Luna: New Moon

The fighters drop into stance, weight balanced, arm raised. And they clash. Carlinhos pivots, trying to draw Hadley, put him out of phase but the Mackenzie is sharp and fast, so fast that Carlinhos loses tempo for an instant. Carlinhos recovers. Marina has never seen a knife fight. It is ugly and violating and harsh. There is nothing glorious about it; no skill of cut and thrust, parry and riposte, blade as attack and defence like the way of the sword. In the way of the knife the first contact will be the last. Any hit will be final. Slash, disarm, stab, immobilise. The speed is dizzying. Faster than thought. Hadley wears a skull grin on his face; his concentration is total. And he is faster, lighter, quicker. Feint, pivot, recover. She glances over at the other Cortas. Rafa’s eyes are closed. Ariel’s hands are over her mouth. Wagner is a mask of utter concentration. Lucas’s face is like a skull. The expressions are the same on the Mackenzie side of the ring.

She can’t look. She can’t look away.

No one can keep up this killing pace. She can see that Carlinhos’s balance is off. His reactions are a fraction slow. Sweat gleams on his skin. His eyes are hard, his face is closed. It’s a dance, a killing two-step. Tight, fast, blazing slashes and stabs: the knife hand, the tendons of the leg. High, low. Carlinhos feints, Hadley blocks with his blade, cuts a gash down Carlinhos’s bicep that rotates into a slash across his abdominals. Carlinhos is already dancing away from the blade, it draws a line of blood on his belly. He doesn’t notice. He is burning adrenaline, beyond pain, beyond anything except the unity of the fight. But the gash to the biceps is heavy. He’s losing blood. He’s losing control. He’s losing the duel. Carlinhos swivels and skips back, putting distance between himself and Hadley. Hadley moves to close the gap but in that instant Carlinhos shifts knife from right to left hand. It’s a surprise for an instant, but enough to force Hadley into retreat. Hadley shakes his head like he’s shaking out a crick from his neck and shifts the blade from right hand to left.

Bare feet slide in a slick of Carlinhos’s warm sweet blood.

Carlinhos sees all the ways that Hadley Mackenzie can come at him in the next attack, all of them simultaneously and in every one of them the knife opens the tendons of his hand, disarms him, tears his leg tendons and sends him down and guts him.

He dies here.

And then he sees the other way, that is not the way of the knife. The way of malandragem. Who brings Brazilian jiu jitsu to a knife fight? Carlinhos throws away his knife. It embeds in the wooden walls of the court, quivers. Hadley’s eyes follow it and in that instant Carlinhos steps inside his guard, blocks his swing with his hands and snaps his elbow joint.

The crack resounds around the court arena. The knife falls.

Carlinhos twists the broken arm behind Hadley’s back. The two men are as close as lovers. Carlinhos scoops up the dropped knife and in the same motion drives it into Hadley Mackenzie’s throat and out through the interior jugular.

The court is on its feet.

There is a look of mild surprise on Hadley’s face, then disappointment. Blood gushes from the hideous wound, his hands flap uselessly at death. Carlinhos lowers him to lie gurgling and flapping in the pooling blood.

Carlinhos roars. Throws back his shoulders, balls his fists, roars. He kicks the wood of the gallery, again and again, smashes a fist into the walls. Roars. He faces his family, shakes sweat from his hair and bellows his victory.

Marina hides her face in her hands. She can’t bear what she sees. This is Carlinhos. This always was Carlinhos.

Hadley is still now and there is a second voice in the courtroom; a long, keening wail, so uncanny and inhuman its source is not obvious until Jade Sun lunges for the rail. Duncan Mackenzie grabs her, holds her. She cries on, incoherent with loss and desolation. The Mackenzie seconds cover the body.

‘The case is satisfied,’ Judge Mishra shouts over the roaring and the keening. ‘The Court is dismissed.’

Heitor Pereira and Mariano Gabriel Demaria try to escort Carlinhos down to the under court. He shakes them off and crosses the fighting floor to bellow in front of the Mackenzies. His body drips with sweat-smeared blood. He jabs an accusing finger at Jade Sun, at Bryce Mackenzie.

Marina is dying.

‘Seconds, control your zashitnik!’ Judge Al-Ashmawi shouts. Heitor and Mariano seize Carlinhos, one on each shoulder, and fight him to the gate. Jade Sun spits. Spit flies far on the moon. The gobbet of saliva strikes Carlinhos on the shoulder. He turns, kicks a spray of blood from the floor at her. Blood rains in her face, speckles the Mackenzies.

‘Get him out of here!’ Rafa yells.