Sir Douglas Norton Warwick was Captain of B Company of the 18th Riverford Infantry Regiment during the Great River War. The Great River is the accepted border between us and Tetzlan, if you were wondering, though that wasn’t the case back then. There wasn’t really an accepted border then, which was why there was a Great River War in the first place.
You probably never heard of that one over in Avalon, on account of it being so short. A lot of that is because of Captain Warwick, although I’ve found that most of the people back east aren’t aware of that little detail. He wasn’t a man to ask for credit and there were plenty willing to take it from him in those days, not that things are much different now.
Morianhenge knew about it, though. They seemed to resent their boy not getting credit. Sometimes I wonder whether that contributed to things a couple decades later, when they kicked off the Lakeshire War.
Anyway, no one really agrees on what started the Tetzlani and the Columbians stoking fires against each other but we all agree it happened. Riverford County is right there on the Great River so the Captain didn’t have to go far to get to the action. The brains in Hancock wanted our men to capture a bridgehead south of the river immediately. A natural thing to want, if you ask me. So natural, in fact, that whoever was in charge of things on the southern side of the river was just as anxious to get a foot on the ground on our side of the Rio Grande, as they call it.
Now you might have guessed that there’s a natural crossing in the river. That’s why we call the county Riverford, after all. The locals on both sides of the river knew about it and both sides scrambled to get to it as fast as they could. That’s where Captain Warwick met Capitan Julius Costanzo Molina Menendez. The folk tales say they first met in the middle of the fording although the official records say they sent messengers across to each other instead.
Regardless, neither commander was eager to have their men cross the river into the arms of a waiting company of hostile soldiers. Yet their orders were unambiguous. They were expected to cross the river regardless of opposition. It was a very difficult position to be in as neither man could reasonably expect to break the stalemate until reinforcements arrived.
Now I’m aware that the Warwicks are a very ancient line of druids, going back to the lifetime of Arthur Phoenixborn himself. They have a reputation as gifted magic wielders who specialize in candles. However the Palmyran line of Warwicks were also famed duelists among the Knights of Morainhenge and this was in the days when sulfurite weapons hadn’t come into common use yet so dueling was still in style. Thus Captain Warwick offered to duel Capitan Menendez, with the loser withdrawing from the river.
The histories don’t say for sure but I don’t think Warwick expected the Capitan to accept. My suspicion is that he was just trying to buy time by sending messages back and forth, keeping everyone busy until someone got reinforcements. The Menendez family wasn’t famous on our side of the river at the time, although that was going to change shortly, so Warwick didn’t know they were also noted duelists. As a consequence a single message became four or five, ending with an appointment the following day.
The biggest challenge to the duel was finding an appropriate judge. Fighting to the death would be the obvious workaround for that but it’s difficult to hold your men to agreements made when you were alive when you’re dead and their resentment towards your killer is quite natural. Menendez pitched a dueling style he called “witnessed by stone and silver.” Nowadays we call it a “three coin duel” in the west and, as best I know, it hasn’t made its way back east, much less the continent or Avalon so I doubt it’s called by another name anywhere else. Dueling being out of fashion these days.
The rules are pretty simple. The challenged party chooses heads or tails and the challenger throws a coin in the air. Both sides then make as many passes as they can before the coin falls to the ground, at which point the winning party for that round is whichever is chosen by the face up side of the coin. This is done three times, with the chooser and thrower swapping back and forth each round. The idea is that the earth chooses the winner by exerting control over the coin, removing the need for an impartial judge to call the match. Or you’re just testing your luck, depending on who you ask.
No one’s sure why Warwick agreed to a three coin duel with Menendez but he did. They agreed that the winner would cross the river unopposed and the other man would take his troops and withdraw a day’s march into their own territory. They would settle the matter at noon the next day.
That was what actually led to the two of them meeting in the middle of the river. There’s a big, flat topped stone there we call the Border Rock. Saw it with my own eyes when I went down south a few years back. It’s about six feet wide and twenty feet long, almost as if the river left it there in anticipation of that particular moment.
Anyway, they went out and met each other there when the river ebbed and fought their three rounds. Menendez called heads. Warwick threw the coin and Menendez won the exchange. Then Warwick called tails, Menendez threw and Warwick won the exchange. On the final pass Menendez called heads and Warwick threw but from there things went very, very strange.
The coin fell between the men and got caught on one of the blades, no one’s sure who’s, prompting both of them to stop in the middle of their exchange. On previous exchanges the coin had bounced a few times before coming to a stop. This time it landed exactly once. It caught in a deep fissure in the stone almost exactly in the middle of the rock and it stuck there, edge up, without bouncing or rolling at all.
Now you have to understand, the outcome of a three coin duel is final, you can’t take it back or do it over, and believe it or not a coin on its edge is covered in the rules. That round is a draw. Which means that neither man won the duel and both would have to march a day away from the river. That is exactly what they did.
You might think their superiors wouldn’t be thrilled with this, and you’d be right. However, life is not as simple as pleasing your superiors in every situation. The people living on either side of the river thought the story was noteworthy and it spread very quickly. Long before the armies could fully mobilize word had gotten around and people began to wonder if ignoring the outcome of the duel was somehow tempting fate. The mood turned against war overnight.
Eventually the men in charge negotiated a straightforward agreement. The middle of the Great River was proclaimed the official border, with the exact center defined as the coin stuck in the Border Rock. Warwick and Menendez became folk heroes and a great deal of pain and suffering was avoided all around. Each man took the coin from the exchange they won and went home.
No one on this side of the river knows what happened to Menendez’s but Warwick would eventually use his in another three coin duel with another knight and it changed hands afterwards. In fact, that silver mark has changed hands at least four other times since then. Going against its verdict in a duel is profoundly unlucky as the only man who ever did it died in a flood a week later. They found the coin in his mouth when he washed up downstream.
No one’s eager to try that again.
So believe you me, everyone out here believes a Menendez keeps his word, just like no one would ever call a Warwick a liar. That goes double if you can best one in a duel and triple if you wager the dueling mark on the match.
“Wait, are you saying that thing you’ve been tossing around for the last ten minutes is Captain Warwick’s coin?” Brandon asked, eyeing the silver mark in Roy’s hand.
“The one and only.” Roy held it by its edges so the other man could study it. “I won it from the sheriff who fished the previous, deceased owner out of the river.”
“Why did you duel a sheriff?”
“Disagreement over who would take a prisoner.” Roy tossed the coin once and shoved it back in his pocket, where it felt unnaturally heavy. The dueling mark knew there was conflict afoot and it was eager to take part, which was unnerving on the face of it and doubly so because Roy so clearly felt the emotion radiating from a silver coin. “My point is, Menendez won’t be able to turn down a three coin duel if he sees I have it. If I win, he’ll definitely keep his word, return Cassie and leave.”
Brandon folded his arms and leaned against the wall of the armory, his expression pensive. “If I’ve understood everything right he’ll only accept the duel if you offer up something he wants in the event of your losing. The only thing you have to offer that he’d want is the rock. I doubt he’s risking that kind of loss just for the coin.”
“He might. But yes, my plan was to offer him the cornerstone. That’s the way these duels work. You can’t win something unless you risk losing something.”
“In that case, doesn’t a lot of this hinge on whether you can win or not?” Brandon rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. “Don’t misunderstand, I have the highest opinion of your capacity for violence in general, Roy. You’ve given me no reason to believe you’d lose a straight up fight. However, a duel isn’t exactly the same thing, is it? Unless you can convince him to let you use magic in the duel, in which case the same will go for him and he looks like he’s not unskilled in that area, either.”
“Not unskilled, sure,” Roy said. “But the Warwicks were much more famous for their dueling skill than their magical studies. Countering a dolmen burner with a sulfurite weapon isn’t easy and enhanced weapons replaced normal blades for a reason. If he agrees to a duel with magic I think my odds are pretty good.”
“Do you think he’ll agree to a duel with magic?”
Roy shrugged. “We’ll know once Georg finds him and extends the challenge. Until then we wait and see.”
Nate Chen Publications 