Long lunge, all the speed that he had, right for the eyes or where he assumed they had to be. His opponent caught the Ravensfriend, hooked it aside, and sliced back down the blade, scraping up sparks—Ringil had to disengage to save his hand. He fell back. The dwenda came at him again, long-sword all flickering, flirting half cuts and feints. With human steel, Ringil would have been outclassed, reduced to full retreat and broad defensive swings. But the Ravensfriend seemed to rise to the occasion like a trained hound. It rang chimed warnings off the more extended of the dwenda’s attacks, chipped the glow-edged long-sword back, gave Ringil a speeded, feverish battle fervor to match the unearthly poise of his attacker. He was panting with the effort it took, but there was a lifting, grinning passion behind it as well.
He had, he recalled in the midst of the fight, been
And the glow was dying, no question now. The shadow at the heart of the light was thickening, becoming less a blur of hinted form and more the bulk of a solid opponent he could kill. Now he saw eyes, oddly shaped, still faintly radiant, but recognizable for the organs they were. The blue flickering uncertainties were giving way, the spill of light from the edge of the dwenda’s blade damping down to little more than a gleam. More and more, it was the cold fall of bandlight that lit the duel. More and more, he saw his opponent’s face behind the clash of steel edges—stark-boned and pale, eyes narrowed, teeth bared, the combat rictus to mirror his own. The fight emerged from dream and became what it was—the man-dance, the steel measure, the promise of blood and death on cold courtyard stone.
The dwenda might almost have heard him. Shadowy black and silver by bandlight now, it leapt in at him with redoubled speed. Ringil turned the blows, got in weak ripostes, could not break the attack momentum. He staggered back. The dwenda blade got past at the tip, touched his face, dropped and licked across his shoulder and breast. He felt sudden heat, knew he’d been tagged. He yelled and struck back, but the dwenda was ahead of him, had seen the move, and the Ravensfriend skidded off a neat upper block. Ringil twisted, tried for the eyes again, failed, had to fall back.
The dwenda came on.
And the myth vendor in his junk shop, brooding, doubtful.
Ringil launched the counterattack without warning, out of a parry posture that looked like retreat. It was the last thing you’d expect, and it had every sprung inch of reflexive speed he could muster behind it. Blade up and inward, lean forward instead of back, savage chop for one thigh. The dwenda wallowed, caught out, wrong-footed for an attack it now had no way to deliver. The block came late, would not turn the force of the Ravensfriend . . .
It almost worked.
Almost.
Instead, the dwenda yowled and leapt, went nearly chest-high straight into the air, crouched like a cat. The Ravensfriend whooped through empty space beneath, Ringil staggered, splay-legged behind the blow, and the dwenda whirled and shrilled and kicked him in the head coming down.
The courtyard swooped and spun around him, dimmed out, swam with tiny purplish points of light. The band looped overhead, across one corner of his vision, trailing blurry white fire. The stone floor tilted and came up, grabbed him by the shoulder, cuffed him across the side of the head, tore the Ravensfriend from his grasp.
FOR LONG, GROGGY MOMENTS, HE CLUNG TO CONSCIOUSNESS.
The courtyard seemed to have upended itself, was trying to dump him off its surface and into a warm waiting darkness below. He fought it, smeared vision and ebbing strength, groped across cold cobbles for his lost sword, twisted and curled about like some half-crushed insect on a tavern tabletop.
A shadow fell across him.
He managed to turn his head; he struggled for focus.
A towering black figure stood over him, etched in bandlight and the soft blue gleam from the edges of the long-sword in its hands.
The blade came up.
Someone blew out the candles.
I
He knew it was.
Egar saddled his horse again with numb competence, slung ax and shield, pegged the lance upright in the ground. Noticed his fingers trembling. The leather-cloaked figure fluttered in memory behind his eyes. He forced it down, no time for that now, or the icy shivering questions cramming into his head alongside. He scanned again for the riders, found them, down off the horizon now and almost invisible against the twilit flank of the steppe they were crossing. Drab colors, not a common thing among the Majak unless a sneak raid was the order of the day.
