Sword fight. At last. I mused over the irony of this session as I went to the rack to pick a sword for my next fight.

Since the contest started, contestants had never been banned from coming to a fight with weapons—some small pen knives hidden in sleeves, some pencil-thin rods disguised as walking sticks.

I could see why this was called the sword fight though: the weapons were honest here, blades you could see and respect.

The arena smelled of metal and old blood; standing on the field, even to one side, I could almost taste it in the air. There were caked marks on the soil where bodies...