‘You’ll have to remove your coat, my lady,’ he said, wiping the sweat and dust from his brow with a dirty rag. The fight master, a slender, moustachioed wine merchant who wore what I assumed were his festival colours of green and gold, leaned uncomfortably close to me. The problem for me was that put the sun in the west and therefore right in my eyes when I faced the six-foot-six man-shaped boulder who now grinned from one misshapen ear to the other as he cracked knuckles that could probably smash through oak planks with ease. In the village of Phan, prizefights began an hour before sunset when villagers returning from their labours could witness the show without having to waste expensive oil for lanterns. The minute the big man had ducked under one of the frayed ropes tied around six rusted iron posts that marked off the fifteen-foot hexagon inside which we’d be fighting, he took up a position on the western-most corner. My first mistake was in letting my opponent enter the duelling ring ahead of me.
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