The Duelist

by Eric Vall

  “Happy Sun Day, sir,” a woman said from behind me, and I whipped around and was met with a pair of bright golden eyes.

  Like the little girl I spied from the woods, this woman also had avian-like features.

  “Sir? Can I help you?” the bird woman asked me with concern, and my eyes cataloged her like the rest of the strange people my brain was struggling to wrap around.

  What I could wrap my head around, though, was the fact this woman was stunning.

  Instead of a sparrow like the little farm girl, this woman had pure white plumage like a cockatoo that rose up on her crest to signal her interest. She was older, but no less beautiful for it, and her shapely mature breasts were barely held at bay from the tight corset cinching her narrow waist. Her curvaceous thighs and ass were clad in skin tight leather, and her arms and shoulders were sheathed in red silk that trailed down to end in a flowing bell-like sleeve. The style reminded me of a traditional Japanese kimono combined with a standard bar wench costume at every Renaissance fair. The scarlet ribbon that kept her bosom from spilling out looked like it just needed one strong tug to release the doves, and my testosterone fueled brain shorted out for a second.

  God damn. I was in sexy monster-girl heaven.

  “Ummmm,” I said and brought my eyes up to her face again. “Yeahhhh.”

  Her crest ruffled a little, and she gave me an amused grin.

  “Happy Sun Day. Do you see anything from my stall you like?” she asked and walked closer to me. Almost too close. I could smell her natural earthy musk under her smoky perfume, and my mouth watered for a different reason.

  “That depends,” I couldn’t help but flirt. “What do you have to show me?”

  “You look to be in need of foot-wear,” she said and gestured to my purple monstrosities. “We have genuine porack leather boots crafted with the finest marite soles. Only fourteen tithes.”

  “Hm,” I stalled. I had no idea what the frick-frack she just said even though I was positive my translator doohickey was still working. “Tempting. But actually, do you think I could trouble you for some water?”

  She stopped in her tracks and snorted a laugh. “You obviously aren’t from around here, stranger.”

  “Um, no.” My voice cracked, so I cleared it. “I’m not.”

  Before she could respond, a huge roar erupted from somewhere, and the echo ricocheted off the buildings.

  “How dare you make a fool of me!”

  A door exploded off its hinges from an inn across the street. A beefy man dressed as DC Comic’s Bane with two katana-looking curved swords strapped to his back stormed out dragging a cat-woman by her hair, and he threw her into the center of the town square.

  The music and chattering stopped, and I followed the gathering crowd closer to see what was happening. Then I tracked the cockatoo-woman’s head crest until I was at the front of the ring of spectators.

  The cat-woman was pushed again to the ground when she tried to stand up, and she fell to her knees and then lithely flipped around in a defensive pose. She looked mostly human, but she was poised elegantly on cat-like feet and clawed hands. The leather of her thigh-high black boots drew my sight up her milky legs, and I couldn’t help but follow the angle of her hip in toward the curve of her waist. She wore a black leather bikini with a halter top and collar combo that exposed her toned belly and perfect breasts. A shiny black tail swished back and forth, alert but not aggressive, and her pointed ears were perked and twitching like she was trying to catalog every sound.

  “This is the thanks I get?” the Bane knock-off roared again. “This is how you repay my kindness? By humiliation?”

  “Tsk,” the cockatoo-woman tutted to my right. “It looks like Asher Dagmar needs to teach his Prospect a lesson.”

  “Prospect?” I asked.

  “Well, she’s only just come in from the Varthan Traders three days ago,” she gossiped as if this all made sense. “Oh, I forgot, you aren’t from here. Asher Dagmar still has two days left before he decides if he wants to consummate with his prospective wife.”

  “Answer me!” Asher Dagmar roared. Then he reared back and smacked the woman across her beautiful face.

  Hard.

  “Hey!” I shouted, but my protest got lost among the collective gasp of the audience. I tried to move forward, but the cockatoo-woman stopped me.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped.

  “You told me to shut my mouth,” the cat-woman spoke back to Dagmar, and her voice was stoic and wickedly sultry in a way that wasn’t trying to be. Her expression wasn’t defiant, but it wasn’t necessarily obedient, either, and there was an intelligent gleam behind her storm blue eyes that suggested disdain.

  Asher Dagmar seemed to think so, too, because he grabbed a fist full of her hair, and she yelped as her long braid came loose in the struggle.

  That was it. I couldn’t just stand there and watch this. Why was nobody stepping in? I shook off the bird-woman’s grasp and broke out of the circle.

  “Hey, asswipe!” I yelled. “Put her down!”

  Silence reverberated around the square. Asher Dagmar’s wild glare snapped to mine, and he dropped the woman and stalked closer.

  “Who are you to challenge me?” he rumbled.

  The square was deadly quiet, and I could feel the laser intensity of hundreds of eyes digging into me. It made me shift on my feet, and I gulped when the man loomed his full height of about seven feet over me.

  “I said, who are you?” Dagmar said again. His teeth were yellow and jagged, and his breath stank.

  “No one,” I replied, and I looked past him at the beautiful cat-woman still on the ground.

  Her head was tilted in confusion, but her blue eyes pierced into me.

  Dagmar followed my line of sight and then turned back to me with a knowing smile.

  “Do you invoke the rite of challenge? You wish for my lifeblood?”

  “What? No! I didn’t mean--” I said and held up my hands.

  “No?” Dagmar growled as the crowd broke out into shocked murmurs, and Dagmar looked embarrassed for a second until he pulled himself together. “Then it is I, Asher Lii Dagmar, that invokes it. I do not see a Duelist Stone around your neck, but it is no matter. All here have seen you insult my honor, and now you must be destroyed.”

  “Wait a minute, invoke what? Destroy?” I looked around at the bloodlust gleaming in the eyes of all the townspeople as my stomach dropped.

  Ashy Dagmar-what’s-his-fuck grinned a feral grin.

  “You have been challenged and you must heed the law,” the large man said and ramped up the audience into a roar. “Choose your weapon, we fight to the death!”

  The crowd exploded into a frenzy of cheers and chants, and I looked around in confusion as ice flowed through my veins.

  Did he say to the death?

  Fuck.

  Chapter 2

  The roar traveled around the crowd at a volume that nearly knocked me off my feet. They were all shouting one word over and over, and I struggled to understand what it was. I shook my head again and thought it was a weird glitch like I heard when those little farm children spoke, but nothing changed with my hearing, and after another second, I could make out what was being chanted.

  “Duel! Duel! Duel!” the crowd screamed as one.

  Dagmar opened his arms wide and gloried in the cheering.

  I looked around for some ally, or some type of friendly face that didn’t want to see me splattered all over the cobbles for sport, but countless faces, human and animalian alike, were jeering at me with a bright look of violence in their eyes. Even the cockatoo-woman from earlier only shook her head at me and melted back into the crowd.

  I was clearly on my own.

  “Make way for the Lord Asher Mec!” someone called from the crowd.

  The circle of people parted across from me, and a tall man with horns that curled around each ear like a ram walked into the ring. On his right arm he had a beautiful woman with soft green feathe
rs on her head that swept back like a parakeet. Her voluptuous curves gave her a perfect petite hourglass figure, and she was draped in the finest gold silk that matched the sun symbol on all the banners. She was just as gorgeous as all of the other women I’d observed so far, and she was just one of a string of women following the ram-man and his entourage.

  The man was obviously important because the moment he raised his arms, the crowd went quiet. Finally, my luck was about to turn around. Surely, it was clear I was not from around here, and it would be crazy for me to participate in this death-fight custom.

  Right?

  “I happened to be in the marketplace,” the horned man stated as he fixed his eyes on me. “This human appears to be unranked?”

  “He insulted me publicly,” Dagmar growled. “Therefore, it is within my rights to challenge him.”

  “Then let us proceed.” The horned-man nodded to Dagmar. “It’s the one-hundredth annual Sun Day, so what better way for you to honor her but with a blood sacrifice?”

  “That’s also what I was thinking,” Dagmar grunted as he returned the horned-man’s nod.

  “Duel!” the ram-man bellowed and riled the gatherers up into another frenzy.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” I cried out, but my voice was lost in all the noise. Then I looked everywhere for any type of break in the crowd so I might be able to slip away.

  That task was made impossible as the group seemed to close in even more. Some spectators even threw things and jeered at me to try to get me to react.

  The ram-man raised another self-important hand, and the people silenced once more so he could address them.

  “My fellow Natavians!” the ram-lord said to his subjects. “Let us enjoy this duel! Dagmar will spill the No-Rank’s blood across the sand, so all shall be reminded of the power of the Duelist’s Order and the Goddess Mercedes!”

  Oh, for the love of fuck.

  Weird death-fights were one thing, but when people started to bring up religious sacrifices, that was usually a bit trickier. So, my choices were to observe this bizarre custom and fight, or forfeit and probably die anyway by voluntary sacrifice? Great town so far. What was that expression again?

  Straight out from the frying pan and into the fire.

  The ram-lord gestured, and one of his attending goat-men brought him a comfy looking chair for him to sit in. When he was settled, he nodded deeply to Dagmar.

  Dagmar seemed to glow with pride, and he pulled out a long cord from a loop on his belt. He glared at me with malice and smacked the cord whip-like against his palm.

  “The challenged must pick the weapon,” Dagmar said.

  It took me a moment to realize he was addressing me specifically.

  Shit.

  Fighting with weapons was definitely not in my wheel-house. This guy seemed pretty confident he could kill me even with a butter-knife, but maybe those were his only skills. I needed to level the playing field somehow.

  Royce Gracie style.

  “No weapons,” I said and tried to summon my courage. “I choose hand-to-hand combat.”

  “No weapon?” Dagmar asked, and the crowd gasped and whispered among themselves. “That’s unheard of.”

  “That’s my choice. Take it or leave it.” I brushed an invisible piece of lint off my ripped shirt as if I had all the time in the world.

  “The challenged has chosen hand-to-hand!” the ram-lord shouted.

  The cat-woman still knelt on the hard ground where Bald and Beefy had left her, and he gave me a frustrated grunt as he marched over to her, bent down, and began to move the cord toward her neck. I could now see the cord he was holding was actually some sort of leash, and he fastened it to the metal ring dangling from the cat-woman’s collar. Then he yanked her up from the ground and dragged her over to where the ram-lord was sitting on his makeshift throne.

  “Watch my Prospective Wife.” Dagmar handed over the leash to one of the ram-lord’s many attendants as if he was transferring her over like an item of property. Not even a valuable item, if his treatment of her indicated anything about his character.

  Seeing this beautiful being jerked around by the neck by this arrogant asshole three times her size lit a fire in my belly, and I was reminded of why I got myself into this mess to begin with.

  “The temporary transfer of assets has been met,” the ram-lord said as the cat-woman was forced to kneel at his feet with all the other women in his harem. Then the lord lifted a chalice from one of many offered serving trays and raised it high. “Let the Duel begin!”

  The crowd went crazy as Dagmar took his place back in the ring, and their gleeful lust for violence reminded me of the unofficial cage matches I used to participate in, only way more intense. It was finally becoming real to me that I wouldn’t be able to escape or talk my way out of this. These people wanted blood-shed in the name of entertainment, and they were going to get it by any means necessary.

  On an island without wifi, I guess I could see the appeal.

  Dagmar chuckled darkly as he removed the katana-looking swords from the crossed sheathes on his back. He tossed them to the side, and a taunting grin stretched wide to reveal his pointed yellow teeth as he looked at me.

  This duel was going to happen whether I liked it or not, and given Dagmar’s sheer size, I could tell my greatest advantage would be my speed. I needed to be light on my toes, so I unwound the seaweed from around my feet and legs.

  I kicked away the remnants of my gladiator sandals, bent down, grabbed a few strips of the spongy seaweed, and quickly wrapped them around my knuckles. They were a far cry from my sparring gloves back home, but they would at least add some protection. I had a feeling landing a punch to Dagmar’s jaw would feel like hitting a concrete wall, and I would be completely toast if my hands were broken.

  After my fists were wrapped, I planted my feet and brought my hands up close to my face.

  “Oh, now he wants to fight! You wouldn’t be the first person I’ve killed who had their eyes on what is mine. And you certainly won’t be the last!” Dagmar’s tone was high and mocking, and the crowd laughed along with him.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  Dagmar came charging toward me, and I jumped out of his way. He swung around and kicked at me, but I danced back a few defensive steps out of his reach. As soon as he put his kicking foot down on the stone, he lunged forward with a growl, and I had to duck and dive out of the way as he made wide ham-fisted swings toward my head. The huge man may have been slower than me, but it was clear he’d been in more than enough fights. The haymakers he was throwing at me would probably do some serious damage, and my only hope was he’d get tired soon, or I could spot an opportunity to take him down and use my Brazilian jiu jitsu on him.

  Dagmar missed another hook to my face, and then I rolled my upper body down and to the left as I dodged another incoming jab. The position left his left side open for a second, so I gave him a leg-kick for good measure, but it was like kicking fucking steel, and I felt the impact all the way in my hip.

  He tried to grab me, but I evaded him again.

  “Quit running away, little rabbit!” Dagmar growled.

  The man wasn’t even breaking a sweat yet, so I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to try and wear him out by avoiding him. I would probably tire out before him, so I needed to drop him to the ground sooner rather than later and put him into a submission hold.

  On his next pass, Dagmar tried to lunge for me again, but I leaned into my left back foot and delivered a side-kick to his solar plexus with my right. Before he could react, I followed with another side-kick to the side of his knee, but instead of going down like a sack of bricks like I was expecting, Dagmar merely bared his teeth.

  It kinda felt like I’d kicked a concrete wall twice in a row, and my heart sank. The fact that he looked like he was just getting warmed up was not a good sign.

  New plan.

  “Excellent!” Dagmar roared. “You had better make this a good show or else I will be punis
hing Zoie extra hard tonight.”

  He saw my eyes widen, and he laughed again.

  “You’re sick,” I spat.

  “Does that bother you, or are you just jealous you won’t be doing the punishing,” he said and leered over to where the cat-woman, Zoie, was watching with large blue eyes.

  Her face betrayed nothing, but her tail gave an anxious twitch.

  Then, for just a second, her expression broke, and she looked afraid. It was wrong for that fear to be there on her face, and I felt this strongly from the bottom of my soul.

  This Dagmar fucker was going down.

  The guy was apparently too thick-muscled for my kicks to work, so I needed to get him on the ground another way. He was so tall, so my best bet was to disrupt his center of gravity and take him down, but first I needed to rile him up so I could catch him off guard.

  “I’m going to beat you,” I said.

  “Oh, really, No-Rank?” he scoffed.

  “Yep,” I said and bounced on the balls of my feet, “And when I win, I won’t be doing any punishing, only pleasuring. Which is something I’m guessing you fail at due to the small size of your penis.”

  Tittering hoots and laughter ruptured through the crowd, and Dagmar’s face turned an interesting purple color. His mocking grin was gone now, and in its place was an expression of pure fury. He charged at me like an enraged bull, and I didn’t move fast enough out of the way to avoid the shove to my shoulder. One, two, he jabbed and crossed, and it was all I could do to dodge and parry his strikes while I tried to maintain control of the space.

  I caught a rogue kick to the chest, and the breath whooshed out of me. Then he aimed another side-kick at me, and I was barely able to bring my leg and arm in a check before he nailed me with another kick. I went sprawling to the ground, but I sprung up like an angry mole barely a second later and distracted him by double jabbing at his face, side-stepping, and sending kicks to his dominant right leg where I could.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I egged him on as I buzzed around him like an irritating fly.

  “I’ll crush you!” he roared and came at me again.