Rise of the Blade - Charles Moffat [56]
Gambling had been a favoured past time in Pierce's youth, and his skill at sleight-of-hand had nothing to do with his ability to always win at cards. The combination of foresight and mind reading had got him accused of cheating many times, but each time the young Pierce had won out by betting one last bet: Let the accuser shuffle the cards and cut the deck and if he could pull out a card, with sleeves rolled up and both hands on the table, that was higher than the card they pulled, they would have to agree that he was simply blessed with luck.
The other instructors at the Academy had a card game every night and always, against their better judgement, invited Pierce to play. These days the warrior was smarter with the way he played, deliberately losing a couple times and falling for their bluffs, but at the same time winning more than he lost. They assumed, of course, that it was pure skill that kept him ahead in the winnings and they vied against each other to see who could beat Pierce's score.
He could have made a fair living as a gambler he supposed, but it would have been fairly boring compared to the intricacies of combat. The veteran warriors around him found cards relaxing compared to the constant barrage of swordplay, and as a time to bond and make crude jokes about Waterdeep's leaders. This was one of the simpler pleasures Pierce always took time to enjoy. He hoped however, that he wouldn't become like many other old men who spent their last days playing away with other old men until the fatal heart attack.
Looking across the table at the younger warriors, the Doctor wondered if it would have preferable to have died young, rather than endure the torture of growing old. "Grey hairs," he mused aloud.
"Huh?" murmured Ricarg to his right. "Wha'ye mumbling 'bout?"
"We're all getting grey hairs," Pierce explained with a shrug.
"Probably the fault of our students!" snorted Ricarg. "We're probably lucky to still have hair unlike your friend Martinez! He probably pulled it all out while having to deal with those bothersome elves!"
Pierce ignored the biting criticism. He too had a distaste for what seemed to many humans as an elven tradition based on snotty superiority. Still, the Doctor knew better than to let such criticism go unchecked. "Actually, Draque claims that baldness is hereditary. If your father was bald, so will you. Sort of like your big nose," he said, nudging the warrior to eliminate any hard feelings.
Ricarg shrugged it off and went back to studying his hand. He barely noticed the incident and would surely forget it by next morning. That was one thing Pierce had always admired about his pals: They could shrug off insults without blinking. It was in human nature, or at least male nature, to ignore threats to their ego.
The Harper nearly fell out of his chair at the sudden realization. Chev ignored him as a threat, but he was undoubtably a threat. "Game over guys!" Pierce said as he leapt to his feet. "You can keep my gold! I've got to go!"
"Appeal to his ego? I doubt it. By all your accounts, he's too smart to fall for that old trick," muttered Draque. He pored over the pages of his spellbook, scarcely paying attention to Pierce. "You may know him better than any other living person, but you can't predict whether he's that stupid to fall for such an obvious ploy."
"But that doesn't matter," Pierce responded with a grin. "He'll ignore the threat because he is so confident, and really has nothing to lose."
"So what? What makes you think that you can actually beat him, even if you do manage to corner him?"
"I don't plan to. Surely your magic could subdue him."
"Yes, but the chances of turning him to stone again would be highly unlikely. Over time, people build up a strong resistance to magic and after a hundred and fifty years of being trapped in such a powerful spell its going to take a spell that I can barely cast to recapture him. To say nothing of the fact that at the moment I don't even have the spare energy to cast it. I've