coming and took a step back, swinging hard. Brys sidestepped the brunt of the blow, bringing his forearm up fast to deflect what he couldn’t dodge. The cudgel landed hard, eliciting a meaty smack and a grunt of pain, but he’d lived through worse and now he was close enough to grab the man.
The cudgel-wielder tried to block him with the iron-capped stick, but Brys slipped an arm past it and around the man’s neck. His opponent jabbed clumsily at him with the end of the stick, but he was too close to inflict any real damage. Keeping his arm locked around the stick-wielder’s neck, Brys drove his right fist into the man’s abdomen again and again, pounding him with short sharp hooks. Soon the man was sagging in his grip, gasping for breath. One last strike to the small ribs sent him to the ground.
At the same instant a searing pain scraped along his flank. Brys swore, glanced back, and saw that Renshil had gotten up. A second knife shook in his off hand, wet with blood; the gambler swiped it in wild, drunken arcs, too unsteady to follow up on his momentary advantage.
Brys was briefly impressed. He hadn’t expected Renshil to be so tenacious. Not that it’d help him. Dodging the gambler’s wild flailings was comically easy. A solid punch to the chin, and he was back down again. A couple of kicks kept him there. The first blow was enough, really, but Brys felt he owed the man a little more in return for the shallow cut Renshil had laid open on his flank.
Wiping sweat and mud from his brow, Brys took stock of the situation. He’d been careless twice, and would be dead if these two weren’t such amateurs, but it hadn’t gone badly despite that. Renshil slumped against the wall, groping at the gaps of his missing teeth with bloody fingers and sobbing. The other man was unconscious, but likely not for long.
He couldn’t manage two captives, especially not while wounded. The man with the cudgel hadn’t flinched from nearly killing Renshil, and Brys saw no reason to second-guess his judgment. If a man’s own friends couldn’t be bothered to keep him alive, who was he to contradict them?
“Should’ve taken your losses.” He grabbed Renshil’s hair, yanked his head back, and cut the man’s throat with the knife Brys had taken from him earlier. The blade was duller than he’d thought, but it got the job done in the end.
Brys picked up the cudgel and tucked it into his belt, then hoisted the semiconscious man back to his feet and marched him out of the alley. The fight had been fairly noisy, and Tarne Crossing was law-abiding enough that the guard might take an interest in disturbances. He could probably talk his way out of serious trouble, if he had to—being a knight carried all sorts of privileges when it came to abusing lowborn scum—but it was better not to be noticed. His immediate plans weren’t terribly chivalrous.
Limping from the blow to his leg, Brys half-led and half-dragged his prisoner to a cluster of dilapidated houses leaning against each other near the town wall. Once he felt reasonably secluded, he used the knife to rip open the seams of his captive’s shirt.
His shoulders were scarred and hairy but bore no brands. Not a Baozite. Brys felt a flicker of disappointment but no surprise; he was never that lucky.
All the ironlords were branded with the Iron Crown if they survived the breaking pits to become soldiers. It sealed their allegiance to their savage god, and it marked them as among the finest warriors in Ithelas: men to be feared.
Hated, too. No one wanted to face them massed on the battlefield, but a single soldier, far from Ang’arta, could expect a swift demise—if he was lucky. The ironlords seldom deserted; marked as they were, they had nowhere else to go. There was no mercy for a Baozite caught out alone, least of all from Brys Tarnell.
This man, however, was just a common footpad. Brys slapped the would-be robber’s cheeks. “Wake up.”
“Whu—?”
Brys held the dented knife up, letting the blade gleam in the moonlight. He brought it so close to his captive’s nose that the man went cross-eyed watching it. “Bad move trying to ambush me back there. Not smart. I can only imagine what lies Renshil must have told to lure you into that stupidity. Luckily, I’m in a generous mood today. I’m giving you the chance