“You can’t keep running,” said Hugo, turning to face him. In the sleek reflection of his dad’s helmet, Finn saw his own visor-covered face, the sides of his helmet daubed with red streaks of paint meant to imitate blood.
His father moved in with a skilful swish of a blade aimed at Finn’s nose. Finn just about reacted in time to block it, but his father loomed over him, pressing down slowly, surely, so that Finn’s knees began to buckle beneath him. “Sooner or later,” said Hugo sternly, “you’re going to have to fight back.”
“I hate to admit this,” said Finn, sinking under the pressure of the sword, his back beginning to bend precariously over his legs, “but you’re right.”
He dropped suddenly, almost limboing away from his father as Hugo stumbled forward at the sudden removal of the body that had been holding him up.
Finn hit his father in the hinge of one leg. Hugo dropped to one knee and Finn released a tiny laugh of satisfaction. He immediately regretted this celebration for two reasons.
First, the smell of this morning’s boiled egg filled his helmet.
Second, his father hit back.
The tremor from Hugo’s blow worked its way through Finn’s armour, a rattle that reached his shoulders and shook the golden ropes of the epaulettes that hung on his shoulders.
To catch his breath, Finn pulled the helmet from his head. Gathering himself, Finn glared at the mirror that ran the length of the wall, saw himself in the new fighting suit he’d spent recent months working on. Making your own fighting suit was the Legend Hunter tradition. It was also necessary in Finn’s case, since the last one had been destroyed on the Infested Side.
This new one was made of dull steel, shiny leather, overlapping straps. The fat buckle on his belt was moulded into a wide biting mouth. There was a somewhat unconvincing painting of a Minotaur’s horns and gaping mouth across his chest. And the quivering epaulettes had been added because this was a fighting suit he’d made not just for future battles he hoped to avoid, but also a graduation ceremony he knew he couldn’t. Unfortunately.
“Do we really have to have such a big ceremony?” he hissed.
“Of course,” his father responded, low. “People have come from all over the world to see this.”
“No pressure at all,” said Finn. “It’ll be good to become a Legend Hunter after everything, I suppose. But maybe it could have been just a family occasion.”
“Serves you right for surviving the Infested Side, battling legends, rescuing me, saving Darkmouth and being generally heroic,” said his father.
“I’ll know better next time,” said Finn, a grin curling the edge of his mouth.
Hugo jabbed his weapon forward, and Finn realised too late that it was simply a diversion, something to push him off balance. He made to parry the blow, but his father was already behind him, and before Finn could even react, had wrapped his arms round his chest, hauling him up so that his legs kicked at the air.
Finn felt the breath forced from his lungs, yet remained as calm as he could, refusing to let the crush panic him. He knew this was a test.
“I’m nearly thirteen,” he spluttered, arms jammed down his sides, but his right hand flicking a clasp on his fighting suit. “I’m too old for tickles.”
The whole outfit peeled open like a banana, and Finn slid down through it, free from his father’s grip.
Jumping away, he again saw himself in the mirror, and this time regretted wearing a vest and old sports shorts. His boots were still on his feet, and his legs disappeared into them like bamboo in a plant pot.
Hugo threw the empty fighting suit in a heap on the floor, a smile creeping across his face. “The Goodman Manoeuvre,” he said. “Excellent.”
Finn glanced at the mirror again. “Um … I need to take a break,” he said suddenly, panic and embarrassment flushing through him.
“We’re only just getting started,” responded his father, coiling himself into a highly intimidating pose, a mass of metal over muscle ready to bear down on Finn.
“No, Dad, we need to stop now,” insisted Finn.
“In two days you’ll become a teenager,” his father pressed, his voice low, as if someone was listening.
“I know, but—”
“Tomorrow you have your Completion Ceremony and become a true Legend Hunter.”
“I haven’t forgotten—”
“The first new Legend Hunter in many years,” continued his father. “We need to have these manoeuvres nailed down for the event or they mightn’t let you go through with it.”
“But—”
“And they will cancel it. Trust me. That’s the reason Billy the Loser got his name.” He wound up to attack again. “Well, one of the reasons anyway.”
“No, that’s not the problem,” Finn said, leaning forward while whispering. “It’s my shorts. I’ve torn them.”
His father relaxed from his cobra pose, lifted the visor on his helmet and peered round Finn’s back where, sure enough, the top layer of his shorts was splitting and threatening to reveal the stripy boxers beneath.
Hugo stood tall, seemed to think about it for a moment, before turning to the mirror. Finn looked at it too and again got a glimpse of how weak he appeared beside his father. Then his father flipped the visor down, and immediately resumed his attack stance. “Come on,” he said. “No one can see it.”
In despair, Finn’s eyes opened wider than the split in his shorts. “What? Of course they can see it!”
“They can’t,” Hugo insisted.
Petulant, Finn stepped to a switch on the wall.
“Don’t,” said his father.
Finn pressed the switch anyway.
From a point at the mirror’s dead centre, the reflection cleared, like condensation evaporating from a window, until the full length of the wall became completely see-through. On the other side, two rows of seats were revealed, packed with a couple of dozen people. Some in a variety of fighting suits. Some in just ordinary suits. One wore an all-in-one bodysuit of shimmering blue scales. There was even a family there, a mother and father watching in wide-eyed delight, while their teenage son gazed on with a look of such boredom it would be a wonder if his face ever found the muscles to smile again.
“Half the Half-Hunter population is watching me,” said Finn, pointing at the audience behind the glass. They had won tickets in a raffle: the chance to see the apprentice train before the Completion Ceremony.
“It’s tradition,” Hugo said. “They get to see you.”
“Yes, but I don’t want them to see everything,” said Finn, jabbing his thumb at the tear in the back of his shorts before heading for the door.
Hugo pulled the helmet from his head. “Should we take a break at this point?”
On the other side of the mirror, the Half-Hunter in blue scales shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“Yes,” sighed Hugo. “Let’s take a break.”
With a shake of his head, humiliation