The gravity of his expression alarmed me. "Batu, I don't like this."
"It is not to like or dislike, goddess. It is to survive. Do you understand this?"
I nodded a little uncertainly. I definitely didn't want to witness someone's death.
Not again. Not after watching John, Nell, Fighting Badger …
Taylor. He walked into his death the same way Batu was: with his eyes open and his heart seemingly at peace with it. The parallels between this moment and the last I spent with Taylor rendered me speechless. My stomach was twisting, my body tense. I wanted desperately to block the memory of Taylor and to escape before I had to witness Batu's death, too.
"Do not mourn. I am not dead yet, ugly one," Batu teased.
"I don't want you to die," I told him truthfully.
"If I have your favor, I have the Eternal Blue Sky's. I am not afraid." He moved away.
Unable to shake my darker thoughts, I struggled to focus on the present. Khulutei joined me, tense and serious.
Cheers went up as a man larger than Batu made his way through the crowd. He reached the corner opposite us, and I gasped. Batu was large; this man was a tree displaying the scars of previous battles.
"Can Batu win?" I asked Khulutei uneasily.
"All things are possible."
It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement. I glanced at the quiet man beside me then at Batu. My champion was stripping off his tunics and over shirts down to his pants. He had the body of a large cat: powerful muscles moved beneath a thick layer of skin, wide shoulders and chest that slimmed down to narrow hips, a flat stomach and long, lean thighs. His torso bore multiple scars in different shapes and was bow legged, probably from riding horses. He was large, strong and fearless.
Impressed, I caught myself staring at his exposed back. He was hairless except for the darkened patch filling in his baldhead. Like Taylor's lean frame, Batu's body wasn't molded in a gym but from constant battle and everyday survival. He just happened to be much bigger than everyone around him, with the exception of the giant champion he was facing off with.
One of the warriors teased him about his baldhead. Batu rubbed it and smiled in response. I didn't understand how he was so easy with men who would kill him at the drop of the hat if his uncle ordered it.
"Do they use weapons?" I asked.
"No. It is a wrestling match," Khulutei explained. "One must kill the other with his bare hands."
Barbaric didn't begin to explain how crazy that sounded.