Garban slogged through the mud of the pit towards the man across from him. He could feel blood dripping into his mouth as he tried to gulp in air. The blood was probably running down from his nose. It was probably broken. It definitely didn’t matter though. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last time either. It was like his pa told him, if there’s nothing you can do about a thing you might as well learn to enjoy it. And sure enough part of him did. Part of him came alive after taking a hit. Nothing else brought him that furious, heart pounding thrill that a heated bout in the pit did.

  Garban couldn’t remember the other man’s name at the moment. Not that it mattered. The crowd wouldn’t be chanting his name at the end of the fight anyway. They’d be chanting Garban’s. The man was fast though. Much faster than Garban. He’d dipped and dodged most of Garban’s punches, always just out of reach. But Garban had him now. He could tell the man was tiring. He was gasping for air even harder than Garban. He had started to slip and lose his footing in the mud of the pit and he was letting his hands drop. Garban grinned through the blood. This was how it always ended. They could be fast as a serpent, as wily as a fox, but in the end Garban was just too strong.

  Too strong. Too tough. Too furious.

  At this point Garban wasn’t even sure what he was angry about, but he didn’t need a reason. The very fact that this man thought he could stand against Garban in the pit was enough of an insult to boil his blood. And that anger fueled him. People warned against anger in the pit. They said it made you sloppy. They were wrong. The heat of Garban’s rage forged him into something unbreakable. The villagers in the area said Garban had a jaw of iron. “You can hit him with a hammer to the chin and he’ll just keep coming,” they said. They were mistaken though. It wasn’t an iron forged skull that kept him up. It was the fury.

  Garban plodded forwards, the mud slowing him. It could slow him to a crawl, but it could not stop him. Nothing could. Garban threw a punch, but his opponent ducked the blow and swung back. The man had put everything into the strike, and Garban’s knees turned to jelly for a moment as the man’s fist crashed into his temple. Garban saw a look of triumph bloom on the other fighter’s face, but Garban shook off the blow and continued to march the man down.

  He could see the fear in the other man’s eyes now, and to Garban it was more beautiful than the sunrise. He was backing away from Garban. Backing away until his foot hit the sloping wall of the pit. And then Garban was on him. The man made a desperate attempt to circle away to the right and out of Garban’s reach, but he was tired and slow now. Garban put on a last burst of speed, lunging forward and hitting the man with a hard left to the side of the head. The man stumbled from the punch and Garban took the moment to wrap his arms around the man’s waist. He lifted him up, the mud around the man’s ankles squelching as Garban ripped him off his feet, only to slam him back down again on his back.

  Garban was on him. He was like a bear mauling the man now. He put one of his huge hands on the man’s face, pushing his head to the side and down into the mud. The mud bubbled as the man flailed, trying to get a breath of air. Garban took the moment to rain down hard blows to the man’s body. After a few moments of desperate struggle the man managed to flip himself onto his belly and lift his face out of the mud. He pulled in a whooping breath, but as he did Garban was already wrapping an arm around the man’s neck.

  Garban squeezed. In his mind his arms were the jaws of a savage beast, crushing the life out of the man. Garban squeezed until the man went limp, and then he kept squeezing. He squeezed until his own ears rang, and the blood pounded in his head so loud it almost drowned out the shouts of the crowd.

  Someone had a hold of Garban now. The man’s second. He must have leapt into the pit to save the man from Garban’s grasp. Garban heard the village scribe shouting that the fight was over, that Garban had won. He let the man’s second pry him free and he stood to his feet. He spun in a slow circle, drinking in the roaring adulation of the crowd. One woman was sobbing, peering into the pit at the man Garban had left face down in the mud, unconscious and beaten bloody. It must be the man’s wife. She was holding a small boy in her arms, forcing the child’s head to her chest to keep him from seeing the battered and broken form of his father. Too bad. The young should see what happens to the weak. It would teach them to grow strong or get crushed.

  Garban reveled in the cheers of the crowd as he lifted his fists into the air in triumph. He closed his eyes and let out a roar that had risen up from deep within, spraying blood and spit over the man who still lay unconscious on the ground while his second tried to slap him awake. However, the woman’s cries seemed to grow louder and louder, until they eclipsed even the deafening noise of the crowd. Her scream seemed to multiply into many voices as it grew evermore deafening. When Garban finally opened his eyes, the air was thick with smoke. The only thing he could see were his own hands, still raised, but now they were covered in blood.

  Not just the blood from a pit fight, his arms were painted to the elbow in red and great streams of it were running down onto his shoulders. Garban recoiled in shock trying to wipe the blood off on his trousers as the screaming pierced him to his very soul. Garban began to frantically try to swipe the crimson from himself but there was too much. Despite his efforts he couldn’t get clean. Try as he might, he knew that he would never be able to.

  ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  Garban awoke with a start. The dreams had come to torment him again. Maybe it was a sign, a message from the spirits of his past that he was making a mistake in training Alef. Garban looked down at his arms, barely visible in the early morning gloom. He ground his thumb into the tattoo he knew was etched on his forearm, just below his elbow. It was his first, and he’d earned it for the win in the pit that he had just dreamt of. He could remember the pride he felt as the scribe had inked the design of a fist into his skin.

  Staring at it now, the pride he had felt was a distant memory. Now he mainly felt regret, like a dull ache in his heart. It reminded him of the soreness he had felt days after a fight. The sharp, stabbing pains of the new injuries would have faded, but his every movement would have an undertone of discomfort for the next week or two.

  The regret he felt was like that soreness, it painted an aching backdrop that his thoughts took place upon. A soreness of soul.

  Garban didn’t regret fighting the man, or even beating him. The man had known what he was getting into when he descended into the pit with Garban. Garban regretted that winning that fight was, at least in his mind, the first step of a journey that ended with him becoming a man that he hated.

  However, he had to remind himself every day, he wasn’t that man anymore. He had taken the version of himself and locked him away deep in the recesses of his mind. He had done his best to cover up the endless well of fury that sometimes still bubbled up in his belly and become the father Alef needed.

  He still wasn’t sure about his decision to train Alef. The boy had made some good points when they had talked about it the night before. He was a good lad, but he wasn’t the type to steer clear of trouble. Alef would fight if he felt it was the right thing to do, training or no. Maybe if Garban trained him it would keep the lad from getting his head caved in if he got into another scrap. Additionally, Durmagos was a dangerous land, and he wanted Alef to be safe.

  He had long thought that if he taught the boy to fight, Alef would seek out fights, but Garban wasn’t sure anymore. He felt as though he had no good options. He could train Alef, and then maybe the boy would go down a similar path that Garban had gone down himself, or bring unwanted attention onto himself, or Garban could refuse to train him, have Alef resent him and leave the boy vulnerable. Why did parenting have to be so difficult?

  Garban ground the heels of his hands angrily against his eyes and growled in frustration. In the end, he had told Alef that he would train him, and that was all there was to it. Once you made a commitment, you had to stand by it. Right or wrong was somewhat besides the point now. All he could do now was hope to the Spring this wasn’t a big mistake.

  ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  Alef woke up to his pa gently shaking him, as he did most mornings. His head still ached from the punch Niall had given him the night before. Thinking back on it now it all seemed like a terrible nightmare. Thinking about how he had nearly been beaten into a pulp in front of Liv made him want to crawl under the blankets and never leave, but he knew that wouldn’t make anything any better. If people heard of him was that he took a beating from Niall and then just never showed his face again, that would only compound his shame.

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  Alef drew back the covers and swung his feet to the floor. Garban was standing by his bedside, his eyes burrowing into Alef underneath his brooding brows. It was as if his pa thought by staring at Alef he could somehow see inside the boy’s mind.

  “Let me get a look at your head and then, depending on how it fairs, we may start training,” Garban said.

  Garban peeled off the bandage he had wrapped around Alef’s head. Alef sputtered as dried bits of blood flaked off and fell into his eyes when the bandage was removed.

  “Hmm,” Garban grunted as he leaned in and examined the cut closely, “it looks to be healing up okay. The honey has kept the rot away at least. We’ll keep training light and bandage it again. It will be fine.”

  He gave Alef’s head one last prod, which was more painful than Alef wanted to let on, and then straightened up. He gave Alef a reassuring pat on the shoulder and walked out of the room. Alef followed after, wiping sleep from his eyes.

  Alef was full of excitement now. He’d dreamed his whole life of training to fight. Now that he might actually get to do it, he could barely contain himself.

  “What’s the first lesson going to be?” he asked, envisioning dodging and weaving around strikes, countering with a flurry of his own.

  “You’ll see in a moment.”

  Alef rambled on in his excitement, “I mean, we’ll probably start with punching. But what kind? I’ve heard jabs are-”

  “We’re not starting with ‘punching.’ Sit,” Garban commanded over his shoulder as grabbed up a few things. Alef sat at the table and Garban slid him a bowl of porridge and then went about tending to his head.

  “Eat up while I get the bandage on. You’ll need the energy.”

  Alef scarfed down his breakfast so fast he thought he had probably charred his tongue with the piping hot gruel. His mouth had been too full to continue his barrage of questions, but now that he was finished he popped up from his seat, bouncing around the cottage and punching the air as if it were an invisible opponent.

  Garban watched him with an expression on his face that seemed to be hovering between amusement and mild annoyance. “Settle down Ale,” Garban said, “Also, I said no punching today.”

  “Then what are we starting with?” Alef asked again as the two of them went out into the yard in front of the cottage.

  “We’ll start with your feet.”

  “Oh. Kicking. I feel like punching would be easier to start with. Plus I’ve heard it’s hard to kick in pit fights because the mud sucks your feet down and-”

  “Not kicking,” Garban growled, a bit of exasperation leaking into his voice, “I never kicked much, so I couldn’t teach you much anyway. Also, you are never going to fight in a pit so you don’t have to worry about that. What I mean is footwork.”

  Alef couldn’t help but feel a little deflated. He had dreamt about how training would go. Maybe he would stand knee deep in snow, driving punches into the trunk of a tree until it cracked and fell before his unstoppable fists. Something along those lines. Of course when he had seen people in the village training, it hadn’t looked that way, but still, footwork didn’t exactly match his manly daydreams.

  Garban continued, “But before we do any training of any kind, we need to have a talk,” Alef sighed loudly, but Garban plowed forwards.

  “Whatever I teach you is only to be used to defend yourself or others. Not for petty grievances or to get even,” Garban stared forcefully at Alef until the lad nodded his agreement.

  “Additionally, once you have decided you have to fight, there will be no second guessing. You have a chance to run or talk before blows are traded, once they are you cannot be of two minds. To break a man you do not need fists of stone, only a will of iron.”

  An unusual intensity had come over Garban as he spoke. Garban’s typical calm and gentle demeanor was eclipsed by an air of barely contained ferocity that Alef felt like a physical force. His fists were clenched and he straightened up out of his typical slouch. Garban towered over Alef and he barely recognized his pa in that moment. Alef could only nod silently in agreement, and Garban seemed to shrink back into his old self.

  “Good, good,” Garban said, seeming almost sheepish about the severity with which he had spoken, “just laying the ground rules is all. First things first I guess. Let me see how you would stand if you were going to fight me.”

  Alef lifted his hands up close to his chin, like he had seen other young men do in training. He also tucked his chin down towards his chest. He’d heard from Fergus that that was a good way to keep from getting your jaw spun.

  Garban looked him up and down appraisingly and raised an eyebrow. Then he took a step forwards, surprisingly fast for his size, placed a hand on Alef’s chest, and shoved hard.

  Alef still wasn’t the most steady on his feet from the night before, and Garban’s push took him off his feet. He sat back hard on the ground.

  “Hmm,” Garban grunted as he looked down at Alef, “You stand too high. You need to bend your knees. Keep your feet about as wide apart as your shoulders and have one planted a bit behind the other. That makes you ready to explode forward as well as weather what’s coming at you without toppling over.”

  As Alef picked himself off the ground Gabran sunk down into a fighting stance of his own, showing Alef what he was talking about. When Alef stood up he did his best to mimic him. Garban walked around him in a slow circle, telling him small things to adjust and pushing him from different directions to check his balance.

  “Good,” Garban said as he gave Alef a last push “How you set your feet is important. The power of your punches come from how you set your feet. Set them firmly and you’ll draw up strength from the ground like a tree. However, a fight doesn’t happen just in one spot. You have to be able to move.”

  “Were you in a lot of fights?” Alef asked.

  Anyone with eyes could guess that Garban had been in some scraps. His nose was crooked and he had lumpy, misshapen ears, the kind you got from having your ears pummeled too many times. He also carried himself with the general air of someone who shouldn’t be trifled with. However, Garban rarely spoke of his youth and Alef was hoping that training together could get him to open up about where Pa had learned to fight.

  “I was in enough,” Garban muttered in a way that told Alef he would not elaborate. “Let’s work on moving a bit now. Drive off your back leg and step forward with your front foot. Then bring your back foot up. Small steps as to keep your balance.”

  He demonstrated the technique, shuffling forward and back. Alef mimicked him and he nodded his approval. “Good, Ale. You’re a quick learner.”

  “This is probably much harder in a pit fight, huh? Because of the mud and everything.”

  “It is, but like I said you aren’t ever-”

  “So you have been in a pit fight!”

  Garban had been so caught up in watching Alef’s technique he had given away more than he typically would have. Alef felt triumphant that he had been able to pry free even the vaguest clue about his pa’s past, even if it had been through a deceptive method. However, when he looked up, the expression of frustration on Garban’s face made him regret his trick.

  Garban glared at him for another second before he let out a long sigh. “Yes Ale. I fought in the pit. Which is why I can say with authority that it is something you should steer far clear of. Now, do you wish to train, or do you want to continue to try to dupe me into answering your prying questions?”

  Alef looked away sheepishly. “Train, Pa.”

  “Good.”

  Garban continued to drill Alef’s movement, calling out directions for Alef to move. Alef’s legs were starting to burn as Garban finally let him rest.

  As Alef shook out his legs Garban said “When you’re actually in a fight you need to use your movement to control the distance between you and your opponent. The safest place you can be is all the way out of his reach, or in close, chest to chest. Either way he’ll have a hard time knocking your block off. The better your footwork is, the safer you can be.”

  Garban came over to Alef, holding an arm extended to demonstrate his reach, and how far Alef should be away from him to be at a safe distance. Then Garban had Alef practice staying at a safe range, with Garban advancing and retreating, and Alef shuffling back and forth to keep the distance between the two of them consistent.

  After a while Garban called a close to the training, saying they needed to be off, or they would be late to meet the rest of the woodsmen. As they grabbed up their gear and left for the day, one question gnawed at Alef.

  Alef finally couldn’t keep the question off his lips any longer. “Pa, you know so much about fighting, why are you so against it? Did you get hurt?”

  Garban let out a sigh and Alef was sure he would brush off his question as he typically did, but eventually he answered. “Aye, I did get hurt. Many times, in fact. But that’s not why I am against it. It’s not about what it does to your body. It’s what it does in here,” he said as he poked at his chest. “Hurting people changes you, Ale. You’re growing into a good man, and I’d hate to see it change you as it did me.”

  Alef was taken aback by his pa’s frankness. He got the feeling that Garban was never quite telling him all that he was thinking. He wasn’t used to Garban laying out his worries so clearly.

  Garban must have caught on to Alef’s surprise because he said “I’m sorry, Ale. Forget what I said. Don’t let me burden you with all my worries. You did well today. I’m proud of you.”

  Then Garban reached out and clasped Alef’s forearm. He didn’t give him a playful slap on the back or ruffle his hair, as he usually did. Garban gave Alef the greeting that he would give another man who he respected. Pride filled up Alef’s chest like a sudden wind and he couldn’t keep a huge grin from splitting his face.