Chapter 14: Final round.
The rain became a steady, cold drum on leather and steel as the herald’s voice cut through the downpour. “For the final bout! Finn Fergusson, freeman, against Ser Jaston Vant, three-time champion of the Green Willow!”
The crowd, sodden and smelling of wet wool and mud, roared nonetheless. From the opposite side of the ring, the champion emerged. Ser Jaston was a fancy thing, polished and elegant despite the weather. His armor was filigreed silverite, his cloak a striking crimson that shed the rain. He was lean, handsome in a sharp, fox-like way, and he carried two curved blades, their edges glinting even in the gloom.
Kerr watched him move. The walk was too smooth, the flourish of the blades too practiced for mere show. This wasn’t a tourney knight. Kerr knew a killer when he saw one.
Oren, his hair plastered to his forehead, wriggled closer to the ring’s edge, Cain a silent, wet sentinel beside him. He stared, his young brow furrowed in concentration. When Kerr glanced over, the boy made a small, twisting motion with his hands, mimicking the dual blades, and shook his head, confused.
Kerr stepped closer to the barrier, the rain dripping from his beard. “See something?”
“Two swords,” Oren said, his voice pitched low, almost lost in the rain and crowd. “It makes no sense. Even if you were coordinated enough to use each one, you’d be better off with a shield or a dagger for defense. To create openings.”
Kerr leaned down, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “And what does that tell you, right now, about our champion?”
Oren’s eyes darted back to Ser Jaston, who was preening for a section of well-dressed nobles. The man hadn’t even looked at Kerr, his gaze instead seeking approval from the stands. Oren thought for a minute, his mind working through the logic like a knight studying a board of chess. “He’s not concerned about defense,” the boy deduced, his voice gaining certainty. “At all. He plans to overwhelm people. He’ll be hyper-aggressive. All offense.”
Kerr’s smile widened, a flash of white in his rain-darkened face. He straightened and turned to the weapon rack. He bypassed the mace, the warpick. His hand closed around the haft of a longspear, hefting it, feeling its balance. He slid a heavy leather bracer, studded with iron, onto his left forearm.
In the center of the ring, the presiding lord, a bored-looking man with a drooping mustache, raised his hand. “Champion’s privilege declares the terms! Ser Jaston demands a contest to first blood, or to yield!”
Ser Jaston finally deigned to look at Kerr. His voice was a cultured baritone, meant to carry. “Unless the stranger wishes to make it more interesting. To the death has a certain… finality.” A murmur, part shock, part glee, rippled through the crowd.
Kerr planted the butt of his spear in the mud. He looked not at the lord, not at the champion, but at Oren. The boy’s face was pale, his eyes wide. He’d just seen controlled, pedagogical violence. This was different. This was a shadow from the bandit road, dressed in silverite and ceremony. Oren met his gaze. He saw the question there. After a heartbeat that felt like an age, the boy gave a single, sharp nod. He understood. Some things required an end.
Kerr turned back. “I do not wish a day of fun and sport to end in unnecessary bloodshed,” he said, his voice calm, carrying the faint, rough accent of the hinterlands he was pretending to be from. “First blood will suffice.”
Ser Jaston laughed, a bright, mocking sound. “Then ‘Finn’ can admit his cowardice and forfeit. Spare us the drizzle and the disappointment.”
“You’re remarkably unscarred,” Kerr observed, his tone conversational, almost friendly. “For a man who’s fought his way to three championships. Your face is practically pretty.”
The champion’s smile hardened at the edges. “No one can touch me.”
“You’re skilled,” Kerr nodded, taking a few measured steps to the side, the spear tilting up. “If only at choosing your opponents.”
The insult, delivered so mildly, landed with the force of a hammer. Ser Jaston’s composure cracked. A snarl replaced the smile. He didn’t wait for the formal signal. Both curved blades came up, and he flowed forward, a lethal dance of whining steel.
Kerr settled into his stance, a middle grip on the spear, his left arm with the bracer held forward. He became stillness against the storm.
The champion was blindingly fast. The blades came in from high and low, a scissoring cut meant to disembowel. Kerr didn’t retreat. He stepped in, the iron-studded bracer deflecting the high blade with a shower of sparks, while the solid shaft of the spear swept the low cut aside. Clang. Thud.
It set the rhythm. Ser Jaston was a whirlwind, a dervish of shining arcs and complex feints. The crowd gasped as a blade whispered past Kerr’s throat, another grazing the leather over his ribs. He was a mountain in a hurricane, moving only when necessary. A shift of the hips, a slight turn of the spear shaft, a sharp block with the bracer. He wasn’t trying to match the speed. He was letting it expend itself against his defense.
And then he began to pick his spots. Not killing blows. Punishments. As a blade licked out, Kerr’s spear darted forward like a serpent’s tongue, the point jabbing hard into the join of the champion’s shoulder plate. Not deep, but painful, disrupting the flow. Another thrust, a sharp strike to the inside of a wrist. A hard slap with the flat of the spearhead against Jaston’s temple, rocking him.
The champion’s perfect offense began to fray. Frustration bled into his movements. He was fast, but every attack met wood or iron, and was answered by a stinging, precise rebuke. His arms began to ache from the impacts. His steps, once fluid, became heavier in the sucking mud.
Kerr worked him like a farrier shaping hot iron. A jab to the thigh, parting the fine cloth and drawing a bright line of red. A twist of the spear to slam the haft against the champion’s knee. Ser Jaston grunted, stumbling. He wasn’t bleeding out, but he was being systematically dismantled. His breath came in ragged gasps, his attacks growing wilder, more desperate.
Finally, a clever trap. Kerr pretended to overextend a thrust. Jaston lunged, a triumphant gleam in his eye, aiming a devastating cross-cut. Kerr dropped low, the blade passing over his head, and swept the spear in a brutal arc against the back of the champion’s legs.
Ser Jaston crashed to his knees in the mud, a thick, wet sound. One of his curved swords slipped from his grip. He looked up, rain and sweat and shock mixing on his face. The crowd was silent, stunned by the clinical dismantling of their flashy hero.
Kerr stepped back, lowering his spear. He looked at the lord. “He is beaten.”
He turned to bow, a formal gesture to signal the contest’s end.
A raw scream tore from Jaston’s throat. “No!” From a hidden sheath at the small of his back, his left hand flashed, a pale dagger aimed for the gap between Kerr’s backplate and helmet.
“KERR!” Oren’s warning shriek was pure terror, cutting through the rain.
Kerr was already pivoting, not away, but into the spin. The spear became an extension of his anger. He slammed the shaft down on the champion’s wrist. Bone cracked. The dagger flew into the mud.
Momentum carried Kerr around. His left arm, the bracered one, came up and across in a short, brutal arc, the iron studs connecting with Ser Jaston’s jaw with a wet, final crunch. The champion’s head snapped back, his body going limp.
Kerr didn’t stop. He reversed his grip, stepping forward, the full weight of his body and a lifetime of disciplined rage behind the thrust. The spearpoint took Ser Jaston in the base of the throat, punching through gorget, flesh, and spine. It erupted from the back of his neck in a spray of dark red, halting only when the cross-guard slammed against the ruined armor.
The silence was absolute, broken only by the hiss of rain on hot blood and the choking final gasp of the champion as he toppled sideways, pinned to the mud by the spear shaft.
Kerr released the weapon. He stood there, chest heaving, steam rising from his shoulders in the cold air. He looked at Oren. The boy was frozen, one hand clamped over his own mouth, his eyes enormous. But he wasn’t looking at the dead champion. He was looking at Kerr, and in his gaze was no horror, only a stark, terrified understanding of the price of a moment’s mercy.
The lord stood up, his face ashen. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Kerr wiped his hand on his sodden leathers. He walked to the barrier, not toward the noble’s dais, but toward Oren and the mabari. He didn’t speak. He simply nodded once, collected Cain’s leash, and with a hand on the boy’s trembling shoulder, guided him away from the ring, the silent crowd, and the body slowly cooling in the rain.