Some of the ones who weren’t swept away wanted to fight anyway, because they were just that valiant. Eliot supposed they must have had difficult childhoods or something like that. Join the club, he thought, it’s not that exclusive. He and his friends gave them a difficult adulthood to go with it.

—

It took them four days to harry the Lorians back to Grudge Gap—you could only kick their asses along so fast and no faster. That was where Eliot stopped and called out their champion. Now it was dawn, and the pass made a suitably desolate backdrop, with dizzyingly steep mountainsides ascending on either side, striped with spills of loose rock and runnels of meltwater. Above them loomed icebound peaks that had as far as he knew never been climbed, except by the dawn rays that were right now kissing them pink.

Single combat, man to man. If Eliot won, the Lorians would go home and never come back. That was the deal. If the Lorian champion won—his name for some reason was Vile Father—well, whatever. It wasn’t like he was going to win.

The lines were about fifty yards apart, and it was marvelously quiet out there between them. The pass could have been designed for this; the walls made a natural amphitheater. The ground was perfectly level—firm packed coarse gray sand, from which any rocks larger than a pebble had been removed overnight. Eliot kicked it around a little, like a batter settling into the batter’s box.

Vile Father didn’t look like somebody waiting to begin the biggest fight of his life. He looked like somebody waiting for a bus. He hadn’t adopted anything like a fighting stance. He just stood there, with his soft shoulders sloping and his gut sticking out. Weird. His hands were huge, like two king crabs.

Though Eliot supposed he didn’t look much less weird. He wasn’t wearing armor either, just a floppy white silk shirt and leather pants. For weapons he carried a long knife in his right hand and a short metal fighting stick in his left. He supposed it was pretty clear that he had no idea how to use either of them, apart from the obvious. He nodded to Vile Father. No response.

Time passed. It was actually a teensy bit socially awkward. A soft cold wind blew. Vile Father’s brown nipples, on the ends of his pendulous man-cans, were like dried figs. He had no scars at all on his smooth skin, which somehow was scarier than if he were all messed up.