Hallowed Souls

Chapter Three

"Mother's mercy. Don't drink too much." His guard told him.

"Drinking is the only vice left to me and I intend to drink as much as I can." Tunitsun told him before pouring himself another cup of mulled wine.

"If you continue drinking that much then perhaps not even drinking would be allowed to you." Peusānôu Trakiza told him.

"Then that would be a far worse prison than what I am currently in." Tunitsun grinned.

"You're lucky you're not in a cell right now." Peusaanou reminded him.

"The emperor's watching the fat men wrestle. No one's watching me, and who the fuck cares if I drink myself to death?" He replied.

"I'd guard that tongue of yours. The emperor has eyes and ears everywhere, and you know you have no friends here." Peusaanou told him.

"I have more than enough." He muttered to himself, yet Peusaanou heard.

"Name one, and don't name me. You would be wise not to put your trust in me." He told him, a sly smile on his face.

Tunitsun smiled back. Peusaanou was no threat, he knew that. The man had been assigned to guard him and watch his every move, even in the privy, but the man was gullible and trusted too easily.

"Why would I tell you that?" He said. "And do tell, when have I ever trusted you?"

A roar went up from the spectators as one of the wrestlers smashed the other's head into the platform.

"I never knew wrestling was a bloody sport." Tunitsun remarked.

"Trebian wrestling is. Sanmatou has few rules. As long as you don't grab the opponent's hair or throat, strike his ears, bite, gouge, or hit his genitals, anything goes. Besides, the emperor likes his wrestling bloody." He told him.

"The emperor has queer tastes. Not in the bedroom too, I hope?" Tunitsun japed.

"You want to die, don't you?" Peusaanou asked him.

"Not really. I don't think I'll be dying anytime soon." He replied.

"Keep telling yourself that." Peusaanou told him.

The dolsioun was filled to the brim. The large arena formed a half-circle around a platform made of straw and covered with a mixture of mud and sand. A rectangular platform rose across from the seats a building with two doors on it, stairs leading down from it to the arena floor. A man stood on the muddy platform, rolls of fat jiggling as he walked.

"Here comes Dometai, champion of Kuzrane!" The herald screamed in the Trebian tongue.

Another man as wide as the first emerged from a door in the building and made his way down to the arena floor.

The two men grappled with each other, each trying to push the other out of the ring of sand. Dometai let go and nearly let himself out of the ring, before pushing back with all his might and throwing his opponent to the ground. He gave his foe several kicks to the chest before jumping on his opponent and pinning him down. He then began to bend his opponents fingers back one by one, his foe's screams filling the arena.

The crowd cheered and shouted their approval. They slapped their bellies and stomped their feet. "Dometai, Dometai, Dometai," they yelled, the arena trembling with the sound of ten thousand voices.

Most of the spectators were commonfolk or guardsmen. A handful of courtiers and a few strakôun were there as well, along with half of the senate. The courtiers wore elaborate robes and clothing. The men wearing long white hats and the women wearing their hair long. Of the courtiers, more than half of them wore the gold and blue robes of the Doujina Clan, the Empress's family that had held most of the power in Trebia for two hundred years. While wrestling wasn't as favored as chariot races in the Trebian Empire, the emperor favored the violent sport more.