David Coe - The Horsemen's Gambit

First blood, the rules said. Beyond that, they didn't specify. A nick of the skin, the severing of a limb, a fatal strike to the breast; any of these would do. First blood. That was all a warrior needed to win.

Every person understood how Qalsyn's Harvest Tournament worked. From the youngest child, dreaming of the day when she might step into the ring and bow to His Lordship, to the oldest man, his memory of that first bow to the lord governor a fading memory, they all knew. A battle could turn with a single thrust, be it the desperate last lunge of a weary guard or the methodical advance of a skilled swordsman. The ring, it was said, was as unforgiving as steel, as merciless as the Growing sun. One mistake, one momentary lapse of concentration. First blood.

Even as she circled her opponent, watching for his next assault, Tirnya was conscious of the spectators shouting and stamping all around the arena. She had watched enough matches as a child to understand the rituals of those in the boxes: the wagers, the exchange of coin at the end of each match, the constant shifting of fortune among men and women hoping to profit from each new wound. But while the spectators made sport of the contests, there could be no doubt: the tournament was a matter deadly serious to all who watched.

And yet, the earnestness of those in the boxes was nothing compared with the gravity of those in the ring. Each contest began the same way. The two combatants entered through the doors at opposite sides of the ring, walked to the center, and turned to face His Lordship, who sat in the main box. Each warrior bowed to the lord governor, the flat of his or her blade pressed to the forehead in salute. Then they bowed to each other. And then they began to fight.

Tirnya had fought dozens of battles in the ring, and had watched more than she could count. Some began and ended with a single devastating assault or in a blindingly quick frenzy of metal and flesh and the obligatory spilling of blood. Other matches began slowly, as this one had, the warriors turning slow circles, eyeing each other, looking for any advantage. Attacks in such contests came in quick bursts; swords dancing suddenly, fitfully, bright blurs in the sunlight, chiming like sanctuary bells each time they clashed, whistling dully as they carved through air.

Standard Qalsyn army blades and Aelean bastard swords; Tordjanni broad blades and the famed shillads of Naqbae; silver dirks and bodkins; curved Qosantian daggers and narrow-bladed knives concealed in a sleeve or a boot: Tirnya had faced all sorts of steel in the ring. She herself might use three or four different swords and as many short blades in the course of a single tournament. But every warrior knew that the weapon itself meant nothing; it was the hand wielding the blade that mattered. There was a saying that was heard quite often this time of year, both in the arena itself and in the chambers beneath, where the combatants awaited their turn. "You can arm a fool with the finest Aelean steel, and at the end of the day he'll still end up bloodied."

Like all sayings of its sort, this one carried the weight of truth. Tirnya remembered a battle tournament from her tenth or eleventh year, when she still sat in the boxes with her mother and brothers, watching with the women and children and the men who had grown too old to fight. A warrior had appeared in the ring whom none could remember seeing before. His coat of mail, the only armor the combatants were allowed, was dull and fit poorly. The clothes he wore beneath the forged ringlets were tattered and travel-stained. And, most memorably, his sword was rusted and notched, a weapon barely adequate for a road brigand, much less someone who hoped to be the last man standing in Qalsyn's famed Harvest Tournament and take home the crystal blade and twenty gold sovereigns.

No one who saw him step into the ring for the first time thought the stranger would last more than a round or two.

"Even the Tordjanni army would turn away a man who looked like that," said one older gentleman who was sitting behind Tirnya and her family.

His companion agreed. "One round with a Qalsyn guard will send him back into the wilds, where he belongs."

But this unknown warrior surprised them all, defeating his first opponent with elegant ease. His swordwork was restrained and efficient, his winning strike a controlled blow to the neck that drew blood, but caused the vanquished man no serious injury.

"The first man was no one," the older man assured himself and his companion. "I'd never seen him before, either."

His companion might have nodded his agreement. Tirnya wasn't certain. She knew only that he said nothing.

When next the stranger entered the ring, it was to face a soldier from the Qalsyn army. Coaf Vantol wasn't the finest swordsman in His Lordship's force, but he was a good fighter, a big, strong, genial man, and a favorite among the city people. Surely the stranger would fall to Coaf. But no. With astonishing speed this man no one knew, this so-called warrior, who looked more like a troubadour desperate for coin than a fighter, had Coaf on his heels. In mere moments, the city's man was bleeding from a cut on his cheek. First blood; second victory. No one cheered, until at last His Lordship himself stood and began to clap his hands for the stranger. Slowly, the applause spread through the arena, growing louder and louder.

After that the man became the favored warrior in the tournament. And he didn't disappoint. Nine more times he stepped into the ring, and nine more times he raised his rusted blade in victory, bowing graciously, first to the central box and then to the rest. Even the old man began to cheer for him, cataloging in a loud voice the man's fine attributes as a fighter: his agile footwork, his skilled use of the long-handled dagger in his off hand, the fluid grace of his sword arm. One might have thought that the old man had instructed the stranger in swordplay, so extravagant was his praise.

Eventually the stranger did lose, to Tirnya's father, as it happened. Her father was a marshal in His Lordship's army, and one of the finest swordsmen in all of Stelpana. He was also well liked in many parts of the city; usually a victory for Jenoe Onjaef would have elicited a mighty roar. But on this day, the defeat of the stranger left the arena strangely quiet. The men and women in the boxes cheered for her father as he raised his blade, but even Tirnya could sense their disappointment. This once, they had been pulling not for Jenoe, but for the other man. Tirnya couldn't deny that even she had felt the briefest pang of regret at the stranger's loss.

Her father won the tournament that year, the last of his seven championships. He could have fought for several years more; there were some who said he could still fight in the ring to this day and compete for the crystal dagger. But his duties in His Lordship's army had begun to lie heavy on his shoulders and he had grown bored with the ring. Besides, a few years later Tirnya was ready to take her place in the tournament, and only one member of any family could enter the ring in a given year. Still, though that was Jenoe's last year as champion, forever after that tournament was remembered for Stri Balkett's appearance in Qalsyn. Stri had since become a captain in her father's battalion and one of the city's most renowned soldiers.