The noise was even more crushing than the heat and the crowds. Logen’s ears hummed with the din. It was the most he could do to keep from clamping his hands over them and throwing himself under the bench for cover. Bayaz leaned towards him. “Was this what your duels were like?” He had to shout even though his mouth was barely six inches from Logen’s ear.

“Huh.” Even when Logen had fought Rudd Threetrees, when a good part of Bethod’s army had drawn up in a great half-circle to watch, shouting and screaming and hammering their weapons against their shields, when the walls of Uffrith above them had been crammed with onlookers, his audience had not been half this size, not half this noisy. No more than thirty men had watched him kill Shama Heartless, kill him then butcher him like a pig. Logen winced and flinched and hunched his shoulders higher at the memory of it. Cutting, and cutting, and licking the blood from his fingers, while the Dogman stared in horror and Bethod laughed and cheered him on. He could taste the blood now, and he shuddered and wiped his mouth.

There had been so many fewer people, and yet the stakes had been so much higher. The lives of the fighters, for one thing, and the ownership of land, of villages, of towns, the futures of whole clans. When he’d fought Tul Duru, no more than a hundred had watched, but perhaps the whole fate of the North had turned on that bloody half hour. If he’d lost then, if the Thunderhead had killed him, would things be the same? If Black Dow, or Harding Grim, or any of those others had put him in the mud, would Bethod have a golden chain now, and call himself a King? Would this Union be at war with the North? The thought made his head hurt. Even more.

“You alright?” asked Bayaz.

“Mmm,” Logen mumbled, but he was shivering, even in the heat. What were all these people here for? Only to be amused. Few could’ve found Logen’s battles very amusing, except Bethod, perhaps. Few others. “This isn’t like my fights,” he muttered to himself.

“What’s that?” asked Bayaz.

“Nothing.”

“Uh.” The old man beamed around at the crowd, scratching at his short grey beard. “Who do you think will win?”

Logen really didn’t much care, but he reckoned that any distraction from his memories was welcome. He peered into the enclosures where the two fighters were getting ready, not far from where he was sitting. The handsome, proud young man they’d met at the gate was one of them. The other was heavy and powerful-looking, with a thick neck and a look almost bored.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know anything about this business.”

“What, you? The Bloody-Nine? A champion who fought and won ten challenges? The most feared man in the North? No opinion? Surely single combat is the same the world over!”

Logen winced and licked his lips. The Bloody-Nine. That was far in the past, but not far enough for his liking. His mouth still tasted like metal, like salt, like blood. Touching a man with a sword and cutting him open with one are hardly the same things, but he looked the two opponents over again. The proud young man rolled up his sleeves, touched his toes, swivelled his body this way and that, swung his arms round in quick windmills, watched by a stern old soldier in a spotless red uniform. A tall, worried-looking man handed the fighter two thin swords, one longer than the other, and he whisked them around before him in the air with impressive speed, blades flashing.

His opponent stood there, leaning against the wooden side of his enclosure, stretching his bull neck from side to side without much hurry, glancing round with lazy eyes.

“Who’s who?” asked Logen.

“The pompous ass from the gate is Luthar. The one who’s half asleep is Gorst.”

It was plain who the crowd preferred. Luthar’s name could be heard often in the din, and whoops and claps greeted every movement of his thin swords. He looked quick, and deft, and clever, but there was something deadly in that big man’s waiting slouch, something dark about his heavy-lidded eyes. Logen would rather have fought Luthar, for all his speed. “I reckon Gorst.”

“Gorst, really?” Bayaz’ eyes sparkled. “How about a little bet?”

Logen heard a sharp suck of breath from Quai. “Never bet against a Magus,” whispered the apprentice.

It didn’t seem to make much difference to Logen. “What the hell have I got to bet with?”

Bayaz shrugged. “Well, let’s just say for honour then?”

“If you like.” Logen had never had too much of that, and the little he did have he didn’t care about losing.

“Bremer dan Gorst!” The scattered clapping was smothered by an avalanche of hisses and boos as the great ox shambled towards his mark, half-closed eyes on the ground, big, heavy steels dangling from his big, heavy hands. Between his short-cropped hair and the collar of his shirt, where his neck should have been, there was nothing but a thick fold of muscle.

“Ugly bastard,” Jezal murmured to himself, as he watched him go. “Damn idiot ugly bastard.” But his curses lacked conviction, even to his own ear. He had watched that man fight three bouts and demolish three good opponents. One of them had still to leave his sick bed a week later. Jezal had been training for the last few days specifically to counter Gorst’s bludgeoning style: Varuz and West swinging big broom handles at him while he dodged this way and that. More than once one of them had made contact, and Jezal was still smarting from the bruises.

“Gorst?” offered the referee plaintively, doing his best to wheedle some applause from the audience, but they were having none of it. The boos only became louder, joined by jeers and heckling as Gorst took his mark.

“You clumsy ox!”

“Get back to your farm and pull a plough!”

“Bremer the brute!” and other such.

The people stretched back, and back, and back into obscurity. Everyone was there. Everyone in the world, it looked like. Every commoner in the city round the distant edges. Every gentleman, artisan and trader thronging the middle benches. Every noble man or woman in the Agriont towards the front, from fifth sons of high-born nobodies to the great magnates of the Open and Closed Councils. The Royal box was full: the Queen, the two Princes, Lord Hoff, the Princess Terez. The King even appeared to be awake for once, truly an honour, his goggling eyes staring around in amazement. Out there somewhere were Jezal’s father and his brothers, his friends and fellow officers, his entire acquaintance, more or less. Ardee too, he hoped, watching…

All in all, it was quite an audience.

“Jezal dan Luthar!” bellowed the referee. The meaningless bibble-babble of the crowd surged into a storm of cheering, a thunderous wave of support. The cries and shouts rang and echoed around the arena, making Jezal’s head throb.

“Come on, Luthar!”

“Luthar!”

“Kill the bastard!” and other such.

“Off you go, Jezal,” whispered Marshal Varuz in his ear, clapping him on the back and pushing him gently out towards the circle, “and good luck!”

Jezal walked in a daze, the noise of the crowd punching at his ears until it seemed his head would split. The training of the last few months flashed through his mind. The running, the swimming, the work with the heavy bar. The sparring, the beam, the endless forms. The punishment, the study, the sweating and the pain. Just so he could stand here. Seven touches. The first to four. It all came down to this.

He took his mark opposite Gorst, and stared into those heavy-lidded eyes. They looked back, cool and calm, seeming almost to stare past him as though he wasn’t there. That needled him and he pushed the thoughts out of his head and raised high his noble chin. He would not, could not, let this oaf get the better of him. He would show all these people his blood, and his skill, and his mettle. He was Jezal dan Luthar. He would win. It was an incontestable fact. He knew it.