Chapter 33: Night Watchman

The morning came with disturbing news. Assignments were handed out before the day’s training and the relevant blades were given their orders. But when Cort announced the morning roster, my name wasn’t on it. After reading out those names, he moved on to the afternoon roster and, again, my name wasn’t assigned to a unit. I drew a long breath as a sickening feeling moved into my stomach.

Night Watch.

Whilst filling in for the town watch was generally a safe job, and paid poorly accordingly, the night shift was a very different beast. In the two weeks we’d been at the Arena, the Blades who had been assigned to Night Watch were always the experienced, higher-ranked blades. Rarely were white blades chosen and even then, those that were chosen were usually about to be promoted. But never bladelings like myself. It paid the same as a regular town watch job, but there were many problems that came out at night which simply weren’t present during the day. Thieves, drunks and criminal gangs roamed the streets at night and inexperience was deadly if not backed by solid training.

It had been mentioned that at least one of the criminal gangs in the city was organised enough that they had their own promotion system for managing their ranks and that killing a member of the watch was part of their promotion process. That extended to Blades of Mondarin who were filling in. I’m not sure how much of that was hazing the new recruits and how much was true, but I wasn’t so confident in my weapon work as to discount the threat.

But, when Cort read off the unit roster for the three Night Watch units, my name wasn’t there. Curiously, for some reason, I was assigned to Gate Duty. More curiously, the Night Watch patrols were organised into three-man teams.

The standard was four.

Cort grinned at me sickeningly. “Mathew… you’re not on the patrol roster, at least officially, but I reckon you need some experience… with me and Brendon on the River District, sundown to sunup. You’ll take Aaron’s place with us and he’ll take yours. I’ll personally make sure you don’t fuck up your first job.”

Well, so much for being nice.

“River District isn’t so bad,” whispered Brendon. “It’s the wealthier side of town, so we won’t be by ourselves. Each of the wealthy houses has guards that protect their town houses, so if you run into someone stealing or mugging, they generally help out. It makes their lives easier because most of the gangs don’t bother with the River District now. It’s not worth the risk.”

“But to be partnered up with Cort?” Rio whispered. “That’s not right. He doesn’t take watch shifts… he says it’s beneath him.”

I knew it was wrong. But what was I to do? It was easy to run off to Gleeson or Thorpe and ask for reassignment; I’d probably even be successful, but Cort was a predator and a bully and he’d singled me out to be his next target. This was a pest, but it was also an opportunity. Either I could run away and he could continue thinking I was weak and, realistically, I would lose face in front of the other Blades, or I could lean into this assignment and earn the respect of the Arena, even if Cort would still hate me.

One thing I learned on Earth was that people loved a survivor. Someone who got handed a shit sandwich, but made it work and came out stronger. I’d grown up in Australia where the ‘Aussie Battler’ was a respected stereotype; the farmer who got smacked down time and time again, but kept getting up to keep the cattle station running.

Then there was the risk: what did Cort have planned? Teams of three meant that he wanted us separated, but why not just go with me alone? Then again, the River District was relatively safe, so an ‘accident’ wouldn’t be as believable. Maybe he just wanted to make me sleep-deprived so he could crush me in the morning with drills?

I figured that, with the exception of him literally stabbing me in the back and having to kill Brendon as well, I’d probably survive the night. Even better, Brendon was known for being particularly good with the halberd; he could handle any bandits that might try their luck. But as I warily accepted the assignment and looked at Cort’s shit-eating grin, I knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The day went slowly.

All those on night duty were excused from training to get rest and prepare for a sleepless night. Except me. Cort ordered me to train with the silver blades and run drills with them all day as he “didn’t want me to cut my own head off.” He, on the other hand, went back to bed.
So I joined the silver blades in their sword drills, advanced halberd work and unit tactics.

Gee, I thought Cort was brutal.

In their defence, the silvers were nicer about it than Cort. They allowed me short breaks and encouraged me when I got smacked down, but they didn’t accept weakness or excuses. These were seasoned mercenaries who had all seen friends die in battle. They were training for the real deal and expected me to keep up. And so, when Gleeson came down for his hour of training, I was expected to be in the ring too.

I’d actually been waiting for this; I was curious to see how my Krav Maga, Jiu-Jitsu and Judo would fare against his grappling swordwork and, overall, it went like everyone expected.

Not well.

But in the last round, the dwarf came close enough to me during a disarm attempt and, as he went to twist my sword and leverage it against me, my old sensei’s voice came screaming through: “Weapon fixation!”

I was too focused on keeping my sword and he was using it against me. As he spun the sword, I let it go and it was quickly flung far out of my reach by the pressure the dwarf had applied, but in that split second, I had an opportunity to attack. As Gleeson continued the disarm, I stepped in close to his body and deep into his guard, and used the momentum to elbow him in the visor of his helm, completely ringing his bell. I quickly slipped my arm under his sword arm and I locked my hands behind his neck and spun hard. The dwarf flew with it in a tight circle and, for a second, I thought I’d done it.

But then he went light: not resisting, not stumbling, just letting me turn myself. I felt the trap a heartbeat too late. I started to switch directions, loosening my grip to steer his head the other way, but the instant that pressure came off his neck, he slipped his head under my arm and vanished behind my shoulder. His boot hooked my ankle as his weight yanked my shoulders back and down. The world tilted. My back slammed into the sand and the air detonated out of me in one ugly gasp…

…just as Gleeson dropped his knee into my sternum.

The dwarf was off me as soon as he had driven his knee into me and stood up, grinning knowingly, as I held up a weak hand and rolled to the side. The Platinum Blade chuckled as I emptied the contents of my stomach into the sand. When I finally finished coughing and retching, I glared up at him and saw he was actually looking kind of impressed.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had to counter that kind of grapple, Mathew. I doubt any of these Silvers would even be able to slip my guard like that. Good work. Take a spell, get a drink. NEXT!”

I stumbled away to the water station and rinsed my mouth out, spitting the putrid taste into the sand as I’d seen more than one silver blade do after a training session with the insanely gifted dwarf.

As I sank into a squat against the stone wall that separated the Arena stands from the sand, an older silver blade came across and sat down next to me. I recognised the twinkle in his eye and remembered that he was the one who had mysteriously told me to stop acting my age a week before. Curiously, I hadn’t seen him since (I assumed he’d been on assignment somewhere), and at the moment, I was too winded and worn out to really give him much thought.

“That’s not a style of fighting I would expect someone like you to attempt, let alone almost pull off, against Gleeson.”

I spat some more water into the sand beside me.
“I’ve picked up a thing or two.”

“In the Shadowspine Plains?” The man was neither asking nor making a knowing statement. His inflection suggested that, whilst some people assumed that from my accent, he didn’t believe it.

“I’ve been around.”

Once again I noticed the mottled silver, bronze and copper streaks in the man’s brown hair. He was older than me, but he didn’t look nearly as old as he felt. It irked me that I couldn’t read him like everyone else. When he spoke, the meaning revealed was deliberate. He knew how to modulate his voice to only ever give away what he wanted, and nothing more.

“How mysterious,” the man said with a chuckle. “You are an enigma. A white blade who can barely fight with a sword, however, almost knocked a living legend off his feet.” He hummed a little tune which, even in my exhausted state, I filed away for later. It was a haunting little tune in a natural minor mode. Aeolian? Probably. Repeated notes a perfect fifth from the tonic and then drifting back down in dotted quavers. I could work with that, write some words… so I mentally borrowed it.

“You can have that one,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “I can see another musician a mile off. You’re not a hack or a part-timer, either…” He pointed to the ring where Gleeson was ‘educating’ yet another Silver Blade. “This is your hobby, isn’t it?”

I said nothing. I was used to reading people and seeing who they were, but having it turned on me was uncomfortable. Worse was how accurate this damn fellow seemed to be. He wasn’t just insightful; he seemed like a bloody psychic which, given that magic and Gods were real, gave me no little discomfort.

I hadn’t had a chance to practice much music since coming to Dromin. A little singing on the road with Laura and the twins when we first left Copperwise Village was the only time I’d really had the time. Basic survival and then, what I could only describe as PTSD, had completely sapped any creative impulse. But this mysterious Blade of Mondarin was right: try as I might, train as I might, this was my hobby. Emergency medicine was my hobby. I was good at it. But I was only the best at one thing.

Music.

I was a skill junkie. A jack of all trades, and a master of only one. But, despite my degree, my years of experience as a concert pianist and vocalist, the decades of teaching, the gigs in grimy pubs that went until 1 am and only ended when some drunk guy tried to make off with your foldback speaker… that mastery wouldn’t do me any good here. My most practised skills, my profession, the very essence of who I was, hell, the very seat of my soul were useless here. I was relying on nothing more than hobbies and passing fancies to survive. No, it was worse than that; I was relying on those meagre skills to protect others.

How fucked up was my ego, believing my side skills were enough to bet other people’s lives on?

I breathed out a long sigh in resignation.

I felt the man’s eyes bore into me. “You’re mighty quick to focus on the negative,” he chided, quirkily. “I’m not trying to depress you.”

“What the fuck are you?” I snapped in a moment of clarity. This man had near psychic levels of perception. He was easily older than me, and the more he spoke and the more I looked into his eyes the more I believed he was older than anyone here.

“I’m a musician, like you. Tell you what, I’ll give you some advice. Tonight, be you. All of you. The medic, the knight, the hero, the paladin, be it all. Make no mistake, you’re good at this. But tomorrow, when you get back to the Arena, you’ll need to be the performer. Be what you truly are to hide who you truly are.”

I stared at this man, who got up and jogged back to the ring where Gleeson stood waiting. He put up a good fight against the dwarf, before being soundly beaten and thrown across the sand like everyone else. But now, I saw that it was different: it was a performance. He telegraphed his attacks, fell into his throws. And Gleeson? He looked like he was in a hypnotic dance, going through the motions without realising that he was being back-led by this weird Silver Blade.

It troubled me. I didn’t like it when I wasn’t the smartest person in the room.

Ok… that was arrogant. But I had got used to being relatively perceptive and intelligent compared to most people and having this guy come up and… I don’t know. It was irritating that he had this air of mystery and I was just playing catch-up. That said, I guess I knew how Erica, Asha and Laura felt now.

The afternoon progressed slowly after that little chat. I started examining my skill set and a sort of panic began to set in. The strange Silver Blade had opened a hole in my confidence and I was analysing my ability to actually survive the night. I wasn’t a knight, nor a mercenary. I wasn’t a battlefield medic or a doctor. More than anything, I’d been damned lucky. I was a man who had a bit of martial training, some experience with emergency medicine and the power of a God filling in the gaps, a power that was intermittent and dangerous to use.
Dangerous? It was outright fatal. I’d killed people. My entire life, I’d never needed to kill anyone. But within a month of arriving in Dromin, my death toll was what? Eight? No, the bandit made nine.

How does anyone live with themselves?

But as slow as the afternoon went with my mind spinning in circles, before I knew it, Cort, Brendon and I were walking down streets that I’d never seen before. It was a nicer part of town, certainly, though it still had a smell of raw sewage that was somewhat diminished by the moving water of the river that flowed freely around the Westfall Keep and the fragrant, flowering bushes that I imagined had been planted on the verges for this exact purpose. The smell was fainter, the roads were paved, and it looked like there was care taken in regard to the continuity of the architecture. It wasn’t opulent by any stretch of the imagination, but if I had enough wealth to live anywhere in Westfall, and couldn’t leave this pestilent hellhole, this would be the obvious choice. It was also close to the Keep, which I imagined led to some additional protection if only because there would be additional guards at the castle should something go terribly wrong, such as a fire or a riot.

Cort was silent on the way to our route. With the exception of a harsh order to follow him, he said nothing to me or Brendon on our way to the River District. I had no intention of passing the time with him, or getting to know him better. I just needed to get through this night, and if he wanted to ignore us, then that was fine with me. We had been on the streets a little over an hour, weaving our way around the rather nice roads, ignoring the city folk and being ignored in turn. Brendon and I had tried to have some sort of conversation, but were silenced roughly by Cort. The Silver Blade set a decent pace and after the second loop, as we began a third, I realised that it took about half an hour to walk our entire beat. The entire time, we had seen no trouble, so my nerves were finally beginning to settle. It was about halfway through our third loop when Cort stopped in the street at a building that was obviously not a residence, but also not a tavern. It smelled of flowers and perfume more than most, and a warm light streamed out of the windows. Cort looked at the building for a moment and turned to us.

“Right. We’ve done it twice. You know the route now?”

I nodded. Brendon rolled his eyes.

“Good. I have a contact that I need to speak to. I’m…” I could tell he was fishing through his brain for an excuse “…getting intelligence for some high-level bounty contracts, so not a word to anyone. If everyone knew this is where I get them, they’d all come down here to pick them up first and they wouldn’t get distributed fairly.”

I couldn’t believe that anything this man said would sound sincere, but this was further from it than even I had imagined, so I just nodded in feigned acceptance.

“So you want us to wait… or…?”

Cort snorted in derision. “No, I want you to continue patrolling the route! Useless boy! Keep patrolling as we have and I’ll finish my business inside and join you later. Every time you pass here, I’ll see you, and when I’m done, I’ll come out.”

Alarm bells were ringing in my head. This was insane. Even I, inexperienced as I was, knew that this was a load of crap. I could be pretty sure that this place was a brothel. I knew his ‘contact’ was probably rented by the hour, so who knew how long we were going to be on our own? Probably two cycles at least. First job on the streets and my CO was leaving to go wet his dick.

But without any opportunity to argue, he disappeared inside and we walked our route, a little slower than the pace Cort had set, as the moon rose higher. We had brought a lantern for when the sky got dark, but I hadn’t had to light it as my eyes picked out every detail in the silvery glow cast by the rising moon. Brendon lit his as the shadows grew longer and deeper, but I left mine unlit at my belt. The elven boon provided by Erica and Asha’s mother played back in my mind. She had kissed me and, whilst the kiss itself was pleasant, the surge of magic through my body was what I truly remembered. Almost a month ago now. That magic was subtle, but amazing. The way I could see and hear better, the way I blended into the shadows and moved without a sound was still a novelty to me. As a kid playing lantern stalk games or spotlight, I loved creeping forward and hiding from the searchers. Knowing that I could do it properly now was pretty cool.

“I cannot believe the Blade Warden would just send us off like this! Mpuuzi!” Brendon muttered, shaking his head. “No… I CAN believe it. That’s the worst part of this. It’s exactly the type of thing he would do. Night Watch are supposed to have at least four Blades per unit! Three is unheard of and then he goes to find a malaya?”

I assumed ‘malaya’ meant something akin to 'prostitute', filing it away for later as Brendon scanned the streets as we walked, muttering in a language that sounded similar to Swahili. “Ni wazimu na ufisadi! Yeye ni mwendawazimu! Does he want us to be killed?”

I was inclined to affirm that, yes, Cort probably did want me dead. But Cort was also a typical self-entitled bigot. The rules were meant for everyone except him and he could use anything to justify his behaviour because, according to him, he was right and everyone else was wrong. And, whilst I thought malice was definitely part of the equation, I suspected there was a lot of entitlement there too.

As we walked, I noticed a few things. Earlier in the evening, we still saw people working and labouring, but now that it was fully dark, the activity had shifted to social pursuits. Unlike around the city gates, a lot of the establishments where people would drink were purely taverns, with no accommodation at all. People congregated here, enjoying a pint quite late despite obviously having worked hard all day. I’d seen the way people wasted no second here and I guessed that it extended to the way they socialised.

Brendon chatted with a few locals as we passed them. Waves here, a handshake there, and we stopped to speak to an estate guard or two he knew from previous assignments. And, despite Cort abandoning us to our route alone, it was quite pleasant. Brendon filled me in on the way the routes worked: how we walked in the centre of the road to avoid ambushes, reminding me to check the eaves for bandits moving on the ‘rooftop highway’ and just generally filling me in on the way the society worked after dark.

Four laps later and Cort still hadn’t joined us. It was now close to midnight by my count and I figured we were on our own for the rest of the night. The ‘good and honest folk’ who had been enjoying the nightlife had all since retreated to bed and the streets were quiet now except for those sneaking into the surprisingly large number of brothels. Ok, it was probably only three or four that I could count, but that seemed unusually high for the district in my opinion. I had read that brothels were usually on the edges of medieval cities, not in the middle of the wealthier districts, but here they were, in plain sight. Another reminder to me that this world was not a straight copy of medieval Europe, magic notwithstanding. I needed to keep track of the differences in culture here.

The women on the streets enticing men into their establishments were, however, exactly how I would have imagined them. They were dressed scandalously, showing too much for polite society but remaining covered just enough to be decent. The girls’ faces were caked with thick layers of rouge and powder; their lips were stained crimson against pallid skin and it was difficult to tell if the perfume came from them, or from the ribbons of pink-tinged incense smoke that curled through the brothel doorways.

“Do people actually find that attractive?” I muttered to myself.

Brendon overheard. “Cort. He’s the kind of mpuuzi who finds it attractive.”

I chuckled. “You and your sister keep using that word… what does it mean?”
Brendon smiled. “Just an insult from our homeland, it means…”

Suddenly, a scream in the night cut through the air. Brendon and I shared a look for half a second, and ran towards the sound. Rounding a corner, we found the source of the commotion: a pretty young girl, around the same age as the twins, maybe younger, who was struggling against the arms of a man who had them wrapped around her middle. She was crying and kicking as four other men were gathered around. They were dressed similarly in neat, clean tunics, each cinched with a leather belt. But crucially, all five of them had arming swords on their hips: good weapons, not crude or second-hand like commoners held. Each of them matched the others: they were a set.

“I’m not a whore!” the young girl screamed as we ran up.
“What is this?” demanded Brendon and he lowered the point of his halberd at the men. “Let her go. Now!”

I followed his lead.

The five men turned casually and, with my gift of elvish eyesight, I even caught one roll his eyes as he saw us. The group of men were uncannily similar: their stance, the way they turned, even the identical cut of their jawlines. Not brothers, but drilled into uniformity by the same drillmaster. They were almost synchronised, and I knew at once that these were no ordinary thugs.

The man holding the girl tightened his grip on his prize as another snarled at Brendon.
“Stand down! Fucking Blades always interfering where they don’t belong. Hasn’t Cort told you to keep your fucking noses out of our business?”
Brendon tightened his grip on his halberd and I slid my feet forward to tighten our two-man formation.

“I don’t know who you are. Let the girl go, Citizen.”

I could tell that was a careful lie. These men were obviously identifiable and, whilst I didn’t know who they were, Brendon clearly did. But he was playing dumb and I had a feeling I knew why. The way they talked, the way they moved, the way they seemed to think they could order Brendon around… I’d heard that Lord Arnias had units of knights as a personal guard, and I suspected we’d just run into some. Or, at the very least, some form of law enforcement. Maybe Brendon thought that by playing dumb, he wouldn’t get in trouble for challenging them. Maybe he felt that if they identified themselves there would be a scandal. Either way, it was a slim chance. These men exuded an air of entitlement and I could tell they were used to taking whatever they wanted. And they reminded me a lot of Cort.

The men laughed derisively, and my fears were confirmed as one of them grabbed a patch on the sleeve of his tunic and turned it so we could see it properly. It bore a coat of arms.
“See this? Now you know who we are. Stand down in the name of Lord Arnias. This girl is…” He paused for a moment and one of his unit chimed in.

“…being taken for questioning. She is suspected to have knowledge of threats against the Lord’s life.”

The first man grinned and nodded. “Yeah… that.”

They had spoken the same way as Cort had when entering the brothel. Apparently, corruption was so widespread here that only the thinnest veneer of an excuse was required to let men in power do whatever they wanted.

But Brendon called them on it. He had a fierce look in his eye as he took a step forward, and I followed his lead. “Bullshit,” he said, rejecting the Athnian Knight’s excuse. “Let the girl go. You want to gang fuck a girl, go pay a malaya.” He indicated to the struggling woman. “She is not for sale.”

The knights all drew their swords as one, except for the brute holding the girl. He tossed her casually to the side first, then brought out his sword. Mercifully, she was able to run off into the dark and disappear, hopefully, back to her home.

Then, we were alone. Just blades in the night on an empty street. Brendon looked uneasy. He had done exactly what he should have. That was his job, and though these men were undoubtedly dangerous, he’d interceded on the girl’s behalf without a second thought. But I could tell he didn’t want to have to deal with the fallout.

“Are you sure you want to do this, gentlemen?” I enquired, trying to keep my voice steady and casual. “As far as we can tell, the situation is resolved. We have no further quarrel with you.” My heart was racing. I was completely outclassed here.

The lead knight scoffed. “Fucking Blades of Mondarin need to be taught a lesson. I see five against two. Yeah, we want to do this.”

Brendon adjusted the angle of his halberd to cover the men as they fanned out. “I see unarmoured chests and gloveless hands holding arming swords. I see heads without helms. This is not going to be good for you.”

But his face betrayed his false bravado. It was a bluff. We both knew these men could outflank us. We both knew that a bronze and a white blade together could not beat five knights, even with our advantage in arms and armour. Maybe we knocked out two or three of them. But not all five. I also suspected that, even if we survived, there would be consequences for standing up to the Lord’s men.

“We’ll see,” came the snarled reply.

The men advanced simultaneously and we both let our halberds fly forward. We’d been trained to aim for the top of the torso, to use quick and efficient cuts and thrusts, but these experienced men were more than up to the challenge. They slipped by the heads of our weapons, quickly moving within our reach and forcing us to withdraw to place ourselves back in the proper range. Strikes came quickly, but we were able to parry and block with the hafts of our polearms and keep the men occupied with our superior reach. Suddenly, one of the knights lunged forward, past the head of my halberd in an attempt to run me through. I sidestepped and brought the butt of my weapon up in an arcing uppercut. The man’s head snapped back and I brought the halberd back down, connecting the shaft with his collarbone and putting him down, hard, on the street’s rough stone. The man groaned and rolled away, clutching his broken clavicle. Thankfully, I hadn’t killed him. I was sick of killing. I couldn’t go through that again. I didn’t want more blood on my hands.

Brendon was struggling against three knights, keeping them in front of him and moving the axe head in a tight, circular guard which both parried the knights’ attacks and kept the point in front of him. It didn’t give them much opportunity to gain ground but, despite his near prodigious talent with the halberd, he was in full defence. I suspected that it was only because of that talent that he was still alive. As it was, I heard intermittent tings of the knights’ swords as they glanced off his coat-of-plate. Sooner or later, they would find a gap.

I had been distracted by Brendon’s situation and the other knight in front of me rushed forward, slapping the halberd away with his sword and grabbing the shaft with his free hand. I dropped the polearm, slipped another deadly thrust and closed the distance between us. I slammed my pauldron-clad shoulder into his sternum, using the metal armour as a force multiplier, and the knight grunted as the wind was knocked out of him. But as I wrenched the halberd back from his grip, the knight lifted his fist into my chin with surprising speed and I stumbled away from him, both of us taking a second to recover.

I wanted to help Brendon and take some pressure off him, but this damn knight wouldn’t give me a moment to intervene. The man was flashing his steel at weird angles and it was taking my entire effort to keep him at bay. My armour rang as his sword glanced off my pauldron. Next, I felt the point in my chest, thankfully stopped by my own coat-of-plate. I took a step back and adjusted my length. I was at my skill limit here and my anxiety was growing. The knowledge that I was a novice in a master’s game was thumping in my head. I heard a body hit the ground with a thud. It was one of Brendon’s opponents. He was sporting a large open wound in his chest, a gaping cut through his ribcage and sternum, and spilling the contents of his torso onto the ground.

No. I wasn’t ready for this. And even if I could beat this man, I wasn’t ready to kill again. My breath quickened, my heart started racing and the sweat began pouring from my brow. My chest tightened, the crushing weight bearing down on me.

My opponent slipped past my axe head again, and I barely had the presence of mind to deflect a cut to my right. He stepped close and drove his boot into the outside of my right knee. The joint folded inward, sending a line of searing pain along the inside of my leg, and it collapsed beneath me. My knee felt like fire. In desperation, I swung the halberd in a crazy arc, low and tight, and the axe head cut cleanly through the knight’s leg, amputating it below his knee and sending him screaming to the cobblestones.

Behind me, Brendon shouted something I didn’t quite catch, but I whipped my head around to find him clutching at his chest, his hand coming away from it bloody. One of the knights had managed to find a gap in the armour. The sword tip had passed between two of the sewn-in segments of his coat of plate and into his torso.

I stood on my good leg.

My right leg was ruined for the moment. There wasn’t much I could do but hobble forward. One of Brendon’s two remaining opponents rushed at me and my temper flared as I watched the other leap towards Brendon and kick him in the chest.

I whirled my halberd and prayed, remembering at the last moment the divine energy I could put into my weapon. I’d been hiding the superhuman abilities with such fear of discovery that I wasn’t used to drawing on them yet. In the heat of combat, I’d forgotten all about them. Now, I willed the power to the fore and it glowed within me as my weapon descended upon the knight. The man lifted his sword to parry the axe head, as would be the normal and expected defence, but the blade of my halberd glowed with an intense, holy radiance and cut through the metal of the weapon and deep into the clavicle of the knight. Just like that one lucky strike against the tree while practising in the forest weeks ago, I watched the divine wrath carry my weapon through his body and leave a deep gash in the road’s stone.

The knight fell to the ground in two directions.

I turned to help Brendon, but stopped in horror as I watched the last of the Lord’s knights rising from where he had fallen upon Brendon. Brendon was limp.

Lifeless.

Blood was everywhere.

As quickly as I had dispatched his comrade, this knight had killed Brendon in just as little time, falling upon him and cutting at his exposed throat.

The smiling, dark-skinned copper blade, always helping, always encouraging. A loving brother who looked out for his sister, looked out for everyone. A man whose family extended to everyone he met. He would have made a good paladin of Bambinae.

No chance for last words. No ‘look after my sister’ as he faded heroically into the next life.
He was now, suddenly and irrevocably, just an empty shell on the street.

The man turned to me, smiling, victorious as he looked around him at the unconscious and dead scattered on the cobbled stones. Brendon’s life had stained his white tunic red, but the man didn’t even seem to care.

“Well, I guess I’ll get that little thing all to myself. I’ll have to find her again, but that shouldn’t be hard.”

I blinked. This man. This monster had trained, fought and served with his unit. One was unconscious, two dead and another missing half his leg and this abomination’s first thought was that he could now rape a girl and not have to share?

There are worse things than killing, echoed a voice in my head.

My heart rate slowed. My skin dried. My breathing returned to normal.

Allowing this man to continue to rape and murder makes me complicit. There was no way of telling whether the thought was mine or Bambinae’s.

It didn’t matter.

I dropped the halberd.

I stepped forward onto my broken leg, not feeling the pain.

Bambinae was with me.

I was vaguely aware of drawing my dagger as I moved with a deliberate, divine wrath, but the movements were no longer just my own; Bambinae was with me.

Remove the cancer of unrepentant evil. Bambinae was with me.

It was the mission she gave me when we first met.

The man wore a complicated expression. He wasn’t smiling any longer; he looked confused as he finally realised that he hadn’t tried to stop me while I had slowly, inevitably, moved forward. I could feel the level of divine weight hammering down upon me, so it must have been crushing for him and he seemed paralysed on the spot by the immense force of it. His sword clattered to the stone street, lost through fingers that refused to hold it any longer. The Athnian Knight stammered something defiant. Something hateful.

But nothing repentant.

Even in the face of divine judgement… he was not sorry.

He still hadn’t moved as I stepped up close to him, so close our faces were almost touching, and I looked sadly into his eyes and deep into his soul. He was so completely lost in his own self-importance, his own hatred, that he would never consider that he could be wrong.

I felt a deep, unyielding sorrow.

Why did I feel sorrow for him?

I realised then that I didn’t. But Bambinae did.

Everything this man could have been, all the good he could have done, but chose not to. He rejected humanity. He rejected morality. He could have been a man who was welcomed into her arms as a blessed child. He could have been like Brendon. But, instead, he chose to kill that beautiful, beautiful man.

So, I embraced him. We embraced him. I held this monster in my arms as the tears slid down my face. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Regardless, he needed to experience kindness and love at least once before the end.

“You could have been brilliant,” I whispered as I held the condemned knight. “I’m so, so sorry.” His pupils dilated with the sudden pain as I slipped the knife through his ribcage, piercing his heart, just as he had broken Bambinae’s. Then, the light left his eyes as he crumpled to the ground.

Remove the cancer of unrepentant evil.

As if in a trance, I moved to the two surviving knights as I knew what had to be done. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want it to be me. I didn’t want that blood on my hands. But, far more than that, I didn’t want whatever crimes they committed tomorrow to be because I let them live. And in that righteous, divine wrath, Bambinae laid them bare before me. Not their future in every detail, nor some ledger of sins, but the truth of what they were: men who had chosen cruelty so often, and so gladly, that mercy would not change them tonight. I knew, with a certainty that made me sick, that if I walked away, they would do this again.

There was no higher authority to appeal to; they were the Lord’s knights. There was no system of justice for these men, and they operated with impunity, without oversight.
There was no system or person to prevent them from doing this again.

And again.

And again.

No, there was someone: me. I could put an end to their abuse.

I could have stopped myself. Bambinae was guiding me, but she hadn’t taken complete control. That wasn’t her way. She wouldn’t force me. The choice had to be mine. I could have walked away, but I didn’t. This was terrible, this was horrible, but it was necessary. I hated that I agreed with her. I hated that I had to be the one to do it. I hated that the responsibility was mine.

WHY?

Why did I have to be put into this position? These men needed to be stopped, but I didn’t want to kill. Yes, ok, I’d just killed the man who had slaughtered Brendon, but he was still on his feet and a threat. These two were at my mercy. It was different. This was straight-up execution. Was that for me to decide? Bambinae seemed to think it was just, but I knew right from wrong. This didn’t seem right.

But letting them live to continue the cycle of abuse seemed wrong too.

Bambinae wasn’t pushing. She knew what she wanted and I knew her reasons, but she was letting me sort through it all at my own pace.

I didn’t want to take more life.

I couldn’t. It wasn’t right.

Every breath I snatched from someone seemed like tar clinging to me, staining me. I could never be clean again. How many lives would I have to take? But that girl they were about to rape: that was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. Maybe she was someone’s Erica, someone’s Asha or someone’s Laura.

Laura.

And, with that thought, it became, undeniably, my choice.

And Bambinae was with me.

I hugged one close, weeping for his potential as I drew the knife from his heart. Then I did the same to the other, whispering a silent prayer that somewhere, somehow, he might be given a chance at redemption in another life. Like Donatu, it was so final. Like Deriostos, it was necessary. And like all of them, it went against everything I believed. Finally, with nothing but corpses and an aching sorrow around me, I turned to the lifeless body of my fellow Blade.

I cursed my stupidity. I should have remembered Bambinae’s power earlier. I could have tried to charge my weapon earlier. I didn’t move faster, as I had with Deriostos; I didn’t use super strength like with Donatu. I was supposed to protect the innocent. What was I doing?

The night air was still and the street devoid of any sound, as if the entire city was taking a minute’s silence for the fallen hero. That’s exactly what he was. A hero. Brendon’s lantern flickered out, having been broken in the fight, and the lack of even such a subtle flame seemed to plunge the street into darkness.

I dropped next to this brave man as my injured knee gave out underneath me. Brendon’s throat had been sliced clear open and, despite knowing there was no amount of healing that I could hope to achieve that would replace the volume of blood he had lost, I ran the power through my hands in a vain attempt to bring life back into his corpse.

Nothing.

I could feel the emptiness of the vessel in front of me. Brendon was gone. Whatever afterlife awaited him, he was already there. This shell was here, and it was no longer him. Tears in my eyes, guilt making me want to vomit, I staggered to my feet. My knee throbbed; there was something broken there, but I willed myself to stand. I had one more job to do and my knee could go straight to hell for all I cared; it wasn’t going to stop me.

I slipped my shoulder under Brendon’s lifeless body, sucked in a breath at the pain and began my long, agonising walk, dragging us both back to the Arena.