I could tell my opponent had spent a lot of time practicing, probably more than me. He was fit and well-studied, and by his clothes had the sort of money that would’ve let his family pay a proper tutor too. I thought I’d heard a noble’s name called out when he was announced, too.

  This young man had probably worked twice or even thrice as much as me over his life, but he was losing and losing hard. He was losing because, though I did not at all know it then, he was fighting one of the most naturally gifted swordsmen to ever live. Life just isn’t fair, sometimes.

  Of course that isn’t to say that I was having an easy time of it, there’s probably a lot of young idiots who trained hard for this tourney and I was fighting one of only a relative few who actually won entry into it. His skill made it clear enough why, and I was working for every moment of advantage I took.

  He’d fallen into a tense defence which I took my time in poking at, all too aware that my advantages of speed and strength would fail me in an instant if I let myself be lured in. More than once I almost did it, coaxing an over-commitment from me and threatening to punish it with steel. Each time my reflexes were barely an instant too sharp for his victory to come.

  As we fought, he slowed and weakened. I realised every ounce of the boy’s strength was being called on just to hold me at bay, while I felt as if I could have continued the pace we were setting for another hour. I probably couldn’t have, but fatigue was a distant fear and victory seemed closer by the moment.

  The crowd started picking up as I scored my first touch, sending the boy back and having the announcers order us apart. He panted and heaved, dabbing his own brow with a wet rag while I practically danced in my own corner, eager to start again. This was nothing like any match I’d fought before.

  We met near the centre again for a second bout, and this time it lasted nothing like as long as the first. My opponent tried to seize the offensive with raw aggression, evidently knowing he didn’t have the stamina to drag things out any longer. It didn’t go as well as he’d probably been hoping.

  I got my second touch after barely a few parries, and not only got his sword out of my way but sent it spinning fully across the arena with the same stroke. The poor lad looked more confused than anything when it was announced as my victory, and the two of us went our separate ways.

  To my surprise, I was getting more cheers now. A lot more. The crowds seemed to have taken a liking to me, and they were letting me know with a volume that might’ve threatened the ears of a man in closer proximity to its source. I was stunned for a second, then decided to respond with a flourished bow.

  Apparently they liked that even more, and I left to a greater applause than I’d fought to. It left me feeling all smug and inflated as I made my way back through the city and headed to where Gruin waited in our inn.

  He was looking better as I entered, too.

  “Oh, you’re alive,” the Grynkori noted, taking another bite out of…a new leg of lamb. An entire leg, that was, still hot and greasy. If nothing else I could rest assured that he’d not be losing any weight from his long period of infirmity, the bloody man was eating half his mass every day.

  “So are you,” I grunted as I tossed off my cape and took a seat. I expected to feel a lot more worn down than I did. That was chainmail, for you. Fighting without it was something of a luxury, at least when I knew I wouldn’t get any holes poked in me for doing so.

  “You lose or are you just in a bad mood for no reason?” Gruin took one look at me, a brief break from eating, and then chuckled. “Oh, nevermind, you’re grinning like a moron.”

  Was I?

  Ah, I was. I just grinned wider at that, after all there was hardly a shortage of things to grin about.

  “I did well actually,” I grinned wider still, “the other sod I fought didn’t have a chance.”

  Gruin grunted in what sounded dangerously close to respect, taking another bite out of his lamb.

  “Must’ve been a shrimp of a fucker then,” he noted. The words just bounced off my good mood without so much as scratching it.

  “You know there’s betting, you could stand to win some coin. You’ll probably be watched since you know me, to make sure I don’t throw a match on your account, but—”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I hadn’t even finished talking before Gruin’s beady eyes lit up and his face twisted apart into a smile.

  “Why didn’t you mention that sooner?!” he laughed, “I’d be a few pennies richer today!”

  More like a few dozen, I suspected. The odds hadn’t been great on me this last fight, though I imagined things would get better now that I’d won my first bout so thoroughly.

  Even as my opponents got tougher. My next fight wasn’t on that same day, but the remainder of the first round was. Actually with over sixteen bouts it would be continuing well into the evening, but I didn’t have the coin to watch that much, nor the inclination. I hauled my way off to study the competition while Gruin continued stuffing his face and healing.

  As I watched, my confidence started to fall away from me. Clearly I’d been facing the dregs of the contest so far. There were no dregs in these later matches, either by chance or by deliberate organisation on the part of the people assembling them.

  Now none of the contestants were permitted any significant amount of armour, and all of us were limited to fighting with practice swords, so it was hard to actually tell a combatant’s wealth or class with a glance like you could in so many other places. Nonetheless, I’d seen enough fencing champions move to know that the motions I was seeing in the man I watched now were not ones you got without the highest order of training.

  That, or maybe just some yet unheard of talent. Either way, though his opponent was better than most of the tournament winners I’d seen before, he didn’t put up much of a fight.

  By the time the match was over, having taken a mere thirty seconds with posturing included, I felt my confidence more or less obliterated. Even my eyes had struggled in following the bladework at play there, and I was not delusional enough to think my limbs would fare any better. I’d lost a few coin on the fight, too.

  I headed back to my rooms feeling a great deal heavier and less high on victory than when I’d walked away from them. Always a bigger fish, and all that, right? Well try telling that to a young man on a winning streak.

  At that point I didn’t have much more planned for the day, besides drinking and probably whoring back at my rooms with Gruin. Life had other things planned, however, as I was interrupted on my return by an oddly familiar face.

  “Excuse me, do you have a moment?”

  The speaker was a tall boy, about my age, and he was dressed in fancy looking leathers that jingled with worn mail at every significant motion. He had a sword at his side that was at least as expensive as my own, and medium-length brown hair bound back from his face. I recognised him at a glance, because he was the one I’d just beaten in the tournament.

  “No,” I snapped, bad mood lurching its way past my lips to splash over him. He didn’t seem fazed at all, not even as I barged past to keep walking.

  “It’s me, uh, Devyne, from the tourney, do you remember?”

  I didn’t remember the name, but I remembered his face of course.

  “I remember beating you,” I grunted.

  “Yes,” he laughed at that, a strained and pitiable sound to my ears, “yes, you did. Soundly I might note. That’s actually why I’m talking to you now.”

  That gave me pause. Was this some retaliatory attack, was I about to find a big pack of unfriendly men stepping out of an alley to beat me for beating him?

  I looked around, just in case. My mail was on, thankfully, but more thankfully still I didn’t find any unexpected violence falling onto me. Good, that. However cocky I was now feeling in fights against single men, I didn’t want to try my luck against a whole group.

  “I don’t follow,” I said slowly, and walked quicker. Another few hundred paces to my room, call it two minutes. If I could get it down to half that before anything turned sour I’d be within sprinting distance, or close enough.

  Things weren’t turning sour just yet though, and the boy called Devyne seemed not to harbour a single tense thought in his head as he practically tripped over his own tongue trying to get an answer out to me.

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re something of a…mercenary, right? I heard about what you did in Rogrid, how you helped slay that monster in the mines…Heard you got quite a cut from the overseers’ coffers as a reward too, is that right?”

  Being quite generous, it was one quarter right.

  “All of it,” I confirmed with a nod, “why are you asking about it though?”

  I already had an idea as to the why of course, and sure enough Devyne soon confirmed my suspicions by opening his mouth again.

  “I’ve set out to make my own way in the world,” he explained, “and I can think of no better way to do that than by joining up with a hero of your repute.”

  Personally I could think of about a thousand, ranging from joining up with an actual hero of real repute to joining up with an alcoholic serial rapist serving in the King’s army as a man-at-arms.

  On the other hand, the idea of someone looking to join me through reputation alone was interesting. Surely, if there was any person I could negotiate cheap prices from, it was that.

  “What exactly would you be asking for in exchange for this?” I feigned disinterest, knowing that it would make the idiot panic, and thus let me wring ever more unreasonable terms from him as he scrambled to keep his perceived opportunity open. That’s one good thing about the nobility, they’re thick as pig shit.

  “I don’t need anything other than to accompany you,” the young Lord hastily replied, “I’ll pay my own way, for my own food, my own travel—everything. I have enough coin for that from my father, just let me accompany you and earn my own name as you spread yours.”

  It was legitimately a better offer than I’d even dared to hope I might receive, and the only thing that kept me from jumping on it with my tongue lolling out was the fear of having him realise how much better a deal I was getting from it all.

  So I took my time, and forced myself to slow down enough that it looked as if I was giving the prospect a lot of very deep and careful thought. By the time Devyne got his answer, we were both within fifty paces of my rooms. I kept the eagerness out of my voice as I replied, just.

  “I think I can find a use for you.”

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