Beam POV: Day 86

  Current Wealth: 306 gold 0 silver 17 copper

  My match was earlier in the morning, which was about typical of our luck, and we only found out a few hours in advance. We’d all known and agreed beforehand that my using my magic to conjure armour and weapons would be too risky, Redaclans didn’t tend to react well around foreign magics, so I was sticking with a slightly refitted set of plate made for a particularly big mercenary who’d never paid up to Ardin a year ago. My weapon, of course, was the vampire’s rapier, still as light and balanced as ever.

  “Remember your training.” Shango said, wearily. I frowned at him.

  “What training?”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know, it just seemed like something useful to say, go out and kick the shit out of the other guy with your Olympic athlete training I know nothing about and can’t comment on. Better?”

  We shared a grin. The brittle kind, that shattered like glass under the weight of the moment.

  In this case, it had help shattering. Solitaire spoke up.

  “No idea about the guy you’ll be going up against.” He cut in. “Except that his name’s Baldrick, like the Black Adder character.”

  We looked at him, blankly, and Solitaire sighed.

  “Fucking hell, the good shit never makes the transatlantic trip.” He muttered, then spoke up again. “Point is he’s an unknown factor. Baldrick the Stonearm, whatever he can do, best to figure it out before deciding on anything.”

  It was better than Shango’s advice, but still not great. Solitaire was a good fighter, and an absolutely terrifying brawler, but…He just wasn’t a contest competitor. Oh I’d want him at my back in a street fight any day, but I’d spent my whole life sparring against people who’d knock him around in an unarmed one on one, and I wasn’t about to start taking his advice now.

  Still, I knew how easily his ego bruised. I politely didn’t say anything.

  The crowds were louder when I stepped into the arena. They were always louder from the inside, their cheers closing in on me like a vice, sending electricity to run along my nerves. I felt my stomach convulse, squeezing itself so tight that I knew I’d have puked if it’d been holding anything, and the alien strength surging into me as adrenaline widened up blood vessels had me wishing my enemy would hurry up and show himself already. He must’ve been almost as eager, because he did.

  Average height for Redacle, well built. He had plate on, too, which had me worried given the difficulty we’d found in getting ours. The man carried some giant glaive, another issue in and of itself. I was used to fighting against other swordsmen, and could only imagine different techniques would be involved with defending against a weapon like that.

  “Strength and Toughness ten.” Shango said. “Dexterity seven, Speed and Alertness eight.”

  So he was slow but powerful, then. And not even that powerful. By stats alone I was fairly confident in winning, but that glaive worried me. It was a big thing, big enough that he probably needed all of even his near-superhuman Strength just to use it in combat. The reach difference between us was going to be a problem.

  “Good luck.” Shango breathed.

  “Go for the cock.” Solitaire added. I nodded absently, heading forward just as the announcement came that our bout was starting.

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  I came in fast, then slowed. Hesitant, circling the guy, stepping in and out as I tried to gauge the distance between us. Hard to read movements beneath plate, I realised. All those little muscular twitches and tensing joints that came before a strike were obscured by the stiff metal encasing them.

  When he moved, I found the motion so poorly telegraphed that it was raw reaction time that saved me from the kilogram of steel lunging at my head. I stepped back, smacking it aside with my rapier at the same time. The enemy’s weapon was heavier, mine swung with more effort, and I felt the impact shake my arm up to the elbow as I knocked the attack away. I closed, aiming to take the chance to get behind the tip, but obviously the bastard fighting me now was used to tactics like that. In one twisting motion his glaive was arcing back for me, this time in a swing aimed low for my knees.

  He should’ve aimed for the thighs instead, as things were I just about managed to jump over the weapon, feeling the wind of it run beneath my feet, and land before a new thrust came at my belly.

  Just barely, I was back in time to see it sweep in front of me, and I kept backing off with my eyes held close on the enemy. He was closing in, confidence apparently bolstered by the exchange. His glaive came high, on the verge of lowering, then he did something with the shaft and his shoulder to rotate it into a sidelong swing. This time I dropped myself, angling my rapier and letting it slide up and over me, straightened just in time for his boot to catch my chest. It bought him a moment, which he used to crack the shaft against my helmet, and then that fucking glaive’s blade was back at me.

  Our fight wasn’t a fight for long, soon devolving into a simple chase. Me backing away, eyes always on that blade, feet always on the next step behind me. My enemy closing in, like a homing missile, entire world apparently lost to him. He swung, and stabbed, and clove and swept.

  And all the while I studied him.

  I’m not a genius. People say I am, because they’ve never met a true, honest-to-god genius. Solitaire, he’s a genius. Shango is a genius, and my fucking brother was a bigger genius than either, within his field. I’m gifted in some way, I doubt anyone could learn as fast as me, but mostly? I just practice.

  My enemy’s moves were something new, but that was fine. I’d practised new things already. I kept my focus on him, and started to realise that the exposed chain links beneath his plates were jostled with motion, and the sounds of creaking steel were ever so slightly different based on position. I realised he favoured thrusts to answer some things, slashes for others. That the weight of his weapon, and its sheer length, would force him to attack with the shaft or butt if I slipped by once. That he couldn’t manage its balance while his feet weren’t planted in a certain way.

  He’d never been closer to winning, I saw now, than during his first attack, because each failed attempt just gave me more information to work with. I didn’t remember things like Solitaire, or needle out secrets like Shango, but somewhere in my brain a deep, speechless part of me was compiling the methods and motions of this new threat. Before long, the ape part took over. I started predicting.

  A thrust missed me, and before he could follow it up with a backstep and swing I closed in. The man twisted his weapon to drive me back with the butt, and I timed my thrust just perfectly. Overextended, and with such timing, I couldn’t have made a scratch on his armour, but my rapier made its way right through the joint of his inner-elbow just as it was most exposed. It found the chainmail beneath spread out in the motion and unable to disperse force as it normally might. And it was driven with more strength than two of me could ever have mustered before coming to Redacle.

  I saw blood leaking from it as my enemy staggered away, and I followed up. He’d not brought his weapon around in the shock, I punished him for that by flicking mine for his visor. People protected their eyes on instinct of course, and when he did I thrust down again for his knee. This one backstepped whenever an attack came, and did so in a very particular way so as to ensure he could pivot just right to bring his glaive around quickly. It meant that the joint- my second target- was open and placed just perfectly to replicate my first swing. This time, though, I was a lot closer.

  More blood, a clear, visible flow now running down his calf and touching the ground in a moment. Not arterial, not quite, but it was enough that I knew I’d not just imagined my enemy slowing. He swung, I ducked, stepped close and darted back at the last second to bait out an overhead cleave. My feet took me sidelong and I nicked his wrist, then kicked the weapon aside as one of his arms was taken off it in shock. It went wide, too wide to be brought around in time, and I lunged.

  I didn’t put my sword through his eye, instead I used the cage-like guard as a makeshift bludgeon and punched the metal into his armoured face. The difference in our strength was immediately apparent, unbalancing him, then letting me kick a leg out from under the bastard as he stumbled. A bit of martial arts, I’d learned, did tend to help in a sword fight. He landed hard, and my boot was on his chest before he could rise, sword right at the joint of his helmet and gorget.

  Unsurprisingly, my victory was called soon enough.