Creusus's Arc

Chapter 1 of 21

Creusus set his bare hand on the registration desk and said his name once. Brogan Ironquill did not look up. He was sorting entries, and his back hurt, and he had no patience for a man who arrived without a sword, without armor, and without a sponsor's page pinned to his form. "No blade," Creusus said. "No mail. Just me." Brogan lifted his eyes then, took in the shaved head, the wrapped knuckles, the bare chest under an open coat, and grunted. "Fools die faster," he said. "Fee's the same. Sign." Creusus signed. He meant to win the grand tournament of Embermere with his fists, and he had come to the desk to make that promise binding. The first bout came before the sun was high. His opponent was a squire in dented plate, a boy barely old enough to grow stubble, drawn against him by lot. The boy's sword was too long for his arm. That was the problem Creusus had carried since the training post: he could not measure a swung blade by eye. He knew the length of a fist. He did not know the length of steel in motion. One misread step in the ring meant a cut he would never see coming. So he did not step. He stayed close. Each time the squire swung, Creusus drove the flat aside with the heel of his wrapped hand, taking the shock on bone and cloth. The boy's breathing changed. His swings got faster, then wilder, then wrong. Something behind his eyes lit up, a shine that did not belong on a squire's face. Creusus felt the air around the boy grow tight, the way a rope grows tight before it snaps. He did not wait to learn what it meant. He slapped the blade wide, and the sword flew from the squire's grip and skidded across the sand. Creusus stepped in and threw a single straight punch to the jaw. It landed clean. The squire's head snapped back. In the same instant a wave hit Creusus in the chest and lifted him off his feet. He flew backward and struck the sand hard. When he looked up, the boy was gone. Not fallen. Gone. The armor was gone with him. The sword lay alone on the ground, and the crowd in the stone tiers had stopped making noise. Creusus pushed to his knees. His knuckles were bleeding through the wraps. He had won the match. He had also learned, in one punch, that the ring held things his fists were not built for, and that the next opponent might not vanish so kindly.