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“Oww…”
The thud of a heavy body hitting the ground mixed with Sorce’s uncontrollable howling as he clutched his arm, and the once-busy training yard fell instantly silent.
Colin’s eyes went wide.
He couldn’t believe what the world had come to.
Could any random recruit scraped out of the Seven Kingdoms’ dirt really match the skill of the finest Rangers under his command?
No.
It was more than that.
With Colin’s trained eye, he could see clearly that Leon had held back, otherwise Leon wouldn’t be standing there like nothing had happened, calmly examining his own severed palm.
The anger drained out of him.
A flicker of curiosity took its place.
Sorce wasn’t even worth Leon’s full attention, so where was this kid’s real opponent?
He thought about it for a moment, then quietly clasped his right hand behind his back.
He stiffened at the sudden realization.
Could it be me?
“Damn it, Sorce, you limp-wristed coward.
You burned all your strength on some girl in Mole’s Town last night.
Watch how it’s done.”
A man who stood a full head taller than the rest of the Rangers stepped forward.
He wasn’t just tall.
The weapon he carried ran several inches longer than a standard greatsword, it looked less like a sword and more like half a door plank.
“Tall Matthew, cough cough, easy for you to say from over there, cough cough — why don’t you damn well try crossing blades with him yourself!”
Sorce was still flat on the ground, still gasping, but he couldn’t stand anyone calling him weak.
He fired back immediately.
Matthew kept bickering with him as he walked to the weapon rack, picking through it left and right.
In the end he grabbed a long shield and nothing else.
He was planning to use raw strength.
Swing the shield, knock Leon flat.
Simple as that.
The recruits behind Leon went quiet the moment they saw the man coming.
They forgot to breathe, watching to see whether Leon would fight on or call it a day.
Their read on it was simple: Leon beating one Ranger was luck.
Against a brute this menacing, he was walking into a beating.
“Kid, Sorce is a coward.
But before I took the black, I was Champion Swordsman of the North.” Matthew walked up to Leon, holding the long shield in one hand, looking down at him from his full height.
“Don’t hold back.
Come at me with everything you’ve got.”
Leon nodded.
He twirled the wooden sword into a clean flourish by way of answer.
Matthew’s style was exactly what it looked like, all power, no subtlety.
He charged shield-first without preamble, stopping only 2 or 3 paces out, then put everything he had into a horizontal sweep.
To every eye watching, the attack was unavoidable.
Especially for Leon, whose whole approach relied on circling and footwork.
That style was about to stop working entirely.
They could already picture it.
Leon sent flying, man and sword together, tumbling several meters across the yard.
And sure enough, in the next instant, Leon didn’t move.
His feet might as well have been rooted into the ground.
He made no attempt to dodge whatsoever.
When the two weapons met, it was the towering figure that went hurtling backward.
The thick long shield shattered like a biscuit.
“Hiss.
What kind of strength is that.”
Colin could just barely make it out.
Leon had swung once, one fierce chop, and Matthew went flying, man and shield together.
The force gap between them was like a grown man taking a swing at a child of three.
Except this time, Matthew was the child.
“Bizarre,” Colin muttered.
“Utterly bizarre.”
He had only ever seen that kind of raw, inborn might among the giants.
Leon watched a two-meter, two-hundred-pound Westeros strongman fly backward and land in an uncertain heap.
Even with his thick skin, he felt a genuine pang of guilt.
He checked.
The man’s chest was still rising and falling.
Still breathing.
Leon finally relaxed.
He asked, carefully, “He told me not to hold back.
I don’t think this one’s on me?”
“Damn it, Alliser!” Colin spun toward the high platform and unleashed a torrent of curses at Alliser Thorne, who stood there watching with an expression of perfect inscrutability.
“Where the hell did you dig up a monster like this?”
A shadow fell over Alliser Thorne’s already unreadable face.
In Colin’s eyes, that expression carried a meaning that had nothing to do with the question asked.
Just what did I do to offend Alliser, that he’d set me up like this?
Colin turned to leave.
“Please wait, Lord Colin the Severed Palm.” Leon’s voice stopped him cold.
“The master-at-arms hasn’t said I’ve passed the assessment.”
How could Leon possibly let this go?
The whole reason he’d come to the training yard today was to use the recruits for practice, beat enough of them to push toward unlocking the next stage of Bloodlust.
Now, instead of grinding through those pathetic, barely-functional recruits, he had real Rangers right in front of him.
Named Rangers.
The kind that actually mattered.
He’d glanced at his system panel earlier.
Defeating a named Ranger elite counted for 5 on the kill/defeat counter.
The 2 men just now had pushed his Bloodlust charge to (20/100).
He wasn’t leaving yet.
“Alliser, by Amynos — does a man like this even need an assessment?
He’s more than qualified to be my second-in-command.
I don’t have time to play house with you!”
Colin the Severed Palm was furious.
His glare locked onto Alliser Thorne like he was one wrong word away from abandoning all decorum, charging the platform, and stringing the man up himself.
“No!” But Alliser Thorne seemed to have decided today was the day he and Colin went to the wall together.
“Leon is right.
In this training yard, I am the master-at-arms, and I am supreme.
None of you are leaving until he defeats every last one of you!”
Luck.
Pure luck.
Alliser had been quietly suffering, no idea how to save face after Leon demolished 2 Ranger elites without breaking a sweat.
Then Leon had walked straight into this opening.
Even Alliser hadn’t seen that angle coming.
When it came to shamelessness, Alliser Thorne still had lessons to learn from Leon.
Today, even if it meant offending Colin the Severed Palm, second-in-command of the Shadow Tower, he was going to make sure Leon paid for this.
“Son of a bitch!
You’re the master-at-arms, fine, you’re supreme, fine — but I already admitted the recruit can fight!
We’ve got over a hundred Rangers in this company!
Are we supposed to duel him one by one all day?
Is that what we’re doing?
Just sitting here like a pack of monkeys watching?”
➤ Next: No Matter, a Mere Fatal Wound