Alverd, anticipating Marcus’s aggressive attack, dropped into a defensive stance, holding his sword sideways. Marcus opted for a powerful overhead slash, but Alverd deflected the blow rather than blocking it directly by angling his sword diagonally, bracing it with his forearm. Marcus’ blade slid off to the side, and his momentum carried him past Alverd. My best friend pivoted deftly, which moved him out of the way of the attack. Marcus fumbled and lost his balance, and Alverd neatly struck the Prince with the haft of his sword, drawing blood from the Prince’s mouth.

It was as I had expected; I suspected that the Prince had training, but his knowledge of battle came from “knights” who fought riding dragons whose concept of a fair fight was to have their dragons breathe fire on anybody who looked like they could actually put up a struggle. As a result, I had guessed the Prince knew very little about actual, practical fighting, regarding it more as a hobby than anything serious. He probably hadn’t fought against anyone who could actually fight back, and given that this fight was merely to save face, he didn’t take it seriously. However, after that vicious blow, I imagined that that was going to change.

Alverd was wearing no armor, which was another advantage, albeit a risky one. Normally, Alverd was a clunky force on the battlefield. His armor protected him from blades and even some arrows, however it slowed him considerably. Without it, he was fast and light on his feet, owing to the combat training he had received in both armored and unarmored fighting. Marcus’s armor made his already uncoordinated strikes and flourishes blocky and slow and left plenty of openings for Alverd to exploit. It also made reading Marcus’s attacks easy as pie, since he practically advertised every move like some crier at a marketplace.

Alverd deflected another wild blow and clouted Marcus in the face again with the haft of his sword. He had been training in the art of battle since eight when he became a page to one of the best knights we had ever known. For the past thirteen years of his life, he had dedicated himself to the path of chivalry, honor, and duty. Plenty of healthy competition and friendly banter had challenged him to be the best knight he could possibly be, and no self-respecting knight would ever lose to some puffed-up misogynist like Marcus.

After another blow to Marcus’s face, the crowd started getting into it. They began to laugh uproariously, and Marcus’s face turned red, seemingly more from embarrassment than from the beating he was taking. He had a nasty cut above his left eye and he spat out a tooth contemptuously as he twirled his scimitar. With an angry cry he lunged at Alverd again.

This time, however, Alverd sidestepped his haymaker slash and smacked Marcus in the ass with the flat of his blade. This went over well with the crowd; they immediately laughed and began insulting Marcus. Alverd looked over at where Alicia was standing; she was cheering up, and now had a grateful smile on her face. Alverd returned the sentiment with his own smile and quickly twirled, avoiding yet another ill-timed attempt by Marcus to take his head off.

Personally, this was all very entertaining. There’s a special kind of fuzzy feeling you get when you watch villains get what they deserve. It’s warm, like drinking a bowl of hot soup. At least that was how it felt for me. I looked over where the nobles had set up the gambling booth, and a great deal of the blighters were all trying to get their money back. The guy in charge wasn’t having any of it, but he was looking pretty concerned. I smirked at him, and the man gave me an obscene gesture before returning to crowd control.

At this point, Alverd decided that the Prince had been humiliated long enough. When Marcus lunged at him again, Alverd lunged as well. But despite Marcus’s greater momentum, Alverd had a great deal more muscle, experience, and guts. He was unable to stop Alverd from ramming his elbow straight into his neck. As he choked and gasped for breath, Alverd kicked the Prince’s sword from his hands. With a final effort, he planted his foot straight into Marcus’s knee, then pushed him onto his back. As the Prince hit the floor, the crowd erupted into a cheer.

Alverd placed the tip of his blade against Marcus’ throat. Normally, such a gesture would seal the deal and end the duel right there. But I saw that same look, the one from the throne room, creep onto Alverd’s face again. He regarded Marcus with animosity in his eyes that was completely out of character. I looked closer and noticed that his hand was shaking slightly as though he were restraining himself to the best of his ability.

Alverd was jerked out of his little trance when Alicia came over and lifted his other arm into the air in a victory pose. She bounced around like a child. Slowly, he let a cautious smile touch his face while she continued to laugh without a care in the world. The little Princess probably couldn’t have cared less that Alverd had just defended her honor. She was probably happier that Alverd had kicked her smug brother’s ass.

For once, I actually agreed with her.

Alverd bowed deeply to his audience. Many of the nobles cheered for him, though some of them were crying their eyes out over their lost gold. I wouldn’t say it was a battle hard won, but it was a moral victory and those were always worth settling for. Alverd let it sink in with humility and grace, but Alicia was hamming it up for all it was worth.

I sauntered over to the gambling booth to pick up my winnings. The man at the booth had conveniently put all my gold in one big sack. I hoisted the giant sack over my shoulder, grinning like an idiot the entire time. Many of the other nobles watched with hate in their eyes as I walked off with their gold. Heh. I looked over at Alverd and Alicia, and for the first time since we arrived in Ishmar, I smiled from the heart. I quickly changed my expression.

The King watched the spectacle unfolding before him with an expression of slight amusement on his face. Then he rapped his scepter on the ground, and the area fell silent once more. All eyes turned to him as he commanded full attention with his gravelly voice.

“The duel is finished,” he declared. “The winner is Alverd, champion of Princess Alicia.”

As the crowd cheered once more, Marcus lifted himself from the ground, brushing blood off his face. But in all the confusion, nobody noticed him pulling a small dagger from the inside of his boot. He quickly charged toward Alverd, who had his back turned to his assailant.

Oh, hell no. There was no way I was gonna let that spoiled little rat bastard kill my friend in such a fashion. I dropped the bag of gold and threw my hands out in front of me, summoning the latent electrical energy in the air into a focal point in front of me. A spark ignited and a small ball of crackling golden lightning appeared. With a quick application of will that was akin to a snap of my wrist, I yanked a small amount of bioelectric energy from the currents within my own body and focused them into the ball. In a heartbeat, the power surged into a ball of lightning in front of me and I willed it forward. It shot forth with blazing speed, sharpening itself mid-flight into a more traditional thunderbolt-like shape.

The lightning bolt I had sent at Marcus was a simple affair; at best, it would paralyze him for about ten seconds, at worst, it would probably just knock him on his ass. But I didn’t have time for finesse. The glowing yellow bolt slammed straight into Marcus’s torso and he sailed back six feet and landed on his back, sprawled like a drunkard on the floor. He groaned in pain, more likely from the impact of his head on the ground than from the bolt itself.

The Prince’s knife clattering on the ground was the only noise in the courtyard after that. All eyes had suddenly turned on me. The looks on the peoples’ faces registered from amazement to stupefaction to anger. I had lit a powder keg, and it was about to explode.

Mages were the bane of dragonkind, and I’d just revealed my powers to an entire room full of lords and ladies, not to mention heavily armed and armored guards. Up till this point, nobody outside the king, Alicia, and the small group of guards who had brought us in knew I was a mage.

Now it was public knowledge.

I felt something leak out of my nose. Huh. I held my finger up to my nostril, expecting snot, but it came away red. I stared in disbelief at the blood on my finger. Alverd and Alicia gaped at me in shock. Then my vision went screwy.

I remember pain, which was probably my head hitting the ground after I tilted backwards. The last thing I remembered seeing was Alverd and Alicia above me shouting incoherently. I blinked several times and each time my eyelids became heavier and heavier. I finally closed them and stopped fighting. I floated away into the domain of darkness.

I woke up a few hours later in the guest room Alicia had prepared for us. Alverd was seated next to the bed polishing his sword with a slightly bloody rag. My eyes swam in and out of focus. I noticed my bag of gold seated on the ground next to him. I tried to call out to Alverd, but mush tumbled out, as well as some drool. It sounded vaguely like “arggle vuved”. Alverd looked at me and then at the gold. He laughed.

“I thought you might like to know that I brought the money. I figured that would be the first thing you’d ask when you woke up.”

I tried to laugh. But it came out hoarse and made my head hurt, so I had to stop. My head swam for what felt like hours. Finally, the pulsing pain in my head ceased enough that I was capable of basic speech patterns. I asked Alverd what had happened after I blacked out. Or, at least I tried to. After a few false starts, Alverd was able to figure out what I wanted to know, and he filled me in.

According to Alverd, it had been Alicia who had truly saved the day. She had stepped in front of me, shielding me from the guards and nobody was more surprised than Alverd. She immediately started barking at the soldiers in her authoritative voice.

“‘And what do you think you’re doing? This mage’s life is in my hands, you know. Will you defy the law of our land?’” When the guards registered confusion, she had gone ever further. “This man is bound to me by the Rite of Reconciliation! Anything you do to him is a transgression against me as well! Do you understand?’”

The men had little choice. They bowed and stepped away from the Princess. Another group of them picked up the dazed Marcus and dragged him away. His humiliation would probably sting a lot more than any injuries he had received. Just as well, the man needed to be taken down a peg.

Everyone kept trying to look at me while a team of healers got a stretcher to move me, trying to get their best glance at an enemy they never expected to see up close. It was common knowledge that war had broken out between Ishmar and its magic-using neighbor Algrustos several times in the past, but the front lines of those wars had never really pushed deep into either nation’s territory. Nowadays, the two nations were content to give each other the evil eye from across their borders. Skirmishes between scouts and spies trying to find their way across the borders were frequent, but not enough to ignite a full-scale conflict.

The last war between Ishmar and Algrustos had ended about twenty years ago. Algrustrian forces had managed to push past the Ishmarian border and across the volcanic plains, taking a pair of critical fortresses that would have served as a stepping stone for the next wave of invasion. Then the Wizard-King and the Witch-Queen had been assassinated. The Prime Minister, forced to serve as Regent seeing as how the daughter of the now deceased royals was still a baby in her crib, called for a ceasefire and agreed that he would pull his troops out of Ishmar immediately provided the Ishmarians did not pursue or engage in any further hostilities. When he received word that the King of Dragon Tamers would allow such a retreat under the caveat that the Prime Minister instruct his troops not to engage in “scorched earth” tactics, the pact was sealed and the Algrustians pulled out. They hadn’t even made it halfway to the Castle of Brimstone.

My point was all the way in the heart of Ishmar where these stuck up nobles played at politics and their endless social butterfly antics, nobody had to worry about the possibility of having magic thrown at them, or they didn’t until my little act of selfless heroism.

For most of the Ishmarian nobility, that act had been the first time they’d seen magic up close. And not the friendly, practical magic that most people were willing to let go in most cases. I’d attacked a member of the royal family, and many of the nobles present wanted my head to roll, Rite or no Rite. Alverd had maintained his silent vigil over my comatose body until the medics (who had no idea if I was alright given they knew nothing of magic) declared me safe to move, and then he and Alicia escorted me back to our room under the fearful stares of all the lords and ladies present.

She had gone off in order to change back into less formal attire leaving Alverd to watch over me. The medics had determined that I wasn’t in danger of death and that I didn’t have a concussion, so they had left (Alverd noted that they seemed very eager to leave). We talked for a bit until there came a knock at the door. Alverd, his sword at the ready, crossed over to the door and warily opened it a tad.

It was Alicia. He let her in. She was wearing an ankle-length night robe made of loose-fitting cotton,which was hardly appropriate attire to be wandering the castle at such a late hour. Once Alverd closed the door, however, she burst into a fit of laughter. This continued for a few seconds and then she threw her arms around Alverd, laughing like a demon the whole time.

Maybe it was because I was still woozy, but even I thought that what was going on was weird. Sure, the Princess was smiling, but this smile was... I don’t know... natural. She seemed less like a mean-spirited tyrant and more like a teenage girl; she seemed so carefree and happy. I tried to smile with her, but it probably came off wrong. Alicia pointed at me and laughed again, then nestled her head against Alverd’s chest.

It only took her a split second to realize what she was doing. She released her stranglehold on him, her face flushing redder than a fresh-lit fire. She backed away, pretty quickly. Again, maybe it was because I was still out of it, but I could have sworn I could see steam rising off of her head.

“Forget I just did that! If you ever tell a soul what I just did, I’ll have you tarred and feathered!” She turned to face me. I must have still been grinning like a slack-jawed village idiot because she turned her vitriol on me next. “And you, I’ll have you thrown in a stockade and let little children throw rocks at your head!” I had a vision of some kids chucking rocks at me, and it stirred up some long buried childhood memories. I wiped the smile off my face with all haste. Seeing as how she’d successfully bullied me into submission, Alicia glanced back at Alverd.

He just grinned like he always did. The man was the epitome of calm and collectedness. But hell, it was catchy. There wasn’t anything like putting a guy in his place, and we had earned it. I think that entitled us to be a little snarky about it. Alicia, her face still red, turned away from the two of us, although that didn’t stop her from barking orders.

“Rest up. Once Kuro is all better, we go to the Nest. It’ll be tough, so make sure you two are up to it. I’ll be by in the morning to come check on you. So… that’s all. Goodnight.”

With that, she rushed out of the room, slamming the door just a little too hard to be casual. Alverd shrugged and went with it. He changed into his own night robes and slid into his bed, pulled the covers up, and blew out the chamber light. He was out quick enough. I lay awake, pondering for some time.

How does one tame a wild dragon? As far as I knew, most dragons were domesticated from an early age in Ishmar. That way a dragon and its tamer grew together, allowing the two to bond upon mutual experience. Some said that tamers could even understand their dragons, and that such understanding came from treating them like family. So how in the seven hells was Alicia going to tame a dragon that had had no human contact before? The idea seemed simply ludicrous. The wild dragons are more likely to swallow her whole than bow to her. These thoughts did me no good. I tossed and turned for an hour, but could find no solution.

Instead, I focused on the future. Now that my identity was known to all, it would certainly change a few things. I doubted that anyone would try to kill me in my sleep; Alicia had assured me that her father would post guards outside our room, and since my life belonged to her killing me would be a slant against a member of the royal family. Although I, at first, doubted that this was a sufficient deterrent, she went on to say that the offender would then be executed, and their entire family publicly humiliated for all time. Given what I knew of nobles and politicians, who preferred death to social suicide, I reluctantly accepted her word. So, for the moment I was safe.

I checked to make sure my staff was at arm's length. It was stupid of me to have left it behind. The stunt I had pulled today could’ve easily been my last, especially since I was still an apprentice. It was embarrassing to admit, but I had never passed my final tests. I didn’t even have my own staff; instead, I had taken my fallen master’s staff, like a common grave robber. Every time I used that staff, I felt as though I was dishonoring Farnus’ memory.

It was too much to dwell on at the moment. I had more important things to think about, like how I was going to help a pint-sized princess take on one of the nastiest and most belligerent creatures in nature.