There are lots of things I’ve done that were objectively scarier than repeatedly punching that oreling in the face, but by fuck is it hard to think of any now. It wasn’t just that he was seemingly unhurt—I really had never learned how to throw a proper swing—it was that he seemed to somehow become visibly angrier after every blow. When he got his hands on me again, I knew, I would not be escaping his grasp as I did before.

  So that was a good incentive to keep circling, and I soon found myself falling into a rhythm. My chaotic fights recently had almost made me forget this, but controlling space really is what a fight between two men—and only two—comes down to. In this case, combined with the length of my own arms, it meant that I had the leisure of striking without being struck. And if I’d never trained in mud for my fancy fencing tourneys, I’d fought on soggy ground during them often enough that even the sludgy streets didn’t throw me off too much. Reflexes took over soon, all the conscious deliberation falling out of combat and leaving everything familiar, reliable, safe.

  Except that I wasn’t winning with a touch here, nor, it seemed, was I winning with two dozen.

  Slowly, I tired. And the Grynkori didn’t. His arms and legs seemed to be the limbs of some great clockwork, punching and shoving and driving tirelessly where mine burned with denser packed acid by the second. I slowed, he didn’t. He neared and my blows became more frantic, more desperate, more ineffective. Finally he was on me again, arms snaking around my waist as he lifted me from my feet and started squeezing.

  Black spots danced in my vision as I felt the terrible sensation of my own bones straining, threatening to break. How many seconds did I have before my ribs cracked and fell inwards? Three? Ten? Less? I elbowed the Grynkori, let the heavy bone of my joint crack across his face time and time again. I had a clear shot at it, and any normal man would’ve been dropped instantly by the hits.

  Once more, I was reminded I wasn’t fighting any sort of man at all. Gruin was painless and woundless, lips tight and face tighter with effort as he focused on crushing me. I couldn’t breathe, found it harder by the second to move, I was going to lose.

  No.

  Fuck that, I wasn’t losing another fight. Not with the ones I’d crawled out of.

  “Have it then, you little stunted fuck!” my elbow came down harder than it had yet, a sledgehammer made of bone that crunched right down between the oreling’s eyes. I actually worried I’d killed him for a moment, but he was just sent stumbling instead. His grip, though, broke all the same. I landed, almost fell, and righted myself just in time to thump Gruin in his mouth as he recovered.

  Both of us stumbled back at that, and I was gratified to see the Grynkori finally looking hurt. Somewhat. Blood was welling in one corner of his mouth where I’d finally split that leathery skin, and a few bruises were starting to darken elsewhere on his face. He was still standing, though, after literally scores of hits to the head. Not human. Not remotely human, maybe a wall that could walk and talk.

  My hands hurt, tortured by the fighting, and now the sides of my torso were joining in those pained protests as the echo of Gruin’s crushing grasp still lingered about them. I steeled myself against it, barely.

  Before one or both of us could fall back in and continue the fighting, though, a new sound reached us, jerking our heads around to watch as a group of men approached. The one nearest us, the leader I thought, had a big smirk across his face which I imagined was very much related to the three others he had backing him up from behind.

  “Sorry boys, are we interrupting?” He seemed friendly enough, certainly smiled like he meant something friendly, but there was something off about the man that left me taking a step back. Only then did I spot more men—two more—approaching from behind us as well. Boxing us in.

  “Not at all, we were just going.” I flashed a smile, and the lead man answered it as Gruin slowly drew his hammer and I my sword.

  “That’s a nice weapon there,” the man nodded towards my blade, “looks expensive. Mind if I take a look at it for a second?”

  I was so very tempted to say yes. There were six of them and two of us, we were tired and they weren’t. If there was one advantage to be found here it was that the people of Rogrid seemed rather short and withered compared to the country folk I’d grown up around, and especially the taller merchant and noble classes I often mingled with. None of them, I imagined, had one tenth my training or schooling, and of course a sword of my quality was quite the weapon to be bringing against whatever improvised tools they carried.

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  All well and good to tally it all up, except there were six of them. Fighting clumsy half-rotted shamblers was one thing, I didn’t want to risk my life outnumbered three-to-one against fellow humans, not with such a wide space around us. I opened my mouth to hand the sword over and, hopefully, walk away with my life.

  Gruin ruined that by screaming like some sort of rabid animal, waving his hammer overhead in an arc that almost smashed my own skull in, and sprinting right for the enemy. They were a good ten yards away, too far for him of all people to clear fast, but the sheer surprise his madness inspired seemed to delay them for long seconds. He was engaging by the time any of them moved to respond.

  Not quite fast enough for his opening hammer-blow to miss, however. I actually winced as the metal head crunched right into the leader’s side and just sort of folded his ribcage completely inwards. It was like watching a dirt mound collapse, and I felt sick seeing the blood burst from behind his lips.

  Not for long though, because I was moving too. There were two men behind me, I’d fought enough times now to know that a strike at your back was always the most dangerous one you could take. Unfortunately for me, I’d been just as slowed by Gruin’s madness as everyone else, and had barely finished turning before the men began their sprint for me. Both at once.

  As I might have hoped, neither one had a weapon half the equal of mine. Long knives, or cleavers, dirty and poorly kept. Then again, sharp enough to kill. And there were two of them against the one of me. Better to have numbers than a shiny sword, ten times out of ten. But we played the cards we were dealt. My shiny sword flicked out for the face of the first man, deft as I could make it.

  Most folks flinch when a big piece of sharp metal flies at their eyes so fast, takes practice not to. This man hadn’t done that practice, and his charge turned into a half-stumbling retreat as his ally continued onwards. A clumsy blow came for me at that, but didn’t get anywhere close to landing.

  You’ll hear these amazing stories of singular heroes defeating several enemies by themselves, and most are sceptical. They shouldn’t be. Several amateurs is nothing. I didn’t know that at the time, but I learned it well myself in that very fight. My next move alone showed it. I feinted in one of the clumsier and more obvious ways I had in years, nerves getting the better of me. He fell for it anyway, and my sword opened up a gash along his forearm. The man stumbled back while the other stumbled forth, pushing me deeper still into a defensive retreat.

  My sword threw itself around like some mad attack dog, and I half-expected to see sparks flying up where steel rang off the clumsy metal of my enemies’ weapons. Iron flakes were scraped clean as guards broke and hits were parried, but bit by bit both of them closed in.

  So I decided to let them close in a bit faster, to feign more tiredness and sluggishness than I felt. One of them fell for the trick quickly, moving to finish me and making a stupid ‘o’ face as my sword ran itself clean through his guts. I freed the weapon with a twist and a drag, leaving him to fall convulsing into the mud, then rounded on the last one.

  He didn’t last nearly as long without his ally, all of two hits. Impressive, I suppose, for someone without any sort of formal training himself. But not impressive enough. The cleaver was smacked away and my edged steel ended up resting upon the big veins of his neck. The man dropped down to his knees instantly, hands held high and tears welling in his eyes. He was so scared so quickly that it actually gave me a moment of pause, stunning me through sheer incongruity.

  “I’m sorry,” the man croaked, “please—”

  I stabbed him anyway, because the bastard had run up behind me with a meat cleaver expecting to kill a man and now had the audacity to cry himself. I was still scared of course, and a bit of his blood spurted into my face, ran down my cheek, stained my teeth. That was when I turned to the others.

  Probably, I made quite a frightening sight. Well over six feet tall, grinning like a madman, covered in blood and with two men dying at my feet from my own violence. But none of it seemed to register beside the Grynkori. He was a blur of motion, and I saw now that everything bad about his anatomy at distance was deadly great in short motions. His small arms, squat and thick, scarcely had any space at all to cover when swinging, and so each of his blows crossed the distance far faster than any human. The bulk of him, combined with the inherent closeness of his grip, let him handle heavy weaponry as if it had no weight at all.

  And, of course, that Grynkorian toughness was getting more than its share of use. Half a dozen gashes littered Gruin’s body where metal had found skin, but he didn’t seem to be bleeding half so much as a human would have upon receiving such wounds. Like his very flesh was armour.

  But he was still fighting a three-on-one now, with only one of his four enemies down, and whatever surprise I’d enjoyed early on by taking my attackers off guard through skill, he didn’t. I saw Gruin backing up as he defended himself with clumsy blocks and hastened parries, spending long seconds on nothing but defense. I stared, mind working slow. Could I run?

  Run and do what? My best bet, long-term, remained in sticking with this mad Grynkori. With no shortage of reluctance, I roared and threw myself into the fighting to help him out.

  It was not, fortunately, much of a fight anymore. Between Gruin and I, three poorly-armed men was no real contest at all. It took us less than ten seconds to leave them all disarmed, wounded or dead, and we didn’t stick around to get any last comments from the fuckers before we started to take our leave.

  Or rather, Gruin didn’t. He didn’t grab me this time, but did succeed in dragging me along behind him through sheer weight of urgency. It was with only mild satisfaction that I saw how much he still struggled to keep pace with my modestly exerted jogs.

  “Best not be around when the guard shows up,” he grunted between wheezing breaths.

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