It was evident from the first moments that Varten didn’t stand a ce against Simon. Iime sihey’d st met, he’d grown older and zier; his steps were not as sure, and his sword strokes were not as decisive as they’d once been. He was obviously out of practice.

  Simon had grown older, too, but he’d spent the st several seasons using his sword stantly, and he was as sharp as he’d ever been. So, he parried each blow easily, getting inadvisably close to the Baron and practically daring him to do something about it just because he retty sure the man couldn’t y a finger on him.

  “What are all of you doing!” Varten yelled to his soldiers after half a dozen sshes, and a few thrusts showed him how one-sided this was likely to be. “Kill this man!”

  They’d already made their decision, though, and stood there silently in a wide circle, watg the duel. “They’d fight for a ruler that aheir respect or their fear,” Simon tauhe Baron. “You have her, though. Not like your father did before the Orcs brought your whole family doeg.”

  “You know nothing!” Varten raged, shing out wildly with a series of strokes that forced Simon to give ground for the first time. “My father was a great man, and the people love me.”

  “There’s been no love in Crowvar for a long time, and I bme you for that more than anyone,” Simon answered, smiling grimly, knowing that his oppo would never uand the ent, not even if Simon expi to him.

  How could he? The world that Simon remembered had never happened. Crowbar wasn’t important to a him anymore. That in to see on the map he was slowly making.

  It was the backwater of a backwater at the very edge of the Kingdom of Brin. That art of the reasohought it was a safe pce to settle with Freya so long ago. Now, though, well, if the desert were to encroach a little further north, and the Baroo dry up and blow away, no one except the King’s treasurer was likely to notice when the annual tax receipts never arrived.

  “Your family's stewardship, if you even want to call it that, has ruihis pce,” Simon taunted. “You hid behind the walls of your fine fortress while everyone else died or fled. Even you see it's nothing more than a shell of what it was like in your childhood.”

  “That’s not what happe all!” Varten said, fending off Simon’s words even less successfully than he was fending off his attacks.

  “And now you feast while your people starve!” Simon yelled, growing angrier. “You are a vulture, pig at the bones of this pce, and when there’s nothi, the taurs will sweep across the nd, and it will be like Crowvar never eveed!”

  Each word was a cut, of course, but most of them were also apanied by actual cuts too. Simon was in no hurry to kill Varten; he’d do before, and he’d do it again. For now, he seized every opportunity, slig at the man’s arm whenever his guard was insuffit or his reach exceeded his grasp.

  No one would miss him, Simon told himself as he rained down a series of blows on the Baron that left him increasingly frantic as he faltered beh the storm of steel. No one. He…

  As Simon khe man off his feet a his rapier skittering across the floor, he deyed only a moment before making the final blow.

  “No, please. I—” Varten cried out, about to beg for his life.

  No words could have softened Simon’s heart, though, and instead of listening, he brought the long sword down into the chest of his enemy. Theood there long enough to watch him die, surprised to find that it gave him no joy or peace as it had in the past. He stayed there long enough that he was forced to step back because of the growing pool of blood. It was only then that he regained his senses and turo the onlookers who were looking at him, unsure of what to do .

  Simon could see some guards looking at him with relief and others with greed. This had been a fragile situation before he’d gotten here, and he had no doubt that any one of them might try to bee the ‘legitimate’ warlord of the area. What would follow would be a particurly ugly civil war that would tiil someone who was even more ruthless than a Raithewait took trol, and the only way to prevent that, and all the bloodshed that would e with it, was for that someoo be him.

  “Ding dong, the dick is dead,” Simon said to himself as he flicked the blood free from his bde and resheathed it before he cleared his throat to address everyone else.

  “Alright, everyone,” Simon said, raising his voice so that no one would misuand what he was about to say. “The leech you’ve called your leader for your whole lives is dead. That fixes one problem but creates a lot of others. So I’m going to need people to go fetch everyone of any importance. I want the captain of the guard, the heads of any important guilds and leading families—”

  “So you kill them too?” someone asked, obviously expeg some kind of pace coup to follow.

  “No one else is dying,” Simon answered wearily. “I mean it. No ohat’s why we’ll post a guard at the door of the Baron’s family. So, no os any ideas. I just want t everyoogether so that the people of Crowvar decide what’s . If they wao leave, then I will. If they wao stick around until the taurs are under trol, then—”

  “What if they want to hang you for killing the Baron?” one of the guards shouted at Simon, making him ugh.

  “Well, you are wele to try, though I do not think that will end well for you,” he said as he walked over to a chair and sat down.

  People milled around for a few minutes, and they discussed everything that happened with each other and tried to decide what they should do befoing off to do as he instructed. That let Simohe a secret sigh of relief before he asked one of the serving girls t him something to drink. Even if killing Varten had been on his to-do list for this trip, toppling the gover and taking over hadn’t been the pn for today, so he was just sort of winging it.

  Less than an hour ter, everyone of any importance had been assembled, and though the Baron’s body had been covered with a liablecloth, everyone’s eyes kept wandering the bloodstained lump it hid on the floor. The guards there testified that it was an honorable duel that the Baron had started, leaving out their reluce to help the man. That wasn’t so unbelievable, at least when he was younger; Varten was fond of such things since he lost so rarely.

  There was no agreement among the group. Instead, there was bickering about what should be done and who should be the oo do it.

  “We must send for advice from the king!” the city tax collector advised.

  “That will be months in the waiting,” one of the rich men who ran some vineyards to the north of the city sighed. “We should appoint someone, me by preference, as the regent to Lord Raithewait’s son and thee him from Vist to Baron.”

  “But the d is only four!” another man cried out in frustration.

  Simohese versations go in circles for almost half an hour before he finally stood and said, “All good advice, gentlemen. Thank you. We will do exactly what you have suggested.”

  “What we said?” the guard captain asked, fused.

  “Who are you to—” aarted to say.

  “We will notify the King, inform the popuce, appoint a reagent, aainst the greatest challehe kingdom faces: the taurs,” Simon said, smiling as if he had all the fiden the world they’d accept his pn.

  “But who will be the Reagent?” the tax collector asked.

  “Why, me, of course,” Simon said. “I have no iion of staying lohan I have to, but it’s clear that Crowvar is fag problems right now that only a warrior solve, and if none of you will pick up the sword, then it falls to me and my men to do it.”

  For a moment, the room exploded in bickering, but Simon ig. Instead, he started to give orders as if he expected them to be obeyed, and shogly, they were. No one was happy with it, of course, but he’d very clearly remihem he was the oh the small personal army, and though many of them might disagree with his methods, he doubted there was a man in this city who didn’t think something had to be done about the depredations of mohat was currently grinding this try to dust.

  By the time he returo his small camp o the Inn hours ter, most things had beeled. The widow had been informed, the bounties had been paid at the usual rate, and people were ing to grips with the new reality: the Baron was dead, and though perhaps not in name, Simon was the new Baron. He was well aware that many of the mealked to only obeyed him out of fear and that they hoped the King would strike him down or that they’d poison him or stab him in the back, given the bsp;

  Simon didn’t pn to give them one, of course. He po stay as far from the ter of power and out in the field as much as possible. In the m, he gave his men the short, short version of what had happened.

  “So he tried to cheat us of our due, and you did what you had to to make sure we got paid?” Jak ughed, spping him on the back. “I knew I liked you for a reason.”

  I knew I liked you for a reason. Simon didn’t lioo long that day. He had everyoart pag up auro the Baron’s walled pound at the ter of town only long enough to get a few procmations written and stamped. He didn’t expect a lot of help from Crowvar, but with these, the rest of the towns and vilges in the regions should be a little more useful, and Simon had a pn.

  Well, he had several, but right now, the one he was most ied in was the most straightforward: push the taurs and everything else that thought that humans tasted like a delicacy back away from the rgest towns and agricultural areas. Nothing was going to get fixed if people were afraid to live their lives. They would just tio flee north, and the desert and the taurs would chase them.