Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

A fencing master wouldn’t use such bluster, only a poser apprentice. To bolster their own self-esteem town-boys have to believe they can fight. Heat rose into my head. I yelled, “What?”

I ducked under his blade, came up well in distance, kneed him in the balls and as he fell sank my ice axe in his throat. The pick emerged from the back of his neck, shining, covered in blood.

I didn’t see Gio’s next moves because I pounced onto the man’s body, both feet on his chest, to pull my pick free. I rolled and slammed it through the nearest foot with so much force that I fastened it to the earth. The foot belonged to the man Mist was fighting. He howled. He jerked his leg, tripped over the handle, which jolted the pick from his shoe. He reeled away.

It seemed that Gio was now the one prepared to die in the struggle for immortality. Wrenn stamped the ground and thrust at Gio. He blocked it halfway. His rapier and dagger moved fast as an Insect’s feelers, keeping Wrenn at bay. Wrenn failed to engage his sword and Gio reached right to cut at Lightning.

None of the Zascai were prepared to help Gio take on Lightning or Serein. They concentrated on me instead, stepping forward warily, trying to time their attack together. I backed against a tree and motioned for Mist to do the same. She never stopped swearing as she raised her katana with both hands. A gleam ran along its perfect edge, daunting the rebels.

Gio circled Lightning’s short sword with his rapier blade and then hit it hard under the forte. He flowed the move on with grace, beat away the straight thrust Wrenn made at his chest. He kicked a foot at Wrenn’s hips, shoving him off balance. Wrenn bounded back, spread his wings.

The man fighting me turned and ran. I looked to Mist; she was shaking, white hands wrapped around her hilt and an expression of disbelief on her face. Blood peeled off the blade’s razor edge. Her adversary lay on the ground in two pieces. For one beat, blood pumped out slickly around his solid guts. His lips moved, then set.

“Shit,” I said. “It went straight through him!” I hadn’t seen before what a blade designed for cleaving Insects could do to a human.

Mist said nothing, trying to think her way out of the horror.

Gio spun on the ball of his foot and lunged at Lightning. Lightning missed his parry but instinctively turned away from the point. It ripped through the left side of his shirt at the waist and into his back.

Gio whipped out the black blade, thirty centimeters slick with blood.

Lightning fell to his knees, heavily. Gio turned to Wrenn.

The Zascai stopped and looked at Lightning. He lay on his side with his body arched, knees bent, his wounded side raised from the ground. His eyes clenched shut with agony; he drew deep breaths through his open mouth.

The thugs shrank back, their broadswords loose in their hands. Gio’s charisma had worn off and they were themselves again, every terrified individual. I shouted, “See what you’ve done? Killed the Archer!” I made no attempt to hide the panic in my voice. “ Lord Micawater. The oldest man in the world after the Emperor himself! Put your weapons down !”

Their blades dropped to the earth. They turned tail and fled, in ones and twos, every direction into the forest. I yelled after them, “San will bring you to justice! I’ll see you all hang!”

Gio and Wrenn were still dueling to kill fifty meters away. Gio forced Wrenn to retreat against a broad oak trunk; he was in danger of tripping over its roots. The last of Gio’s allies raced past. A look passed between them-the terrified man urged Gio to run. Gio glanced back, realized his friends had split and his chance had gone. He jumped out of Wrenn’s reach, shouted something I couldn’t catch, then disappeared between the trees.

“What did he say?” said Wrenn. “Jant, chase him!”

“No such thing-look at Lightning!”

“Hurry!” Mist snapped. “Help me with Saker! Saker, you’re going to be all right.”

Lightning’s square face was pallid as clay; sweat broke out on his forehead. His body was rigid. “Leave me alone,” he said faintly. He tried to fend me off and pull himself into a sitting position, so Wrenn and I supported him, me on the left and Wrenn on the right, and eased him against a tree trunk. We propped him upright and I rucked up his shirt to see the damage.

The rapier had passed through the forearm of his left wing, between its two long bones; radius and ulna, and then out and through the wing’s bicep before gouging deep into his side. So his folded wing had been stuck through twice, leaving two entrance holes and two exit holes, but it had protected his side from receiving the length of the blade.

Lightning tried to spread his wing but couldn’t. “It’s only a scratch,” he said, vaguely and inaccurately. I took its wrist, held together its three elongated fingers and pulled it open with a grating sound deep within the lacerated gristle. Blood flowed in strong pulses from the upper limb and soaked it. Normally broad with splayed feathers like a hawk, it looked thin with the wet golden plumage plastered down to the skin.

“Water. Hot water.” I rounded on Wrenn. “You can do that, can’t you?”

Wrenn fetched a canteen from the fire Ata had built and began to pour water through Lightning’s wing. I whispered, “He can live without a pinion. The stab in his side’s more serious. Here, cut away the shirt.”

Lightning tried to tug his wing out of my hand. He would rather die of blood loss than be in such an improper position. “I’m sorry, Saker,” I said aloud. “We have to treat it.”

We mopped away the blood on his back, leaving a red-brown map of his skin’s tiny pores and lines. The skin around the puncture hole was spongy and inflamed. Lightning was growing too confused to be rid of our administrations. “Better luck next time,” he said to Wrenn, then rested his head on his knees. “Ah…it bloody …hurts.”

I applied my tourniquet to his wing for a minute while I cut strips from his shirt to make a field dressing. It was impossible to tell how deep the wound was. I saw that it was more than four centimeters, but I had been taught not to probe them. I couldn’t do anything about internal bleeding. I couldn’t prevent infection; I didn’t have sutures, nothing even as basic as a mold plaster or a clean bandage. Lightning looked so weak that all I felt was shame. I had never seen him like this before, and I should never have to. It wasn’t the right way around: as at Slake Cross, I should be the injured one and Lightning should be helping me. He’s the second-oldest Eszai, the richest immortal. He is the center of Awia; he taught me its language, etiquette, martial arts. His money drip-feeds Wrought. What will happen without him? “My god, what are we going to do?”

Mist said, “Finish the job.”

Wrenn said meekly, “How can I help?”

I yelled, “Look after your own sorry hide! Gio had a system for fighting two men that you didn’t know!”

Mist spat, “Shira, keep working. Wrenn, then go and fetch the horses.”

Wrenn plunged about in the forest, falling over, cracking branches and making an awful noise. When he returned holding the reins of our three mounts Mist took two from him and left him with his palfrey. “Ride back to the Culver Inn, find our coach and summon the driver. I’ll build the fire up so you can see where we are.”

The Swordsman was only capable of a canter rather than a gallop; he led his horse to the road and we heard its hooves resound loud in the night then steadily fade. Mist said, “I wish you weren’t tripping so hard.”

“Ha! I saved you.”

She looked surprised. “Well, a second later I saved you ! That man I cut apart, he…Oh, forget it…”