FROM PITS TO THRONE: A Crown Forged In Chains

Chapter 7: The Last Month's Shadow

Two months remained on the bargain when the unthinkable happened.

Laim faced a champion called Torvald One-Hand, a hulking raider from the frozen isles who had lost his left arm to a bear and replaced it with a spiked iron ball on a short chain. The fight was savage but straightforward, Torvald’s raw power against Laim’s speed and cunning. The crowd loved the contrast; the scarred foreign slave against the northern monster.

For the first half, Laim danced and cut, opening shallow wounds on Torvald’s legs and sides, wearing him down. The raider swung his iron ball in wide arcs, each miss shattering sand into sprays. Laim’s old thigh injury ached, but held.

Then came the mistake.

Torvald feinted a wild overhead swing. Laim ducked inside, sword thrusting for the heart. But the raider had anticipated. The iron ball whipped around in a short, vicious hook. It caught Laim full on the left side, just below the ribs.

Laim felt his ribs crack in two, perhaps three. The impact hurled him across the sand. His breath gone and vision black at the edges.

Torvald roared triumph, raising the chain for the killing blow.

Laim rolled desperately, sand scraping raw skin. The ball smashed down where his head had been, burying itself deep. He came up gasping with sword still in hand and lunged blindly. Luck or the gods guided the blade under Torvald’s raised arm and into his armpit, severing his arteries.

The raider bellowed, staggering backward as blood fountained. He swung wildly once more but strength fled with it. He dropped to his knees, then face-down in the sand.

Victory.

But the cost was cruel.

Guards carried Laim from the pit to a storm of cheers that sounded distant, muffled by the roaring in his ears. Every breath was knives. His left side was already swelling with purple blooming beneath the skin.

In the healing chamber, Garrick and Mira worked with grim faces.

“Three ribs broken,” Garrick muttered, probing gently. “One cracked bad enough it might pierce lung if you twist wrong. Lungs sound clear for now. But you’ll not fight again soon.”

“How soon?” Laim rasped. Pain made his voice a stranger’s.

“Two months at least maybe four and this time you must keep to it or see greet the afterlife in refusal. Bind them tight, no deep breaths, no swinging steel.”

Two months. Exactly what remained on the bargain.

Jarrett arrived before sunset, flanked by guards with an unreadable face.

“A hard win,” he said, almost kindly. “The crowd adored it. Torvald was a favorite in the north, his death will draw wagerers from across Etoibard for your next appearance.”

Laim lay propped on straw, his ribs bound so tight he could scarcely draw air. “Next appearance in a month,” he said through clenched teeth. “As we agreed.”

Jarrett’s smile did not reach his eyes.

“Of course. Rest. Heal. The bargain stands.”

But the next day, everything changed.

A new slave was thrown into the cells, a wiry man with a broken nose and the accent of Miraolden’s western hills. He claimed to have been captured in a border raid. Within hours he sought Laim out, whispering through the bars.

“Word from across the sea, lad. Your tyrant’s getting nervous. There are whispers you might live long enough to matter. Quiet orders have been sent out to finish you here if the pit won’t.”

Laim’s blood chilled. “Proof?”

The man glanced around, then slipped a scrap of parchment through the bars. On it, in crude letters: Hawks offers triple gold for the foreign champion’s head even though it was yet to be proof that Laim was the same Liam Walton of Miraolden. Rumors were enough he wanted no loose end. No questions asked.

The man vanished the next morning sold suddenly to the quarries or silenced forever. But the warning remained.

Jarrett’s visits stopped. Food portions dwindled again. Guards watched Laim with new wariness.

Three weeks passed in stifling quiet. The ribs knit slowly; pain dulled to a constant throb. Mira brought strengthening broths smuggled from the kitchens. Garrick drilled him in breathing exercises to keep the lungs clear.

But rumors swept the compound; Jarrett was taking massive bets against Laim’s return. Bookmakers offered long odds on the Unbroken ever fighting again.

Then on the first day of the last month, Jarrett came with an offer.

He stood outside the cell, flanked by two scribes and a lanista witness.

“You’ve healed remarkably,” he began smoothly. “But not fully. The physicians agree one more blow to the side could kill you. The crowd loves you, Laim. I would hate to see you die cheaply.”

Laim sat against the wall, ribs still bound. “The bargain was eleven months of victories. One month remains.”

Jarrett spread his hands. “And you shall have your freedom if you choose it now. I’ve found a buyer. Lord Ermin Rein offers a handsome price for your contract. You would serve in his household, light duties, good food, perhaps even a position of trust. Far better than dying in the sand for my profit.”

Laim’s mind raced. Ermin Rein, the politician who had approached him months ago. This was no coincidence.

“And if I refuse?”

Jarrett’s smile thinned. “Then you return to the pit next week, healed or not. I have a new champion arriving soon, the Iron Serpent of Valdia. Undefeated in twenty fights. The crowd demands spectacle.”

He leaned closer.

“Choose wisely, Laim. Freedom as a valued servant or death as a broken gladiator. The bargain allows me to sell you at any time. It says nothing about forcing you to fight injured.”

The lanista nodded confirmation. The scribes waited for his response.

Laim looked at Garrick, who stood silent in the shadows with his face unreadable. At Mira, whose dark eyes pleaded caution.

He thought of the warning from the Miraolden slave. Of Robert’s tripled gold. Of Jarrett’s fear that the bargain would actually be honored.

If he returned to the pit now, ribs half-healed, against an undefeated monster he would die. Jarrett would see to it.

But in Ermin Rein’s household, he might live. Might heal fully. Might find another path to freedom.

He met Jarrett’s gaze.

“I accept the sale.”

Jarrett’s relief was almost comical. Papers were signed that afternoon. Gold changed hands, gold far less than Laim had earned Jarrett in blood, but enough to soothe the arena master’s pride.

The next morning, guards escorted Laim from the cells he had known for nearly a year. He walked slowly, ribs protesting every step, but head high.

Garrick clasped his forearm at the gate.

“Live, boy,” the old fighter said gruffly. “And remember what the pit taught you.”

Mira pressed a small pouch into his hand, herbs for pain, a sharp little knife hidden in the seam.

“I will find you,” she whispered. “When you are free.”

Laim nodded with his throat tight.

As the gates clanged shut behind him, he looked back once at the blood-soaked sand visible through the archway.

He had entered those gates a prince in chains.

He left a scarred survivor, still in chains but with a new master and perhaps a new chance.

Before they loaded him into the covered cart bound for Ermin Rein’s estate, Laim paused at the threshold and spoke to the nearest guard, loud enough for others to hear.

“Tell Jarrett,” he said clearly, “that one day I will come back. Not as a slave. Not as a fighter. But as a man with a debt to settle.”

The guard swallowed, but nodded.

Those words would definitely reach Jarrett. And perhaps, across the sea, it would one day reach Robert Hawks.

The cart rolled through Korthos’s winding streets, up into the hills where the wealthy built their villas overlooking the harbor. Laim sat in the dim interior, ribs throbbing with every jolt, and allowed himself one small, grim smile.

One year in the pits had not killed him.

It had only made him harder.

The last month of the bargain had ended not in the pit, but in a betrayal that felt like salvation.

Now the real work began. Healing accompanied with plans, plans that would one day see to his return.