C. Brittain - Voima

If he could speak of her and Roric joining him, Karin thought while the fingernails bit into her palms, then maybe she was not going to be sacrificed after all to the lords of death. Or maybe he was just mocking her again with this offer.

“Are the bodies ready for the ceremony?” Eirik asked. “It must by now be midnight.” He took Karin’s arm firmly again. “I’ll take her along and send you some of the men to carry the bodies out to the mountainside.” He laughed again at the expression that Karin was unable to conceal. There was no more humor in his laughter than there was in his scarred lip. “Not looking forward to meeting the lords of death, is that it, Princess?”

When Gizor did not answer him at once, Roric slapped his blade against his palm and said, “If you are my father, tell me at once, for I have no wish to be a patricide, but that is the only thing that will keep your spirit from Hel this morning.”

“You are No-man’s son,” Gizor growled at last. “I have no sons. And if I did, I would kill them rather than know them for oath-breakers who had turned against their sworn lord.”

He shifted as he spoke, and Roric, moving to continue facing him, realized the old warrior was maneuvering to put his own back to the sunrise, so that the sun would hit Roric in the eyes-one of those eyes still half swollen shut-when it rose over the eastern cliffs. A misstep here, thirty feet above the river, would be fatal.

And this battle could be fatal even if he survived it. Gizor had three times tried to kill him, and had insulted him far too thoroughly last night for Roric to let him live or his own honor would be gone. And yet that honor would also be destroyed by killing another of Hadros’s oath-sworn warriors.

“When the king brought you home,” Gizor said almost absently, as though in speaking he hoped to distract Roric while finding his own best position, “it was clear you were the whelp of some housecarl on one of the manors.”

Roric, concentrating on the island’s surface and moving himself to what he hoped would be a better position, stopped dead. “The king brought me home?” he said in a tight voice. “I always heard I had been found outside the castle gates.”

Gizor froze for a second, then shrugged. “King Hadros brought you inside the hall when he found you outside.”

But that was not what he had said. Roric stood absolutely still, his jaw clenched. Why had he never considered this before? If he was the son of King Hadros and some serving-girl, the king might well have brought him home to raise as a foster-son, especially since Valmar had not yet been born. How else had the king persuaded his queen to raise a serving-girl’s baby herself, except by telling her that he intended to make this baby his heir if she herself could not produce a son? But then Valmar had been born, followed by Dag and Nole, and five years ago the queen had died.

He had never felt he knew the queen well once he grew past early childhood, had indeed talked to her but seldom once Valmar was born and he was taken to be raised among the men. Was she the kind of woman who would have taken in her husband’s base-born child? Karin, he thought and almost smiled, most certainly was not.

He did not have a chance to wonder further, for it was then that Gizor attacked.

He came at a rush out of the sunrise, with the yell he told all the young warriors would startle their enemies and even freeze them momentarily. Roric had heard that yell too many times. He braced himself to meet the charge, catching Gizor’s sword on his own.

Steel rang on steel, and Roric ducked another blow as he sprang sideways to get the light out of his eyes. He caught himself six inches from the edge. Hadros’s son, he was thinking. I am Hadros’s son.

“Who then is your father, Gizor?” he shouted mockingly. “I never hear you mention him. Was he some slave brought up with the booty from southern raids?”

Gizor did not answer, instead keeping his sword constantly moving, thrusting, slicing, cutting in great arcs at Roric’s unprotected head.

Roric had fought against him in practice dozens, indeed hundreds of times. But he had never known Gizor to fight like this. His steel flashed twice as fast as it ever had then, and he used moves that he had never taught any of the young warriors how to counter, as though he had been saving them in case he ever wanted to kill the men under him. Roric retreated as well as he could on the narrow top of the island, never taking his eyes from the other’s sword.

His boots slid on the loose gravel near the edge, but he found his balance and parried another blow. If I am a king’s son, he thought, then no one can say I am not worthy of Karin. He grinned and tossed back his hair. “And why do you have no sons, Gizor?” he shouted from a distance of ten feet. “Did the serving-maids always put them out for the wolves rather than raise your get?”

Gizor rushed him, and again he parried the thrust and spun out of the way. So far he was fighting defensively, waiting for the other to tire himself out in fighting a younger man. But he himself was still exhausted from last evening’s fight against the raiders who had sprung from among the rocks-the men who now had Karin.

He swung his sword into position to block another blow just in time, almost distracting himself by the thought that he was not just fighting for his own honor, but because he had to be free of Gizor to rescue her.

That is, he had to survive this fight, but King Hadros might still prevent him from rescuing Karin. Son or no son, Hadros could outlaw him for killing the king’s sworn men and for running away with Karin, and as an outlaw he could be struck down by any man.

In the meantime, he had to win this fight against a man fighting as though berserk.

If he could get Gizor really angry, he thought, break down that icy efficiency of fighting, he would stand a chance. “Where did you lose your right hand, Gizor?” he yelled. “You always said you lost it fighting beside Hadros in the northern kingdoms, but did some serving-girl cut it off for you when you fell asleep drunk after refusing to pay her?”

He dodged and ducked the old warrior’s rush, but as he spun away again he thought for a second he saw a face peeking over the edge of the island.

He barely got his sword up in time to block Gizor’s next blow. Was this one of the ambushers back again?

“Gizor!” he shouted. “Someone’s there!”

The old warrior answered for the first time, never moving his eyes from Roric. “Think I’d fall for a trick I taught you myself?” he asked grimly.

Their swords rang again. Both were bleeding now, and sweat ran down Roric’s forehead into his eyes. “No trick!” he yelled. He dodged so that Gizor had to turn, had to look where he himself had looked a moment before.

And Gizor’s eyes went past him, and for a second his attention wavered. Roric pressed the advantage, raining down blows, pushing him back. Gizor recovered almost immediately, but he was forced to take another step backwards, then another, until he was almost teetering on the edge-

“Yield!” Roric shouted, his sword still ready. “Yield to me so I need not kill another of Hadros’s men! Yield so we can both face-”

He never had a chance to finish. Gizor gave a wordless yell and made to plunge forward.

But as he sprang the gravel spun under his feet. He lost his balance and fell hard on his stomach, trying to hold his sword away from him. His feet went over the edge, and he scrambled with his arms for a purchase. Roric rushed forward, but it was too late.

Gizor slid, faster and faster, and with a final yell disappeared backwards over the edge. There was a silence for two seconds, then a hard, shattering smack, then a splash.