The roar of ten thousand spectators shook the frost from the granite tiers as a three-hundred-pound border mercenary named Ba Tu stepped onto the central fighting ring.
He stood seven feet tall, a mountain of thick, dark flesh and scarred muscle forged in the salt marches of the far north. He wore no armor, only a sleeveless vest of grease-cured horsehide that exposed biceps as thick as cedar logs, crisscrossed with jagged white seams from spear wounds and wolf bites.
Across his boulder-like shoulders rested an eighty-pound flanged mace of solid cast iron.
The weapon was five feet long, with an eight-sided iron shaft two inches thick. It ended in six heavy, razor-edged flanges designed to shear through plate armor and shatter warhorse skulls. Ba Tu swung the mace downward to plant its butt against the granite flat stone slabs. Then, the ring shuddered under the impact. It sent a dull, bone-shaking through the soles of every spectator within thirty paces.
“Round of Sixteen! Match One!” the royal referee bellowed, his voice echoing from the upper gallery. “Ba Tu of the Salt March Penal Cadre versus Pei Jing of Cloudford Town! Combatants to the line!”
In the high silk pavilion of the country nobility, Marquis Xie leaned back into his carved rosewood chair, a satisfied smirk curling his thin lips.
