The afternoon fights were brutal.
The knights had stopped testing and started pushing. They drove the champions hard, forcing them to their knees, making them bleed, making them fail in front of the crowd and the king and the families who had come to see them fall.
House Corvin went first. Their champion was a young man, barely fifteen, with scared eyes and a sword that was probably too heavy for him, he lasted less than a minute against the knight who faced him. His blade was knocked from his hand, his legs swept out from under him, and he landed in the mud with a sound like a sack of flour hitting a stone floor, it was sad as it was shameful.
The crowd laughed, the Corvin lord, stared at his champion with the hollow eyes of a man who had seen too much failure in life to be surprised by another.
