M: Actually, his name is never mentioned. He's always just referred to as "the Jarada". So, while I didn't guess that we didn't know his name, it made sense to me after finding out.
By the way, when it comes to leaving this chapter in or out, I wouldn't consider just what peoples' reactions are to it - but why is it there? Obviously, we're critiquing the prologue based entirely on its own merits, since we haven't seen the rest of it and can't vouch for the effect of the prologue on the whole piece. But yeah, consider what you want to tell us with the prologue. A lot of people have problems with prologues in general because they have a tendency to be superfluous. So, consider what you're trying to achieve and how well it does, as well as just our "like it/don't like it" comments based on what we see.
My thoughts:
I was a bit confused at first as to whether the duel was for real. Dahael says something about hoping this doesn’t come between them in the future, which suggests he thinks they’ll both be around to see said future, but those two were definitely trying to kill each other. (On the other hand, this seems to be answered about three pages later…)
You have a lot of “he did this, doing that” sentence constructions (example: “Vales fell to the floor on his back looking at Dahael”). Fine occasionally but I think it’s nice to vary the structure of your sentences. Switching it up a bit might also give you the ability to use some shorter senences, which is good for action scenes I think.
Speaking of action scenes, well, I’m never quite sure about starting a story with an action scene like that. Some people say it’s good to get thrown right into the conflict, but when it’s physical and direct conflict like that readers have no idea who to root for or why we should care. This one was brief enough that I don’t think it’s a huge hump, but it seemed worth mentioning.
I’m very interested so far in the world and the culture that you’re building – and that’s really all I have for you, I think. Sorry my comments are a bit minimal, but the story seems only just begun.