The sole of the Feared's metal boot thudded into Logen's chest, ripped his breath out and rammed him into the earth, the sword tumbling from his clawing hand, puke burning at the back of his throat.
Before he knew where he was a great shadow fell across him. Metal snapped shut round his wrist, tight as a vice.
His legs were kicked away and he was on his face, arm twisted behind him and a mouthful of dirt to think about.
Something pressed against his cheek. Cold at first, then painful. The Feared's great foot. His wrist was wrenched round, dragged up.
His head was crushed further into the damp ground, short grass prickling up his nose.
The tearing pain in his shoulder was awful. Soon it was a lot worse.
He was caught fast and helpless, stretched out like a rabbit for skinning.
The crowd had fallen breathlessly silen, the only sound the battered flesh round Logen's mouth squelching, the air squeaking in one squashed nostril.
He would've screamed if his face hadn't been so squeezed that he could scarcely wheeze in half a breath.
[...]
The Feared's great boot slid off his jaw and Logen felt himself dragged into the air, limbs flopping like a puppet with the strings cut.
The tattooed hand went up, black against the sun, and slapped Logen across the face. Open-handed as a father might cuff a troublesome child.
It was like being hit with a pan. Light burst open in Logen's skull, his mouth filled with blood.
Things drew into focus just in time for him to see the painted hand swing back the other way.
It came down with a terrible inevitability and cracked him a backhand blow, as a jealous husband might crack his helpless wife.
'Gurgh-' he heared himself say, and he was flying. Blue sky, blinding sun, yellow grass, staring faces, all meaningless smears.
He crashed into the shields at the edge of the circle, flopped half-senseless to the earth.
Far away men were shouting, screaming, hissing, but he couldn't hear the words, and hardly cared. All he could think about was the cold feeling in his stomach.
As if his guts were stuffed with swelling ice.
He saw a pale hand, smeared with pink blood, white tendons starting from the scratched skin. His hand, of course.
There was the stumo. But when he treid to make the fingers open they only clutched tighter at the brown earth.
'Yes,' he whispered, and blood drooled out of his numb mouth and trickled into the grass.
The ice spread out from his stomach, out to the very tips of his giners and turned every part of him numb.
It was well that it did. It was high time.
'Yes,' he said. Up, up onto one knee, his bloody lips curling back from his teeth, his bloody right hand snaking through the grass, seeking out the hilt of the Maker's sword, closing tight around it.
'Yes!' he hissed, and Logen laughed, and the Bloody-Nine laughed, together.
[...]
The world burned.
His skin was on fire. His breath was scalding steam. The sword was a brand of molten metal in his fist.
The sun stamped white-hot patterns into his priclling eyes, and the cold grey shapes of men, and shields, and walls, and of a giant made form blue words and black iron.
Fear washed out from him in sickly waves, but the Bloody-Nine only smiled wider. Fear and pain were fuel on the fire, and he curled the three fingers, and he beckoned.
'I am waiting,' he said.
- Last Argument of Kings, Part II, The Circle