took his shield off, still looking for a way out, the larger man danced across the room and hit him with a back fist.
After that, for nearly four minutes, Tor just fought, trying to remember what he'd learned over the years, what Burks had him practice. That he was making contact with the man was apparent, his hands and feet stung from the blows, but they didn't seem to do much. Tor finally found himself picked up by the face and slammed into the stone below him. Thankfully it was smooth. He lost consciousness for a bit, but managed to poke the large man in the eye it his right index finger somehow, going out or not. When he cleared enough to see again he was running around in a circle, keeping just out of the giants grasp. Almost at least.
Tor rolled and kicked out at a knee, which made something shift, the feeling of it ran down his leg, but that was all, the giant didn't do more than shift his weight back.
Tor finally got enough of his sense of self back to try and go after the man smoothly and actually try to target the weak points as more than an afterthought. Then he did better. Not well, but the harshness of the beating he was taking damped down a bit. And it was a beating. For all the he was hitting the guard twice for every once he was hit himself, he could barely stand and the other man still looked fresh and ready to continue. Even after two good solid strikes to the groin the man stood relaxed and poised, moving on him again.
Finally Tor had to just do what he could to survive, biting, kicking and scratching, advanced techniques and dirty tricks. At about ten minutes something happened, a blow to the back of the head, and everything went dark.
Tor woke looking at the sky, no one touching him at all. Well, at least the guy hadn't kept beating him while he was out. Standing on shaking legs, wondering if defensive wetting was still a good option, Tor faced the man again and raised his hands to continue. The man sneered at him. At least Tor thought it was a sneer. It might have been something else, based on what the guy did next, which didn't involve killing Tor at all.
“Alright, I'll cede the issue to you, but if you get her killed, I will come for you. Oath or not. Bet on it.”
Then without pause he stomped off again. Limped off. Tor decided not to follow him this time. Standing up straight he rubbed his jaw. Three teeth had been knocked out in the front, which hurt, and his right eye was swollen closed. With his left he angled slowly, hoping he didn't have to fight anyone else under their really painful tradition. George the Royal Guard handed him back the amulet with his shield on it.
Oh, right. He had amulets for stuff.
Yay.
He hit the healing one and most of his body stung for about half a minute, his mouth stung for almost five as the teeth regrew. The device couldn't regrow a hand, but it regrew teeth just fine. Tor had no clue why that was, but it worked for everyone that way. Even teeth that had been missing for years. When he felt better, he looked down at his shirt, and changed it so the bright blood and scrapes weren't there anymore.
“So…” He said to the remaining six guards. “Um, I don't exactly have the book on this particular tradition. Why exactly am I alive again?”
There was a low chuckle from the group as if he'd said something funny instead of pointing out an obvious truth. The other guy could have simply killed him.
“Heh, yeah. Well, it's like this Tor,” one of the younger guards, a guy of about twenty told him a small smile on his face. “When two of us get in a fight, or have a disagreement, we can't really just go at it like normal people. Then one or both of us would end up dead each time. We're people too though and things come up.
“So Veren and you fought, but you didn't give up even when beaten, showing you were willing to die to back up whatever your part in this was. He wasn't willing to kill you over it, so he ceded the match to you. We kind of have to do it that way, I mean otherwise the best fighters would always win and they're not always right. It was a battle of wills, not fists, and you won.”
Oh.
That made sense then. Hopefully no one else felt as strongly about the whole thing as Veren did though. Healing device or not, too much more of that and Tor would just die. It was clear he needed a lot more work on his fighting skills. Painfully so, or it had been, but Tor’s memory was good enough in that regard.
Then everyone just left. That was it. No big thing, no hard feelings. Fight, resolve the issue and leave. It was efficient, but kind of strange feeling. He kept expecting his mother to pop out and chastise him for being a common ruffian or something. Instead he went inside and everyone acted like nothing had happened at all.
Heh.
Really they were waiting for Burks to come back and say that the truth device could be beaten or couldn't be, but that didn't come until after dinner that night. It was another grand affair, each guest with two servers, all wearing their sharp green clothing, which matched the table cloth and napkins and about twenty courses were served, each tiny, at least on his plate. Rolph, who sat directly across from him, had more, but Denno, two places over had about the same. It was a favor really. Tor knew that he couldn't handle all the food if the plate was loaded each time himself and doubted that Brown would do that much better.
Really it was ridiculous, the meal finishing off with four different deserts, then cheese and drinks. Tor was so full he had to stick to taking small sips of water at the end, but hadn't wanted to embarrass anyone by not eating it all. Then, as they sat and talked, Count Lairdgren made his way in.
Now, he, Tor thought as he regarded the man, looked exhausted. Tired enough that he didn't bother with a preamble at all. It was bizarre really, given the situation, but Tor couldn't find it in himself to blame him. Not looking like he did.
“It will work. I couldn't find a way around it, not at all. I'm sure there is one, but I doubt my brother here will have had time to experiment and figure it out.” Grinning he pulled out an amulet, the sigil glowing green.
Tor blinked. All of the amulets should have a pink sigil on them. It was in the shape of a “T” with lines through it on a diagonal. “T” for truth. Reaching out to the bit of focus stone, the wrong color too, being too brown for the soil around the Capital, Tor got what the field did. It glowed and turned black on command. It was a trick? That seemed likely, but what was the point?
Burks set things up quickly, Denno in a chair towards the side of the room along the outside wall, and the amulet activated. The glow was mainly white with hazy yellow strips, not the cream and golden yellow it was supposed to be at all. Denno wouldn't know that, but everyone else seemed to just take it in stride as well. Interesting.
Couldn't they see the obvious differences or was it that everyone else was just better at hiding their shock than he was? It didn't matter really, so Tor hid his own realization as best he could. If it was about fooling Denno, then he'd go along with it for now. But not without some kind of back-up information. Tor dropped into a deep state, cleared his mind and focused intently on Burks, who was doing the same thing, he found. He was reading Denno instead of just using the Truth device. Why? Tor didn't know for sure, but kind of suspected that the Count had actually found a way around it, one Denno could have used, so was going to try this instead. A pure reading would be harder and potentially more accurate, though why he hadn't done a better job faking the way it looked Tor didn't get at all. Was it a sign to him or… Tor had to fight shaking his head, it really didn't make sense at all.
“Alright Denno, would you please state your name for us all?” Burks said it like asking his own brother his name made sense, but Brown didn't blink.
“Dennorian Algiers Brown.”
A full and slow second after the lie the field turned an off black, almost dark smoke color. Instead of lancing through the field, it grew slowly like a cloud. It looked totally wrong, his units put out a stark black and shot across the field suddenly, looking like a rift had opened in space. This effect was cruddy by comparison. It made him want to roll his eyes, but he decided to go with the ruse for a bit, to see where it led.
So Tor didn't hesitate, leaning towards the man.
“Um, Lie? Denno, what was your given name, not what you picked for yourself.”
“Six.” The man said, smiling a little.
“But we all thought that we deserved actual names, so we each picked our favorite color. The rest came later, when we decided that most people would respect us more, think us more like them, if we each had two names. I was married about a century or two after that and took my wife’s name for a while, hence the Algiers.”
This time the field stayed clear and shone brightly.
Burks nodded, but it may not have been in agreement, but rather a way of letting Tor know that he felt his focus on the subject.
