Being on standby is usually very boring, which is only a good thing because if there's excitement while you're on standby, it means something bad is happening. Like finding that body. The only thing useful to do is spar or practice your archery in the training field.
The sparring pit itself is spectacular. The guardhouse was built to the kingdom's standard, and that included an enchanted live weapons sparring pit. I had only done practice bouts with wooden weapons previously, but live weapons changes the game quite a bit. The enchantment prevents any injury in the pit from weapons that aren't themselves enchanted. Which means I use standard issue gear in there, my own equipment would still kill a man. What the enchantment doesn't stop is the actual pain of the hit, which wont go away until you leave or fall unconscious from it. (Very similar to that knife to the neck I felt during that eyes of the dead spell, except that forced me to stay conscious through it.) With all that put into the sparring pit it makes me wonder why the standard issue gear is so poor.
Right now Ken and I are resting after several rounds of sparring. After some of the talents he displayed today, some of his quirks while fighting seem to be explained. If he was raised in a bad part of the city he lived in or in just a bad city, he'd have learned more along the lines of fencing and unarmored combat with small easily concealed weapons than what we use. Which leads to the question...
“So why did you join the watch?”
He looks a little uneasy with the question.
“Well, to escape. My hometown didn't have much in the way of a town watch, and what we did have was corrupt. Honest guards didn't last long before requesting transfer to another city or 'disappearing,' and I chose the former to get out of there. The place was pretty much run by thieving guilds, and street gangs. Some people still managed an honest living by farming or crafting wares. But no one would last long without paying someone or other protection money. I was brought up on stolen food and taught how to fend for myself in a similar way. I'm not exactly proud of what I did to get by back there.
“Once I'd had enough of being strong-armed into burglarizing my neighbors, I tried joining the watch. I never got much training, pretty much just have to ask to get in around there. I was hoping to be another man on the small force and make a difference. I didn't know that pretty much all of them were being paid off to just let whoever had done the paying's group do whatever, you only had to be careful around watchmen paid off by a different guild. Did the best I could without drawing too much ire from the bosses. Requested transfer when I killed a mugger that was taking it too far on my route. I had one friend higher up in the ranks than myself, and he got me out of there. Not just for my sake, but also to stop me from causing any more trouble. It was easily done, not much paperwork when you transfer from a place with 'too many guards' to someplace that's asking for more. I kinda wish I had managed to-”
“Hey Nivar, Kenneth! Come out front, we've got a wizard here giving us a bit of trouble. We might need some extra muscle if he tries something stupid.”
No comments:
Post a Comment