Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

He did not even step back. Instead, his metal claw cut across his body, her sword’s tip almost trapped between it and the spines of his arm. Then he moved further in, for a moment almost body to body, then past her, turning as neatly as any dancer – even as she spun on the ball of her foot, drawing her blade free, backing up to allow space again.

Two sharp lines of pain were clamouring in her mind, torn through her arming jacket below her right shoulder, dug there by the spikes of his off-hand arm.

His face bore a slight smile, and his eyes were encouraging, almost genial. He was enjoying himself, but not at her expense. She was impressing him, even though it was her blood glistening on his spines.

Then he drove straight at her, destroying all the distance she had tried to create. His swift blade flicked past her face, only her last-moment sway saving an eye from it, and then it was back to cut across her body, too close to be parried. She let her left leg fold, shoulder almost touching her knee, letting the strike pass her by. A heavier weapon would have left him open but, when she tried to jab at him with her sword, twisting her wrist and arm inwards to bring the needle tip to him, his weapon was in place to scrape down the length of her own blade, nicking her elbow to draw a single bead of blood.

She slapped him with her off-hand. She had no needles or spines of Art there, but it was a move both unbecoming and unheralded, and she felt the inside of her fingers connect with his chin, hooking his head aside. She used this tenuous purchase to swing her back foot round and retreat, then kick off and move forward again, even as he started to close once more.

She should have had him then. Her technique had been faultless: not a spare twitch or quiver to warn him that he would be driving himself on to her blade. His body was abruptly sideways, though, feet skipping him aside so that the slender lance of her rapier scoured a gouge in the grey leather of his jacket but drew no blood, and then he drove his clawed gauntlet down at her like a scythe-blade.

The first jolt passed through her, though in that moment she could not have recognized what it was. She pressed forward, ducking almost under his armpit, feeling the descending blade rake through her flurrying hair as she put on a rush of speed, clearing ten, twelve paces before she turned with sword outstretched and ready for him. She found him standing, as before, without having deigned to follow her. His expression was patiently encouraging, maddening because there was a meaning there that she could not quite grasp.

Her heart and innards felt taut and out of balance. He had bloodied her twice, and he was improvising. She had the measure of him, yet had barely touched him.

Some small, clear voice in the back of her mind explained it to her patiently: This is fear.

He approached again, his steps confident but without arrogance, a man who has seen the history of his duel written out like a play, and intends to perform his role without melodrama.

She seized the initiative, a three-step lunge from a standing start before he had even neared her, her sword lashing down on him, demanding an answering parry as he tried to catch her blade in the crook of his. Instead she drew her weapon back, whipped it at his face so he swayed aside, then was already drawing it back across her to pierce between his right-side ribs. His blade shadowed hers, his parry waiting for the strike to land as if it were a fly. Instead she wrenched her lunge up and stabbed straight at his face again, a strike meant to take him through the eye, but dropping for his throat even as he brought his blade up, hoping to slip under his guard.

Something rang across her skull, scattering her vision with sparks and lights, and she felt a solid impact on her sword-guard, a complaint of steel, and a pain in her side that seemed to spring from nowhere. For a second she could not see, but instinct brought her blade about to fend his off even as she stumbled back, and he let her go again, a second break, providing punctuation in the meticulous rhythm of the duel in his head, that he was carefully teaching to her.

That was what his expression meant, she realized miserably. It was the look of a hard teacher whose student is proving capable, if not exemplary.

He had punched her with his gauntlet even as he had the blade hinged down to catch her blow. Somehow she had warded off his first riposte, but the next had gashed her just above the waist. There was a trickle of blood down the side of her face where he had broken the skin.

The cold, ill feeling within her had crystallized. I am not as good as he is. The gap between them was certainly smaller than should be expected, given the difference in their years, but Isendter had been a master since before she was born.

He was stepping forward again, ready with his next lesson, and she felt a tremble inside. Save me – he’s going to kill me. She had never acknowledged such before. When she had fought Tisamon, so long ago, she had been too young and foolish to quite understand what losing a duel meant. Since then, she had fought many times, but no single opponent had really challenged her, not like this.

She tried another attack, putting her sword through a half-dozen feints and lunges, keeping him at its far end, and herself out of his reach. In her arm, her side, her face, the pain seemed to grow and grow. His metal claw had become a thing of horror, a torture implement. I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to die.

He let her stave him off for a little while, demonstrating a parrying style that moved his arm faster than she could flick the tip of her blade.

I am going to lose. The small voice was growing louder within her.

Dal Arche watched, and he knew enough to see how the fight was going. Everyone else was watching, too – all save one. Someone tugged at his elbow urgently.

‘Dal, we have to go.’

He dragged his eyes away from the contest to see the Spider, Avaris, hopping anxiously from one foot to another.

‘Dal, it’s the plan, remember. We leg it now, maybe some of us get clear, come on! ’

He glanced back at the duel, saw the pair separate again, another flash of red on the girl’s body. I owe her nothing, not even enough to watch her die. She’s not one of mine.

But he realized, with sour reluctance, that somehow she was, even though it was she who had got them into this mess. She was his champion, after all. He was a peasant woodsman gone to the bad, but in this moment he owed her something of that feudal loyalty that princes never quite seemed to grant to their underlings.

‘We’re going nowhere,’ he growled.

‘What? Dal!’ Avaris hissed, and then, when the brigand chief rounded on him, he bared his teeth in a rictus of desperation. ‘I want to live, Dal. Don’t do this.’

However that loyalty to his followers cut both ways, and Dal sagged and nodded, feeling off balance, and unfamiliar to himself. ‘Those that want to, go now, creep off, but no sudden moves. The Beetle girl and her Wasp are staying, no doubt, and so am I. Maybe they won’t notice those that leave, if some of us stick around.’

He turned his eyes back to the fight, hands clenching and unclenching on his bow, hearing the careful, wretched sounds of his people taking their chances. Someone stepped up to his elbow, though, and he glanced sideways to find Soul Je nodding to him.

‘Go and take your chances,’ Dal advised, but the Grasshopper shook his head.

‘Mordrec, then?’ Dal asked.

‘Right behind you, Dala. Don’t feel up to running, anyway.’

At that he did glance around. As he had known, the Beetle girl and her escort had remained, and their magician too, though she seemed perilously close to flight.

‘A man can die in worse company, it’s true,’ he decided, clapping Soul Je on the shoulder, and settled down to watch the conclusion of the duel.