Patricia Briggs: When Demons Walk

Hirkin’s face whitened with rage. “You would banish me? I am the second son of the Lord of the Marshlands! Our oldest title goes back eight hundred years. You are nothing! Do you hear me? Nothing but the bastard son of a high-bred whore.”

Kerim shook his head, managing to look regretful as he drew his sword from the sheath on his back. His voice abruptly iced over as he said, “High-bred whore she might be, but it is not your judgment to give. I cry challenge.”

The sight of the Reeve’s sword distracted Sham momentarily. She had heard that the Leopard fought with a blue sword, but she had assumed that it was painted blue—a custom that was fairly prevalent among the Easterners.

Instead it was blued as was sometimes done with steel intended for decorative use. She’d never heard of true bluing done on the scale of the Reeve’s massive blade. A lesser process was occasionally used to prevent rust on swords, but the blades came out more black than blue.

The Reeve’s sword was a dark indigo that glittered evilly in the dim light of the little cottage. It was edged in silver where the bluing had been honed away. Thin marks where other blades had marred the finish bore mute testimony that this was no ceremonial tool but an instrument of death.

Hirkin smiled and drew his own sword. “You make this too easy, my lord Reeve. Once you might have bested me, but I hear that two days out of three you can’t even lift that sword. You have no one to help you here—these are my men.”

Apparently he didn’t count Sham, who was definitely opposed to Hirkin—but she was surprised that he didn’t notice that two of his guardsmen were also backing the Reeve, leaving only Scarf and the cadaver still loyal.

Kerim smiled gently. “The order of banishment has already been listed in the temple and with the council. My death will not nullify that.” He twisted the sword around in a shimmering curtain of lethal sharpness, then smiled ferally and said, “We are in luck, it also appears that this is the one day of three I am able to fight.”

Apparently tiring of the posturing, Hirkin growled abruptly and sprang at Kerim, sweeping his sword low and hard. Without visible effort, Kerim caught the smaller blade on his own and turned it aside, destroying a table that stood against the wall.

As Sham winced away from the destruction, her attention was caught by a slight movement on her left. Without turning her head further from the flashing swords, she glimpsed Scarf edging slowly forward, a large, wicked knife in his hands. She frowned in disparagement at his choice of weapons—in the right hands a small dagger killed as surely and it was much easier to hide.

Knowing what little she did about Scarf, she would have thought he would wait to see who was winning before committing himself firmly to either side, but perhaps he had a greater interest in Lord Hirkin than she knew. She flinched again when Hirkin’s sword crashed into one of the cheap little pots that lined the crude wooden shelf set into the wall.

Sham knew she should take advantage of the fight and leave. The back door of the cottage was behind her, and no one was watching.

She waited until Scarf chose his position before selecting her own. Judging the distance with an experienced eye, she took a two-fingered grip on the handle of her thieving tool, careful to keep it out of sight in the length of sleeve that dangled below her hand. Then she settled in to wait for Scarf to make his move.

She missed most of the fight, though she could hear. The clash of metal on metal was overshadowed by Hirkin’s full-throated cries: Her father had done the same in battle. Kerim fought silently.

Slowly, Lord Hirkin backed to the corner where Scarf waited and for the first time since the initial strike, Sham got a clear view of the fight.

Time after time the blades struck and sparks flashed in the flickering torchlight. Lord Kerim moved with the lethal grace of one of the great hunting cats—unusual in a man so large. Sham no longer wondered how such a burly man had won the title of Leopard. Though Hirkin was without a doubt a tremendous swordsman, it was obvious he was no match for the Reeve. Hirkin stumbled to his left and Kerim followed him, leaving the vulnerable side of his throat an easy target for Scarf’s knife. Sham waited until the guardsman pulled his arm back before sending her tool spinning through the air. It slid noiselessly into Scarf’s good eye at the same time that a knife buried itself to its haft in his neck.

Startled, Sham raised her eyes to meet those of her fellow Southwoodsman, who raised his hand in formal salute. Near him the Cybellian who had supported Kerim was wrestling on the floor with Hirkin’s remaining henchman. Satisfied that the situation was under control she turned to watch the sword fight.

Hirkin’s sword moved with the same power that Kerim’s did, but without the Reeve’s fine control. Again and again, Hirkin’s sword hit wood and plaster while the blue sword touched only Hirkin’s blade.

Both men were breathing hard and the smell of sweat joined the smell of death that lingered cloyingly in the air. The blades moved more slowly now, with short resting periods breaking up the pace before the furious clash began again.

Abruptly, when it seemed that Hirkin was certain to lose, the tide of the fight changed. The Reeve stumbled over one of the old man’s slippers, falling to one knee. Hirkin stepped in to take advantage of Lord Kerim’s misfortune, bringing his sword down overhand angled to intersect the Reeve’s vulnerable neck.

Kerim made no attempt to come to his feet. Instead, he braced himself on both knees and brought the silver-edged blade up with impossible speed. Hirkin’s sword hit the Reeve’s with the full weight of its wielder behind the blow.

With only the strength of his upper body, the Reeve took the force of Hirkin’s blow and redirected it, slightly twisting as he did so. Hirkin’s sword sliced a hole in the Reeve’s surcoat before embedding itself in the floorboards.

Still on his knees, Kerim stabbed upward as if he held a knife rather than a sword. The tip hit Hirkin just below his rib cage and slid smoothly upward. Hirkin was dead before his body touched the floor.

The Reeve wiped the blade on Hirkin’s velvet surcoat. Showing little of the litheness he had displayed in the battle, he slowly regained his feet.

“Thought you might be slowing down, Captain.” The Eastern guard who’d supported Kerim spoke casually from his position on top of the man he’d been wrestling. He held the cadaver’s twisted legs under one knee and used both hands to secure an arm he’d pulled up and back. The position looked uncomfortable for both men to Sham, but she seldom indulged in such sport.

Kerim narrowed his eyes at the man who addressed him and then grinned. “It’s good to see you again. Lirn. What is an archer of your caliber doing working in Purgatory?”

The guardsman shrugged. “Have to take what work’s offered. Captain.”

“I could use you, training the Castle guards,” offered the Reeve, “but I have to warn you that the last man to hold the post of captain quit.”

The guard’s eyebrows rose. “I wouldn’t have thought that Castle guards would be that difficult.”

“They’re not,” returned Kerim. “My lady mother, however is .”

The guard laughed and shook his head. “I’ll do it. What do you want me to do with this one?” He gave the captive’s wrist a twitch and the man beneath him yelped.

“What was he doing when you caught him?” asked Kerim.

“Running.”

The Reeve shrugged. “Let him go. There is no law against running, and he is no worse than most of the guards around here.”