“Unarmed next,” the Marshal said. “Pair up. Stammel, you’re with Groj.”

Stammel grinned. He’d won the argument, then; he hadn’t been sure until this moment. Unarmed fighting, once in grip of the other, wasn’t about sight but about feel … and he was sure his feel would come back. Groj might throw him, but he would be fighting again. Suli guided him some twenty paces.

“I’m Groj,” a voice said in front of him. “I’m one of the smiths. Marshal says I’m not to kill you.”

“I’d prefer not,” Stammel said.

“I’m a head taller,” Groj said. “He said I should tell you that.”

“I could tell from your voice,” Stammel said. He could feel his body’s adjustments, the same as always. For a taller man, this shift. Around him he heard other pairs moving into position.

“But I won’t let you win,” Groj said. “I told ’m I wouldn’t, and he said that was all right.”

“I won’t let you win, either,” Stammel said. Just as he wondered whether pairs signaled each other some way or the Marshal started it, he heard the command.

All the pent-up emotion of the past tendays exploded as he charged. He heard the rasp of Groj’s boots on the grass as the man tried to swing aside, but he was faster, and his arms, reaching wide, caught the man’s belt. Pivot, yank—Groj’s big hand touched his shoulder, but he already had the leverage, and Groj went down. He rolled up quickly, caught Stammel’s arm, and then they were in grip, hands and elbows and knees, struggling for mastery.

Groj was bigger and very strong, but Stammel had more speed and many more years of experience; he fought silently, exulting in the expertise he had not lost to blindness, feeling and hearing Groj’s surprise, the grunts of effort, the gasps as Stammel found yet another way to pin the bigger man. If demons could not defeat him, no big hamfisted smith—

“Hold!” came the command. Groj fell back, gasping; Stammel pushed himself away a little, only somewhat winded.

Footsteps on the grass. “Well,” Marshal Harak said. “What do you think now, Groj?”

“You’re right, Marshal. He’d have half-killed anyone else. I’m blown.”

“Sergeant, I expected you’d explode some way, so I gave you Groj. I didn’t think you could hurt him, but you’ve left marks on him will take tendays to vanish.”

He hadn’t realized that. He’d been so happy … “I’m sorry,” he said.

“No need,” the Marshal said. “You’ve been entirely too controlled since your ordeal; it had to come out sometime.”

Arcolin’s Camp

The messenger from Cortes Vonja carried two letters for Arcolin, one with the seal of Gird on the flap and the other addressed in Arñe’s writing, sealed in the same wax as the other but without a seal. Arcolin felt his heart sink. Good news would have been Stammel riding into camp with the others.

He slid his dagger blade under the flap of the Marshal’s letter first. Your sergeant lives, the Marshal had written.