“When the fighting’s come to an end,

Time to stop being so worried,

And start digging holes in which to bury,

Those whose lives had arrived at their end.” - Old poem, typically sung by soldiers at the end of battles while they bury the dead.

“The brat did well,” said Griselda as she nodded and congratulated her brother-in-law to be as he returned to their ranks. After that, she stood up and tidied her clothes a bit, even as horns were blown and drums were beat to announce the entrance of the next pair of duelists. Since their opponents had sent out their combatant first in the previous round, this round their side would be the one to send someone out first, and they had previously agreed for Griselda to handle that part. “My turn to beat their faces in, then.”

With confident steps, Griselda stepped forward into the dueling grounds, as she brought out her pair of flanged maces out of her personal storage, and gave them a quick flourish as she walked. The way she easily flourished those hefty maces with the same ease the previous nobleman did with his much thinner and lighter rapier spoke a lot about her ability to use them.

Across from her, came an older nobleman with his hair and beard already turning partially white, though he kept his long hair slicked back and tied to a ponytail, with his beard neatly combed as it fell almost to his chest. Griselda had not recognized him in person - she was from the east and was not as familiar with the Posuin nobles as she was not born and raised there - but remembered Andrea’s briefing about the man.

The man was from the side branch of house Oleysun, who was good with the sword and thus often trained the younger members in swordplay, though with the rise of Randall and Vaughn Oleysun’s fame, his name was mostly forgotten as he had grown older and weaker compared to his prime. That they sent him out suggested that the coalition army must be really hard up for combatants right then.

They probably were, all things considered. The scout reports Griselda received showed that their enemies had paid a horrible price for the ferocity their soldiers showed during the last battle, when they were drugged up. While the reports failed to give concrete numbers - understandable considering the situation and difficulty to scout out the enemy camp - the approximations she received almost made her gasp in shock.

Around one in every ten of the soldiers who had been drugged two days ago had passed away from the after-effects of the drug they consumed. Out of the survivors, three in four were struck ill from the same after-effects, and the few that had lighter symptoms were somewhat under the weather as well even so. As an army, the coalition army had just lost any remaining combat effectiveness they had, and she needed no genius to tell her how resentment must have brewed against their commanders in the opposing camp.

Maurizio likely had an antidote to temper the after-effects with him, considering how he imbibed what looked like a concentrated form of the drug himself, but he was never able to distribute it since he died to the mercenaries sent after him. Even then, considering how severe the after-effects was, Griselda doubted that there would be no long lasting sequelae from the drug, which also made her understand why Maurizio, for all his purported brilliance, came close to being disowned by his family.

Her mind snapped back to the present, as her opponent stepped forward and raised his longsword in a knightly salute to her. The old man carried a shield on his other hand, while Griselda had borrowed a pair of bucklers and strapped them to her forearms, since the duels were conducted unarmored. She returned his salute with one of her maces, and they both squared off to start the fight.

The old warrior was a cautious one, and his experience meant that he left no openings for Griselda to abuse from his stance. Instead, she charged headlong, a move that most duelists would have never taught to another. Griselda was no duelist, however. As she had been raised in poor lands, which suffered from frequent monster attacks in the swampy, more fertile regions they had inhabited. From a young age she had been taught to fight, and while she had less experience fighting other people compared to her opponent, her instincts were honed through a decade of life and death battles in the wilderness.

As such, when the old nobleman struck with his sword, she had deftly caught the blow with the buckler on her left arm, and used it to angle the sword away from herself. The nobleman raised his shield in defense and blocked one of her blows even as he stepped back and away from the second, but he was clearly somewhat unnerved at the way she fought.

Rather than attempt to win through superior skill or clever techniques, Griselda charged at the old man like a raging bull, full of ferocity and aggression. The old man was flummoxed by the charge at first, and further confused when he spotted the openings Griselda left in her headlong rush, yet failed to abuse them because of her ferocity.

He felt that if he tried to strike her openings, then one of her blows would also find him in turn, and given the ferocity of those blows, the old man was unsure if he might survive such a hit. On the other hand, Griselda seemed to pay the risks no heed as she kept pushing and struck tirelessly with her maces. The shield held by the old man was dented all over and even deformed along the edges by then, courtesy of her many strikes.

When the old man finally felt that he could no longer spare the risks and resolved to strike Griselda even as she struck at him, he found that the openings she left were traps. The moment the old man struck for one of the openings she had left on purpose, Griselda averted her strike’s trajectory to the side, towards the old man’s sword hand. One of her flanged maces struck the old man’s hand and shattered his fingers, while the other struck his sword and flung it far away, where it landed a mere handspan from the foot of a watching knight.

The old man cried out in pain as he held onto his broken hand, before he gathered himself and gave a bow to Griselda as he admitted his defeat. He then walked back towards his side while Griselda calmly walked back towards her side to the cheers of the knights. She saw that Andrea had stood up and unlimbered her limbs when she arrived at the group.

“Good work,” said Andrea as she tapped Griselda’s shoulder with one hand when she passed by. The third duel’s participants were the respective commanders of the armies, which meant Andrea and the current acting commander of the coalition forces. Griselda gave her fellow noblewoman and friend a thumbs-up gesture as Andrea walked out with her shield and battleaxe in hand.

The final battle was anticlimactic as Andrea simply demolished her outmatched opponent with powerful blows of her axe, and soon had the opposing commander yield as she placed the blade of her axe against his throat. With the formalities done, one of the knights from the coalition side brought a chest full of coins as the ransom for the captives - a prepared amount to match the wager - and handed it over to the defenders.

From her side, Andrea Utghwes ordered the captives brought out. The captives were in reasonably good health, other than their injuries, which only received normal care rather than a full treatment from the healers. They were handed over to the coalition side, sans their equipment, which had become part of the wager, and the gathering separated from there.

The very next day, the remnants of the coalition army had retreated from Fort Kazka, while the defenders cheered once more for their hard-earned victory.