Marcus Antionville once wrote that ‘I pity the common man, for they know nothing of victory’. I understand the sentiment, but I think I envy them, myself. They scurry about with their unimportant lives; small joys but also small miseries.

  I rather think I would amend Marcus’ famous words as follows;

  ‘I envy the common man, for even as they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared knowledge of defeat’.

  - Words of the Lord Proctor following the sacking of Altine in the 3rd century of the 2nd age

  I stood in shock for a moment. The scene made no sense, and it took a few moments for me to notice enough minor details to decipher it. Even as I stalked into the room and faltered, I saw the blood around Nathlan’s knee leech into the wound itself.

  The dregs that pattered from Vera’s open wound behaved as I would have expected, but the red mess on the clean sheet beneath his leg seemed to rush back into the fine seams I could see in his skin.

  I saw Vera’s eyes flick my way, and she held up her off hand for a moment, before grunting in exertion and grabbing the bed once more to hold herself up. Unsure what was happening, and unable to help in any meaningful way, I simply waited for the strange healing process to take place.

  Vera’s wound quickly stopped bleeding, and she seemed to regain vitality as moments passed. Nathlan was still insensate to the world, but the delicate cuts crisscrossing his knee joint were closing over as well, and before more than a hundred breaths had passed, his knee looked clean and whole once more.

  Once it was over, Vera sagged and stumbled over to a chair in the corner. She nodded gratefully at me, “Thanks for trusting me there, would have been a real pain to knock you out without ruining the spell.”

  I gaped a little, before recovering. “Oh please, you’re weak as a kitten. I could probably pick you up right now and smush your little face up like a baby.”

  My smile widened as I saw her eyes narrow to slits. “Try it,” she said, one hand straying to the hilt of the broadsword belted at her waist. We shared a laugh as I sat down in a chair opposite before glancing over at Nathlan once more.

  He looked small on the bed, thin and bookish once more. A far cry from the assured warrior that had beaten some of this generations best 1st tiers while nearly 20 levels below them.

  “How is he?”

  Vera shrugged. “Better than we have any right to expect, worse than we’d hope. It was a nasty break, Lamb. Type of wound I’ve seen end men not two days from the battlefield. Infection, fever…”

  She looked down at her hands tiredly, but when she caught my dark expression hurried to amend her thoughts. “It’s healed well. Alson’s got steady hands, sliced him up real nice-like.”

  I raised an eyebrow at the heavy accent that had begun to creep in as she spoke, but my concern for Nathlan overrode my curiosity right now. “Was he the surgeon? Did he say anything about the recovery?”

  “Yeah, a real spider of a man, that one. Lots of bone splinters to dig out, some cartilage that needed reattaching. He got it all back in place though and I got here before he could stitch him up, thankfully.”

  At my questioning eyebrow – still raised from earlier – she continued. “With a little help from Jorge and some very costly alchemical support, I can perform some low-level sympathy magic. It’s a class skill of mine, though very much unsuited to heal others. With some…creative intent, let’s say, I’m able to speed up his recovery by orders of magnitude. You see his scars?”

  I looked again at the latticework of thin scarlet lines traversing his leg and winced as I imagined the work that had gone in to creating them. Most were at odd angles across the knee joint, but several snaked up to mid-thigh and down along his shin.

  My expression was once again enough for Vera to see my thoughts. “Physically, he’ll be healed by nightfall. The longer-term issue will be re-learning how his body works. The muscle is new and doesn’t remember how it’s supposed to move. Will take time for him to regain that easy grace.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  Another weary shrug, as if her shoulders were weighed down by a heavy pack. “Who knows? Could be days, could be weeks. Shouldn’t be any longer than that, knowing Nathlan.”

  “Could be…or he could decide to milk it for as long as possible and catch up on some reading.” She didn’t bother looking up to see my hopeful smile, but I did see her lips crinkle slightly.

  I settled into the uncompromising wooden chair and waited for my friend to wake up.

  “Hey sleepy head,” I said in my best sing song voice. Nathlan’s nonplussed expression was enough for Jorge to laugh, and I threw my hands in the air as I caught Nathlan’s newly awakened eyes. “Surprise! You’re alive!”

  He swatted at me half-heartedly and groaned as he tried to rise. Vera was on him in a flash, arm braced across his chest and growling into his face. “I’ve lost too much blood to see you whole again. You. Stay. Still.”

  Jorge’s familiar aura descended upon all of us, a warm blanket on a cold night. “It’s good to have you back with us, Lad. You remember what happened?”

  Vera eased back after getting a frantic nod from Nathlan, and he took a deep breath before explaining. “Yes. I was beaten by Jacyntha of Grey-Rock. She was too fast.”

  He spoke in quick, clipped sentences. Trying and failing to sound clinical. I could see his mind shying away from the incident even as he spoke. I glanced again at the cross-hatched scars and decided I’d probably do the same in his shoes.

  “Aye, that’s about it. She kicked your knee backwards while the Holder intercepted the axe, and I suspect you took a blow to the head on the way down too.”

  “No, it was the Holder that hit me” he said. Jorge focused on the scholar with such intensity that Nathlan actually shied back an inch. He hurried to clarify. “I felt my leg buckle, and I was falling down. The Holder reached out before I hit the ground and tapped me on the forehead. I don’t remember much else after that point, but I distinctly remember her reaching out towards me. I think she was trying to numb the pain.”

  Jorge had eased back on his unwitting glare a moment into the explanation, and nodded in thought.

  “Aye, I can believe that. Good news then. You still have all your faculties, Lad?”

  Nathlan shrugged.

  “How would he know either way?” I asked.

  “Rumsfeld’s predicament,” Nathlan answered quickly. As he looked around at Jorge and Vera, no doubt showing the same incomprehension that my face was displaying, he explained; “There are things you know that you know, and things that you know you don’t know. I know I understand how Cave Bears survive centuries of slumber without dying of starvation, and I know I don’t understand how Rakshasa reproduce.

  “But there are also unknown unknowns – things I don’t understand that I’m not even aware of. I am ignorant of many things that I do not realise I am ignorant of. This is Rumsfeld’s predicament – how can we lay claim to knowledge when we are ignorant of even our own ignorance?”

  I let the silence hang a few moments before breaking it. “Are you saying that you don’t know if you’re an idiot? Because I think I can answer that…”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Jorge chuckled as Nathlan shot me a glare. “Well you certainly seem to be the same Nathlan. You feeling alright?”

  The young man sobered abruptly, his mock glare giving way to a more troubled expression. “Yes, but I can’t stop thinking about the fight…” He trailed off for a few moments, and Jorge prompted him.

  “Dwelling on the moment of injury is common enough, lad. Just try not to focus on the pain, aye? Has a way of sticking with you if you let it.”

  “No, it’s not that. It wasn’t the pain anyway, more so the noise. I could hear the pop and squelch of the cartilage-“ he shuddered, and I was glad that he left the rest of that thought unsaid. “anyway, it’s more the fight itself. I don’t think I stood much of a chance either way, but I was holding her off well enough for a while. Then she used some sort of enhancement or boosting skill, and I couldn’t so much as touch her shadow. Why would she be keeping that hidden for so long if she could have ended the fight at any point?”

  We all hummed in thought before Jorge spoke. “Aye, well you’ll all probably learn soon enough so no harm if I share what I reckon now, is there? Listen in…”

  Following Jorge’s revelation about the likely trial coming soon, we discussed lighter topics. Chatting, commiserating, providing Nathlan with company and hope. Seemed crazy that he would be recovering within most likely a week, but to go from the heights of physicality we currently inhabited, all the way down to bed-ridden was a hell of a fall. It took some adjusting too.

  I left him in the capable hands of Jorge and Vera after a few bells and went wandering through the haphazard cluster of tents and semi-permanent structures that served as gathering point and holy site both to the mountain clans.

  I wanted to let my mind wander as well as my legs, and the light exercise would also help my own bruises and bumps to recover quicker as well. I felt fresh as a spring chicken next to my almost-crippled friend, but I wasn’t in the best state to be honest. My ribs ached fiercely, and while I’d cleaned the blood from my face, bruising still mottled my tanned skin.

  I heard laughter drift out of a longhouse up ahead, like liquid joy seeping out between the open windows and doors alongside the firelight. Curious, I found my feet drawing me towards the building, and I slipped inside. A cheerful drunk man slapped me on the back as I entered.

  It was a longhouse, made of rough-hewn pine logs thick around as a man and stacked seemingly without care. It was well-named though, for the benches lining the sides and spearing down its length bore at least a dozen men and women on each side.

  I stepped carefully past boots casually spread on the floor, and brushed shoulders with many a reveller, but no angry looks were cast my way. The vibe was…happy. A gentle excitement, thrilling in a mundane way, without the edge of danger that I was used to.

  I found my way to the bar and waved down the tender. She was a tall woman with eyes the colour of amethyst, and I found myself taken aback by her striking appearance for a moment.

  “Had too much already, love?” she asked in a teasing tone.

  I forced myself to focus on anything other than her shining gaze, which caused my gaze to travel down to her inviting lips and the smooth swell of her collarbone-

  I wrenched my gaze back to her face and coughed at her coy smile. Blushing, I asked for a sweet mead, and was rewarded moments later with a frothing tankard. Some of the cool liquid splashed down my hand as I picked it up, but the barmaid and patrons on either side of me didn’t seem to mind.

  “You new here? Don’t much look like one of the mountain-born, I must say,” she said. I found myself smiling at the irony, and her eyes crinkled alongside my own. Just then I felt a meaty slap on one shoulder, and was yanked nearly entirely around.

  I was face to face with a giant. I wasn’t small by any means, clocking in just over 6 feet and well-muscled given my last few months living wild and fighting almost every day. This man dwarfed me.

  Red beard, bound in a tight braid. Arms like tree-trunks, and gnarled and scarred as old oak to go with it. His massive hands seemed like they could reach out and crush my skull with barely a thought, and the power I felt from the grip on my shoulder put truth to that instinct.

  His voice, when he spoke, rolled like thunder through the room, and I swear I could see my mead jittering in its cup. “That’ll be down to him being a filthy lowlander bastard, Alfie. I see the way those eyes o’ yours are a’twinkling, and you’ll be keeping your hands off this boy!”

  I was starting to worry at the turn of events, and my heart sank further as I saw the woman behind the bar smirk. Was this some sort of setup? Felt too obvious, but I suppose I was stupid to come here alone, given the prejudice I’d seen already during the arena. I’d thought that was just brash youngsters in a competitive environment, but I guess they learned it from somewhere.

  The woman – Alfie – jutted her chin up at the colossal warrior and her teeth flashed in the firelight as she smirked wider. “And why’s that, big man? Might be I’m bored of the usual, and fancy finding myself someone more…exotic to spend the night with…”

  In any other circumstance I’d be thrilled to hear it, but unfortunately for everyone involved, and especially me, we weren’t in any of those other happy circumstances right now. Don’t rile him up further, you ass! A quiet voice screamed inside my head. For once, my inner critic and I were in perfect agreement.

  The big man lifted me up before him – literally lifted me up like one would a puppy – and growled in a menacing tone over my shoulder at the barmaid. “He ain’t some handsome airheaded clansboy, Alfie. This here’s the bastard that beat my nephew bloody ‘front of the whole stinkin’ lot of us!”

  And just like that, things had gone from bad to worse.

  “Look mate, no hard feelings-” I tried to raise my hands as I spoke, but he had me by the shoulders, so I was left to plead my case while dangling helplessly above the floor. I abruptly cut off my pleading as I was wrenched around to face him once more, orange bristles almost tickling my face as he brought me close to his.

  “Don’t be apologising boy! You beat him fair and square! Serves him right, the little prick – never wanted training from his favourite uncle, did ‘e? No no, couldn’t have that.”

  He tried his best to imitate a whiny little child with his next words, but his baritone only shifted an octave higher, taking him from rumbling the earth to ‘only’ rumbling my bones.

  “‘Uncle Ribcrusher scares me da, I don’t wanna train with him no more’, ‘Sorry Alker, my boy can make his own choice. If he doesn’t want to learn under your hand, then he doesn’t have to’. Look where that’s bloody got him! Beaten by a lowlander in front of everyone. Ha!”

  He spun me back around to face Alfie, the beautiful woman arching a delicate eyebrow in amusement. Whether at the giant’s antics or my plight, I couldn’t tell. When her eyes caught my own, I saw her smirk return once more.

  I had whiplash, but I couldn’t be sure if it was from the physical sensation of being twirled through the air like a marionette, or the emotional whiplash of bracing for my death only to realise I was probably going to be okay. Probably.

  Just as I was coming down from the terror of moments past, I felt hot breath on my neck and heard the big man growl practically in my ear. “I’ll not have you getting your grubby mittens all over this innocent boy, Alfie. Hands off!”

  And with that, he plonked me back down in front of the bar. I held a steadying hand out to my side and took a moment before straightening out of the crouch.

  “You look like a virgin sailor finding dry land once more,” Alfie said with a playful smile. I just let out a heavy breath.

  “That was worse than The Blending,” I said in response. The big man behind me laughed, clapping me on the back so hard I had to hold onto the bar to steady myself. He leaned over my head and shouted at the top of his lungs – which, as I’d already established, were pretty fucking big – “Free drinks for the lowlander. My respects to The Second!”

  A couple of cheers went up in response, likely more to the ‘free drinks’ part rather than anything related to me, but it was nice to hear some loud noise that carried good tidings for once.

  Vera came by to drag me back to our shared tents a few bells later as the evening sun dipped below the horizon, and Jorge came around even later on to fetch her after she’d failed in her task.

  “…and so he says to the thief, ‘why are you always wearing leather armour, anyway? Wouldn’t steel-plate protect you better?’ and the thief looks up at him and says-”

  I couldn’t quite hold in a cackle, and Vera elbowed me, her flushed face gleaming almost as red as her hair in the gentle firelight. I waved her off, shushing her, and the giant of a man that I’d come to know as Alker pushed her back into her seat with one massive hand while he leaned forwards to listen.

  I got control over myself for just long enough to finish the sentence before breaking into another fit of laughter. “and he says, ‘because it’s made out of hide!’”

  Alker practically howled at the ceiling, stamping his foot hard enough to jostle the furniture around us. The reception was more mixed with some of the other barbarians we were drinking with – the late hour and steady supply of alcohol making the men and women generous with their laughter, but there was only so many ways you could polish a poor joke. There were a few snickers and sporadic laughter, although all were drowned out by Alker’s wheezing.

  Vera just groaned and flapped an arm at me in protest. “That was awful, Lamb!”

  I raised my hands in surrender, “I can see that my time here is at an end and- Oh, Jorge!”

  I tried to drape an arm around his shoulders and pull him over, but he was rooted to the earth like a statue hewn from marble. He raised a single finger and wagged it imperiously at Vera, saying simply, “I’m disappointed in you.”

  He then turned on the spot and marched out the door again, although I could see him waiting just outside. I shrugged at Vera as she clambered to her feet, patting Alker’s leg as she did. He looked at us like a forlorn puppy – a good imitation of what I must have looked like earlier in his colossal hands – but she waved him off.

  “No no, bossman’s right. We’ve got a big day tomorrow and need an early night.”

  I nodded reluctantly. “Aye, been a pleasure” I said towards the big red-headed giant of a man, and tried my best not to catch the eye of Alfie as she wiped down the bar. A big part of me wanted to make an excuse to stick around – I knew Jorge and Vera would have no problem with it – but I knew getting tangled up in something casual like this wasn’t good for me right now.

  I turned away before realising I owed her at least a bit of courage. I turned back and smiled at her, mouthed ‘thank you’ and then followed on after Vera. I caught her approving look as I turned, and was suddenly very thankful I’d not just snuck out without saying goodbye.

  “Back to camp?” I asked, slinging an arm around Jorge’s shoulder.