“Fuck!” Xerxes blurted, lunging to the side.

As the bulky knife flipped end over end, the bottom of the hilt caught his shoulder, halting the weapon’s momentum and causing it to clatter to the floor.

Biru roared with laughter. “See! Damn mages are charlatans and ‘ucksters, I tell ya!”

Many in the crowd joined him in laughter, although not all. It seemed Gem’s exaggerated tale still lingered in the minds of many present.

As a few coarse comments were thrown here and there, Xerxes reached up and rubbed his shoulder where the knife hilt had hit him. His eyes shifted for a moment as he sought Gandash in the crowd, and saw that the smile had left his friend’s face, to be replaced by a glower. He also looked at some of the shoulders. In the booth, Rihan was frowning. On the other side of the room, Sergeant Aniskipel was shaking his head.

You just made a mistake, Biru, Xerxes thought.

Tilting his head left and right to crack his neck, he took a deep breath and forced himself to stand straighter.

Reaching down subconsciously to check that his spell component pouch was in place at his belt, he pointed at Biru and loudly said, “Hey, you! Bitch.”

“What the ‘ell did you just call me?” Biru snarled, stepping away from the table.

“You heard what I said. If you want to make this a real contest, come up here and let me show you what mages are really like.”

Biru sniggered derisively.

“Xerk…” Gem said.

Xerxes held up his hand. “I got this.”

“Fine, you little runt,” Biru said, cracking his knuckles and walking toward the stage.

Xerxes watched him come. Before he took three steps, Xerxes had a read on him. The man wasn’t a fighter, at least, not in any professional sense of the word. He’d probably cracked a few heads and noses in brawls, but he didn’t have any training, either as a soldier or as a martial artist.

Xerxes, in contrast, had been training as a fighter since he was only five or six years old.

Though his father was Sighted, the gift wasn’t always passed down through families. In other words, mages who had children didn’t know if their offspring would follow an arcane path, at least not until they reached puberty, whereupon the gift would either manifest or not. In some cases, a mage could sire many generations in which no Sighted appeared. In other cases, a Sighted could pop up seemingly out of nowhere.

The result was that most mages operated under the assumption that their children wouldn’t become Sighted, and would thus provide them an education and potential career path that didn’t have anything to do with magic. In Xerxes’ case, his father had hoped his son would eventually go into the military.

Of course, given all his martial training, after he did become Sighted, it went almost without saying he would study the order of Asgagu, which was the most martial of the magic paths.

Biru’s ignorance regarding magic-users was no surprise. There were only about seventy mages on the entire planet of Mannemid, and roughly thirty who were native Isinians. For common folk like these, mages were heard about in stories or sung about in songs, but rarely, if ever, seen in person.

The stage formed a half-circle, with the widest section against the wall being roughly fifteen feet from end to end. As Biru neared the short set of stairs on the side, Xerxes stepped back.

While allowing the hulking man to climb up and join him, Xerxes kept a close eye on him, just in case he tried an unannounced rush or some other equally sneaky trick.

“Let me tell you the rules of fighting in a place like this, mage,” Biru said, cracking his knuckles. “No killing. That’s about it!”

He laughed at his own comment, but this time, only two or three people in the crowd joined him.

“Come on, Biru, ‘e’s a kid,” someone called.

“A lying mage kid!” Biru snapped.

Xerxes was starting to get angry. He didn’t need to look at Gandash to know his friend was fuming. All the work Xerxes had done to defuse the situation was for naught. That wasn’t to mention how all of this was happening in front of dozens of soldiers who had only recently begun to accept him as a friend.

Therefore, he wasn’t inclined to waste time.

“If there aren’t any rules,” he said, taking a step forward, “then there’s no need to jabber.”

“Listen, runt, I just want to make sure you don’t complain when—”

Xerxes moved forward with speed that only a mage could match. Before Biru knew what was happening, Xerxes grabbed both his arm and the front of his tunic, stepped to the side, and then threw the giant man over his hip to the ground.

Biru’s face smashed into the wood of the stage, and he grunted. Before he could recover, Xerxes half-knelt, clenched his hand into a fist, and punched the man’s jaw. Once. Twice. Three times.

It took that many to render him unconscious, even with the strength of a Seer. It was impressive. After confirming the man was out cold, Xerxes stood, hooked his foot under Biru’s hip, and launched him off of the stage.

Biru sailed through the air and crashed onto the table he’d risen from, sending ale and food splattering everywhere. Biru’s friends cried in alarm, some of them jumping away from his tumbling form. Two of them, quick thinkers apparently, threw their hands out to stop his fall, preventing him from rolling on to the floor.

Xerxes brushed his hands off, looked around at the crowd, and said, “Anyone else care to give a try? I really don’t feel like casting any spells tonight, but I will if I have to.”

He let his hand rest meaningfully on his component pouch.

Nobody responded to his challenge.

“You showed ‘em, Xerk,” Rihan said loudly, and Xerxes stifled a grin as he hopped off the stage and threaded his way back toward Gandash and Gem.

Meanwhile, the bard had returned.

“I haven’t seen a fight like that since I left Mannemid as a lad,” he said loudly. “It reminds me of an old ballad from Ira, which as you know, is a starisle of such immense glamor and….”

Xerxes tuned the bard out as he sat back down.

Gem smacked his shoulder affectionately. “Well done, Xerk. You make an old man proud!”

“Yeah,” Gandash said. “You handled him like a champ. Cheers!”

All three companions raised their tankards and drank.

The evening went without any further mishaps. Biru eventually regained consciousness, and scuttled out of the tavern nursing his jaw, his woodsman friends clustered around him, most of them casting dagger-like glares at Xerxes along the way.

Rihan joined them shortly, and then a soldier from Squad Two named Goran, who everyone made fun of for being bald. Both of them praised Xerxes’ performance, and though Xerxes tried hard to keep the pride from showing on his face, he failed.

They continued drinking and snacking into the night. Eventually, Gem launched into some old war stories.

“It’s been a while since I talked about the battle of the Red Castle,” he said. “Everybody loves a good castle story, right?”

It never ceased to amaze Xerxes how many stories the older man had to tell. And it seemed like each one either had an important moral to it, or was just downright hilarious.

Xerxes forced Gandash to switch from ale to water at a certain point. Mages got faster and tougher as their magic grew stronger, and they even developed mental abilities that surpassed ordinary humans. But, alas, they weren’t blessed with unusual alcohol tolerance. The convoy was going to be in this remote town for an entire day before Captain Ishki led them out into the Yellow Forest. Xerxes wanted to spend that last day exploring the town, not helping his friend nurse a hangover.

The next morning, Xerxes woke with only a tingle in the back of his head to remind him of the previous night’s activities. Gandash was in the other bed snoring.

Poking open the shutters of their shared room, Xerxes saw that it was raining, but not very hard.

Perfect day to look around town, he thought.

He woke Gandash, who seemed a bit sluggish and complained of a headache, but was otherwise fine.

As they prepared for the day, Xerxes looked at his two most important possessions: his sword, which was leaning up against the wall next to the bed, and his spell component pouch, sitting next to Gandash’s on the dresser under the window.

Doubt we’ll be fighting a battle in the town square, he thought, and decided to forgo the trouble of strapping on his weapon. It was even less likely that he would cast a spell while out shopping in the town. However, their instructors at the Academy had always emphasized the importance of a mage carrying their component pouch at all times.

The last thing to accomplish before heading down to the common room for breakfast was morning prayer. Xerxes finished in a few seconds, but Gandash, who took praying a lot more seriously, went on for a good minute or two. Xerxes didn’t interrupt.

With all preparations out of the way, they went down to a breakfast of flatbread and ground lamb seasoned to the hilt with yellow curry.

Their fellow mage Bel joined them a few minutes later.

“Hey,” Gandash said.

“Morning,” Xerxes added through a mouthful of flatbread and lamb.

“Morning to you too,” she said in her characteristic soft voice. Being from Od, which Isinians considered a somewhat barbaric land, she looked different from Xerxes and Gandash. Both young men had dark hair and eyes, while she was pale, both her eyes and skin. She was tall, with broad shoulders, and hair bound into numerous tight braids that hung down her back. Her facial features were even more unusual compared to theirs, as she had sharp cheekbones and large, slanted eyes that made her stand out, especially in a far corner of Isin like this. In fact, she was so obviously from Od that if she’d been in the common room last night, it would have been much less likely the locals would have cracked jokes at her expense. After all, women from Od had the reputation of reacting with violence when they got angered, though that was primarily an exaggeration.

After calling for the same breakfast as Xerxes and Gandash, Bel poured herself some water and said, “I was told things got heated last night.”

Gandash smiled. “Did you hear Xerxes knocked some asshole out cold?”

“I heard. The guy had it coming, apparently. Nice work handling it so quickly, Xerk.”

“It was Gandy’s idea,” Xerxes said.

“Oh?” Bel leaned back slightly as a serving girl put a plate of flatbread and lamb on the table.

“Aw, come on, it wasn’t like that,” Gandash said.

Bel started eating. “How was it, then?”

“Some assholes were making jokes about Od. And mages in general. I was about ready to start throwing fists, but Xerk and Gem jumped up to do a knife-catching show….” Gandash went on to tell the story of what happened. Bel was suitably impressed.

They chatted as they finished breakfast, and when they were done, Xerxes said, “Okay, time to check out the town in the daylight.”

“Sounds good,” Gandash said.

Before walking out the door, they made preparations for the rain. Bel and Gandash threw their hoods up, while Xerxes donned the wide-brimmed hat he preferred. That was when Bel said, “Oh, I left my component pouch upstairs.”

“It’s not like we’re going to do any spellcasting while shopping,” Gandash said.

"Besides," Xerxes added, "this place isn't a slum like, say, Harborview. There's a whole constable force keeping the peace."

Bel shrugged. "I guess you're right."