Chapter 15: Duel, Part 1
Rath sat on one of the many benches that had been set out around the perimeter of twenty different dueling circles. The whole thing was a farceone thousand people, nearly all of them young idiots who believed this would lead to something more than pain, humiliation, and wasted time. Fighting each other in the saddest excuses for 'dueling' that Rath had ever seen.
It was like somebody had dragged the pit fighting and boxing matches to the fairgrounds instead of keeping them to the empty warehouse of the week at the dockyards.
He gingerly tested his nose, which was sore and a bit swollen, but thankfully not broken. The little brat claiming to be from the west end, but who definitely sounded like he was a little country mouse still learning how not to get his pockets picked, had nearly got him, but Rath was older and bigger, and those two things usually sent cocky striplings fleeing like startled birds.