Vylder followed the trainer into a room. Armoured sleeves, helmets, and various weapons, such as tridents, short swords, and daggers, lined the walls. He ignored the armour and helmets, as none of them would fit him, anyway. Walking along the rack, he browsed until he spotted something that appealed to him. As he inspected the weapon racks, he spied a mace, three and a half feet long. It had a leather-wrapped handgrip long enough for two Nevan hands, topped with a plain, solid iron ball.

It wasn’t his hammer, but it would do. He picked it up with his right hand, hefting it. Pursing his lips as he tested its weight, he found its balance, and then he nodded. “This will do.”

The trainer didn’t understand what he said, but the meaning was obvious, so he nodded in response. As they were about to exit the room, Vylder spotted some Jamahdi round shields leaning against a wall.

Most shields on the rack had spikes in the centre boss. One had a plain dome. Vylder picked the one without a spike, then walked towards the room door. He cast a glance over his shoulder and then walked out.

He waited, and the trainer walked in front, and led him down a corridor to an opening. As he approached the daylight, he could hear some random voices cheering, some yelling. He could understand none of it.

The trainer stopped and gestured for Vylder to continue. Vylder hesitated momentarily and then walked into the daylight. He held the shield up to shade his eyes as they adjusted to the brightness.

As he cleared the entrance, a large, thick door slammed into place, flush with a ten-foot high wall. As he looked around, he found it surrounded the entire pit. Atop the wall, he could see people. Their faces wore expressions that turned Vylder’s stomach, wondering to himself what manner of people would create something like this. At one end of the encircling wall, there was a covered area set three feet higher than the rest of the wall, where Vylder assumed people of status would sit.

The pit ground spanned sixty yards, and at the opposite end stood a man unlike any he had seen before. He stood half a foot shorter than him, a slender figure with well-defined, ropy muscles. What surprised Vylder was that his skin was dark. The yellow sand formed such a contrast that it seemed almost white in comparison. His hair was short with tight curls. He fascinated Vylder. So much so that, while admiring the fluid grace of his movement, it was only his instincts that saved him.

Vylder’s opponent fast closed the gap between them and thrust the trident he was wielding straight at his chest. He sidestepped and deflected the thrust off to his left with his shield. But his opponent spun right and tried to jam the butt of his spear into Vylder’s gut. Barely deflecting that with the haft of his mace, he took a few paces back. There were some cheers, and some hissing from the crowd, but all that fell away into the background. This was life or death, and this man was fast! His opponent, aware that his element of surprise was gone, became more cautious. He felt surprised himself, seeing that his opponent, although huge, was not slow as he had thought.

The two men began circling each other. Vylder held his shield at a thirty-degree angle from his line of attack, the leading edge facing the other man. He held his mace low, but ready. Vylder had entered the calm that he always felt as that familiar surge from within his gut flooded his body, and everything seemed to slow down. As they circled, the gap between them closed slightly, and then Vylder struck. The leading edge of his shield shot forward, catching the trident just behind the head.

The force of the blow knocked the weapon off of Vylder’s centre, as Vylder moved forward, swinging the mace back and around for an overhand swing with devastating force. The man wielding the trident caught the blow on the shaft of the weapon, but the force of it jarred his arms fiercely. He rolled backward and regained his feet. Because of the blow he deflected, his hands had lost almost all feeling and there was pain shooting through his arms.

No sooner had he stood up than Vylder was on him, delivering a flurry of strikes that he could barely keep up with. Shield, mace, backhand mace, shield, mace, shield, as Vylder pressed him. As Vylder was delivering an overhand strike, the man rolled forward and past Vylder’s right side, but Vylder turned around to his left and butted him to the ground with his shield as he was getting to his feet.

The man fell onto his back and the trident skidded just out of his reach. Both men were breathing hard. The man on the ground looked up at Vylder with wide eyes. When Vylder approached him, the man closed his eyes, ready for the finishing blow that would end him. His body tensed in anticipation. But then… nothing. He opened his eyes and saw the immense man’s hand outstretched toward him. Eyes of a colour he had never seen before, and so much hair on his face that it seemed to grow out of everywhere.

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He hesitated a moment and took the hand, and suddenly he was back on his feet. Vylder could hear the crowd now. It seemed they were angry, some were flinging food into the pit. Then a familiar voice called out in Ohlsbachi, “It’s to the death, darling.”

Vylder replied angrily. “I agreed to fight. I fought. I won. I don’t need to kill this man. I won’t.”

While he was responding, his opponent inched towards his weapon. As the man reached his trident, the doors swung open and from each end, twelve armed and armoured men filed out and began surrounding them.

Vylder made ready as he turned and gauged the situation. His eyes met the man he had fought, and he gestured to him with his mace, then to himself, and then to the men surrounding them. Vylder’s opponent’s eyes widened in surprise, and then he flashed Vylder a wicked smile. They were opponents no more. With his foot, he flicked his trident up to his outstretched hand and then stood back to back with him.

As the ring of men started to slowly, cautiously close in on the two former combatants, Vylder’s whole body tensed. His breath became ragged, and a ripping, low growl emanated from the back of his throat. His skin flushed as his heart pumped harder, his internal furnace burning hotter, and his eyes turned bloodshot as the growl turned into a roar. He held his arms outstretched as though inviting them, as a fine steam emanated from his skin’s surface and he seemed to expand slightly.

The pit guards heavily outnumbered the two, but Vylder, already huge, seemed even bigger now. They did not relish the prospect of having to take him down. Not to mention the other large man who, for most of the match, held his own against the monster before them. They glanced at each other in apprehension. A voice from the dignitaries’ pavilion rang out in Nevan, shouting, “Kill Them!”

At this command, the men tried to rush them, shields forward, spears at the ready. Vylder took two running steps and unleashed a forward kick with his left leg that sent the nearest man careening backward. He then swung his shield over to the right, ploughing the edge into the next man, who went down like a puppet with its strings cut. He then shield rammed the man after him.

The dark-skinned man threw out a devastating flurry of kicks, thrusts, and crosschecks that had already put two of the guards down. Over his shoulder, he could hear what sounded like a bundle of armour dropping from a roof, accompanied by grunts and cries of pain.

At this stage, almost half the armoured men were down. The dark-skinned man held his own, but Vylder was tearing through them. Several cuts marked his skin, but he didn’t seem to notice. He swung the mace in a wide arc into the body of another man, and folded him like a blanket.

The remaining four men were backing away now. Vylder’s new ally stood firm, and Vylder paced in front of them like a caged animal, breathing like a bellows. And then he shocked everyone. He transferred his mace to his shield hand, and reached down with his right, grasping one of the downed men by his belt, and hurled him at the others like one would with a small sack of flour. The unconscious body slammed into the two shields in the middle, knocking the men behind them down in a heap.

It was over. At this stage, the small crowd of people was on their feet, stamping and cheering. More men came through the doors, and Vylder began moving towards them. The other man grabbed his shoulder, and Vylder wheeled on him. He held his hands up, and Vylder stopped and stared at him. The man was shocked. When he fought him, he was fighting a normal person. Albeit a very large one, but a person, nonetheless. What stood before him at that moment was like the devils his elders would tell stories about to frighten children into behaving.

Vylder was calming down, but he was still alert. It was apparent that the latest people entering the pit were dragging the limp forms of the guards out of the arena. A voice in Nevan rang out above the din, and the crowd slowly settled down. “Friends! Friends! Friends! What did we think of that?”

The crowd’s cheers rose again, and then faded as the voice continued, “We have the Gijeji warrior, and we have the black bear! At first, opponents, and now, allies!”

The crowd cheered, accompanied by the sound of stomping feet.

From the entrance that Vylder came from, the trainer gestured for him to go over there. Vylder was about to offer his wrist to his former opponent when he noticed he had frozen. More armed men, wearing different styled equipment, entered the pit out of his opponent’s side. Vylder went and stood beside him, once again ready. Just when it seemed the pit was about to erupt into violence again, two well-dressed Nevans emerged from the opponent’s entrance.

It was Flavius and another man. A hard-looking man who had the appearance and bearing of someone who had spent a good deal of his life fighting. Flavius spoke a few words to the man in Nevan. They shook hands, and then the other man made a hand gesture that appeared dismissive to Vylder’s former opponent, and then left the pit with the armed men.

Flavius then said to Vylder in Ohlsbachi, “Quite the first showing, my fine, large fellow. You gave a spectacle that people will speak of throughout the Empire, I have no doubt. And now you have a new teammate, it would seem.”

He then regarded the other fellow, said a few words in Nevan to him, turned back to Vylder, and said, “Go, eat, rest. Get acquainted with your new friend here.” Flavius then turned to head back through the opposite entrance, and said over his shoulder as he was walking away, “I am expecting great things from the two of you, ha-ha! The Dark Man and the Black Bear! Today was a great day! A great day indeed.”