One finds it difficult, even with my repertoire, to imagine a sight more in need of a righteous charge than watching the city walls collapse.

Bodies littered the road between Lucius’ army and the mountain men, each pierced and felled by arrows. Lucius sat beneath the hasty post to which they had strung up the corpse of the negotiator, goading the men to him. The Cynizia commanders kept their temper and kept their orders firm, but the legion of the Black Keep obeyed Erdro alone. Without him, each was their own, and each burned inside to see their honorable diplomat so humiliated. Naturally, any who tried to cut off Lucius’ head perished.

My pupil was in truth happy to sit there and whittle away at their defenses one warrior at a time. Every fighter slain seemed to goad another, all while his own soldiers regained their strength.

Then the wall collapsed, and he knew that at least one of the three stigmata existed within their ranks.

“Men. The time for waiting is over. Your families are in there, at the mercy of these barbarians. Now we fight!” he roared.

There is always a question of motivation when it comes to asking men to run headlong into mortal danger. Tyrion used valor and expectation. That is fine for an advantageous fight. Lucius did not have an advantage of that sort, not after the voluntaries had already been whipped for Tyrion’s foolishness.

To protect others works much better.

While the bulk of Karekale’s men scrambled over broken brick and boulder, the thinnest of lines stood to keep the Puerto Faro garrison at bay. The Vassish war cry rose like a wave and crashed upon them. Shield to shield, a hammering as though by rocks. The weaker men were thrown back, knees buckled. Gaps striped the formation. In went the swords, in went the spears.

Beyond that shell of defense, the mountain men drove themselves against the hasty defenses of Rackvidd. Without so much as overturned carts to block the roads, the soldiers of Lord Raymi swelled around the breach in the wall and clashed. Most of them held, but not every road, street, and alley could be held. At least one collapsed, and through it streamed plunders, pillagers, thieves, rogues, scoundrels.

Into the city poured the worst of humanity.

Horns blared, sub-commanders screamed. They tried to rally reinforcements back from the charging mass. The two lines merged into one another, dissolving into a melee. Lucius fell victim to it as well, breaking through the middle by taking a spear through his shield arm. He cut that man down and tore the weapon out from his flesh.

It would heal.

Beyond the first line of the mountain men, he found himself surrounded. He also found the secret trick of Erdro Karekale; a pit mined out to a tunnel. He knew at once; a sapping tunnel. The wall had been undermined, and with a speed unthinkable to the defenders of Rackvidd.

Lucius’ retaliation had also come at unthinkable speed however, and he caught Erdro at the mouth of the tunnel. Still black with the subterranean mud, the lord of the Black Keep faltered in his march. Out came his sword. “Solhart!”

Sandalled feet pounding through the mud, over the blood and broken bodies. Lucius abandoned his shield, it would stop no blow from Karekale before it regenerated. He snatched up a spear from a fallen Giordanan. The tip twirled through the air while his sword cut through a man’s face to make a path between him and Erdro.

“He’s mine,” the lord of the Black Keep declared, shoving his second in command off to lead the attack on Rackvidd. He looked to the melee beyond and knew no help would come for either of them, though the victor may well find himself butchered. That put a grin on his face. It was a dragon’s savory sneer.

In the midst of open combat, a melee on all sides, to call something a duel sounds a folly. Despite this, what they had very nearly was a duel. When soldiers are spectators and the circle is protected not by agreement but by the raw pressure of wills, a true spectacle can be forged, as though the pressure were a blacksmith’s hammer.

Lucius had learned the way of ending a fight quickly, of striking a man down during that hesitation of doubt. Quite common that a foe will think to himself, “Perhaps we don’t have to do this, not really.” That vanishes after the first threat to his life. Killing the man in that first threat is what makes a good warrior.

It doesn’t work on other good warriors. Erdro Karekale was not such a prey.

He was injured however. Every movement tore at his unhealed chest. While his own doctors had stitched him up to a degree, packed him with salves and pain killing drugs(1), he was not a man whole. He contended with Lucius, hacking with his sword and dancing from the spear tip. The two of them trampled corpses and parried steel.

“Your city has fallen, Vassish!”

The spear slipped from the side of Erdro’s blade. The brute shoved forward, knocking Lucius away. My pupil retaliated, twisting and spinning his body to slash his sword across the Giordanan’s leg. He lost the spear in the process.

Aching arm. Weak fingers. Lucius growled. “It’s my name they will know tomorrow.”

Erdro bellowed laughter and took his oversized saber in both hands. He assaulted, a frenzy of steel clashes. He bludgeoned against Lucius with the sword, hammering into parries and guards and blocks till the boy’s arms went numb. With a roar, he struck with all his waning might. The edge didn’t reach Lucius, but his own hilt was smashed back into his face.

Nose and lip split with blood.

“I’ll send your head back to your king!”

Lucius spat. A hot squirt of blood from his mouth and into the raging face of Erdro Karekale. That made the gap. That cleaved the man’s mind from the fight for an instance. Lucius’ cut wasn’t clean. It was a twist of his blade to bring it beneath Erdro’s arm and he ripped it backwards. Like a saw, it cut from skin to bone and tore the tendon’s of Erdro’s tricep.

The lord of the Black Keep roared, blood gushing down his body. A dying dragon’s cry for help. The pressure of wills that kept the melee apart vanished. Soldiers swept in. Shoulder to shoulder with one another, mountain men next to Vassish, their eyes on the two leaders. Each thought of nothing but of the enemy leader’s head.

The tide of the battle for Rackvidd turned then, as he stood there on the brink of unconsciousness and waiting for his stigmata to put him back together. Sammy, the doctor, had to find him as the battle for Rackvidd progressed into the breach of the walls, and Lucius put to the test the boy’s claim that he was only a butcher on Sunsday. For years after, my pupil kept with him an arrow head ripped from his lungs, put there by one of the Giordanan’s. Called it “a gift that came very close to my heart.”

A singular image escaped that bloodbath, and became immortalized in paint by the future artist Leandro Bauer, who ultimately lost a leg but not his life fighting for Lucius. Naturally, I had some hand in the growth of Leandro’s fame, for it suited our purposes well, but I by no means wish to diminish the technical prowess possessed by Leandro. Sadly, the original painting can no longer be publicly viewed, as it has transferred to a private collection whose location I won’t divulge. Copies are available in most large cities, and have elicited more than one grand heist, both before and after my pupil’s death.

At the time of creation, the original was sent directly to King Arandall, to curry favor for himself, and for Lucius who in effect, saved Leandro’s life. It worked on both accounts.

As depicted, Lucius stood, one foot on the felled corpse of Erdro Karekale(2). Helm lost. Armor pierced by two spears. Blood dripped from his limp arms and stained his blond hair. He did not have the slump of death to him. He stood with head turned to Rackvidd as his soldiers forced away the Cynizia rogues. The sun had just begun to set beyond him, casting darkness across the pile of slain foes.

Lord Felix von Raymi saw this sight as well, but he from atop the remnants of the city wall. He had fought his way up and cut through the mountain men to survey the extent of the risk. By way of Erdro’s gleaming gold, he saw that Lucius had defeated the enemy commander and struck the head from the snake.

Alcohol was the primary painkiller available to Erdro, which even the most casual historian would surmise contributed to the man’s defeat. This in no way lessens Lucius’ victory, for he had been the cause of the wound. It took me nearly a month to recover the corpse of Erdro Karekale. I normally have a great many means of bribery and theft to dig my fingers into such a curious stigmata, that allowed him to treat stone like clay. He had dug direct through the foundation of Rackvidd thanks to this miraculous power. He had used it to collapse the coastal road behind his troops as well. Oh, the trickery I could have done with such a pawn. The artificial creation of stigmata was still beyond me at the time however. Erdro’s death served little more than furthering my research notes. That, and a rock for Lucius’ fame to stand upon.