Darion watched them clash, wood cracking against wood, feet shuffling in the dirt. But his mind drifted.

They might see him as all strong and powerful because of how ruthless he had been in battle, because of the undead army he commanded, because of the way he had burned Valdenmoor’s barracks and captured their king.

To the knights of Percvale, their Baron was a force to be reckoned with.

But the truth was different.

The thing was... he would probably lose against the weakest knight here.

He wasn’t that good of a fighter. He knew the basics, how to hold a sword, how to stand and how to swing, but he had never trained the way these men trained. He had never spent hours sparring and building muscle memory until his body reacted faster than his mind.

He was decent, at best. Maybe. He doubted even that. In a fair fight, one on one, no undead, just him and a sword against one of these knights? He would lose.

Everything he had accomplished: the battles won, the territories intimidated, the enemies crushed, it was all because of his undead. They fought for him. They did the things he couldn’t do. Without them, he was just a man. A reasonably fit man, yes, but still just a man, having no martial prowess or legendary swordsmanship or battlefield heroics of his own.

The knights didn’t know that.

Or maybe they hadn’t thought that way yet. Maybe it hadn’t crossed their minds. They saw their Baron as a leader, a commander, the man who gave orders and made decisions. They didn’t sit around wondering, "Oh, could our Baron be a good hand-to-hand fighter?" That wasn’t his role.

That wasn’t necessarily what they needed from him.

Darion watched the fight go on. It was a pretty entertaining one. Both men were cautious, neither willing to overcommit.

They circled each other, wooden swords raised, eyes locked. One would feint left, then swing right, but the other was already moving, already reading the attack before it fully developed. A strike aimed at the head was deflected at the last moment.

A swipe at the legs was hopped over. They moved like dancers, each step deliberate, each swing seemingly planned before it was put into action.

Neither wanted to be the one who made the first mistake. So they didn’t. They just fought well, blocking, parrying, stepping in and out of range. The clash of wood against wood filled the yard. The minutes passed. The crowd of knights watching grew larger.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of back-and-forth, someone made a slip and the other capitalized. A wooden tip pressed against the exposed chest. The fight was over.

Darion was learning as he watched them fight. Not consciously, he wasn’t studying their footwork or memorizing their techniques. But something was sinking in. The way they moved. The way they anticipated each other’s strikes.

The way they created openings and exploited weaknesses. He remembered the first time he had really fought something in this world, the Bogart he had gone to kill in the forest, back when his men had been too weak and too scared to follow him.

He had approached the animal with his weapon and he had won. Looking back now, he realized how lucky he had been. One wrong move and he would have been the one lying dead in the forest.

The knights were putting on a good show, by the way, because the Baron was watching. Normally, when knights trained among themselves, they were efficient: drill the moves, correct the mistakes, move on to the next exercise.

It was work, not entertainment. But with Darion standing at the edge of the yard, arms folded, eyes tracking every swing and parry, something had changed.

The men sparring were performing. Not in a fake way, the moves were real and the strikes were solid, but there was an extra edge to their fighting, a little more flair and a little more drama.

They wanted to impress him. They wanted him to see what they could do. And the knights watching from the sidelines noticed too. Even they were more engaged than usual, cheering, calling out advice, reacting to every near-hit with groans and gasps. What would have been a routine training session had become something closer to a spectacle. And it was entertaining. Even for them.

Darion spent the remaining of his time there watching the fights.

He watched knight after knight step into the makeshift arena, wooden swords swinging, boots scraping against the dirt. Some matches ended quickly, a single mistake, a single opening, and it was over.

Others dragged on, both fighters too cautious, too skilled and too unwilling to give an inch. The crowd of knights around him grew and shrank as men came and went, some returning to their card games, others abandoning their meat to watch a particularly good bout.

He even sat down when he got tired, finding a wooden crate near the edge of the yard and lowering himself onto it. The wood creaked under his weight, but it held. From there, he had a perfect view of the training area, close enough to see the expressions on the fighters’ faces, far enough that he didn’t have to worry about a stray wooden sword whacking him in the head.

He listened to the shouts of the knights as they had fun and stuff. They cheered when someone landed a particularly good hit. They groaned when someone made a stupid mistake. They laughed when one of their own got knocked on his backside and took a moment too long to get up.

The ones still at the meat place held their meats and ate as he watched. They had given up on pretending to be busy. The card games had been abandoned entirely. Even the men who had been doing solo drills — swinging swords at posts, running laps, doing push-ups — had drifted over to watch. The training yard had become the center of the barracks, and Darion was at the center of it all.