'No choice, then,' said the veteran who replaced the slain officer. 'We'll go one at a time, hand to hand. Back in Etarra, the unblooded survivors can buy his killer three nights with a harlot. As my personal stake, I'll throw in all the beer tonight's hero can drink.'
'Don't send Gery first.' someone jeered, to a companion's snatched cough of laughter. 'If he wins, his new wife will spit him.'
'She'll do worse, I promise, if I spend my month's pay getting one of you oxen rolled in a brothel!' the offended party sniped back.
Lest the banter distract from the bloody work ahead, the ringleader swiftly quelled them. 'Listen up! We draw lots. As the first pick gets tired, the man next in line will replace him. Six to one odds, the hell-spawned barbarian must eventually wear himself down.'
Whatever their method of deliberation, the outcome took but a moment. A man broke away and unsheathed his blade and approached the rock cleft on cat strides. Braggen tagged his light tread and deliberate balance, and knew beyond doubt his opponent was going to be uncommonly skilled. Candidates who earned the sunwheel badge of life service were never less than exceptional. A springing, hot sweat slicked Braggen's palms underneath his thin gloves. He cursed fickle nerves, gently shifted his stance onto the balls of his feet. He faced the grim charge his clan chieftain had asked of him, his last course of action bitter and set, and the life in his veins summer sweet.
He had the advantage of facing an opponent limned against ambient light. By contrast, the Etarran must seek an armed adversary shaded in seamless darkness, half-masked among obscuring rock. A sword thrust would cast a flat line of reflection, thin reference upon which to engage in a bout of lethal combat. The added endangerment made the attacker move in with hair-trigger alertness. He would not strike first, or grope blind for his quarry. Nor would he make the green fool's mistake and work his way in too close. A sharp, seasoned veteran, he came on with care and listened for Braggen's quick breathing.
The thrust he expected shot out of ink shadow with only the soft, warning grate as boot leather ground upon stone. He parried the lunge with a predator's speed, flexed knee leading, and his body in flawless form, presented sidewards. The shorter reach of the clansman's poised dagger was granted no opening to strike.
The urge became overpowering, to release strung-up tension through expletives. Both combatants curbed the temptation to vent. Curses and insults would not hold off death or lessen the fear that stalked in lockstep with the danger. Quick and quiet, they closed in deep earnest, their duel marked by the flurried scrape of fast footfalls, the forced calm of each breath, and the shearing clashes as steel hammered steel amid the pitch blanket of darkness.
Then, as Braggen had dreaded, the backup man crept toward the notch in the rock. His silhouette melded into the outline of his Etarran antagonist and blurred clear perception beyond recourse. The odds traded sides, with the defending clansman hampered by distraction. The bystander's stray noise now overlaid the small, vital clues that matched his offensive to his combatant.
Braggen fell back on his merciless training and the honed edge of his clan hunter's instincts. His first lessons had not been conducted in a closed hall, with waxed floors and candles for lighting, but in the deep wood, with obstructions and roots, and the inconvenience of glaring sunlight. He had sparred by night, even in filthy weather, with the rain a cold sluice in his eyes. A man learned to trust more than sight and hearing, bruised and cut by his betters until he outstripped learned limits, and found he could move in and strike without thought on the prompt of intuitive reflex.
Though the Etarran had endured stringent tests in the field, more than half his secure life had been spent between walls, to the atrophy of the more primitive range of his senses. The next flurried exchange, he found himself pressed by fast steel that licked in and bit out of nowhere. Braggen scored on his shoulder, then again on his flank. The next lunge left him overextended. The dagger stabbed low into his right side, and he crumpled, moaning the name of a loved one.
The blow that dispatched him came fast and clean, and opened the neck just over the glint of his mail shirt. His blood jetted out in a heated, wet rain, sluicing the coffin-close rock face.
'Forgive,' Braggen whispered. He paused, while the man he had felled embraced the Wheel's turning, the life in him drained into final oblivion, and his sightless eyes fixed on the faint ribbon of sky, pricked with cold, distant starlight.
Respite was brief.
'Jolm's down,' the man in the passage informed the companions maintaining the cordon. The one who stood as the patrol's tactician came next in the lineup. Collected, he firmed his grip on his drawn sword, sucked a tight breath, and advanced.
Where a squeamish recruit might have flinched from spilled blood, this man reviewed Jolm's mistakes with stark purpose. The shuddering corpse in his path was likely to spoil his footwork. To clear room to fight, he needed to haze Braggen backward down the black throat of the ravine. Nor would he risk such a task to rank chance, blinkered in treacherous darkness.
Not proud, he begged backup help from his officer. 'Have Kitz bring a torch! Can't spit slinking clanborn while I'm trapped in this Light-forsaken pit.'
Reassurance filtered back from outside. 'Hold, then. We'll send in pitch brands. If you can't find a rock hole or crevice to wedge them, you'll have two bearers. I want that barbarian cut down!, he's cost us a damned sight too dearly!'
Braggen blotted a trickle of sweat with his forearm. He could do naught but wait in taut readiness, while the men outside fumbled with flint and battled the sharp gusts to light torches. The wind through the gap raked through shirt and leathers. Shearing cold burnished his overheated body, his damp skin roughened with dangerous chill. Let his reflexes become slowed, he was going to succumb, his worst nightmare made real if an enemy sword managed to drop him, wounded.
The officer's changed mood had served him dire warning: he had plucked off too many Etarrans with bowfire to allow pride to let him die cleanly.
He rolled his tired shoulders, tried to stay loose, while his overstrung nerves rebelled at the creeping delay.
'You could run for it,' mocked the swordsman who faced him, testing his temper for weakness.
Braggen denied him the grace of an answer, nor dropped his raised steel for an instant. He maintained wary vigil, prepared for the opportunistic rush that must not catch him off guard. Second bled into agonized second. He held his strained focus on the enemy before him, while minutes dragged by, and the breeze funneied through the black cleft of the notch slapped and fluttered the soaked cloth of the dead man's sunwheel surcoat.
Fire flickered at the entrance. Braced for the change, struck alert by his peril, Braggen resisted the natural impulse to shift his established vantage. The dazzle of flame did not spoil his night vision on the moment his stance was revealed. He was still settled, even expectant, as his wily enemy lunged for him.
The attacking blade met Braggen's solid parry, a jarring clash that raised belling echoes within the tight stone enclosure. This bout was no tentative, testing affray enacted in covering darkness, but an assault stemmed from frustrated rage, brought to bitter focus by half a lifetime's experience. The Etarran headhunter whose blows Braggen fenced was a cold-handed veteran, gifted with weapons and tempered beyond any braggart's need to flaunt his extraordinary skill. His brassy competence had but one aim: to finish his man without flourish. Bounties were his livelihood, and killing a trade he had mastered with consummate skill. Poor footing did not shake him, nor the sharp blasts of wind that hissed with pummeling force through the gap.
Against brilliance and a gift of unshakable balance, Braggen owned the reflexes of a poisonous snake. He met and matched the man, stroke for stroke, resisting the fast-paced assault that insistently drove him back and back again. Wise enough not to seek to win ground, he chose his attacks to conserve strength and effort. For when this foeman's blistering talent wore down, he would be free to step back and allow a fresh companion to resume in his pl
ace.
The seasoned Etarran pressed that binding crux. If he could not kill outright, he would settle for wringing his opponent to a state of panting exhaustion.
Braggen blinked stinging sweat from his eyes; strove not to be dazzled by torch flame. The men kept their brands shining full in his face, a sore setback the swordsman well knew how to use. He had a reach slightly longer than Braggen's, and his lightning touches drew blood with a nettlesome sting. If the tactic provoked fury and won him the match, this bearded clansman refused to succumb.
Braggen had lived with black rage all his life, instilled by the memory of Tal Quorin. He parried the lunges one after another, blocked the whistling blade until his wrists and arms ached from the slamming vibration of impact. In the dark, under hellish, flickering brands, the match crossed beyond a pitched contest of straightforward muscle and steel. Battling contention also encroached on the delicate realm of the mind. An opponent this skilled was accustomed to winning. Etarran, he would also be prejudiced. The fact a contemptible clansman sustained his best form without taking crippling injury must eventually sting him. Provoke that cool poise, and he might be lured into brash risk.
Yet if the Etarran had overweening pride, or a reputation to flaunt in front of admiring fellows, his attack suffered no inconsistency. Time and again, Braggen was forced to defer to the viper-quick strike of his lunges. The clansman was tiring. Neat, solid footwork slipped and slithered on snow. Twice, he almost turned his ankle on the rocks. His right forearm had punctures stabbed through his bracer, and a bleeding nick in the webbed skin at the ball of his thumb left his dagger grip slippery.
Hazed by the smoky flare of pitch torches, the town swordsman came on, his blades casting jarring, carnelian reflections, and his citybred features an inhuman mask of concentration. He had cold, pale eyes, and a punishing, ethereal style that gave him the appearance he was invincible.
Braggen caught himself short of a disastrously wide parry. He must not let his disheartenment throw him. Gasping for air, bathed in the rank pong of his trail-beaten clothes and the unwashed blood of dead enemies, he snarled and blocked like a snared fox. Exhaustion had stripped his veneer of humanity.
Hounded and battered, he handled his weapons by the reflex of gut-stripped instinct. Outnumbered before this, he knew the strange landscape that bordered the extreme edge of survival. A handful of times he had fought past the point when better sense said he was beaten. He had surpassed himself then. This bout was no different; except before, he had not been alone.
He had held on for the sake of beleaguered clan brothers, their interconnected dependence a wellspring of inspiration.
Now he faced death for an absent prince, trapped in a place of desolate rock, keened over by mournful, sharp gusts. Fatigue robbed his focus, leaching the urgency from his purpose. The shattering din of steel meeting steel savaged his ears without mercy. More pleasant by far to let go of hard striving, to imagine his daughter, with her long, satin hair being combed by the hands of his wife.
The slapping sting of a graze to his bracer snapped his wandering thought. Braggen parried; again, yet again, his lips peeled back from bared teeth. He saw an opening and lunged. His sword was predictably struck and deflected. But his dagger hand scored, and opened a fluttering rip in the flank of his enemy's surcoat.
Tired as he was, he realized this indefatigable townsman was flagging as well. Heady encouragement rushed through his veins, until he had to rein back to stay recklessness.
No fool, his opponent sensed the turned tide. He shouted, asking the next man to step in and give him relief. 'Change the lineup,' he added, taking the vicious cut meant for his head on the flat of his angled blade. His riposte kept clean rhythm, through a voice wrenched to strain. 'Send in Kitz before Gery. Tell him, play safe. If he's blooded, stand down. This creature we've cornered was born without nerves, and he's strong as a deadly wild animal.'
Braggen held ready, pressing for opening, but the fight did not lag. The two veterans changed places without missing a beat. All over again, with his muscles cramped to burning, and his sight still trammeled with torch flare, the clan swordsman must meet and size up a new adversary. In the speed of sharp action, he must gauge this foeman's style without opening his guard, or succumbing to thought that might stall his response time and lead to a fatal mistake.
Kitz proved a lean veteran with shaggy dark hair, and a cut hard and accurate as a mule's kick. After three slamming parries, Braggen's palm was bashed numb. The punishing ache setting up in his wrist was only going to get worse. This brute's smashing style required well-set feet. Gasping, running sweat from every overheated pore, Braggen gave ground again. He tested the terrain under his soles with a forest-bred hunter's dire patience, and waited. Best to press his attack over loose stone or snow. Then the hammering force of Kitz's traded blows could be robbed of their damaging leverage.
The slipped step that might throw him as he traversed the ground first posed a risk that could not be avoided. Braggen made himself even his raced breath. The disciplined perception that kept him alive required a clear mind, but not too narrowed a focus. Tunnel vision or anxiety would shut down intuition and constrict his physical senses. Tension would force his starved muscles to work harder, further straining his laboring heart.
Parry and riposte, Braggen matched the offensive. Tears of sweat burned his eyes. From block to a high cut, his right shoulder trembled, first warning sign he was losing his war with fatigue. Maddening, to know he could kill this man, if only his stamina was not depleted. As things were, he could scarcely stand off Kitz's rank slashes, far less launch methodical attack. He felt his soles skate on patched ice, then catch in a pocket of gravel. One nearly missed step; Kitz's blade stabbed in at his flank, the thrust stopped on a wrenching parry. Braggen bartered on luck and finessed his way past the pothole that had nearly defeated him. Here lay the advantage he had angled to arrange. If he pressured, perhaps his enemy might rush his form and be lured into misjudgment.
'Ware footing!' cautioned the left-hand-side torchbearer.
Kitz gasped his swift thanks, and stood off for a beat.
Sword poised, the reflected light shot off his blade betraying his unsteady trembling, Braggen panted. He surveyed the faces of the hardened men pressing him and understood that he would be denied any respite. They saw he was failing. Hang back, and someone would just string a bow, and call in a marksman to fell him. Safety lay in renewing the attack, a wicked irony: he must make his move to engage on the same trappy ground he had hoped would defeat his opponent.
Braggen lunged. The fight renewed, to the punishing clang of stressed steel, and the coarse, torn gasps of the clansman. His hair was sweat drenched, and his shirt soaked through. Tht linen caught on his moist skin and chafed, a binding drag on his shoulders. Now tired enough that his parries were careless, he realized he could not reverse ebbing stakes. He might stay alive, to no added purpose. As his legs shared the same jellied wear as his arms, he could scarcely rally. Only a wrought miracle would let him seize back the offensive.
What gain could ten more minutes' delay serve Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn? Since Braggen had no ready answer for hopelessness, he swung and blocked through sheer stubbornness. If these townsmen wanted his scalp for their trophy, he would not grant them the liberty before he was down and unconscious.
Blind tired, now, Braggen only realized the swordsman was changing when Kitz's pounding strokes reached a lag.
Gery stepped in, light-footed and rested. Braggen flexed his burning shoulders. He noticed he had running blood on both hands as he raised his battered sword to receive the next round of offensive.
No novice, the younger man came in fast. His touch was astute, but without innovation. Against his fussy, classical purity, Braggen needed speed and concentration. If the style was predictable, the drilled perfection of Gery's parries left no slackened technique to exploit. Suffering moments of blacked-out vision, and gaps of distorted hearing, Braggen was aware of almost n
othing but the rasp of his own spent breath. The screaming din of struck steel came and went, blotted up by the flitter of torch fire. He fought on by touch, his sloppy feet dragging over rough ground in a manner that swiftly wrecked boot soles.
Through the din, he understood his bystanders made wagers on how long he would take to fall. He parried the next stroke, and the next after that. Slow rage burned through him. Be damned to Dharkaron if he would allow a dullard like Gery to take him out, or claim honor in front of his comrades.
For rockhead clan pride, Braggen kept on. He vowed he would die of a burst heart, before he laid his neck bare to a stripling with no imagination.
The futility mocked him, that he would be finished the instant the more polished swordsman reclaimed the assault. Against that one, he could not stand past two strokes. He could but hope the man had the grace not to lay back and toy with him.
Braggen caught the next stroke too near the cross guard, and narrowly missed being disarmed. His dagger hand saved him, a manic bluffing stab at Gery's wrist that made the fool flinch and shy off. Too spent to mock, he fought his sword up, caught the next slamming stroke, just barely.
Unnoticed, through the labor of staying alive, the town officer had realized his men were making a game of the outcome. Through shivering steel, and a snatched moment of clarity,
Braggen caught his outraged, barked order, that commanded young Gery to stand down.
'Now will you buffoons attend to your business!' the Etarran served in sharp reprimand.
Sheer rage born out of twisting despair, Braggen snatched the diversion. He cast down his long dagger, and in a swift move, whipped the small dirk from his sleeve cuff.
His throw followed by seamless reflex.
Then the sharp grief, dousing the sweet triumph of revenge, as the man toppled neck struck, and left his young wife a widow.