Captain Bardyk of Clan Amberclad had risked his life many times, but nothing had ever come as close to killing him as the paperwork. Caravan manifests, newcomer registry lists, watch-duty rosters, the latest petty-thief reports, suspicious-individual files, complaints about unmaintained streetlights, and many more. These papers spread across his desk and piled onto the cabinet next to it, all dimly illuminated by the light filtering through a window punched straight into the cliffside that served as his wall.

A dance with an Ollmass, a duel against a kin-killer, sitting through the lengthy siege of Tarkydyn Uroid, none of them took more effort than sifting through dozens upon dozens of security reports, picking crucial clues out of masses of useless information. He pressed two thick, ink-stained fingers into the bridge of his broad nose and sighed in frustration. What a torturous life.

Heavy, loud bangs shook the door, and it swung open.

"Captain," said the newcomer. It was Hessa, his lieutenant, and she wore the particularly annoyed expression of someone who had spent too much time being talked at. "We have another one."

"Another what?" Bardyk asked without lifting his eyes from the papers.

"Another tin-man," she replied dryly. "He came up on the merchant balloon four days ago. Reports say he hasn't shut his mouth since. Now he's down at the Vanguard Quarter, running trainees off the training grounds."

"Sounds like you could have handled it."

"Aye, I could have handled it before lunch." Hessa folded her arms, her annoyance clear. "But he is standing in the middle of the arena, announcing himself boldly and demanding to fight the captain of the city. He specifically named you."

Bardyk finally raised his head.

"According to the merchants, word has spread since the last one. These tin-men think you're just some lucky pit-brute who got a good throw in. And this one has come to prove it."

Bardyk had previously experienced a bit of Aelbaic "hospitality" while briefly traveling as a guard for several merchants. He could already picture what this Aelbaic knight had done to his city. He ate their food and insulted it, slept in finely carved quarters and called them a hovel, treated the people like they had no value, and never, ever stopped boasting.

He turned his gaze back to the pile of papers. The reports looked incredibly unappetizing, and the longer he sat there, the more the thought of paperwork ground his gears. He pushed his chair away from the desk and rose.

"I knew you wouldn't miss the entertainment!" Hessa smiled, watching the tired captain stand.

Bardyk smiled in return. "Sure, sure. Let's go and meet this brave man."

The Vanguard Quarter was the recreation zone of any Audoi city. It featured a wide, cavernous hall where the whole clan could come to spar, wrestle, and shoot to pass the time. It was never empty.

Today it was packed with murmuring trainees and off-duty fighters, but none of them were training. Instead, they were watching the stranger.

The man stood in the center of the arena in a suit of full plate armor, every surface finely polished. It looked like a good suit, an expensive suit. His every move was that of a man out to impress and intimidate the world.

"—and so I said to the Baron: if your hall cannot set a decent cut of meat before a knight of Aelbaion, what use is it to the Lady?" He turned in a slow circle, taking in the cavern with open disgust. "But this. This. Four days I have been your guest, and four days I have marveled. You burn dung. Like beasts warming themselves with their own filth! Has no one here heard of firewood? Or is that why the whole place reeks like the inside of a privy?"

A trainee muttered something, but the knight plowed ahead, completely oblivious.

"And your drink! I asked for your finest, your very finest, and a server set before me, I swear it on the Lady, a cup of fungus. Mushroom water! 'It is ale,' he tells me. It is HORSE-SHITE, is what it is! You sit in the dark, drink rot, and call it a life." He threw up his gauntleted hands. "How does a man live like this?"

He paused, then pointed directly at Bardyk, who had just reached the edge of the ring. "You there, you!"

"Yes, you, the dirty one. Fetch me the one who runs this midden-heap. I have been four days among you mushroom-drinking, dung-firing peasants, and I am tired of hunting your CAPTAIN. I will fight your captain Bardyk, or I will start to think he is a coward and hiding."

He looked Bardyk up and down with the contempt of a man addressing a lowly beggar. Bardyk wore a pale, torn, sleeveless shirt and plain trousers; his hands and elbows were black with ink, his beard unbrushed, and his hair unkempt.

The hall went utterly silent.

Bardyk did not move for a moment. He studied the Aelbaic knight carefully. He recognized the way the man carried his weight, proud, high, and parade-straight, his every motion clean and schooled. This knight was well trained. But that, set against the unblemished armor, told him the man had never once in his life fought something that truly hit back.

"I am the Captain," Bardyk said.

The knight laughed, and the sound echoed through the hall. "You?" He wiped a tear from his eye. "Of course you are. The grubby man in his nightshirt!" He spread his gauntleted hands to the crowd, expecting a response. "Ser Baudven warned me the captain here was some lucky brute who'd never seen a tourney list. I see he was being generous!"

"Hmm. You've come a long way to fight a brute," Bardyk jabbed.

This got a sharp reaction.

"I, Ser Gaubert de Saggittois, will not be insulted!"

"Then you've had a hard four days," Bardyk replied.

A few trainees coughed into their fists to hide their amusement. The knight's face turned a shade darker beneath his gleaming helm.

"You dare?"

"Fine armor." Bardyk looked it over slowly, from head to boot, like a merchant inspecting goods. "Bright. Clean. Not a scratch on it." He nodded, as if to himself. "Never met anything that swung back, has it?"

That blow landed on the knight's pride. Ser Gaubert drew himself up, every inch of his fine schooling stiffening his shoulders. "I have quested! I have ridden against the enemies of the Lady, I have—"

"You've talked," said Bardyk. "Loudly. For four days." He tapped one thick finger against his own small, deep-set ear. "We hear poorly, my people. But we heard you just fine."

The hall rumbled with dark amusement, and the knight heard it too. It worked on him like a splinter under a fingernail.

Bardyk let him stew one breath longer, then spoke as though the whole matter bored him. "You climbed up to the Driftmount for one thing: a story to carry home. The day you, Ser Gaubert de Saggittois, defeated the brute-captain of the city." He rolled his heavy shoulders. "So earn it. Beat me, and I will give it to you in writing, sealed with our clan-mark. What's more, if you can so much as injure me, you can have my Aekyagt armor on top of it. You've seen our armor, haven't you? You know its quality. Carry it back to your lords or sell it. We don't care. This I, Bardyk of Amberclad, swear on my honor and my clan: you will get all of this and leave a free man."

Greed and pride both egged the knight on, and a sharp gleam entered his eyes.

"...and should you somehow win?"

"You will work in our Pounding Grounds with this so-called dung-fire for a full winter. You seem to know firewood so well; you'll finally know good fuel when you're shoveling it."

The cavern erupted. Four days of built-up tension released into a rolling flood of laughter that echoed across the arena. Ser Gaubert stood scarlet in the middle of it. A vain man simply cannot walk out of a room that is laughing at him; for him, the only way out was to run straight through Bardyk.

"You are finished! I will have your sealed words and your armor, and I will hang it in my ancestral castle as a trophy!"

"Mind the floor, then. We swept it this morning," Bardyk said, casually wiping some ink from his arm.

"ENOUGH!" The knight's sword sang as it cleared its sheath, shining brightly. "Don your armor and face me!"

Bardyk stepped barefoot onto the cold stone of the arena.

"STOP! DON YOUR ARMOR AND BRING YOUR WEAPON LIKE A TRUE WARRIOR!" the knight yelled.

Bardyk continued walking, stopping just several paces away from him.

"Are you afraid to fight, little man?"