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Chapter 15 - Messenger

My life found a pattern again and four months were gone before I really knew it. The priests weren't too bad at getting ok terms for fights. It seemed that only my matriarch and her daughters were willing to risk angering the priesthood. The matriarch had been forced to take a break and her eldest daughter had taken her place with the help of a few priests as advisers. Most of the women of the house seemed to blame me for their difficulties which had an interesting effect. I ran into more women throughout the day now some of whom were a little pushy but never to the point where I felt I needed to be rude to get rid of them.

My surplus was over 110 which was an unheard of number. I wasn't even 17 yet but my brothers would talk to me like they expected me to retire any day. 10 years was a long time to them after all, and if I take on half the training of the next generation I could make it go almost double that before ending up in debt. I wasn't going to do that but they still didn't understand why. It wasn't like I had a favorite woman and her children I was supporting.

Not that they were complaining, while I would take matches that only had fair payout they had their pick of matches with better odds, since I was clearing the other houses' boards of veterans. Estro was becoming a power in the ring which meant that even with the displeasure to the priest weighing on them the women of Estro were doing pretty well. The boys were starting to get a couple extra years to train on average and it was showing in the ring already, as well. With me spending so much time with them and the trainer our younger brothers were better prepared. After almost 11 months since I first arrived the fortunes of Estro had come around. They could make the trades for fresh blood much easier then they could have when they bought me. Which is also why my sisters didn't corner me, they now had more choices and ones that were not as odd or possibly dangerous.

Not that it made watching my matches any less interesting. My last two matches had to be moved to bigger arenas not because the fights where large but because they needed room for everyone who wanted to watch. I knew some of the houses would be trying to trade for me, but with my surplus it would be hard to come up with enough and the odds were low that I could keep up this pace.

The priests made sure that I was one of the first ten people to know that I had a match and what the terms were. I never turned one down but they always seemed worried that I would. It was nice to not worry about it. I knew they would find me one and I could keep track myself. I also knew I would have almost three days to prepare.

The men in my units were doing well. So far I had only lost the one. Which wasn't bad considering that they had also taken to fighting more often then would be advisable. I had also had more time to play with the new sense I had discovered when I was brought here. I found that when I focused I could blast objects around my room. I was still working on how to make that useful.

I was taking a break watching the two groups of men run through tactics, when I noticed a priest enter the training room. I called out when I saw the grey robe, he seemed to be looking for something. Priests where allowed to go everywhere, they were the servants of our lord after all. Another little known fact, to the men anyway, was that a group of ten priests and a raised septon could speak with the voice of our lord unless said lord overruled them.

The man in grey turned to see who had addressed him and that brought the front of the grey robe he wore to face me. On it resting over the man's heart was the red star of our lord. I felt my knee hit the stone ground before I had realized I had moved. The man moved up to me, as my brothers came to a dead stop. I knew we weren't in the capital but surely they knew what the star meant.

"Son, since you seem to recognize me maybe you can point me in the direction of the wilder."

"I am sorry if my brothers haven't offered you help, messenger, they call me wilder."

The priest titled his head, "You don't match the stories."

I growled and signaled the brother of my unit who had tried to step up behind me. He saw the signal and I felt him reister fear, then recognition, then surprise but he was in the habit of obeying me. He stepped back then took a knee. The rest of the unit followed his example after a second of hesitation. That got the notice of the rest of our brothers who were down here. Priests were allowed to go anywhere but they normally didn't have the time. My brothers had gotten used to having one or two around the practice gym now, but before that they almost never bothered to come down here. If a brother wanted spiritual guidance they had to go to the priesthood.

They had seen enough of the priesthood now to know that I didn't react that way. The messenger picked up on the change in the room and looked around. There was another priest in the room and he looked up from the brother that was talking to him. He almost ran over to the messenger. "Do you need any help, brother?"

"I didn't mean to cause a problem."

"There is no problem, here, brother. They are all loyal servants, they just haven't seen a messenger of our lord before, we don't get many this far out."

"I am looking for the wilder."

"Might I ask why?"

"After I find him." The messenger was frowning.

"Oh, I am sorry brother, the man behind you is the wilder. I thought you knew."

"He doesn't match the stories."

"Well he has a match in a few hours, if our lord hasn't ordered haste you can watch and judge for yourself."

"I didn't make the time to check, is it a four on four?"

"I am afraid I didn't look at the terms." The city priest looked at me.

"Yes, a four on four, against another team that I might be willing to call a unit. All veterans and veterans of other four on four matches. They don't have as clear a leader, the terms are .2 a head for loser and .8 for winner. Victors split the remaining."

"Why would they take terms so low?"

"No doubt they believe someone must kill me soon and they want the honor of claiming to have done it. There are quite a few that are fighting for that honor now so terms are better."

"You don't sound worried." the messenger was looking at me again.

"What good would that do? Death comes for all. She is never early and never late she just keeps her own time."

"A few more hours won't matter for my message, but I will not be letting you out of my sight."

"I understand, I have your permission to continue then?"