Peril's Gate

  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 funneled 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 place.

  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. The 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 nothing 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.

  ‘Forgive,’ Braggen grated. The needful word chafed at his tortured throat. With no chance to recover the dropped dagger at his feet, he hauled the lead weight of his sword up to guard point. Through eyes glittering with trapped rage and regret, he beheld his own death as his first, rested nemesis came back at him.

  This man was not tempted to stall, or waste time. He dispatched his kills by expedience.

  Braggen parried the first lightning stroke, a blind miracle.

  The next could not fail to rip through his chest. His arm was too sluggish to manage the block. Nor had he the dregs of strength left to deflect the sheer, driving force of an expert swordsman’s stop thrust.

  Worse, his vision was patchy from prolonged exertion. Half-unconscious, he fumbled to maintain his shambling defense. From outside, very faint, he thought someone shouted. Then a wasp-fine hum creased across his stressed hearing. No doubt his body served up final warning that his overtaxed senses were failing.

  He planted numbed feet; and the lunge that he braced for delayed, and then never came.

  Rocked forward into a stupefied stumble, Braggen yanked himself short of a fall. Balance gone, utterly, he averted collapse in a jarring drop to his knees.

  Before him, torn with agony, the lethal town headhunter lay thrashing. Braggen watched the man’s puzzling demise, too numbed to feel curiosity. Stupid with shock, he finally noticed the arrow punched down through the jointure of neck and collarbone. The shaft was clan made, and still quivering.

  Braggen blinked. He hurt too much to be dreaming. Still, the sure evidence of his salvation took a moment to reach his stunned brain. For a mer
cy that stupor did not burden the archer.

  The next, seamless second, the dumbfounded torchbearer buckled and slammed on his face. His brand bounced free of his slackened fingers. Sparks spattered and flurried over the snow. Through the sheared hiss of steam as the coals sizzled out, Braggen wrestled the urgent awareness that he should snatch up his lost knife. But sight showed him the officer, already fallen, his cheek in a spilled pool of blood.

  The remaining torchbearer dropped his brand, spun, and ran. The flared flag of fire cast a glinted needle of reflection, scribing a descending line through the darkness: a third released arrow whined downward. The steel-tipped shaft of vengeance, it struck the Etarran’s sunwheel surcoat directly between pumping shoulders. He tumbled, legs drumming in useless spasm. A last arrow dispatched him, clean through the nape, where his wisped blond hair curled from the rim of his helm.

  ‘Forgive,’ Braggen gasped in the killer’s behalf.

  Undone by fatigue, senses reeling with dizziness, he tipped his chin up in salute. Limned against the faint ribbon of starlight, he made out the form of the archer, a spare silhouette where sky met the scarp of the ridgetop.

  ‘Six,’ he rasped hoarsely. ‘There was another … just at the mouth of … the notch.’

  ‘I took him down first,’ said his Grace of Rathain. His apology rang terse as his marksmanship with the bow. ‘Can you forgive me? The precaution almost delayed me too long.’

  Braggen dropped on his buttocks. Stupefied with anger, he slammed his limp fist against the spent flesh of his thigh. ‘Damn you!’ He squeezed shut dripping eyes. Wrung through by a wave of convulsive reaction, he sucked in a harsh, rasping breath. Then, dogged, he gathered himself once again. Though a useless fury that all but choked him, he cursed with bitterest venom. ‘Damn you, my liege, to the black gates of Sithaer! You were to go on without me!’