by David Estes
Sir Draconius fought not only well, but smart, avoiding any skirmishes involving more than three warriors, and picking off those who found themselves isolated on the fringes. Then, with great skill and agility, he’d forced the last few knights to submit by slipping his sword through their defenses and jabbing its point against their necks.
The crowd cheered once more, and Tarin had to hold back not to cheer with them. Bart only grunted and mumbled something under his breath.
Next it was time for the commoners to take the field. Tarin felt a rush of something that was part fear, part excitement, and it was impossible to determine which was the majority. “Remember, use your size to your advantage, and don’t take any unnecessary risks,” Bart instructed.
Tarin nodded, and moved toward the group of competitors. Unlike the Knight Division, where there were only twelve warriors with six advancing, the commoners would be represented by more than twenty fighters. And yet still only six would move on to face the knights.
Also unlike the knights, who were announced individually, taking turns marching onto the field of battle, the commoners were announced in quick succession as they slogged forward in a ragtag group. Tarin barely heard them say “Choose!” before it was time to start.
“Fight!” the tourney master said. He was presumably the lord of the castle, a man named Lord Wall, the current head of the house that had controlled Walburg for decades.
Everything happened so quickly that Tarin barely had time to think. Luckily, he didn’t need to, newfound instincts rushing to his limbs like lightning strikes. He stepped back, narrowly avoiding getting slashed by a rusty short sword wielded by a short man with tar-stained teeth. Tarin quickly remembered how differently the commoners fought from the knights. Their division always had more bloodshed, more “accidental” deaths. They were in it for the gold, not the glory, and honor played no part.
The yellow-toothed man was about to slash at him again, but someone grabbed the shifty fellow from behind and began choking him. The man tried to speak—probably to submit—but passed out before he could say the words.
For a moment, Tarin could do nothing but gape at the carnage and retreat from the worst of it. Then he heard Bart’s voice, rising like a scythe in a field of wheat. “Fight, you moron! Fight!”
Tarin shook his head and raised his Morningstar, his muscles tightening and contracting as he swung it overhead. A wiry man wearing a leather breastplate sneered at him. “What are you going to do with that, swat a few flies?”
Tarin released the chain and the ball slammed into the man’s chest, knocking him back. He crashed into another combatant, who was immediately swallowed up in the battle. The man with the leather vest was bleeding in several places, not moving.
Deep inside himself, Tarin was horrified at what he’d done, but at the same time he felt a surge of pleasure, the thrill of victory. Aye! someone screamed, and he wasn’t sure if it was Bart, the voice inside him, or his own voice, hollering with glee.
And then, suddenly, there were only six fighters left, and Lord Wall shouted, “Cease!”
Tarin let his spiked ball drop, and pulled it in. He was breathing heavily, ghosts of hot breath pluming into the cool, autumn air, and his heart was a ball of steel, battering around in his heaving chest. He wasn’t tired—he felt on fire. Alive.
It took all of his restraint not to throw himself at the remaining five contestants, slaughtering them all.
“Frozen hell,” he whispered to himself, trying to catch his breath. He’d heard of bloodlust before, when soldiers in the midst of battle gained great strength and stamina, fighting until their legs collapsed beneath them. Is that what this is? he wondered. But he already knew the answer, the voice inside him humming with excitement. This feeling was something else entirely.
While the commoners waited and the injured were carried from the field, blood staining the grass crimson, the knights were announced once more. Sir Draconius was last, striding onto the field, radiating confidence.
He is yours, the voice said.
Tarin found his teeth gritted together, his jaw clenched. A growl rose up from his throat, and then the final battle began.
The commoners threw themselves at each other and at the knights with reckless abandon, while the knights were more methodical, working together to eliminate each commoner. Tarin, on the other hand, couldn’t see anything or anyone but Sir Draconius.
The world became a ball of darkness, the brilliant knight a white flame, whirling and slashing and defeating one opponent after another. Tarin stalked the knight, tossing aside anyone who got in his way, smashing his spiked ball against armor and flesh, ignoring the cries of the fallen. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware of the cries of shock and gasps from the crowd. He was aware of their fear. But this knowledge only seemed to fuel the growing fire inside him, pushing him forward. He sidestepped an attack that came from the side, using his muscular arm like a clothesline, catching the attacking knight across the neck. He stomped on the knight’s chest and the man uttered a guttural submission.
The last remaining commoner, a man barely half Tarin’s height, threw a knife at him. The sharp blade sunk deep into his gut, stopping him in his tracks. He stared at the handle protruding from his flesh, and his enemy raised his lip in a sneer of victory.
The boy he once was would’ve cried out, would’ve fallen. Would’ve passed out at the sight of his own blood.
That boy had been fading ever since he’d drunk the witch’s potion. Now, the knife in his stomach seemed to cut away the last of his youth, unleashing the beast that had been growing day by day.
Tarin pulled the blade out, black blood dripping from the sharp steel. The man’s eyes widened in disbelief and he froze.
Tarin dropped the bloody knife. A voice inside him was crying for him to walk away, to admit defeat, to return to Castle Hill and his parents and Annise and his old life.
But that voice was weak now, barely audible, naught but a whisper of wind in his ears. There was no going back, no returning. Not ever.
With a roar, he whipped the Morningstar, crashing it into his opponent’s chest, where it stuck. The man’s mouth flew open, his tongue lolling out. He wrapped his arms around the spiked ball, as if hugging it to him, and then collapsed.
With a yank, Tarin wrenched the ball away from the dead man.
All was silent.
All was still.
Blood rushed in his head, a dark tide rising.
Warmth trickled from the slash in his stomach, streaming down his legs, forming a black pool at his feet.
Sir Draconius, the last remaining combatant, gaped at him, his eyes flashing behind his faceplate, his sword raised and ready.
And then dropping. “I submit,” he said.
It was as if the words were spoken in a different language—Tarin couldn’t quite make sense of them. This was the champion of the tourney, a gallant knight, and he was submitting before Tarin had even attempted a single blow.
“No,” Tarin found himself saying. But it wasn’t him—not anymore. Or was it? Was there any difference between him and the thing inside him? Was there ever a line between them, or were they one and the same the entire time?
“What?” the knight said. “I submit. You win the melee. Take your spoils and be gone.”
“No,” Tarin repeated, striding forward, whirling the ball around his head, slowly, slowly, and then gaining speed, faster, faster, faster…
Someone grabbed him from behind, and he reacted, flinging an elbow back and into the jaw of his attacker. Bart, a surprised look on his face, flipped chin over heels, landing on his stomach in the pool of dark blood. Tarin’s blood, from his gut wound.
And when Tarin turned back toward Sir Draconius, the knight was gone, having fled the field.
A coward, in the end.
But a smart one.
Because Tarin knew he would’ve killed him, several times over.
“They hate me,” Tarin said.
>
They were back at Fay’s shop. Seeing Bart covered in Tarin’s dark blood, she’d immediately closed the shop door and shuttered the windows. Now she was soaking Bart’s shirt in a large washbasin.
Bart, naked from the waist up, was grinning, rubbing his sore jaw, which was already mottled with black and blue from the blow he’d sustained from Tarin’s elbow. The enormous sack of gold they’d been given for winning the melee was apparently enough to dull the pain. The coins were stacked on a table, tall shiny towers.
Tarin couldn’t look at the gold, not when all he could remember were the narrowed eyes, the frowns, the barrage of jeers from the spectators as he left the field of battle. The pure, white rage he’d felt burning through him had been extinguished in an instant.
“We can work on your bedside manner,” Bart said, biting down hard on one of the coins. “And now we can afford a full set of armor big enough for the likes of a man of your size.”
“No,” Tarin said. “I’m done fighting.” He remembered something Annise had told him, once. How she wished she could disappear into the Hinterlands forever. How she wished she could be free.
That’s how he felt now.
“What? You just defeated the greatest champion the north has seen in a decade without landing a single blow. No, this is only the beginning.” Bart stood and approached Tarin.
“I don’t want to be a monster,” he said. I’m just a boy, he thought, bitterness coating his tongue from the lie. Both the spoken one and the one he’d thought. The moment he’d killed that man he’d lost his childhood and become a monster.
“Then take off your scarf,” Bart said. “The people fear what they don’t understand, what they can’t see. The northerners will respect your brutality, but only if you can control it.”
Control. The word seemed to echo inside him. A flame was lit, small, but growing rapidly, feeding an invisible inferno. He gritted his teeth and tried to tamp it down. To his surprise, a flood of cool washed over him.
Maybe he could control it. Maybe the thing inside him could be broken, like a wild horse.
“How?” he asked.
“Practice,” Bart said. “Tomorrow we ride for the next tourney, a stopover on the way to Darrin. Now take off your scarf and let us have a look at you.”
Tarin didn’t want them to see what he was, but he found his hand lifting to the folds of cloth covering his face, grabbing them, his fingers clenching together.
And then releasing. “No,” he growled. “This is who I am. This is what I am.”
Bart frowned, but didn’t force the issue.
That was when Tarin realized he had the power to control his own destiny.
Bart said, “Let’s get you sewn up before you drip any more of that tar-blood all over Fay’s shop.”
“No,” Tarin said again. “We’ll seal the wound with fire.”
Fay agreed to ride with them to Darrin, closing her shop for the tourney season. It seemed the prospect of significant amounts of gold was enough to convince her. She said it would take her most of the trip to the eastern mountains to construct Tarin’s armor.
For now, she patched together a temporary suit that would prevent injuries like the one from the throwing knife. They’d both marveled at the way Tarin had clamped his teeth together and suffered in silence while the hot iron had been pressed to his wound, sealing the broken flaps of skin together.
Because they couldn’t find a horse large enough to carry Tarin, Fay had agreed to let them use her wagon, which would be pulled by two old steeds that cost them the rest of the gold they’d won. “An investment in the future,” Bart had called it.
As they left Walburg, Tarin ignored the narrowed eyes piercing him from every side. They hate you and fear you, the voice said. Good. That is good.
Tarin didn’t want to be hated. Nor feared. But he kept silent, closing his eyes and focusing on every bump in the road.
When he opened them again, they were surrounded by countryside, Walburg well behind them. Only then could he release the sigh of relief that had been building in his chest.
Bart laughed. “You are an enigma,” he said.
Tarin didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he didn’t ask.
Bart said, “You fight like a lion one day, and the next you’re as meek as a lamb.”
Fay said, “Leave him alone.”
They rode in silence after that, except for the voice in Tarin’s head, which wouldn’t shut up.
Tarin won the next tourney. And the next. Sir Draconius showed up for the first, but didn’t compete in the melee. He didn’t appear at the second.
Bart and Fay’s spirits were high as they counted the gold.
But Tarin felt cold and empty inside. He’d killed another man. This time he hadn’t even intended to, taking some strength off the blow. But the man had died just the same. Most of the others had submitted out of fear.
Once more, he’d been booed, the spectators raging against him, this giant man named Choose.
“They’ll come around, you’ll see,” Bart said, handing him a small pouch of coins.
“What’s this?” Tarin asked.
“Your share.”
Compared to the size of Bart’s pile of gold, Tarin’s was a hill next to a mountain. Fay received a smaller share still, the rest to be paid upon completion of Tarin’s armor.
Tarin didn’t know what to do with the gold, so he simply stuffed it in his pack, which he shouldered as he stood.
“Where are you going?” Bart asked.
“Nowhere.”
“We’ll come with you,” Fay said.
“No,” Tarin said.
And then he left.
The town they were in was small, naught more than a waystation on the road to Darrin, with ramshackle huts built of shaved logs and mud, so it didn’t take Tarin long to locate the home belonging to the man he’d accidentally killed.
Lurking in the dark shadows, he looked through one of the windows. A woman was tending a fire. She was young, naught more than twenty name days in age, but still she had two small children to look after. Like their father—who Tarin had shoved so hard he’d flipped and landed on the back of his head, going completely still—the two boys had hair so black it was almost blue, and big green eyes. “When will Father be coming home?” one of them asked.
“Soon,” the woman said, dashing away a tear that trickled from the corner of her eye. She hasn’t told them the truth, Tarin realized. He felt something break inside him. His heart? Did he still have a heart, or had it turned to stone when his blood turned to darkness?
My fault. My fault. Myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault…
Tarin turned away from the window and rummaged through his pack, locating the gold. He stooped down and set it just outside the door. Then he raised his fist to knock, fully prepared to melt back into the shadows before he could be seen.
But before his hand dropped, the door opened.
If the wife of the dead man was startled or scared, she didn’t show it, her moist but steely eyes staring out at him. She glanced down and saw the pouch, the glint of gold evident through a slit at the top. “Keep yer gold,” she said. “Me husband’s life was worth far more.”
The right words escaped Tarin—were there any right words?—and all he could say was, “I’m sorry.”
“Tell that to me kids. Tell that to me heart.”
“I can’t,” Tarin said, and turned away, leaving her standing in the doorway, a silhouette of a woman who’d become nothing more than a shadow. There was silence for a moment, and then he heard the jingle of coins as she picked up the gold and slammed the door.
Because of me, Tarin thought as he walked back.
By the time they finally arrived in Darrin, Tarin’s fame had already reached the city. He’d won another three tournaments, badly injuring a top knight in the process. At least he hadn’t killed anyone else. It was the only thing that kept him from digging a hole and burying himself in it. At each tournament,
his self-control had gotten stronger, the voice in his head smaller; but still, when the battle raged, when his Morningstar whipped through the air, he wanted nothing more than to destroy everything in his path.
He’d sustained several more injuries—a slash to the shoulder and an arrow to the foot, but neither were as grievous as the knife wound from his first tournament. Each time he insisted the wounds be healed with fire. It was the only thing he seemed to understand anymore.
Sitting in his cart while Bart and Fay rode the horses, he stared at his huge gloved hands, trying to see the thin fingers he once had. But his past had faded away quickly, like a stone dropped into a deep, dark pool. He couldn’t even remember his parents’ faces.
Annise’s was still there, however, but day by day it became harder to pluck it from his memory. He feared she would soon be lost to him, too. Then again, he thought, maybe it is better this way. If his life was a sheet of paper, he’d rather fold it in half and rip the old piece to shreds.
People, mostly soldiers and their families—Darrin was a border city, after all, and the north was at war with the east—lined the streets, staring at him, whispering behind cupped hands. None cheered, but none booed either, which he took as an improvement.
He’d outgrown the makeshift armor Fay had given him, so now there were large gaps revealing his threadbare clothes beneath. She was secretive about the armor she was working on, hiding it in a locked chest that Tarin leaned against when they traveled.
When they finally reached the place they would be staying, an inn catering to traveling combatants, Tarin looked up. Darrin was a harsh city, all stone and mortar and blade. Walls lined the roads, and there were no sellers on the streets. Only marching soldiers wearing gleaming armor and swords in their belts.
Above the walls rose the Black Cliffs, dark, jagged teeth devouring the sky. They were known as the Razor, the last barrier before the sea, providing protection from eastern ships. To the south, the Mournful Mountains offered another natural barrier, though more and more the easterners had managed to breach the stone behemoths via tunnels and caverns, wreaking havoc on the north.