The notion to dive for his helmet and roll into a tight protective ball entered his mind and was gone before it could be counted as more than a foolish instinct left over from his childhood. But the instinct returned stronger this time. He didn’t know what to do. So he just stood still, like a twig planted firmly in the hard soil.

“Vigor, Vigor . . .” The cries softened, then faded altogether as the crowd sensed an outright pummeling—their bull would soon trample this mouse who’d spoken so bravely but now stood quivering in the dust.

Vigor uttered a grunt ten feet away, pulled back his sword (still at a full run), and swung the blade in an arc that Johnis judged would reach his neck at the peak of its momentum.

He waited a full count, then dropped into the protective ball. His body collapsed into itself and fell to the ground like a coiled spring, faster than Vigor could have anticipated.

The warrior’s sword swept through empty air, and both feet reached the balled form on the ground, one right after the other. Both stopped at Johnis’s midsection.

The rest of Vigor’s body, however, was not so quick. It catapulted over Johnis, went airborne—feet high, head low—and sailed ten feet before gravity finally had its way with the man. Johnis watched the whole thing with his face pressed into two inches of dirt.

The thud of Vigor’s chest and face slamming into ground.

A terrifying crack of bone.

The gasp from the crowd.

Johnis breathed hard, nostrils blowing at the dust. It was the only sound he heard in the wake of the mighty fall. Vigor lay still.

Johnis lifted his head and stared at the larger man’s closed eyes facing him from a dozen feet away.

The eyes snapped open and stared at him.

Vigor suddenly sprang up to his feet and shook off the fall. But . . . he’d heard a crack! The man’s back or his neck.

“Vigor, Vigor, Vigor, Vigor!”

Vigor rushed him.

Too late to rely on anything but raw instinct. Johnis leaped to his feet and ran away from the indestructible monster whose eyes now bulged with fury at the runt who tripped him up.

It took him only a few strides at a full sprint to feel the same surge of power he’d felt racing through the gaming hall. There was something in the air here, he’d thought then. It made him overly zealous. It made him cry. It made him dull in the head at times.

And it made him fast.

Speed might not help him fell the mighty beast named Vigor, but it would help him run away. Johnis flew straight for the line of warriors watching from behind their helmets. He could feel the red cape tug at his neck, and he shrugged out of it.