereth’s rapier flicked high, then low, searching for the weakened leg. Laim parried, riposted, felt the knight’s strength. They were evenly matched in speed, but Sereth’s technique was cleaner yet less desperate.

The first blood was Sereth’s gift: a shallow cut along Laim’s forearm. The crowd gasped, then cheered.

Laim answered with a sudden, ugly rush, shield bashing forward, dagger stabbing low. Sereth danced back, laughing aloud.

“You fight like a gutter rat,” the knight called. “No honor.”

“Honor doesn’t keep you breathing,” Laim replied.

They clashed again. Laim began to use the pit tricks Garrick had drilled into him; a handful of sand feinted as a throw, a sudden drop to sweep the leg. Sereth adapted quickly, but frustration crept into his eyes.

Midway through the fight, disaster struck.

Sereth lunged in a classic bind, rapier sliding along Laim’s blade to trap it. Laim twisted free but the motion wrenched his injured thigh. Pain flared, the leg buckled and he staggered.

Sereth saw it instantly.

The knight’s rapier darted like a serpent’s tongue, piercing Laim’s left shoulder just above the collarbone. Blood sprayed. Laim’s shield arm went numb.

The crowd rose as one.

Sereth pressed now with elegance and no mercy. Thrust after thrust forced Laim back toward the wall. Each parry jarred the wounded shoulder; each step shot fire through his thigh.

Laim’s vision tunneled. He tasted copper.

Then he remembered Garrick’s words after the Red Bear; When the body fails, the mind must be sharper.

He let Sereth drive him all the way to the wall, feigning greater weakness. The knight overcommitted, extended rapier in a killing lunge.

Laim dropped his shield entirely, both hands seizing Sereth’s blade. The edge bit deep into his palms, but he held onto it. With a roar born of pure will, he yanked the knight forward off balance and drove his dagger up under the chin.

The point punched through palate into brain.

Sereth’s eyes widened in shock. His body went rigid, then limp. Laim shoved him away; the corpse fell in a golden heap.

The crowd grew silent for a second then the arena exploded.

Laim stood swaying, blood streaming from shoulder, hands and thigh. He raised the dripping dagger in defiance. The cheers crashed over him like surf.

Guards rushed in to carry him out. As they passed Jarrett’s box, Laim looked up. The arena master’s smile was fixed, but his eyes were cold calculation.

Back in the cells, Garrick worked in grim silence.

“Shoulder’s through muscle, not bone. Hands will scar ugly. Leg held barely.” He poured wine over the wounds. “You’re running out of flesh to give, boy.”

Laim’s voice was a thread. “How many months left?”

“Seven.”

Seven months. And Jarrett’s patience thinning.

The pattern continued, relentless.

Next came a pair of gladiators from the southern isles, brothers who fought back-to-back with hooked spears. Laim killed one, crippled the other, and yielded the fight only when the crowd’s mercy chants spared the survivor. Jarrett barely allowed it.

Then a beast-master with two leopards on chains. Laim slew the cats but took claw rakes across his back that burned for weeks.

Each victory bought him breath, but the cost mounted. Sleep became a battle against pain. Food tasted of ash.

Yet something else grew; allies.

The healer woman named Mira, always quiet and had dark eyes, also a slave, began tending him alongside Garrick. She brought salves that eased the fire in his joints and spoke little, but her touch was gentle.

One night she stayed after stitching a new cut.

“You fight for more than freedom,” she said softly. “I see it in your eyes.”

Laim hesitated, then told her fragments: a lost kingdom, a tyrant, scattered family. He did not name himself Walton, but the weight of truth eased something in his chest.

Mira listened without judgment. “Then live,” she said. “Live long enough to make him pay.”

Lord Ermin Rein’s interest deepened. Gifts arrived: a fine steel dagger hidden in a loaf, a map of the city tucked into a wineskin. Once, a note saying ‘Patience. Opportunity comes.’

Jarrett noticed the attention.

“You draw eyes,” he warned after a particularly lucrative fight against a dwarf berserker. “Powerful eyes. That can be dangerous.”

Laim met his gaze. “As long as I win, it’s profitable.”

Jarrett smiled thinly. “For now.”

The betrayal began subtly.

First, the food portions shrank again. Then the weapons given him grew slightly unbalanced for the opponents he faced.

In the fights themselves, opponents began to carry blades with edges suspiciously keen on one side, or armor that left vital spots oddly protected. The crowd did not notice but Laim did.

Garrick confirmed it one night, his voice was low. “He’s hedging bets. Letting the champions think they have an edge. If you die ‘honorably,’ the bargain dissolves. No one can cry foul.”

Laim’s hands curled into fists, scars pulling tight.

“Then we give him no chance.”

Five months into the end of the bargain.

The opponent was called the Shadow of Caldor, an assassin-turned-gladiator, hooded and silent, armed with twin curved blades coated in some dark resin.

From the first clash, Laim knew the fight was poisoned.

The Shadow moved like smoke, strikes blurring. Laim parried desperately, but each block left his skin tingling where steel met steel. Within minutes, his limbs grew heavy and his vision swimming.

Poison on the blades.

The crowd sensed something wrong followed by faltered cheers. Laim staggered, barely deflecting a cut that should have opened his throat.

Rage cleared his head long enough for cunning.

He feigned greater weakness, dropping to one knee. The Shadow closed in for the kill.

Laim surged up inside the guard, accepting a shallow slice across his ribs and buried Garrick’s hidden dagger, one he had smuggled in that morning, into the assassin’s eye slit.

The Shadow dropped without a sound.

Laim stood swaying over the body with poison burning in his veins and looked straight at Jarrett’s box.

The arena master’s face was pale.

Guards carried Laim out, the crowd’s roar was mixed with cheers for victor and boos for the obvious foul.

In the healing room, Garrick and Mira worked frantically, forcing bitter herbs down his throat, bleeding the wounds to draw the poison out.

He barely survived and when strength returned enough to speak, Laim sent word through Mira’s underground channels: Jarrett had broken faith.

The Lanista Guild demanded investigation. Jarrett claimed ignorance with cover up that the Shadow’s blades must have been tampered with by a rival. No proof could be pinned on him.

But reputation suffered. Bets on Laim shortened dramatically.

Jarrett visited once more with all smiles gone.

“Two months left,” he said quietly. “Two months, and you walk free. But understand this, certain parties grow impatient. If you die in the pit before then, no one will weep for a slave.”

Laim, propped against the wall, his eyes met that of Jarrett. “And if I live?”

Jarrett’s smile returned, wolfish. “Then I will honor the bargain. And perhaps sell you to someone who wants you alive for other reasons.”

Garrick watched the door close as Jarrett left.

“He’s frightened,” the old man said. “You’ve become too valuable to kill cheaply, too dangerous to let go. He’ll try one last throw.”

Laim nodded, staring at his bandaged hands.

“Then we throw harder.”

In the quiet nights that followed, he planned not just survival, but escape if the bargain should failed.

Mira brought word from the city: Lord Ermin Rein was preparing an offer to buy Laim’s contract outright. Something dangerous, but possible.