My own breath filled the confines of my helm, loud and bestial where it escaped the lattice of small holes in the mask. My whole body quivered with energy, with the aftershock of countless blows, with my own suppressed desire to keep moving, keep swinging.
But there was nothing left to swing at. Only a young soldier who’d probably been a squire not long before the tourney kneeling at my feet, his sword held in slightly trembling hands.
“I yield, ser.” The boy was also breathing hard. “I yield.”
Coward, an ugly voice hissed in the back of my thoughts. You still have fight in you.
I fought my bloodlust down, straightened, and turned my gaze up to the Spire. I barely heard the herald announce my victory through the rush of blood in my ears.
Once I was back in the tunnel, the brawny marauder clapped a hand on my shoulder. He’d also surrendered, at the end, but only after I’d put steel against his neck and demanded it.
“That was well earned!” Harald laughed. “Ah, a disappointnt though. I wanted to reach the second day. Now you’ll have to win, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Before I could ask from who? A high voice called out through the bustle of Coloss staff and defeated fighters. A young girl with brown hair and a peasant’s dress sprinted through the crowd, then all but leapt at the hairy warrior. By the resemblance, no doubt in my mind who she was.
“You’re not supposed to be down here!” He admonished her, and forgot his Alheider accent. There was no real bite in his voice, and she imdiately began an excited chatter in a rural dialect I could barely make out. She didn’t seem displeased by her father’s loss.
That’s the kind of man who should be winning this, I thought. Probably best for him to return ho and rember this as a passing adventure. Lifting my axe, I noted the jagged edge on both blades, the bits missing and cracks marring the good steel. I grimaced.
A figure lingering near one of the doors motioned over. When I drew near Kaia Gorr lowered her voice so no one else could hear.
“Empress wants to see you.”
“Rose, this is… too much.”
The Empress and I stood together in one of the Coloss’s private stables. There were a few, kept for knightly steeds either too precious or too volatile to be left out in the tunnels with all the noise and bustle. We’d passed midday, and Rosanna had managed to steal an excuse to et .
Still, there was little ti before she needed to show her face publicly again. For once, all that urgency slipped from my mind as I appreciated the vision in that room.
The beast was beautiful, more so by far than Faisa Dance’s armor. Tall and lean, but powerfully built, it stood calm in the low lit room. Calm, but not placid. It held the poise of a night creature, secure in its environs, watchful. Black as midnight shadows with eyes like twin rubies, it had a long and sinuous neck and a whip-like tail. Its elegant legs ended in feet halfway between claws and hooves, nimble as they were deadly.
I could not decide if it were more reptile or mammal. The eyes were glassy, with only subtle shifts in shade to hint at a slitted pupil. Through its mane of almost liquid black hair, I could make out twin strips of spiny fins.
It watched , that dark chira, as though judging. Or waiting.
“You needed a mount,” Rosanna said simply. She paced around the beast, keeping just out of arm’s reach, her dress trailing along the stone behind her. “This is one I had available. You recognize her?”
I realized I did. “One of the pair who drew your coach. The scadumares.”
The other died that night in my battle against the priorguard, while rescuing Laessa Greengood.
Rosanna held out a hand, not quite touching the beast. It turned its serpentine neck. Its head looked very much like a horse’s, save for perhaps a subtle point in the upper jaw like a beak. A forked tongue erged to lick at the Empress’s hand, but its ears remained pricked and aid at .
“They are very difficult to keep,” Rosanna explained. “They are all female, this breed, and will not accept any other kindred of chira. So, there are few of them. They are long lived, so so have survived through the centuries, but this may be one of the last. They are also very solitary by nature, but when they do bond the loss of their companion will strike them hard.”
Her voice turned wistful. “I have tried to find sothing to do with her, but she has languished since her sister’s death. I think this is as worthy a purpose as any. Co.” She beckoned with a ringed hand. “Let her take your scent.”
The scadumare watched as I approached. When I offered my hand, she sniffed at it first with her nostrils then flashed that serpent’s tongue to take my taste as well. I noted the sharp, curling horns erging from her artfully shaped skull.
Cautiously, I placed the palm of my hand against the chira’s brow. When she let , it encouraged my other hand to stroke at her strong neck. Her skin seed oddly leathery, though looking at its sleek color I would have thought it smooth. ṞΆ𝐍Ồ𝐛ЕŚ
“You and your sister saved our lives that night,” I whispered to the scadumare. “I am sorry it cost you.”
Oddly, the mare began to purr like a cat.
“She likes you,” Rosanna noted. “Careful. She’s a predator, and her teeth are quite sharp.”
I did my best not to react. “What’s her na?”
“Morgause. Her twin was Morgan.”
While I spent ti admiring and murmuring to the chira, letting it morize my voice, Rosanna’s voice turned more conversational. “The commons are talking about you, you know.”
“Are they?” I asked.
“You caused quite a stir with your show earlier. Everyone wants to know who the gallant warrior defending poor eld is.”
I snorted. “In any other situation, they all would have cheered those other knights while they butchered those two. The Priory’s support mostly ca from the commons, rember?”
Rosanna waved a hand in acknowledgent. “I rember.”
Again, I shook my head at the proud beast in front of . “This is a kingly gift, Rose. I’m not sure—”
“You are fighting on behalf of kingdoms,” Rosanna interrupted . “Accept it, Alken.”
She pointed to the walls, where shelves and hooks held a number of items. “Her tack. Would you like to have a groom aid you?”
I shook my head. “Better if I do it. It will give us ti to get to know one another.”
My next bout would be another lee, probably the last before I would have to fight like a proper knight again. Why did that thought give so much anxiety?
Our conversation stopped when Ser Kaia stepped into the stable. Her face looked drawn, and sothing about her manner put my guard up.
“You should co see this,” she told us both in a near breathless voice.
“What is it?” The Empress asked.
“It’s the Cymrinorean. He’s fighting the champion from Aureia’s Gate.”
My predictions for how the brackets would collapse turned out to be off by so margin. I’d been certain Nimryd would end up fighting . There must have been so surprise upset or a contender unable to continue, because sothing had shifted.
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While Rosanna returned to her husband’s side, I went to the viewing halls beneath the stands where other champions could watch the fighting from a nearer vantage. Once again masked and in character as Ser Sain, I strode through the crowd of armored competitors where they gathered at the windows.
The storm was growing worse. Thunder mumbled sullenly in the clouds above. They seed closer, as though sagging from their own weight. Strangely, the rain hardly seed to touch the high walls or the small island they encircled, as though so force kept the growing downpour from touching the Coloss.
The mont I took in that air, a strange thrill went through . Not my Alder magic, but sothing deeper and more core beneath it. The wind tasted of excitent, of fear, of raw anticipation. I could feel the crowd’s energy soaking into rain and rock. The emanations of burning souls.
It reminded of battlefields. I turned my attention to the figures facing off in the center of the rocky field. There were a dozen fighters, but only two stood. Siriks Sontae wore the sa outfit he had the night I’d first t him, with white warrior’s robes patterned in clouds beneath pale blue armor, one pauldron larger than the other. An open faced helm shaped into the image of a roaring sea beast covered his head, his own long braid of dark red hair spilling from the back in place of a traditional plu.
And also like that first ti, he held a sword-spear of near impractical size, with a weighty blade grafted to a long handle. He cocked it back, almost as though prepared to hurl it.
The shadow of an enormous shape lood above him. Ser Nimryd of the Gate wore the mirror-bright steel of his order, fashioned to show the frightened faces of any interloper who might try that ancient road into the subcontinent without welco. Chased with lines of scripture, all words once spoken by the God-Queen Herself, that armor almost seed to produce its own light. I could hear a murmuring voice at the back of my thoughts, looking at it.
Her voice, inscribed into tal and rembered through the long centuries. Few had kept faith so completely as the knights of Aureia’s Gate, and that faith seed bright as a cresting dawn to my eyes.
Was Nimryd also a True Knight, like Jocelyn? Looking at him then, I considered it possible. He held a round shield bright as his armor and large enough for a man to lay on in his left hand. In his right, a sword short enough to be a gladius to him but a guillotine to anyone else shone with rain dew.
Siriks seed so small compared to that titan. The cloven peaks of Ser Nimryd’s helm towered above him at a neck-craning height. And yet, the Cymrinorean stood calm and ready.
“One swing and he’ll cleave him in half,” one of the knights near muttered. “Foolish boy.”
“Not sure how anyone’s supposed to take that monster,” a young da with armor finned and scaled like a fish noted. “Did no one protest the Gate sending a giant to represent them?”
They hadn’t. The High Warden of the Gate had sent his eldest son, who’d died when storm ogres ambushed their retinue. Nimryd fought on behalf of his lost lord, to honor him.
Truth is so often an impedint to how people want to feel, and many around looked at that towering warrior with fear and more than a little resentnt.
He’s protected all of you for centuries, I admonished them in my thoughts. And yet, all they saw was another monster like the one who’d rampaged through the city two months before.
Nimryd lifted his broad sword high, as though saluting the clouds. The motion was slow, deliberate, yet the whole arena seed to center on the blade’s point. Siriks lowered himself into a crouch, sweeping his swordspear back.
I stood at the ledge, and felt the air change. The wind seed to pause, then start up again. But it flowed a different direction when it did.
Did anyone else notice? By their focused eyes and excited conversation, they didn’t seem to.
“Watch,” the man next to murmured, nudging . “He’s going to do it again.”
Do what? I wanted to ask, but kept my focus on the match.
Nimryd swung down, a vertical chop with all the weight and power of a collapsing siege gate in his arm. My teeth clenched. No man could survive that.
But it never touched Siriks. He stood completely still, making no effort to dodge or block. The blade ca down, producing a heavy whistling sound, then—
Stopped. Nimryd halted his sword little more than a foot above the Cymrinorean’s head. The wind the blade parted didn’t stop, striking the ground around Siriks and kicking up a cascade of dusty gray sand. His braid danced in that breeze.
Even from a distance, I could see the tightness in Siriks’s posture, almost see his anger beating off him like heat off stone on a sumr day. There were murmurs and exclamations of surprise around , reflected at greater volu across the stands.
The young warrior moved, and I almost missed the movent. He seed to blur, diving or sliding to one side in a flicker of speed. He vanished into the rising cloud of dust, then erged from it and delivered an almost acrobatic cut that made the pole of his weapon bend under the heavy blade’s weight. I heard his shout crack off the walls, which almost muted the sound of steel links popping apart.
Nimryd recoiled, his blade sweeping in a reflexive slash that made so much air move in a rush I heard it even from most of two hundred feet away. The dust cloud followed his sword, the slash altering its shape.
Bright red blood dripped from his cut wrist.
“Did you see it?” The man next to asked excitedly. He wore dun tal closer to brown than gray, so badly battered and old I couldn’t tell what the designs inscribed into the tal originally depicted. Like , he wore his helt even off the field.
I shook my head. He’s fast. But… it’s not just that.
I’d felt sothing in the mont before Siriks moved. Another shift in the air. Again, I noted how all the other fighters watching the duel play out kept low to the ground. One of them had even sunk his sword into the sand, and clutched at its grip.
The settling dust gave Siriks more cover, and he used it. Flying into motion with the nimble speed of a panther, he dashed around behind the dwarf giant to get at his ankles. Nimryd clearly wasn’t unfamiliar with such tactics, because he took a long step back before lifting an armored foot to stomp.
The entire island shuddered. People across the stands let out cries of alarm, and more than a little excitent. More thunder rumbled above.
Siriks lost his light footing with the tremor, tumbling into a roll. He ca up crouching, only to find the giant’s sword slicing across the ground towards him like a killing wave, its tip sunk deep enough to create a furrow. He brought his own weapon up, as though to block it.
He couldn’t block that. But—
He swept the swordspear to one side in a sharp motion, letting out a piercing shout. And much like when Laertes deflected my thrown axe, he knocked the blade aside.
He used his aura to do it. I felt the shift in energies, the sudden outburst of his spirit erging into the world like a repudiating backhand. It wasn’t an Art — sothing less focused than that. There was no manifestation of phantasm, no carefully shaped technique. Just raw will, and a sound like a church bell struck by lightning. Racing lines of broken earth ford in the sa direction as that cut, creating a scar across the island near twenty feet long.
The dwarf knight’s blade splintered, the end crumbling away and cracks marring it nearly up to the hilt. Nimryd staggered from the force of impact, nearly going to one knee. Again, the whole world seed to shake as he slamd a foot down to keep himself balanced.
Once more, Siriks flickered with unnatural speed. That, I suspected, was so sign of his actual ability. This ti I tried to trace the motion. He crouched low, bending one knee dramatically, and looked like he threw his weapon — only he kept hold of it, and it carried him.
He’s using his weapon to drag himself around, I thought. An enchanted arm?
It turned him into a living missile. He slamd into Nimryd’s chest, the sharp point of his weapon sinking into solid steel. Not so deep enough to pierce the heart beneath, but it latched the smaller warrior against his foe. Still holding the haft of his polearm, Siriks braced himself on it with one foot and drew a long dagger from a sheath on his back — a seax.
He slashed, right into Nimryd’s visor.
The dwarf’s roar of pain and shock near deafened . It was no human sound, but sothing like a howling wind combined with a war horn. He let his sword go, and reached up to pluck that deadly fly off him.
Siriks brought his sidearm back for another strike. “YIELD!” He roared. “OR I TAKE THE OTHER EYE!”
Nimryd paused, half blind and enraged, but still present enough in mind to hear reason. His hand, still dripping blood through the seams in the gauntlet from a cut wrist, trembled.
“…I… yield.”
The arm dropped limply, and the giant leant forward as though bowing before a king. Siriks ripped his blade free of Nimryd’s cuirass and hopped down, getting clear of his surrendered opponent. He paced so fifteen steps before stopping. His eyes, wide enough I saw their whites even from a distance beneath his roaring helm, swept across the other competitors.
“Who’s next?”
None moved. Siriks started to pace, impatient as a caged beast. “Anyone!?” He snarled.
Again, when no one stood to et his challenge, the northerner whirled to face the Arbiter’s Spire. He raised his voice to echo around the stands, louder even than the angry waves of the bay.
“Is this your best?” He demanded of the royal box, and the high king who sat within it. “Is this all the strength your Accord can show !? Greedy rcenaries, scheming courtiers, and aged heroes too afraid of their own strength to fight properly!?”
He hurled his bloodied seax down on the sand, then used his swordspear to point at the defeated giant. I followed that gesture, frowning. Had Nimryd held back?
Of course he had. With public opinion against the eld, he wouldn’t have wanted to kill anyone and look more the monster. I recalled his halted blow from before. He’d done that himself, not Siriks with so sorcery.
No response from the Emperor to that challenge. The crowd seed to hold its breath.
“Arrogant pup,” one of the tourney knights around spat. “Who does he think he is?”
“I don’t know what he thinks,” another said with more reserve, “but I’ve never seen anyone take down a full grown dweorg like that.”
The tourney herald stepped forward onto his balcony and brandished his scepter. “The Crown wishes to comnd Siriks of House Sontae for his display of valor, and extends its assurance that the young lord shall not be left bereft of challenge for long.”
Of that, I had no doubt. It would be my turn soon. There was just one new problem with the plan. After seeing him fight, I wasn’t so certain I could beat him without using all my powers.
The knight next to , the one in dingy armor, let out a low, rasping laugh. “Now that’s a warrior! Makes glad I ca to this city. Sorry for my old man, too. He’d have enjoyed this. Sha.”
He propped an iron shoe up on the ledge and rested an arm on his knee. The eyes beneath his lifted visor were alight with interest. I knew those eyes. I’d seen them less than two hours ago up in the royal box, only in a more feminine version of the sa face.
Prince Calerus flashed a grin at . “Can you feel it in the air? There’s a storm coming, and it’s going to be legendary.”
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