He fought them two at a time until all eighteen lay dead or crippled, watching the fight master’s face grow paler with each defeat. When he won the ninth fight in a row, the crowd stood to their feet and roared.
Urzaia had never enjoyed a fight more.
From then on, he expected similar fights every time. Odds stacked against him, fighting to correct someone who had twisted Imperial law to his own advantage, righting wrongs and defeating worthy opponents.
Instead, his second assignment shipped him north of the Dylian Basin. He was headed as far north as any man had ever been, where tribes had set up a chain of villages in the snow. Apparently, they no longer considered themselves part of the Aurelian Empire, and had formed their own society with their own rules. Urzaia was there to administer punishment on behalf of the Emperor himself, who had assigned this mission to the Guild. It was with a sense of pride that he set out, determined to hammer the primitive armies into the ice and return with documents of surrender inside a month.
The first year, he enjoyed his work. It was harder than he’d imagined to fight in the snow, so even when the villagers organized hunting parties of thirty or more, it was rare that he could kill even three or four before the others melted away. This was a challenge in itself, even though their warriors could not fight him evenly.
The second year, he wished for an enemy Soulbound. The ambushes had grown frustrating, and even when he flattened a village, the inhabitants would just pack up and move somewhere else.
The third year, he was beginning to question why he was there in the first place. Navigators seldom brought any news or orders for him, and when they did, it was only an order to stay where he was and continue working. Not that he was seeing any results. He had probably killed two or three hundred warriors, from various villages, but no single group took too many casualties. And none of them had even come close to surrendering.
By the fifth year, he had all but given up on performing his duties for the Empire. When he became bored, he would hike up the mountains and lure a Kameira—usually a Brightwolf, or an Icewinder, or a Hydra of some kind—down toward a village, where he would fight the warriors and the Kameira both. This was chaotic and often unsatisfying, but created a few interesting fights.
One day, everything went wrong. He couldn’t remember exactly what led to it, but he woke at the bottom of an icy pit, a dead Brightwolf lying on his chest and slowly squeezing the life from his lungs. Both his legs were broken, his hatchets were missing, and the pit was surrounded by the corpses of fifty warriors from several local villages.
He fully expected to be flattened beneath the body of a Kameira, but a scouting party from a far-off village found him first. They dug him out, loaded him on a sled, and dragged him back home.
Stories of his violence had reached them, but none had seen him personally. They failed to recognize him, and so they let him live as one of them. While he was there, he realized they were living perfectly well without the Empire. Why did they need an Emperor anyway?
So he asked them why they had chosen to rebel, and they told him.
They paid taxes because their ancestors had always done so, but they never received anything in return. There were no roads. No one gave them food or shelter from the winter storms. No Guild came to defend them from the frequent Kameira attacks, and there were no chapter houses within a thousand miles. Quite simply, they had never been part of the Empire, except in name.
But the final blow came when an Elderspawn had invaded, years before. It moved from village to village, spreading a disease that slowly turned people into monsters. By the time the Blackwatch arrived, the whole region had been infected.
They offered no explanation, and taught the locals nothing. Instead, they killed everyone affected, and half of the seemingly uninfected children. Then they vanished during the night.
At that point, the villages had done something new: they called all their leaders together, from all over the region, and jointly decided to stop paying taxes.
That was when the Emperor finally took notice of them.
“When I heard that story,” Urzaia said, “I decided that the Emperor must not know. If he knew the story, he would know this was not a rebellion, and he would not have sent me. By then, I had made enemies in many of the villages, as you might imagine. But those who would let me help, I helped. I built fences, fixed sleds, fought Kameira that attacked. I made a difference, I think. And I fell for a local woman, settled in, built myself a house. For two years I lived this way. It was boring, but sometimes boring is nice. And I could fight Kameira bare-handed, so that was exciting.
“After two years, another Navigator showed up with personal instructions from the Emperor. They had the Imperial Seal and everything. This paper told me that I had run out of time, that I needed to kill until there were few enough villagers to fit onto the Navigator’s ship, and then to pack the holds with the rest. We would return to the Capital, where they would face trial.
“Not only did I tear up the order in his face, I was…not so kind to the Navigator. Or his crew. They sailed out much faster than they planned, I think. But now, I regret that I did not kill them and send their ship to Kelarac.”
Urzaia looked to the distance and sighed, his smile fading completely for the first time. “Three months later, two of my brother Champions came to take me. It was the most interesting fight I’d had for seven years, so that’s something to thank the Emperor for. But there were two of them, after all, and they were not weak. They are the ones who now call themselves Eight and Nine, actually.” He nodded to the door of the cabin, beyond which Eight stood sentry while Nine recovered from his burns.
“They took me to the Capital, where my own Guild Head passed sentence on me in the name of the Emperor. I was stripped of my titles and rights as a Champion, and sentenced to death in the gladiator’s arena of Axciss. This is not so rare, you understand. Criminals can continue making money for the Empire, even while they face the penalty of death. For me, I am happy to die where I was born.”
Urzaia smiled again and settled back on his heels. Calder was sure his own face showed some combination of shock, anger, and horror, but Urzaia didn’t seem to mind. “This is why you shouldn’t trust the Emperor too much,” Urzaia said. “He is not like they say he is. Maybe he cares about the Empire, but he does not care about its citizens very much.”
The statement struck deep in Calder. It was exactly what he’d always said, based on his Reading of the Imperial relics.
He had to get this man on his crew. If only there was some way to get around his inconvenient death sentence.
Calder leaned forward and grasped the bars of the cage, staring intently into the Champion’s eyes. “Urzaia. I can’t do anything now, but I will come back for you.”
The prisoner’s eyebrows rose. “It would surprise me if you did.”
“You just need to hold on. Stay alive. Do whatever you can. But some day, as soon as I possibly can, I will come back for you. I have reason not to trust the Emperor myself, and I can’t let a man go who’s smart enough to see things as they are.”
Urzaia laughed, though he kept it quiet enough not to alarm Eight. “I don’t consider myself a smart man. But if all I must do is keep winning, I can do that. I have not lost in the arena so far, and I don’t see a reason to do so now.”