Chapter Eighteen: The Jhagaraes
It had been yet another grueling day in the rock quarry, stone smashed by hammer. The Sun brutal and the guards even more abusing. They had taken special care to single him out, a blatant attempt to grind him down like the rock under the prisoners' hammers and picks. Tonight was the big fight, and no one here save Koca and the Warden wished to see him succeed and that was made clear to all, especially to Harry.
The air was tense and thick with anticipation that evening amongst the camp. There was a brooding excitement. A thrum pulsed through Kokerel's cell block. The strong and more audacious jeered him, but the many, the weak and the desperate, looked upon him with pity, and perhaps a few with some type of wonderment. A reckoning was coming for the boy who did not belong.
They came for him near dusk. Harry was slumped atop the rough straw that served as his bed with his back against the stone wall of his cell, and his newest book perched in his lap. His untouched dinner remained festering in its pale. He did not bother to look up when he heard the bolts on his door pulled back.
His door swung open. "Cala (move)!" they barked at him. Harry calmly marked his page and sat the book aside. He stood and without the pause or hesitancy of a poor sap who should expect their fate, he exited his cell with his back straight, chin held high.
He was clad in only his pair of dirty pants that were frayed high above his ankles, worn from days in the pit. The prisoners were not provided shoes but his feet had long ago become callused to handle the sharp terrain. His soiled and blood stained shirt laid abandoned on the floor of his cell, cut to shreds in those first few days here by the whips of the guards.
Harry did not meet the eyes of his guards as they each fell back a step at his presence. Had he looked, he would have seen fear there. They may have despised him, but that did not mean they could not respect him for what he was. He had not earned the nickname Kokerel for naught - a mad, fighting cock.
"Cala!" one gathered his courage and struck Harry in his back with the butt of his rifle. Harry fell forward a step with a grunt, but did not try to resist. They led him out the block.
The roar in the yard was deafening. The Jhagaraes were everything in the prison, and both prisoners and guards alike swarmed like angry bees about the ring that stood in the middle of the main yard. Hawkers, the traders in blood, called out the odds they were offering as swathes of gamblers held out their wages to bet. Already money and cigarettes were being traded in ernst.
All was muted to Harry, however. His eyes were locked forward, he ever drawing nearer towards his fate at the center of the mob as he was being shoved along by the butts of his guards' rifles. Two led him from the front. Two guarded him from the rear. An aisle opened up before him as his audience peeled back to let him pass, both gaunt and fiery eyes alike following him as he moved amongst the crowd.
He did not want to fight. He'd been fighting all his life. Everyone made him fight. Dudley. Malfoy. Snape. Dumbledore. Voldemort. Bart. Koca. The Warden. Why could he not just live in peace?
Pumar was already in the roped center, striding about the ring with his fists held in the air, already declaring his impending victory. He roared back at the mob like a fearsome lion, consuming all their cheers and shouts like alcohol, letting them intoxicate his already swollen ego.
He was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall, and his bulging muscles rippled beneath his leathery hide. He had every reason to be confident of the fight to come. Harry had to be a quarter of his weight and nearly two full heads shorter. Pumar had never lost a fight in Dakhal, and he was certainly not expecting to fall to this little "white" runt.
Upon spotting Harry, he stopped and sneered, his jowls foaming like those of a hungry hyena's. After pointing a fat, thick finger at Harry, singling him out, Pumar then raked one of his thumbs across his own neck, promising a grim outcome. As all the prisoners and guards were undoubtedly hoping, Pumar meant to kill the Kokerel, and Harry did not doubt it himself. He'd seen Pumar kill before.
Harry's face was stoic though and betrayed neither fear nor confidence as he entered the ring. There would be no referee. There were no rules. The victor was named only after the other was rendered unconscious, or more often than not, killed.
Harry took his place at the opposite side of the ring and bringing one fist to his opposite palm before his chest, Harry bowed his respects. Pumar only sneered and spit on the ground, mocking this foolish display.
"You dead, white boy!" Pumar jeered him to the roar of the crowd.
"Kill him! Rip his head off!" came shouts from every direction. They were all in Hindi, but Harry had been able to pick up enough of their language to understand it. The mob was hungry for blood. Pumar flexed his mighty muscles, pounding his chest while booming into the air like an angry guerilla.
Pumar wasted no time, charging Harry at once like a mad bull. Something snapped, like a switch being turned. To Harry, everything - the swarm and roar of the mob, the barreling Pumar - everything seemed to grind into a slow motion. Many things crossed his mind in that split second. He remembered Cedric in the graveyard of Voldemort's murdered father, the first person he'd ever seen killed. He remembered the rotting corpse of Bathilda Bagshot swarmed with flies in the basement of her home. He remembered that gut wrenching moment as he watched Dumbledore killed, struck with an Avada Kedavera and sent tumbling off the Astronomy tower. He remembered all those fallen in the halls of Hogwarts in that final battle. He remembered the bent and broken Bart on the streets of Kolkata. He'd seen death. He was tired of death. He wished it to visit him now and end it all.
But no matter how many times he had these feelings in the pits of the quarry or at the start of the fights, as if it were not of his own power, Harry always fought back. Lost in his thoughts, it appeared Pumar was going to run him right down. It happened too fast from there for any spectator to really see what happened next.
Somehow Harry side-stepped the charging beast. Spinning while sweeping out one leg, Harry caught Pumar by his shin and moving with such force, Pumar tripped and went tumbling face first into the ropes, nearly pulling the whole ring apart. The mob groaned.
"Get him! Bash face in!" the mob screamed for blood.
Now red in the face with a blood-thirsty rage, Pumar leapt to his feet, spinning around madly, looking for Harry. "I KILL YOU!" Pumar growled ferociously before charging at Harry again. His strategy was one dimensional - get his hands on Kokerel and pound him into the ground.
Harry tried to spin out his path once more, but one of Pumar's massive arms flung out and caught him. Before he knew it, Pumar's solid arms were wrapped around his chest with the death grip of a giant python, trying to squeeze the life out of him.
With a surge of a truly unnatural force, Harry stomped on Pumar's foot with the weight of an elephant, crushing it.
"Argh!" Pumar grunted in pain, bending forward.
With his legs bent, Harry lunged off the ground with all the power of a Seeker pushing off from the grounds of a pitch, and the top of his head was sent crashing into Pumar's unprotected face.
"Ungh!" Pumar spluttered backwards, releasing Harry as blood spouted from his broken nose and mouth. Before Pumar had a chance to gain his bearings, Harry spun and landed a strong kick squarely into his chest. Pumar tripped further backwards and though Harry had managed to knock the air from the man's lungs, he stayed on his feet.
With two swift steps, Harry was on him again and jammed his bare foot into Pumar's knee. Pumar whelped with the pain of a wounded beast, crumbling down, but before his knees even had the time to hit the ground, Harry struck him fiercely, right in the throat with a knuckled fist.
Pumar's eyes bulged with the shock of it, but his agape mouth could only let out a silent wail of agony. With Pumar clutching his burning throat, Harry struck him hard in the face, splitting open his brow just above his eye, but still the strong ox held to his knees.
With his adrenaline surging and a pulse of electricity surging through him, Harry struck him again, hard in the face. Some unseen force seemed to pass from his core, through his arm and out his fist into Pumar's unprotected face. The blow rang out with a loud crack as if Harry had struck him with a wooden bat. Pumar was blown backwards. The bones of his cheek crushed, he now laid motionless, sprawled out on the ground. A pool of blood began collecting around his unconscious head.
Utter silence. The once roaring mob stared on with unbelieving eyes and dropped jaws. In not even a full minute, the little white boy had taken apart their reigning champ. Kokerel.
With absolute calm, Harry turned his back on the fallen Pumar and exited the ring.
"Where you think you going?!" a seething guard moved to block his path. Harry recognized him at once. It was Raj. "Get you ass back in there, Kokerel. This not over 'til I say it over!"
. . . .
Until this day, Harry had fought in only seven fights in the Jhagaraes. By the time the last rupee and cigarette had been traded, Harry had fought fifteen. They had forced him to take on one challenger after the other until he lost. But he hadn't lost. He'd won them all.
'Wha..?' Harry breathed silently to himself, his cut and bleeding fist cocked back, ready to strike again. He was straddled across the chest of the man beneath him. It was a gruesome sight. The man's face was crushed, bleeding, and unconscious.
Harry raised his own bruised face with a fat lip and swollen, hemorrhaged eyes to the star lit sky.'What am I?' Harry rolled off the man, collapsing onto his own back beside his challenger with exhaustion. He was losing himself. Who he was, in his heart and in his soul... it was slipping away.
He was only semi-aware of the four rough hands grabbed him by either arm and hauled him up onto his feet again. Harry let them drag him from the ring as the now timid mob parted to watch him go. The next thing he knew, they were carelessly tossing him into his cell. He heard the metal door slam closed and the bolts lock back before he slipped off into darkness.