Gruin started the fight by throwing his tankard, and throwing it hard. It was a big thing, heavy and thick, made of tough pewter. It dented visibly on impact with the first man’s head, knocking him bodily to the floor and emptying its remaining suds to mingle with his blood.

  Violence exploded from that incident like a lit powder keg, and most everyone responded differently. Devyne had by far the worst reaction, freezing up in disbelief and stunned uncomprehension as he clearly failed to grasp what was truly happening or what it meant for him. I, by now, was rather more practical.

  Leaping to my feet, I whipped the stool up into a two-handed grip from underneath me and readied it like a club…then stumbled, leaning precipitously as the weight unbalanced my already drink-twisted posture and sent me tumbling over entirely. I hit the ground, which was fortunately yielding planks instead of hard stone or packed earth.

  By the time I’d righted myself and sat up, one of the arseholes was already standing over me with his own stool raised. I panicked at that, and lashed my foot out more on reflex than as part of any tactic or measured attempt at downing him. Luck, or perhaps just his own drunkenness, was on my side however. I knocked one ankle right out from under him and the idiot managed to drop his own weapon down onto his head when he fell. That gave me a few moments to groan, roll over, get halfway up to my feet and then projectile vomit everything in my guts out for about two feet in all directions.

  For a few moments, it was horrible. Then it was brilliant. I had in all likelihood just regurgitated enough ‘poison’ to kill a small child, and besides promising myself that I would never indulge in so much again, I suddenly felt a great deal less impaired than I had been.

  I actually managed to stand up, for one.

  Gruin was laying into the other men with all the fury of…Gruin, but he was very drunk, despite his physiology, and still fighting two at once. It seemed his every other step was a stumble, and simply punching was leaving him at risk of toppling over just as I had.

  On the other hand, he never went down. Something about his squatness, combined with his shortness, meant that however top-heavy a Grynkori was compared to human bodies, they had an uncanny stability that left his drunken staggering more of a nuisance than a danger. Fall down and even a drunkard could stomp you to death, no matter how tough you are. But he didn’t fall.

  Those big fists of his went around like a windmill, and I soon decided to focus more on my own enemy. I was just in time to kick him hard across the face as he started to stand up, which nearly sent me down again but just about didn’t. It did send him down.

  With Devyne still panicking like the useless fucker he was, and the man downed by Gruin’s tankard now at risk of getting up and joining the melee, I hurried in keeping my opponent down with a few more kicks to his belly and back.

  I don’t think I broke anything, I’ve broken plenty of bones since then and don’t recall feeling the telltale crunch then, but I was drunk enough that I might’ve just missed it if I had. At the time, feeling guilt for such a thing was well beyond me. I just got stuck into the tankard-struck man as he began to climb back up again.

  Unfortunately, this one was already on his feet by the time I reached him. He seemed a good deal less drunk than I was, too, even with the explosive rush of a fight rapidly searing all the booze from my blood. I was too slow to evade his first punch and felt it connect cleanly with my cheek.

  Rolling with the blows you take is so great a part of withstanding any fight, and nothing will remind you of that fact more than taking one you’re not ready for. Both my legs just turned off as the fist crunched into my face and tipped me back, eyes blurring and thoughts dashing. Hands scrambling out, I was able to snag my enemy by his jerkin and bring him down with me—sometimes it paid to be big.

  Now, though, I was simply stuck in a fight on the floor, and I was a lot dizzier than I’d been seconds earlier. We rolled around, cursing and hissing and snarling as both of us wrestled for the superior position even while drink-bleary thoughts struggled to work out what it even was. Eventually I ended up settling on top, and luck would have it that that was the ideal placement for an advantage in such a contest. I started raining fists down on my enemy, each blow more disoriented and clumsy than the last, but sheer weight and leverage left them all effective enough.

  It was around the time a particularly heavy impact bounced the poor sod’s head off floorboards beneath us that he stopped struggling so much. I punched him properly after that, or as properly as I was able. A big thrusting blow that left my knuckles throbbing and probably had his jaw hurting a good deal more, but had me confident that there’d be no more fight from him.

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  That only left Gruin’s bout, now, and as I got to my feet I saw that it…could certainly have been going better than it was.

  He hadn’t lost, at least. Not yet. Two on one was still a big ask for any man, but Gruin was weathering his own defeat and dragging it out through sheer resilience. I knew there were limits to even him, though, especially wounded as he still was, and sure enough he was buckling under the sustained pressure.

  I was too drunk for my usual cowardice, and heroically stumbled in to help my ally out by punching one of the men attacking him in the back of his head. He fell down into a rather clumsy, and entirely accidental, headbutt against Gruin’s head.

  My luck was at its sourest then, because the fucking Grynkori was knocked right out by that of all things. That left me and the last drunken arsehole attacking us, alone. He was as big as me, and suddenly seemed rather more sober.

  He did not waste any time in testing his perceived advantage.

  When at last I stumbled out of that pub with Gruin leaning against me for support and Devyne trying not to meet my eye, I was in a rather worse mood than before. Devyne, obviously, took the brunt of this displeasure, as Gruin was both too unconscious and too strong for me to vent such emotions upon him. I occupied myself for most of the stumble back by imagining all the nasty ways I’d get my revenge.

  The moment I was back, though, sleep took me.

  I didn’t dream that night, or not that I can remember at least. Funnily enough my memory was worse back then than it is now, because…well, you’ll find out why eventually if you haven’t already. Being an epic Hero has more than just the obvious consequences.

  Which isn’t to say that the obvious consequences aren’t miserable, all the same. I woke up with a headache and, frankly, an everything-else-ache too. My body seemed to remember the abuse I’d put it through the night before, and it was complaining with every nerve it could find. I groaned, rolled around in my bed and tried to find a position that banished the misery.

  I did not manage to, so in the end pain and discomfort dragged me out of my bed and into the main living space of our rooms. Gruin was already up, I had long come to suspect that Grynkori needed less sleep than humans, while Devyne was apparently still in his own quarters.

  “Did we fight a dragon last night?” Gruin asked me as I took a seat and, rather fortunately, found some buttered toast and bacon already set out waiting for me.

  “What?” I barely even found the will to answer his question, having little concern for anything other than food and my own headache.

  “In that pub last night,” the Grynkori pressed, “a dragon? Did we fight one?”

  “...No? Just a bunch of drunken…tits, I think.”

  He seemed disappointed at that, which I suppose actually was fair enough given that whatever draconic combat he thought had happened would have been past tense.

  “We did beat those drunken tits up though, right?”

  My back twinged. The way I reckoned, they’d done about as much beating as we had.

  “Who cares,” I grunted.

  Fortunately my match on that day was not until quite late into the evening, so we had a good long while to recover and clear our heads. More fortunately still, my uncanny powers of recovery were working just as they always had. Within another hour I felt the throb in my temples noticeably diminished, and no longer found myself driven to wrathful slurring at the very notion of getting up and walking about.

  That was still not fighting condition, of course, but I was willing to wait and see how I fared with more time before drawing any fatalistic conclusions. This waiting period was interrupted only by a knock upon our door.

  Gruin and I had both acquired a rather particular response to such unexpected things, and it was far from a benign one. By the time we’d both aborted our reflexive moves to arm ourselves and ready for combat, the knocking was ringing out all over.

  I had to answer, of course. It could have been important. Devyne wasn’t the one knocking, as I’d suspected, but neither was it anyone else I recognised. A young, badly-dressed boy who looked altogether nervous in my presence and, at least as far as I could tell, was not armed.

  That put me at ease, somewhat. It did not seem to do that for Gruin.

  “What do you want?” I snapped, annoyed to have been worried by something so…inconsequential. It was rather satisfying to see how the poor sod stuck speaking with me scrambled at the sight of my displeasure, and I soaked the sight up good and proper as he tried to reply.

  “Adept Wyrickai requests your presence in his laboratory, sir,” the boy babbled. I suddenly found him a great deal less amusing, for he’d just dropped the name of that bloody Thaumaturge I’d been shoved off to see earlier. I didn’t know what the man might want from me, and the thought of finding out was far from pleasant.

  “Requests, or demands?” I asked him cautiously.

  The look on his face was answer enough.

  “I say sod the bastard, if he wants to haul you off he can bloody well fight for it himself, eh?!” Gruin’s violent enthusiasm was far from reassuring, as memories of Morlo’s performance against those undead swam back into the forefront of my mind.

  “I’ll take that into consideration,” I replied, as diplomatically as I could manage. I certainly wouldn’t be considering a fight with someone who could make the fucking sky attack me, but I also didn’t want Gruin to get it into his head that I was in some way cowardly or in need of help finding my courage. Best to just get away from him so I could make my own decision.

  “Lead the way,” I ordered the boy, “I’ll see to this myself.” The idiot scrambled away and I strode after him, doing my best to look less hungover than I was and, to my relief, finding that Gruin was content to watch me go alone. The moment we were out of sight, I started panicking.

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