Jordel Read online

  ***

  For a while, most fights went the same way the first had. I learned to brace myself for the pain of death, and the Healers all knew my name after the first couple of months. The few fights I did win were mostly luck more than anything. But overall, I didn't mind too much. I wasn't exactly comfortable with killing people anyway, and the basic wage for Death combatants was enough to survive on in decent comfort, even if I never got the winner's bonus.

  It was the basic wage that had attracted me to the Pit in the first place. A single dachal per battle for the Basic fights, and two dachals per Death fight. On top of that, the winner recieved 1% of all winning bets - well, the officially placed ones, anyway. If the crowd was large, this could add up to an additional three or four dachals, easily. Given that I had made a habit of participating in anywhere from one to three Death fights a day, well, I had quite the hoard of steel coins building up.

  All in all, I had a pretty good life going, aside from dying a few times each day. That lasted until the day I got called into Tik's office.

  "You know why I brought you on here, Jordel?" he said. Nervous, I shifted my weight from foot to foot. There was nowhere to sit down, unless I wanted to lounge on the large oak desk that took up most of the room. I didn't answer the question.

  "I brought you on," Tik continued, "because I thought you would be a good investment. I mean, look at you, you should be tearing these guys apart. You assured me you could fight."

  I still didn't say anything, and Tik let the silence grow, peering at me impassively as the torches on the walls flickered, making the silence more uncomfortable.

  "Nobody's betting on you, kid. That means that even when you do win, I don't get squat. You know how much I've made off of you? Eighteen dachals." He slammed his palm on the desk. "Eighteen! You know how much you've cost me this past month?"

  I shook my head.

  "Between your meals, your lodging, and your pay, almost seven - seven! - aurits. In only forty five days! I'll let you do the math on how much I've lost."

  Six aurits and two dachals. That was a lot of silver.

  "So here's the deal. You start winning, or I'm going to have to replace you with someone who doesn't lose me money. You can go now." He waved a dismissive hand at the door.

  I left.

  It wasn't much of a choice, after all. It wasn't as though the Pit had been my first choice of employer. Problem was, any smith I visited already had apprentices, and better ones than I would make. Most of them had one important ability I did not - they were Warders. It was a problem neither Mickel nor I had foreseen with looking for a job in Insen. Many job positions could be filled with Madmen from the Asylum.

  And now I was on the verge of getting fired.

  The thought lent me the strength of desperation, and I went into the next fight with a fire that neither the threat of death nor my reluctance to kill another person could diminish. My opponent for this match was a swordfighter, one that I had faced a couple of times before - and he had beaten me handily. His name was Leion, and there was no doubt where most of the bets would be placed today.

  We met at the center of the ring, and Leion's confident look faded a little when he saw my face. Suddenly wary, he took up a offensive pose. It was obvious he wanted to end this quickly.

  The first attack was his, a high arcing strike meant to cleave into my neck near the shoulder. I raised my hammer, the handle easily blocking the blade. But there was less force behind the blow than I had anticipated, and Leion drew his blade back faster than I could recover. His sword flashed underneath my hammer before I could bring it down, striking at my chest.

  I pivoted, but too slowly. I watched the point of his sword move in slow motion, almost as though it was striking through molasses. The point hit the center of my chest, and at the angle I was currently facing, it was going to pierce my left lung. I was going to lose again. The sword moved even slower as the point pressed against my skin, about to break through.

  But it didn't.

  Instead, it skidded along my skin, as though my flesh was made of stone. Before I had time to wonder, the blade had passed by my side, leaving me unharmed. I finally managed to bring my hammer back down and knock the sharpened steel away from me. Having committed himself to the blow, Leion stumbled forward into me. I grabbed the wrist of his sword hand.

  With a speed that surprised even me, I swung my hammer heavily into his arm. With his hand trapped, he couldn't pull away, and the blow connected. I heard a horrible snapping sound from his wrist. His blade dropped from fingers that would no longer close properly. His face held a look of shock and fear.

  Before he could think to do anything other than clutch his shattered arm with his good hand, I swung again, this time aiming for his chest. Leion tried to block the blow with his arm, but the weight and momentum of the hammer carried it through his defense. The steel-plated wood caught him in the shoulder as he tried to jump back, spinning him around twice before depositing him on his back on the ground.

  Dazed, with one arm broken and his other shoulder dislocated, he couldn't do anything more than stare as I raised my hammer and brought it down square on his chest.

  Crunch.

  He coughed blood once before he expired, ribs shattered. The crowd had gone nearly silent. Nobody had expected me to win, much less in such a decisive matter. At least, I hoped that's what it was, not that they had noticed how the sword didn't seem to pierce my skin.

  I'll admit to a slight bit of apprehension as the Healers rushed out to attend to the dead man's body. But they ignored me completely, and I retreated back through the door I had come through. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to me, and I quickly learned that my little display had gone unnoticed. Things go fast during a fight, and everybody just assumed Leion had simply missed. Lucky. I heard that term thrown around a lot.

  It was my only fight of the day, so I retreated back to my room, a small cramped place in the back of an inn that Tik rented for his fighters. It was cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and stuffy all year round, but it was solitary. I sat on the bed - there was no room for a chair - and tried to think things through.

  A Ward had blocked the strike from the sword - that much was obvious. Question was, did I make it, or was somebody else trying to protect me? The odds on the fight were probably somewhere around seven to one against me, so it wasn't hard to believe that someone could have made a lot of money by hiring a Warder to fix the fight. It was illegal, of course, but some men would do anything for a price.

  The other possibility - well there was only one way to find out.

  I knew a little about how Warders worked from when I was looking for work. The reason they were so well suited to forge work was because they could block the heat from reaching them, allowing them to handle extremely hot metal as if it was cool to the touch. They would actually mold the nearly molten metal with their hands as if it was clay.

  I wasn't about to stick my hands in a fire to test my theory though. So I cast about in my mind for something else I could do as a test. Something simple. My eyes fell on my hammer, resting against the wall. Two steps brought me in range, and I grabbed the handle. Crouching on the floor, I raised the head of the hammer a short distance above my hand, just enough that it wouldn't do any real damage if it hit.

  Then I concentrated. In my mind, I formed a protective bubble around my hand, one that wouldn't let the hammer through. I tried to convince myself that this was the right way to go about forming Wards. It seemed to make sense. From what I'd heard of Madmen, they just had to form their intent in their mind, and the Madness took care of the rest. Pretending I was confident, I released my grip on the hammer.