Growing up among trolls, Edwin was the shortest person around. Now, walking among humans, he was taller than most, and he used it.

“Where is your son?” he growled, leaning forward so his shadow covered the man. Edwin slipped the blade of his knife under the man’s graying beard to press it against his neck.

“I-I don’t know,” the man stammered. “Today is his day of rest. He went for a walk. I don’t know where he is, I promise!” He seemed genuinely terrified, which made sense given that Edwin had broken into his house and was now threatening him.

“Assuming you’re telling the truth,” Edwin said, “when will he be back?”

“He all...he always comes back by suppertime. That’s what the stew is for.” The man looked at a pot bubbling on the fire. “You can have some if you’re hungry. Just please! Put away the kn-knife.”

If the old man trembled any more, he would cut his own neck open. Edwin sighed and lowered the dagger. A quick glance told him it was about an hour from dusk. He had time to wait, and the stew did smell good. He’d been living on what little food he could steal for a few days. A proper meal would be life-changing.

“All right. I’ll have a bowl while I wait.” Edwin narrowed his eyes at the man. “But don’t try anything.” He righted one of the chairs he’d knocked over a few minutes earlier, facing it toward the door. The dagger went on the table in case he needed to use it in a hurry.

The man grabbed a bowl and started ladling stew into it. “How are you with parsnips?”

“Fine,” Edwin said, though truthfully, if he’d ever had one, he wouldn’t have known it. The trolls and humans had different names for things.

He was just thinking how odd it was that the man he’d threatened moments before cared about his taste in food, when he took a bowl of scalding broth to the face.

“Ahhhh!” Edwin screamed. He threw himself backward on instinct, sending the chair crashing to the floor. “You Elvar-fucker!”

Edwin wiped away the searing liquid with his sleeve while reaching for the dagger with his other hand. His fingers curled encouragingly around the hilt, but by the time he could see again, the man had vanished out of the open front door.

“Come on!” Face still burning, Edwin scrambled to his feet and ran out of the house. He should have expected this. What had his mentor always said? People never use reason when they feel threatened. Edwin would have let the father go once he found the son, but now he’d probably have to kill the old man too.

Said old man was running toward town screaming his head off about a bandit. Edwin, a bandit? The townsfolk should be so lucky.

Edwin sighed and gave chase, his long legs letting him gain distance quickly. He had almost caught up when two burly women with clubs stepped in his way. Militia, if he had to guess. Little experience and even less training.

Useless.

Ducking under the first woman’s swing, Edwin stabbed the second in the side before she could attack. As she stumbled back, he drove his foot up into the first woman’s chin, sending her sprawling to the ground.

The second woman stepped forward and brought her club down toward Edwin’s head. He threw himself to the side, rolling and coming up on one knee. With a flick of his wrist, he sent his dagger flying through the air to bury itself in her eye.

As the second woman toppled over, the first leaped to her feet, club in hand. That was the problem with hitting someone’s jaw--they went down fast, but they rarely stayed that way. Now Edwin could either fight an armed opponent with his bare hands or go for his dagger, which was about a dozen feet away. He would probably reach his weapon, but if not, he’d be turning his back to his enemy for nothing.

In the end, his urgency won out. The dagger would end the fight faster, so the dagger he chose, diving toward the body.

Edwin yanked his blade free and turned to fight, only to see a spinning hunk of wood hurtling toward him. The woman had decided to throw her club instead of chasing Edwin down.

Luckily, Edwin was stronger than most humans. He reached up with his free hand and caught the club just before it hit his face. His wrist muscles strained to stop it, but they did, and he suffered no injuries except a throbbing palm and a few stinging splinters.

The militiawoman, who had started charging after throwing her club, stopped in shock just long enough for Edwin to throw the club back at her. It smacked her on the forehead, stunning her and letting Edwin lunge forward and stab her in the neck.

Edwin straightened up from a solved problem to see an unsolved one. The man he’d been chasing was gone, and with him Edwin’s best chance of finding his target. He needed another way. Thankfully, the shouting and fighting had drawn quite a crowd, and their anxious faces gave Edwin an idea. Almost any problem can be turned into an opportunity, his mentor liked to say.

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“Give me the nurse!” he shouted. “Give me Robert, or I’ll go house to house and slowly disembowel you all, children first.” As he spoke, he gestured with his dagger, flicking blood onto the crowd. They cringed with every drop. “Then I’ll leave the corpses for the maggots. No one will burn your dead.”

Silence stretched across a long moment, only broken by a child’s muffled sobbing. Then the crowd parted to reveal the exact man Edwin was looking for.

Robert was a tall, muscular man who probably had a good decade over Edwin’s nineteen years. Edwin’s mentor had told him that Robert was a nurse before being chosen by the Ember of War. There was irony in going from a healer to a soldier, from dueling death to dealing it.

“You’re done hurting my village,” Robert said. He stretched out his arm and a sword appeared in his hand, complete with a matching shield strapped to his other arm. The villagers gasped. Edwin supposed they hadn’t known their town healer now had some of the powers of the Beohur of War.

“That was the plan,” Edwin said, wiping his dagger on his clothes. “I’ll just kill you and be on my way. Or you could always give me your ember willingly. Either way, your village will be fine. Unless you run. If you run, the massacre starts.”

Robert answered by striding toward Edwin, sword and shield raised.

“Death it is.” Something thrilled inside Edwin. He had done so much training and preparation without ever knowing when he could strike back at the Beohur. Now he was finally about to take the first tangible step on his quest. This moment was years in the making.

Just before Robert reached striking distance, the Torchbearer leaped forward, swinging his sword while holding out his shield to prevent a counterattack. The blade moved fast, faster even than Edwin could move, though not too fast to lean out of the way.

Edwin stepped back, but Robert planted his foot between Edwin’s and rammed him with his shield. Stumbling, Edwin tripped over one of the militiawomen’s corpses. It seemed even in death they tried to stop him.

But even in death, they failed. Robert tried to stomp on Edwin, but the younger man kicked his legs up above his head and rolled backward onto his feet, coming up with his dagger in one hand and a club in the other.

“I have the skill, prowess, and weapons of a master warrior,” Robert said, “and you seek me out with tools better used for brawling than a duel. Who are you? How did someone I’ve never met learn I was a Torchbearer?”

“Answering a dead man’s questions is a waste of time,” Edwin said. “But I have enough honor to give my name, at least. You deserve to know that you’re about to be killed by a man named Edwin Trollkin.”

“Well, then, Trollkin, have at you!” Robert leaped over the body separating them and thrust with his sword.

Edwin knocked the stab off-course with his dagger and swung the club at Robert’s head, but the Torchbearer blocked with his shield. With both fighters’ arms engaged, Robert lifted his leg for a kick, his leg lashing out too fast for Edwin to dodge.

What Edwin could do was hop backward so the kick didn’t hit as hard. As Robert’s boot hit Edwin’s gut, Edwin slashed at Robert’s calf. Though Edwin tumbled backward, barely managing to keep hold of his weapons, he was rewarded with a line of red on Robert’s leg. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it would bother him every time he put weight on it.

“You move well,” Robert said, before coming in for another attack. This time, his sword swing was only a feint, and when Edwin sidestepped it, he nearly got a face-full of shield. Thankfully he’d kept his club high enough to block, and with Robert’s shield extended, Edwin was able to score a cut on the Torchbearer’s forearm.

“You’re--ahh--you’re strong, too,” Robert said as he pulled away. Edwin knew what he meant: that shield strike would have staggered most people even through the block.

Luckily for Edwin, he wasn’t most people.

This time, Edwin took the offensive, swinging backhanded with the club. He was hoping to engage Robert’s sword arm to open up the body, but Robert ducked and replied with a backhand slash of his own. Edwin was forced to hop back out of range.

Robert followed with a lunge and a dual stab, thrusting his sword and his shield at Edwin’s midsection. Bringing both of his weapons upward from below, Edwin knocked Robert’s attack away, stopping its forward momentum. Before Edwin could follow up, though, Robert had pulled back out of his lunge and out of reach.

The two men circled each other for a few moments to catch their breath. Robert was probably trying to come up with a plan of attack against Edwin’s unusual troll-taught fighting, but all Edwin cared about was that the Torchbearer kept taking steps on his wounded calf. Let him plan. Edwin would beat him anyway.

Robert stopped circling, stepping toward Edwin in the opposite direction. Edwin raised his dagger to block any attacks, but Robert was already lunging the other way. His shield swept outward, knocking away Edwin’s club and creating an opening for his sword to stab into Edwin’s belly.

Agony flooded into Edwin’s body, filling him up until he was almost drowning in it. Breath and thought and action all dissolved in the pain. If this was the first time Edwin had felt something this consuming, it probably would have pulled him under.

But his mentor had prepared him for this, training Edwin until he was no stranger to pain. His mentor had said something else, too: People are the most vulnerable when they think they have won. So Edwin let himself cry out, let his head roll forward, let his eyes go unfocused. All the while, he gathered his willpower and walled the pain into a corner of his mind. He could feel it later. Right now he had work to do.

Then the opportunity came. Out of the corner of his eye, Edwin saw Robert relax and breathe out. The Torchbearer’s lips curled into a small, relieved smile. He thought he’d won.

That was when Edwin drove his dagger into Robert’s heart.

Edwin leaned forward on Robert’s sword, gritting his teeth against even more pain, and stabbed just below Robert’s chest, angling his dagger’s long blade upward so it pierced the heart from below.

In the most satisfying moment of Edwin’s life, Robert’s smile vanished, replaced by a gasp of pain and shock.

“It...” he wheezed. “It burns. It...burns so...much.”

Then his body went limp and the life faded from his eyes. His sword and shield vanished as he let go of them, bringing Edwin a fraction of relief.

Edwin pulled his dagger free. The jagged black blade was coated with the Torchbearer’s blood. Perfect.

Edwin opened his mouth and stretched out his tongue, revealing a sigil that had been tattooed onto it in pitch-dark ink. As he licked the blood off of his knife, the sigil glowed with a deep violet light, and power flooded into Edwin. The power of a divine ember.

Edwin Trollkin was now the Torchbearer of War.

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