The Blade Itself

“Huh. Looks more like a labourer than a swordsman to me.”

“Maybe, but looks can lie.” The sound of the crowd was slowly fading, and the nervy chatter within the room subsided along with it. West raised his eyebrows. “The King’s address,” he whispered.

“My friends! My countrymen! My fellow citizens of the Union!” came a ringing voice, clearly audible even through the heavy doors.

“Hoff,” snorted West. “Even here he takes the King’s place. Why doesn’t he just put the crown on and have done with it?”

“One month ago today,” came the far-off bellow of the Lord Chamberlain, “fellows of mine on the Closed Council put forward the question… should there be a Contest this year?” Boos and shouts of wild disapproval were heard from the crowd. “A fair question!” cried Hoff, “for we are at war! A deadly struggle in the North! The very liberties which we hold so dear, the very freedoms which make us the envy of the world, our very way of life, stand threatened by the savage!”

A clerk began making his way around the room, separating the contestants from their families, their trainers, their friends. “Good luck,” said West, clapping Jezal on the shoulder, “I’ll see you out there.” Jezal’s mouth was dry, and he could only nod.

“And these were brave men who asked the question!” Boomed out Hoffs voice from beyond the doors. “Wise men! Patriots all! My stalwart colleagues on the Closed Council! I understood why they might think, there should be no Contest this year!” There was a long pause. “But I said to them, no!”

An eruption of manic cheering. “No! No!” screamed the crowd. Jezal was ushered into line along with the other contestants, two abreast, eight pairs. He fussed with his steels as the Lord Chamberlain droned on, though he’d checked them twenty times already.

“No, I said to them! Should we allow these barbarians, these animals of the frozen North, to tread upon our way of life? Should we allow this beacon of freedom amidst the darkness of the world to be extinguished? No, I said to them! Our liberty is not for sale at any price! On this, my friends, my countrymen, my fellow citizens of the Union, on this you may depend… we will win this war!”

Another great ocean swell of approval. Jezal swallowed, glanced nervously around. Bremer dan Gorst was standing there beside him. The big bastard had the temerity to wink, grinning as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Damn idiot,” whispered Jezal, but he took care that his lips didn’t move.

“And so, my friends, and so,” came Hoff’s final cries, “what finer occasion could there be than when we stand upon the very brink of peril? To celebrate the skill, the strength, the prowess, of some of our nation’s bravest sons! My fellow citizens, my countrymen of the Union, I give you your contestants!”

The doors were heaved open and the roar of the crowd beyond rushed into the hall and made the rafters ring: suddenly, deafeningly loud. The front pair of swordsmen began to stride out through the bright archway, then the next pair, then the next. Jezal was sure he would freeze, motionless and staring like a rabbit, but when his turn came his feet stepped off manfully next to Gorst’s, the heels of his highly polished boots clicking across the tiled floor and through the high doorway.

The Square of Marshals was transformed. All around, great banks of seating had been erected, stretching back, and back, and up, and up on all sides, spilling over with a boiling multitude. The contestants filed down a deep valley between the towering stands towards the centre of this great arena, the beams, and struts, and tree-trunk supports like a shadowy forest on either side. Directly before them, seeming very far away, the fencing circle had been laid, a little ring of dry yellow grass in the midst of a sea of faces.

Down near the front Jezal could make out the features of the rich and noble. Dressed in their best, shading their eyes from the bright sun, on the whole fashionably disinterested in the spectacle before them. Further back, higher up, the figures became less distinct, the clothes less fine. The vast majority of the crowd were mere blobs and specks of colour, crammed in around the distant edge of the dizzying bowl, but the commoners made up for their distance with their excitement: cheering, shouting, standing up on their toes and waving their arms in the air. Above them, the tops of the very highest buildings around the square peered over, walls and roofs sticking up like islands in the ocean, the windows and parapets crammed with minuscule onlookers.