As the evening went on, Kre watched the room’s occupants take their leave and depart for their own homes. For a brief moment, Kre wondered if he’d be allowed to go to his own home or if he’d have to return to being locked in the storage room of the town hall.
“Kre dear,” prompted Mrs. Koraski in a gentle voice, “we have a room reserved upstairs for you. Pete is already on his way back from your house with some fresh clothes and some personal effects. We certainly can’t have you walking around in the dark after all that cider, now can we?”
Mrs. Adranis, Landar’s mother, handed Kre a small folded piece of paper. “Drink that with a full glass of water, it will help keep the alcohol headache from crippling you in the morning.
“Keep in mind,” she continued with narrowed eyes and a tight press of her lips, “I tend to make it a rule of forcing everyone to feel the weight of their evening’s overconsumption. So, not a word of this to anyone, especially Landar.” Her stern face softened for just a moment as she gave Kre a motherly wink before she departed.
A couple of Kre’s other friends hung around until after most all of the townsfolk departed. Even after Mrs. Koraski shoo’ed them out of the main hall, they spent time in Kre’s luxurious room, talking about everything except what was going to happen over the next few days. They had already been warned against being too rowdy and breaking anything and, to top it off, it was Pete the natural disaster himself who sternly warned them!
After the umpteenth story about some random event in their past, Pete stood up and silenced the others with raised hands. “All right, all right. Settle down. I had been saving this for the next time Noj visited, since that’s more in line with the annual tradition, but seeing as how this is a special circumstance, well…”
Pete reached under the mattress where he had previously stashed a large piece of metal affixed to a wide leather belt. It was a gaudy and horrendous looking piece of personal decoration, to be certain, but every eye in the room was firmly affixed to it and everyone’s minds went immediately to needing to possess the piece of crap for themselves.
“This belt,” he intoned, having obviously practiced this speech many times over, “is a symbol of victory, both physical, mental, and… well, thirdly then, emotional. It has been passed around many times over, between my older brother and his friends, and among our own group as well. It represents the heart and soul of a champion and may only be won through combat.”
That last part was a stretch. In fact, most of what Pete said was a complete fabrication. The only truthful bit was that the belt was indeed handed down from his older brother to him a few years back, when Pete and his friends took up the solemn tradition of pretending to beat the daylights out of each other.
It had started several years back when some wandering showman was going from town to town trying to drum up audiences for his one-man, strong-man show. When he stopped in Mintas, he put on his regular bit and some of the townsfolk were entertained enough to hand over some cash.
Among the showman’s act was lifting a set of weights that no one else in town could lift, bending an iron nail with his bare hands, and punching a hole through a heavy wooden shield that even a sharpened spear could not pierce. He topped off his act with a claim that he had single-handedly fought, and bested, the Citadel’s own chief hand-to-hand combat instructor. He claimed that while he turned down the offer of serving as the new lead instructor by claiming his possession of a restless soul in need of seeing the world, he did take the proffered Belt of Champions and has worn it ever since.
Pete’s brother, Welter, in particular was not taken in by any of the man’s trick stunts. At the end of the strongman’s show, Welter and his friends offered a wager. “Hey, muscle man! I think we’d like to see an encore! The strongest of us here, against you in a fair fight!”
It was a dangerous bet to begin with, since even though the showman used a set of tricks to make his feats of strength look superhuman, he was still a very large and muscular man. What Welter and his friend’s were betting on though, was that he had no actual combat fighting ability aside from brute strength.
“No, no,” the strongman rebutted. “I would not have much of a reputation if I injured every aspiring townie in the places I pass through. My fighting days are done. I only travel to see more of this great land and to inspire others to harness their inner strength.”
Welter was not to be put off so easily by such a masterful response though. He anticipated this, in fact, and he set his next part of the plan into motion. “I’ll lay a silver against your belt that I can take you in a first-to-fall.”
The strongman wasn’t fast enough to respond before one of Welter’s friends chimed in, giving Welter a rough-looking shove on the shoulder, “Hang on, who’s to say that you’re the strongest of us?”
“Well,” Welter quickly responded, “I’m the one laying a silver on the line here, so I get to make the claim.”
Intrigued, the strongman simply watched and waited. Even though a silver coin would have been three times as much as he made in the whole of the evening, it was hardly enough to force him to abandon his stance of non-violence. However, if he could entice the other hot-headed youths into throwing more money in, a fight could prove very financially viable. Especially if he could play them off against each other.