Shango POV: Day 90
Current Wealth: 221 gold 2 silver 42 copper
I had a lot to do, as always. That was life in Redacle. Do things, then find out you have more fucking things to do. My heading to the arena had been a break, a momentary recharge, an afternoon spent, if not resting, then diverting my focus to differently strenuous tasks and letting myself recover somewhat in all the areas of my brain reserved for the others.
Argar, as was his ever prominent habit, had to ruin that by leaving my balls in my throat the entire damned time.
Oh, it all started out well enough. Things usually do, don’t they?
Our bodyguard waltzed his way out into the arena as if he owned the place, and he didn’t seem flapped an inch by all the hateful jeers thrown his way. I remembered then that he’d earned himself a reputation for brutality with how he’d dispatched The Soldier, which probably wasn’t to our advantage. Solitaire, at least, had been subtle in exacting his revenge on the fucker sent to kill him- at least from what Beam had told me. Subtlety not only wasn’t within Argar’s vocabulary, but it wasn’t within his physical capacity to even learn the word.
His opponent couldn’t have been more different.
It was a small man, and that was my first hopeful observation. The second was that he was also an older one, probably as close to sixty as he was to fifty, and scowling that way only the properly tired and miserable were ever able to muster. As if the entire world were squatting without permission on his lawn. He peered up at Argar no more impressed than anyone else might have been looking at a regular sized man.
Which was the beginning of my less hopeful observations. Following that singular pioneer of pessimism, I realised that his armour was quite well made even by the standards of this tourney, that he held the fairly big and thick sword in one hand as if it weighed nothing at all. That even wearing twenty kilos of metal, he moved like he weighed nothing at all.
Strength 11, Speed 13, Dexterity 10, Stamina 6, Toughness 10, Alertness 13, Charisma 6, Intelligence 5
Well, fuck. My breath caught in my throat as I drank in the statline. He had a fair advantage over Argar in more than one area. Speed and Alertness were both high enough that he’d be dancing around him, and that Dexterity…It was freakish. I was almost tempted to warn my friend, but the words wouldn’t come out, held back by sense.
It’d just distract him, I knew. Just make him slow and stupid, and he’d need all the speed and wits he could get to come out on top here. Suddenly far less relaxed than I had been, I watched, tense and ready for whatever might happen.
The old man said something that I didn’t hear, and it seemed to only irritate Argar. He lost his cool, came flying at him. It didn’t work.
The axes were like blades in a blender, whipping around, coming one way and the other. I actually felt bad for the bastard stuck dodging then, almost. Argar hadn’t gotten any stat increases from his three days of training, I’d been sure about that, but there was something different about how he moved now. A refinement, a practice. It wasn’t much of a difference at all, but all those sluggish luls between swings that an enemy of my or my brothers’ speed were able to slip around seemed to have shrunk.
He was almost resembling an actual fighter, with an actual sense for his weapons’ balance.
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Still, he hit nothing but air. I watched the older man weave between axe swings, sometimes not moving more than an inch or two as he sent their edges flying wide of himself. It was almost hard to believe, a preternatural display of…No, not of speed, he wasn’t just moving fast. I could track him just fine, this wasn’t anything like The King.
He was just picking the exact right thing to do, every time, all the time, without fail. It was almost like watching Beam fight.
Argar’s face twisted to a growl, and his body surged on now instead of his axes. Clearly he meant to smash his enemy down with a less avoidable attack.
It looked, for one moment, that he’d actually manage it. But the older man’s sword just whipped up and smashed against Argar’s helmet, stunning him with the instinctual flinch all men had to such an eye-approximate impact and interrupting his charge. While Argar still reeled and righted himself, the sword found a joint in his armour with surgical precision, passing between plates and drilling through chainmail. I winced at the sight as his leg buckled and he stumbled back.
“You are strong.” The older man called out. “But undisciplined, poorly trained.”
I barely heard him over the crowd, but I heard Argar clear enough as he spat back his defiance.
“I’ve been training for three days, and that’s all I need for you!”
He was charging in, an axe reared high, his body so painfully open to an attack that even I winced. The older man closed to punish him for the vulnerability, then stumbled back as Argar suddenly let go of his axes and whipped a fist out viciously fast. Faster than it could ever have come with two kilos of steel clutched tight. The older man moved at the last second, turning it to a glancing blow which sent sparks skidding and metal screeching as steel slid off of steel, but he was unbalanced and Argar moved fast to punish him for the failing.
Argar wasn’t deterred, not yet, he kept on combing. Leaning in, scrambling for the older man and trying to lock his grip.
If he managed, I knew he’d have a chance. In a grappling match, covered with plate, the things that mattered were size and strength, not skill and sidestepping speed. I urged Argar on, did all I could not to stand up and start howling for his victory, watching with a dry mouth and tight fists.
But Argar’s enemy was good at this, too. Very, very good. He slipped from Argar with a sliding grind of stiff plating, and backed off faster than I could follow. Argar barely snatched one of his axes up in time to ward the man off with another, wide swing.
He was panting now, and all the hope drained out of me like helium from a punctured balloon. There’d never really been much of a chance at all, I saw now, not with such a weight of experience working against him. If we’d wanted Argar to win, we’d have been better pushing him to do so a month ago. At least then there might’ve been some question at hand before he went down.
“You cannot win this, boy.” The man called out, “But you are a resilient one, it will take time to defeat you. Surrender now and I will take you on as my apprentice. If what you say is true, and you really are only days into training, then you would be more than qualified to be my student.”
Argar looked almost offended.
“I’ve not lost yet you old bastard.” He snarled, looking for a moment like he’d come on swinging again, but hesitating, holding back to regain his already wasted breath.
“Save me the bluster, boy, this is your final chance.” The older man spat. “Give up, save me the effort of beating you, and you might go places under my tutelage.”
Argar’s fists, I saw, were tightening. Even from the hundreds of feet separating us I could make out the iron strength in his wrathful grip.
“Piss off.”
Then it was the older man’s turn to attack, and if anything he was deadlier on the offence than he was resilient in defence. Moving in like a snake, going low, melting back from a warding swing and twisting around to strike from Argar’s unprotected side. The giant was stumbling around to guard, just as the elder reversed his movement and hit the other. Metal screeched, Argar stumbled again, and then a new blow was coming.
Argar didn’t avoid this one either, but it bit a lot deeper than the staggering impact he’d taken seconds before. I winced, he winced, the fucking crowd winced as we all saw- almost felt- the edge of his enemy’s steel neatly pass down.
Whatever his damned sword was made of, the old man had a nice edge on it. Even tool steel chainmail surrendered. But not without exhausting most of its attacker’s impact.
Quick as lightning, Argar’s punch caught the old man across his head and lifted him fully a half-foot from the ground as he went sliding back. The bastard wasn’t even close to up before five hundred pounds of screaming Northerner came down hard atop him.
The match didn’t last long after that.
