The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 045: First Round

The Lake of Ward was a quarter mile of black ice under a white sky, and twenty thousand people had come to watch it kill someone.

They lined the shore in banks of fur and wool, shoulder to shoulder, stamping their boots against the cold. Vendors sold hot cider from copper urns. Children sat on their fathers' shoulders. At the north end, a stand of blue-and-silver pavilions held the great Houses, their banners snapping in the wind. And in the middle of the lake, on a low rock island rising out of the ice, stood a single tall pole with a white flag on top. The Ward Standard.

"The rules are simple," said the Marshal, a heavy man in a fur cloak, from a wooden platform at the shore. His voice was big enough to carry. "Twenty-two entrants. One standard. The first to lay a hand on it wins the round and the purse. Any who fall through the ice are out. Any who are struck down are out. The host House's champion is seeded to the second round by ancient right." He raised his hand. "Let the ice be kind."

A horn blew.

Twenty-two people stepped onto the lake.

Ethan walked last.

He kept his shoulders hunched and his hands out from his sides, the way a man walks on a floor he suspects of being wet. The crowd noticed. A ripple of laughter ran down the shore. Somebody yelled, "Look at the null!" and somebody else yelled, "Does he know which end of the sword to hold?" Ethan lifted his chin, gave them a small, nervous smile, and slipped.

It was a good slip. He'd practiced it in the hayloft for two hours. His boots went out from under him, his arms windmilled, and he landed on his backside with a thump that rang across the ice. The laughter rose to a roar.

At the pavilion, a tiny, familiar figure in a patched coat leapt to his feet and shouted something rude and furious. Edric. Beside him, Bram sat stone-faced, with his arms folded.

Good.

Ethan got up slowly, brushed himself off, and stood there while the others ran.

The thing about the lake was that it sang.

He'd heard it as soon as his boots touched the surface. A low, vibrating hum, felt in the soles of the feet more than heard, deep and steady where the ice was thick, and thinner, higher, tighter in the places where it wasn't. Under the snow dusted over the surface lay patches that would not hold a man's weight. The marshals had laid them in advance. A web of traps, invisible to the eye.

Not to the ear.

His Perception was eighteen now. Everything in the world had edges. He crouched, laid his palm against the ice, and listened to the whole lake at once.

There. A cold, hollow note, twenty paces ahead, to the left. Another past it. A long thin one, like a drawn bow, curving around the island like a ring.

Seventeen thin patches.

He mapped them without moving. Ahead, the runners were already spreading out. He watched them with Appraise and Stalker's Instinct, a dozen pulses racing across the ice, bright and quick.

[Gorm Aldane. Level 24. Strength Awakener. True attitude: Overconfident.]

[Ysa Winterbourne. Level 22. Cold Awakener. True attitude: Fierce. Hungry.]

[Dorian Hale. Level 27. Fire Awakener, Rank C. True attitude: Focused. Determined.]

Twenty-seven. Dorian had gained thirteen levels in two months.

It was Gorm who went first. He charged straight at the island, a big young man with his arms swinging, and the ice under his left foot made a low, tight crack. He had one heartbeat to look surprised. Then the surface opened under him like a mouth and the black water swallowed him to the chest. The marshals hauled him out with long poles.

Flinch.

The crack had been so loud. Ethan stood frozen in place, rigid as a post, one hand still flat on the ice, and the rest of the world slowed to a crawl. He saw a runner fall. He saw another leap over a gap. Then the second ended, and he was moving again.

Beside him, a hunter stumbled. Then another.

The ones who run, fall.

He got up and took a step. And another. Slowly, on the thick ice, using the low notes, never the high.

By the time the first knot of fighters reached the island, ten of them were out.

The rest clashed in a shifting scrum around the rocks, a mass of steel and fire and frost. Ethan saw Dorian cut through it like a hot knife, a ribbon of orange light snapping at his wrists. A hunter went down, scorched, and was dragged off. Ysa Winterbourne, a thin girl with two white braids, laid a hand on a boy's chest and froze him to the ice up to his knees. A lean man in leather struck at her. She spun, and another set of white frost shot out of her palm.

The crowd was screaming. They'd forgotten the null.

He hadn't forgotten them.

He moved along the outer edge of the circle, always a pace behind the fighters, listening. The ice rang under him, thick, thick, thick, thin. He stepped around the thin. A man staggered back from the melee, bleeding, and Ethan stepped back with him as if offering a hand.

"Out of my way," the man snarled.

"Sorry."

The man shoved. His boot came down on a high, bright note, and the ice dropped away beneath him with a long, wet groan.

Oh.

Ethan hadn't touched him. Not truly. He'd only stood, in a place where a fall was waiting, and let someone else walk into it.

It turned out to be a good trick.

He did it again, with a hunter who lunged for his wrist. And again, with a lean boy who struck at his ribs and found nothing there. Each time he gave a little startled yelp, stumbled, flailed, and the other fighter overbalanced onto the thin patch he'd mapped. By the fifth he had picked up a following of snickers from the shore.

"He's lucky!" someone shouted. "He's the luckiest null in the realm!"

"Luck," said the girl with the white braids.

She stood three paces away. Her breath came in short, hard clouds, and frost clung to her sleeves. Her eyes had narrowed.

[Ysa Winterbourne. Level 22. True attitude: Suspicious. Calculating.]

"You keep falling at the right moments," she said.

"I'm clumsy."

"You're not."

She raised a hand. The air between them went white. Ethan threw himself to the left, rolled, and came up behind her. She spun. Her palm struck the ice where he'd been, and a long white crack raced outward from her fingers, spreading, branching, running straight beneath her own feet.

She looked down.

"Oh, no," said Ysa.

The ice split. She yelped and leapt, and Ethan caught her wrist and hauled her backward out of the water with all four skills and a Strength of thirteen. They tumbled onto a thick stretch together, panting. She stared at him.

"You saved me."

"I tripped."

"You did not," she said, in a furious whisper.

"I did a little."

A horn blew. The Marshal's voice rolled over the lake. "Four remain! Dorian Hale of House Hale! Harl Brenner, of the Free Hunters! Ysa Winterbourne, of House Ardane! And Noel Thornwick, of Thornwick!"

The crowd gasped.

Ethan blinked. He looked around. Dorian stood forty paces away on the rocks of the island with a smoking sword in his hand. Harl, a hulking brute, lay on the snow clutching his knee. The rest were gone. Only the Standard remained, white against the sky, and the long, quiet flat of ice between.

Dorian lifted his head and looked straight at him.

He didn't smile.

Then Ethan ran.

It wasn't graceful. He took the straight line to the island, listening, never looking down, twisting aside from the high notes, hopping the low. Behind him he heard Dorian's boots strike the ice in a hard, driving rhythm. Fire whispered. A ribbon of heat sizzled past his ear. He ducked, leapt, and the ice shrieked under him and held.

He hit the rocks. He took three steps up. He reached out, and his fingers closed on the cold white cloth of the Standard.

"Noel Thornwick!"

The roar that went up was so vast it shook the ice.