The Wandering Duelist, Chapter 1: Nowhere in Particular

The famous duelist Voslo Stettman finds himself far in the countryside, and with a corpse he doesn't know what to do with, when he meets a traveling merchant.

Transcript

Chapter 1

Nowhere in Particular

         Pulling a sword back out from a person’s skull was always surprisingly hard. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was getting older, his sword was getting duller, or if perhaps people’s heads were getting thicker. He wagered, though, it could well be a bit of all three. 

            The man ran his fingers back over his thin gray hair, though he fancied it silver, and planted a heavy leather boot on the felled challenger’s back. With a shimmy, a grunt, and a pull, the sword came loose, and its gruff, aged owner stumbled back a few steps. Some blood-spray dotted the right side of his patched leather jerkin, which he brushed off. 

“Nothing on my trousers at least,” he observed. His pants were so dark as to be nearly black, and even if some blood was on them, it wouldn’t be noticed until he put it to wash much later. A new, tiny river of blood pooled out into the parched dirt beneath the corpse, which the earth greedily drank. 

He looked left and right, shielded his eyes from the sun and searched the long road in both directions. “No one here but you and I,” he grunted in his weathered voice, like the corpse might have some input on the matter. “Now…which way was that town?” 

Both directions looked very much the same, and you get all turned around when fighting. It was all just wind and dust and brown things, with rolling hills that might have been pretty if they were green. The dry road seemed to extend infinitely either way, with no sign of other travelers. The grass was tall and dead, a telling sign of the drought which had gripped the continent for nearly a year now. 

            “By the Proofs it’s hot,” he wiped sweat from his furrowed forehead, then looked down and frowned at a spot of blood on the cuff of his worn-out white shirt. 

Voslo Stettman walked a few feet off the road and plopped down against a high boulder, a little bit of merciful shade granting him some reprieve from the heat. His wooden sword, made of strong ironwood and reserved for nonlethal duels, was laying against it already. He unstrapped his small two-ply wooden shield from his forearm and placed it on the ground beside him. Its steel boss faced upwards, surrounded by myriads of knicks and cuts.

Sweat dripped down his sunbeaten face and got caught up altogether in a beard that was thick and gray with streaks of brown, cut on one side of his jaw by a white scar. It would have matted his hair once too, back when he had much of it. He ran his hands again over the short-cut patchy hair that remained on his tanned head and thought, hardly for the first time, that he should probably just shave it.

            “That’s the thing about getting old,” he shouted to the dead man still laying in the road. “You lose hair in all the places you fancy having it, and get hair in all the places you’d rather not.”

            Just wind. What would that stranger have known anyways? He would never grow old. Judging by his age, his parents were probably still alive. Maybe his grandparents, even. Voslo had laid his own family to rest in the longsleep years before. He thought it strange that someone so young, someone who had anyone at all left in the world to care about him, would want to become a duelist - let alone challenge Voslo Stettman.

            Then he wondered what he often wondered as he looked over at the dead man. He wondered if maybe they weren’t that different. Maybe, like he himself, that man over there had taken up the life of a duelist precisely because he had no one left. Maybe, like he himself, that man had also once been born anew in blood, and now bloody work was the only thing he could manage to accomplish. Then he wondered what he often wondered after all that wondering – if perhaps he had done the man some favor by saving him from the life ahead.

            “I’m getting tired of this,” he said aloud to himself. It was all beginning to feel pointless. How many times had he been to each of the nine states? How many times now had he cut down ambitious young men aiming to make a name for themselves in his blood? It always ended the same: polishing his bloodied sword. Surely there was something more, something else he could do with his life than this. He had been thinking as much for twenty years but, so far, had done nothing about it.

            In an irony for the ages, the greatest duelist the world may have ever seen did not have a taste for killing people. He remembered, as he looked down at his weapon, the first time his own master and mentor Sarfan Hood had killed a man in front of him. His apprenticeship to the master duelist was fresh and new, and Voslo was only fifteen years of age. He knew in his head, rationally, that a duel until dead ended in, well, death. Still, when he saw his master’s foe laying there in his own blood, clutching at his neck and trying to force some words through the gurgling of his own blood, the young Voslo Stettman had vomited. Dead men ceased to make him sick long ago, but it still never brought a sense of triumph. Whenever possible he tried to encourage a duel until bloodied or even until yielded, instead of until dead. 

            Voslo laid his sword across his lap and set to wiping it clean with the only rag he had. The blade was a rugged and beaten thing, like it’s master. For four decades now he’d been swinging it, but never once did he have it reworked. It was his father’s sword, and the only thing he had left from what childhood he was allowed. Strong steel though, wrought from the best iron of the Iron Craggs, forged by the best forge in Gavelstone. It only had one notch along its length, from the very first time a fourteen-year-old boy ever swung a sword in anger, his mind set on death. He thumbed that notch tenderly for a moment, then looked back up to the corpse and sighed.

            “What to do with you, then?” Not that the young man would have any helpful insight on the matter. 

This was always his least favorite situation. When a duelist has fans, travels in a caravan, or challenges you in front of some tavern somewhere, someone always seems to know what to do with the body afterwards. When some youngster gets it in his head that he wants a storied duel out in the far countryside, warrior silent against warrior, he never knew what to do with the body. Do you just leave it there on the road? Do you bury it, the body of a total stranger who just tried to kill you? The drought had been going far too long for burning it to be an option. 

            The grating sound of wooden wheels in the distance interrupted his thoughts. Coming over a dip in the road, not all too far away, was a wagon. Voslo’s eyesight was hardly what it used to be, but judging by the large horses that pulled it, and the bright colors that hung from it, it was the wagon of a Courser, those merchants who endlessly travel from somewhere to somewhere else.

            He looked back over to the corpse in the road. “This should be interesting.”

            About twenty minutes later the fine wagon approached close. It was indeed a Courser’s wagon, with four wheels instead of two, so that the goods and wares inside might always be stable. Two impressive horses, both brown with painted spots of white and black, pulled it in tandem. They came to a halt a comfortable distance from the body lying in the road.

            “Oh dear, oh dear,” a somewhat high-pitched man’s voice came from the rider’s seat. He let himself down, patted his horses, and walked over to the corpse. “Oh dear,” he said again. 

The man was of medium height and skinny, dressed in clothes a little too large. He wore a dark blue Rikkayan cap on his head, from which brown curls of hair stuck out at short length. His short-sleeved cotton shirt had probably been white once, an ill-advised color for a Courser, and now was all stained in the dusts of the Nine States. He wore dark green trousers, well sewn, yet easily a size too large for his legs. He was so perplexed by the body in the road that he didn’t even notice Voslo resting in the shadow of the nearby boulder.

            “Welp,” the young merchant said to himself. To Voslo’s surprise, he bent down and rolled the man off the road, awkwardly and ungracefully, until it fell into a slump at the wayside.

            “I was leaning that way myself,” Voslo commented from his shaded rest.

            The merchant squealed in surprise, looking around himself quickly until he found Voslo. His eyes went wide at the sword resting across the man’s lap, and his fidgeting hands trembled around his waist to retrieve a dagger.

            “I’m armed! And I’m trained in fighting, I warn you!” His hands were shaking, and he used them both to hold out the tiny piece of sharpened steel. 

            “You hoping to open some letters for me with that?” Voslo chuckled. 

            The merchant’s face twisted as he looked down at the dagger in his hands, almost as though he was regarding it for the first time. Almost as though he had never actually drawn it and held it up before. In an instant he dropped the weapon onto the road, held his hands up, and stooped low in submission.

            “I yield, I yield! I’m just a poor Courser, good sir!” He pleaded. “Please, take anything you want. I’ve a wagon full of valuable things, I promise. Well, half a wagon anyways. Just leave my horses be, they’re my most valuable, I mean no!” He hurried over to his horses, patting them with disregard. “Cheap things, these. Impurely bred, bought them from some darklanders for cheap. Worthless really. Do you like wine?” He hurried again to the side of his wagon, played with some straps, moved canvas aside, and produced a black bottle from within. “Tijeran wine!” He held it up into the sun like a newborn baby. “Everyone knows there’s no wine better than Tijeran wine! It’s my most valuable possession, this.”

            “Well, can’t be saying no to Tijeran wine,” Voslo reckoned, enjoying the effect he was having on the young man.

            Slowly, pensively, holding up the bottle like a shield, the merchant approached. As soon as Voslo grabbed the bottle from him, he leapt back a pace, glancing nervously around him. “So…can I go then, good sir? Seems no need for any troubles between us.” He was drenched in sweat by this point.

            Voslo wrestled the cork out from the bottle and drank it back. Tijeran wine really was the best. “Never was any trouble between us. I’m no killer.”

            The merchant cocked an eyebrow at that, looked over his shoulder to the dead body he had just rolled out of the way, and then back at Voslo. “Either you’re a killer or you picked a very strange spot to rest.”

            Voslo looked up and down the treeless, barren road, and figured he had picked about the best spot available. He pulled out a leather sleeve secured by his belt, opened it, and produced an old, stained scroll of parchment. “I’m a duelist,” he said, holding it out to the merchant between his fingers. With his other hand, he jerked his thumb at a small steel emblem of three swords crossed against each other, pinned to his leather jerkin over the left breast. 

            “A duelist…,” the merchant said the words uncertainly as he took the scroll from the man’s fingers. He unrolled it, and sure enough, there was the seal and signature of the Justicar. “By the authority of Justicar Solsen Belkind? By the Proofs, man, he died thirty years ago!”

            “Solsen Belkind died?” Voslo said, surprised. Then he thought about it a minute. “Guess that makes sense enough. Was over forty years ago I got my dueling permissions, and he was gray then.”

            The merchant handed him the letter back. “So you and that dead man dueled?”

            “Aye,” Voslo nodded.

            “And obviously you beat him.” He followed.

            “Would be strange if I didn’t, situation being what it now is,” Voslo remarked. 

            “So you’re good in a fight, then?” The merchant continued.

            “Wager most duelists are,” Voslo answered. “Would make for an odd hobby otherwise.”

            The merchant paused for a moment, looking back to his caravan, then turned to Voslo and tried to hold himself upright. “Any chance you’re looking for work?”

            Voslo looked over to the caravan himself, then back to the merchant. “I’m no glave, no northern blood in me.” Usually, Coursers hired fighters from Helmond as glaves, personal bodyguards to protect them on the dangerous backroads of the Nine. 

            “I’m not Rikkayan, but I aim to make my name as a Courser all the same. Might make sense if my bodyguard isn’t from Helmond,” the merchant reasoned. He stepped forward and did a small bow in the Belmaran fashion, right hand in a fist over his heart. “My name is Kory Rush. I’m from Solmar, and I’ve taken up the trade of Courser for myself. Just a fortnight ago I lost more than half my wares at the hands of bandits. I don’t have much, but if you’ll ride with me and offer protection, I promise a third of my profits as your pay.”

            Voslo eyed him skeptically. “Make many profits as yet?”

            Kory shrugged. “Not many.”

            The duelist frowned and looked across the road at the dead body in the ditch. “Do you know who I am?” 

            “No. Why? Should I?” Kory asked.

            “I’m Voslo Stettman,” he answered.

            The merchant seemed to become a little weak in the knees at that, and took a step back to steady himself. “The Voslo Stettman?”

            “Is it a common name?” The older man asked back.

            “The Voslo yes, the Stettman no,” Kory answered.

            “Then seems a betting chance I’m the Voslo Stettman.” He looked back to the caravan. 

            Kory chewed on a thought, taking a closer look at the man. “I thought Voslo Stettman only had one eye, on account of losing it to a tiger fight, but you’ve got two.”

The duelist just sighed. “Where are we?”

            “Nowhere in particular.” Kory tried to straighten his clothes, now painfully aware that he was in the presence of a famous man.

            “And might we be fairly close to somewhere in particular?” Voslo asked.

            “There’s Kippenton, which I’ve just come from,” the trader offered. “Though I’m not minded to go back.”

            Voslo recalled the young man challenging him on the mainway in the center of Kippenton, all that ambition in his green eyes, all his blood still very much inside his body, and wondered if he might have been from there. “I’ve not a mind to either, I think.”

            “It’s a day’s ride west to Bradhall, and that’s where I was aiming to go,” Kory said.

            “A day’s ride west to Bradhall then.” Voslo reached into his shilpurse and pulled out an iron ring that had three electrum rectangles dangling from it, each one stamped with the king’s seal of a serpent with a rose in its mouth. He tossed it up to the merchant. “Three shil for a ride to Bradhall.”

            Kory turned the shilring over in his fingers, the three electrum shil dangling from it. It was a lot of money for only a day’s ride. “And the job offer?”

            “Let’s spend the day together first,” Voslo figured, standing up and sheathing his sword. He patted some dust off his black trousers, and again thumbed at a small bloodstain on his shirt.

            The merchant looked around, confused. “Where’s your horse?”

            “Didn’t have a horse. I don’t like horses, and they don’t like me much either,” Voslo answered. 

            Kory looked back to his wagon. “There’s room at the rider’s bench, if that suits you.”

            “Guess we’ll find out,” he said.

            “How do you get around without a horse?” Kory questioned.

            Voslo slapped at his legs. “These two fellas right here. Served me well enough some forty years now.”

            “You’ve been walking for forty years?” Kory looked surprised.

“Well I’ve been dueling for forty years, and as it’d be a strange thing to duel as soon as I could walk, I reckon I’ve been walking a bit longer.” He helped himself into the wagon, then looked down to Kory. “Still coming?” 

            “If I didn’t, this would be a robbery.” The merchant pulled himself up onto the rider’s bench next to his new companion. 

            “Never too late,” Voslo suggested.

            “Oh it’s too late alright,” Kory gestured to the boxes behind them. “Like I said, group of thieves stole most my wares already.”

            “To Bradhall then, and with nothing to sell,” Voslo grunted. He didn’t really intend to serve as a bodyguard for anyone. He liked his life of wandering. All the same, when he had looked at the body of the slain man earlier, he couldn’t help but wonder if he should consider quitting the dueling life. Killing was all he had been good at since he was a teenager. Maybe now that his hair was gray and thin, some new opportunity might open. Maybe he’d find something to live for, instead of something to kill for. Kory Rush would not be that thing, of course, but maybe getting to Bradhall would be a start.

            “I’ve been in worse situations.” The merchant slapped the reins of the horses, and slowly, the wagon cart pushed on by the discarded body on the side of the road, continuing the journey to Bradhall.

            “Me too,” Voslo assured him, looking over his shoulders at the nameless corpse left behind. “Me too.”