I’m ashamed of a lot of the choices I made back then, but not wanting to join an army isn’t one of them. Armies are not places for clever, or even ‘functionally intelligent’ people, I’m sorry to say. The skills required of a soldier are essentially just a willingness to do as he’s told and hurt people, with very little else.

  That may have been perfect for me, but it’s hardly a glamorous career, or something to be proud of, and so I don’t regret my choice to stay out of it one bit. Surprisingly, Gruin didn’t either.

  “Pah, I’m not here to fight in human wars,” he scoffed, “you can all kill each other between yourselves.”

  He wasn’t wrong about that, either.

  “It has nothing to do with your injuries then, I suppose.” I just couldn’t help myself, Gruin was so annoyed to be hurt—as if the very notion of infirmity was some personal failure on his part—that pulling his leg about it was the best entertainment I’d had in years.

  He didn’t bite today though, which, come to think of it, might have been an example of how bad his condition was. Gruin just grumbled something about how it wouldn’t be fair on the lanky humans if he joined in and dozed off into another nap. That was more or less how we spent our second day in Eoryg.

  And our third.

  The sad truth was that with Gruin still recovering, there wasn’t really much cause for me to do anything. Nor much to gain from it. A good deal of our success in killing things so far had come from the Grynkori’s ability to…well, kill most of them by himself.

  So with him out of commission, I certainly wasn’t going to be risking my skin on the ability to compensate. No, as far as I was concerned I’d earned myself a holiday.

  Granted, that didn’t mean I was just going to sit around and waste money either. I was thinking ahead enough to know that I’d run out of coins eventually.

  As far as I was concerned, I didn’t have any particularly marketable assets on me. That was the major hitch in my plan to make money, and it was what stumped me for a good long while. Right up until I heard about the tournament that was being held.

  That perked me up with thought. Now I’d never actually won a fencing tournament, and only ever taken part in two that actually took place within cities and had proportionately larger pools of contestants. Most, though, offered some sort of prize for those within the top few places.

  I’d gotten a grain once, by coming in third. It had been a smaller tourney than this one, and the prize here was ten times that. Third wasn’t such a big ask, right? Well I suppose I’d have to find out by signing on. Besides, I was in better shape now than when I’d last made my attempt. Much better. Hard months on the road had burned away most of the flab my body had built up from too much drinking, and I’d been more diligent in training, with my long hours of daily boredom, than ever before. The actual fights I’d been in—was it as many as a dozen, now, since going into that bloody dungeon—had done a world of good to boot.

  I told Gruin about my plans, and he just burst out laughing. For ages. I didn’t bother confiding in him more after that, just went off to put my name down for the tournament.

  Apparently, things were done a bit differently here. With only thirty two slots, and nowhere near so many participants, all the fencers who wanted to take part had to prove themselves first. I was stood before a bunch of grumpy old fucks and told to ‘show them what I could do’. Well, I didn’t have an idea of what that meant anymore than you probably do. I just started swinging.

  My sword really was a good one, and my skill with it had made modest but consistent improvements ever since I’d started needing to constantly use it to avoid dying. Within a single minute I’d already cut apart the air in over fifty places, and my arms were growing stronger, not weaker, as the warmth of exertion seeped into my muscles and coaxed them out of hibernation. Mail weighing me down or not, I barely hesitated to circle the room with blurring footwork and hack one way and the other. After a while, I saw, even the miserable fucks tasked with surveying my performance were taking note.

  “I do spar, you know,” I told them, finding myself annoyed at their indifference still. “It’s hard to show that off, without an opponent.”

  One of the men on the side got an evil look on his face, and clapped. Quite promptly a man I recognised to be a trained halberdier walked in.

  Officially speaking, though there was no standing army, every man of nobility was expected to maintain his own household guard to serve as law enforcement and military both over his smaller territory. I could tell this was one of the Dukes’ by the make of his uniform and the sigil he wore. A heavy steel breastplate covered his torso, complete with thick pauldrons and bracers protecting the arms. He had similar plating about the lower body, and if the entire set didn’t quite add up to a full suit of gothic plate it was boasting precious more in the way of openings.

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  His weapon was what perturbed me, though. A trained halberdier he was, and a proper halberd he carried. This looked blunted at least but with the bloody size of the thing that wouldn’t matter much. Feel a three pound chunk of steel smack into your skull and tell me how safe the bluntness makes it.

  Still, I had asked for this myself and could hardly back out now. Besides, if I did well against this thug then it’d be all the more chance for me to enter the contest.

  “Come on then,” I coaxed, breathing hard so he’d think I was both afraid and more tired than I was.

  He came on, and I waited until he was just one pace from range before lunging.

  It must’ve surprised him, because he did nothing to stop my attack before I was already within the length of his weapon. He adjusted grip quickly and sent the haft of his halberd out as a barrier, blocking my steel where it smacked against the wood and took a neat chunk out. Quick as anything his weapon’s butt was twisted around to lash for my head, and I barely sidestepped in time to make it a glancing blow.

  The road must’ve toughened me, because I didn’t even feel it and didn’t even delay. My sword came around to smack his head with the flat of it. The halberdier’s helmet blocked the worst of it, but I could still hear the metal vibrating and singing as my sword came back into a defensive grip. He was dazed, disoriented, so I pressed my advantage and booted him hard in the belly.

  Like everything else on him, that was protected by a thick breastplate. My heel felt like I’d just tried splitting a boulder with it. Other than that, though, it did its work. The man stumbled back, and another swift smack to the head with my weapon succeeded in taking the legs out from under him. He fell hard, and I stepped forth to aim my blade down at his exposed face. The instant steel came to within an inch of skin, he froze. Everything, it seemed, froze. I paused, soaked in what had just happened, and looked to the men in charge of the tournament.

  They were staring at me, disbelieving I thought.

  “You…How did you do that?” one of them gasped.

  “A Thaumaturge are you?” another accused.

  I dealt with the angrier one first, seeing an obvious priority in the idea that I might get accused of cheating in a noble’s tourney. My neck was not well suited to a hangman’s noose, I thought.

  “No my Lord,” I replied with my eyes lower, “just skilled with my weapon.”

  To tell the truth, I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened myself. I’d felt better ever since recovering from the darkthings, faster and stronger. I’d assumed that was just the feeling of a body no longer racked by wounds. Now, though, I was starting to suspect there was more afoot. Nothing magical of course, but maybe my training and experience was doing a lot more good than I’d thought.

  After all, how many men could trounce an armoured halberdier with a bloody sword?

  Everything that happened next did so in sort of a blur, but I was, fortunately, not hanged. That was something. What did happen though was that I got shunted through a large number of buildings; from the shoddy-ish entry hall I’d put my name down in, to a finer looking, more official office before finally being marched to a tower near the city’s edge.

  It was only as I actually climbed its stairs, though, that I realised, with dawning horror, just what sort of tower this was. I wasn’t going to meet a politician, noble or merchant. I was heading for a Thaumaturge.

  Now at that point I’d only actually met one Thaumaturge, Morlo the mad bastard who blew things up while giggling and constantly insulted me. This was, believe it or not, a significantly more positive experience than I have with them at my current age in writing this account. Thaumaturges are some of the most deranged, reckless and sexually perverse arseholes you’re ever likely to meet, and they’re not nearly as rare as people living in the sticks are likely to think. Meaning that they actually are everyone’s problem.

  I learned most of that first-hand today as I was bundled up to speak with this one.

  The Thaumaturge’s office, or perhaps he preferred the word laboratory, was a pointlessly expansive construction of sheer stone and rounded edges. I saw flasks boiling and tinctures smoking across every surface, the air within smelled faintly of sulphur, and I got the inexplicable impression I was being watched as I stepped inside. Probably, I was.

  Now I will say that the majority of these features probably didn’t actually serve a function, other than to impress stupid and gullible guests who had no idea what a Thaumaturge was like. I shivered, wondering what sort of dark and powerful magics I’d walked in on.

  Had this Thaumaturge known what he was doing, he’d have waited a bit. Let my anxiety amp itself up. Instead he popped out near-instantly and stuck his nose in my face. A tall man, he was not quite so old nor skinny as I’d have expected. He looked almost like a giant goblin, with much of his weight distributed into a swollen belly, and saggy, liver-spotted skin did little to put me at ease in his presence.

  “So you’re the mystery lad?” he barked, aiming the question at me as if he expected it to somehow get him an answer.

  “Mystery lad?” I croaked, like an idiot. Well maybe my ignorance was forgivable this time.

  “Hold still,” the Thaumaturge snapped, then planted a hand on my forehead before I could even decide whether I would or not. The air hummed with power unleashed and I felt a shock run through my body as the old man seemed to just…spasm in front of me.

  I passed out quickly, and when I came to the Thaumaturge was leaning against a desk, staring at me and trembling.

  “What the fuck are you!?” he croaked, eyes wide with…fear.

  Fear.

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