44 - The duel

It was past high noon by now, the sky cloudless. It was the time of summer in which summer comes to seem weary, the green of the leaves worn and tattered and soon to be killed by fall, yet the air carries no hint of crispness yet, still making flame-shapes over town cobbles at high noon.

Blood spilled on them, and gore that isn’t rank already, turns rank in no time. On a roof you are above that; now, stepping out into the street, I was in it. Three times now, Kantila had been bathed in it.

Today’s dead were being carried away, the Lakans to one place where they’d dig a burying-ground on land they now considered theirs, the Yeolis to the fields outside where, I hoped, the Lakans would let other Yeolis take them before the birds and dogs did. Scraps of people’s valueless things—a comb, a darkened rag, a broken wooden arm-ring—lay scattered on the street. Here and there on the stones was a white sprinkling of our own quicklime; I reminded myself not to fall.

The Lakans, so small from above, now seemed a head taller than me to a man, chewing aromatic leaves as is their habit, their faces a brown as uniform as mahogany. Sakrent was a tower to me; his great hands at the center of his arcing strokes were at my eye-height. But I was used to fighting bigger people. I was nervous, but no more than I should be.

Sakrent took no notice of me, and an impatient buzz rose, full of the clips and rasps of their tongue. I realized why: one helmeted head behind a wall looks like every other. They thought I was a squire. I stepped closer to him, and drew Chirel full-speed. They went silent for a moment, then broke out laughing, while Sakrent stared down at me amazed. “Laugh, you fool dirt-skins!” my warriors bellowed from above. “You’ve never met Ch—em, Rao!”

Sakrent said something to Klajen, which I suspect from his face was, “Should I really kill this child?” I answered that myself by advancing on him, en garde. He faced me, and his wide-set black eyes changed into a pure cold battle-stare, with just the touch of a sneer.

With a short grunting “Huk!” he began his sword whirling, the circles alternating sword-side and shield-side, at whistling speed. The blade was a mist in the air, faint grey against the dark of wall behind him, faint black against the sky, making a sword-shaped flash in the sun once on each pass. He always fought this way, I could tell, so no doubt he could do any stroke he wished from this start, and could keep it up all day if he wanted.

The eyes can lie. Seen, his blade seemed everywhere at once, forming a shield of steel; weapon-sensed, it was what it was, a single shaft which was in each spot along its path one moment out of every hundred, leaving him wide open everywhere else, and the whole path precisely predictable. My eyes only confused and disheartened me. I closed them.

He had fixed me with a terrifying stare and opened his mouth to let out a war-cry, but now startlement stopped him, and his sword slightly checked in its speed. In my mind I counted the time, then sprang in and down-cut his sword-side forearm between the elbow-guard and the bracer, while his sword was on the bottom of its arc on his shield-side.

Severed, his sword-hand and half-arm fell at his feet, and his huge sword whirled wavering in his remaining hand until its tip smashed ringing into the cobbles. He stood flat-footed, looking stunned from me to his sheared arm, which spurted blood. I could kill him easily now, but guessed Klajen would acknowledge this as victory enough. Sakrent would not be back to fight us, worse than thumbed, but if his bleeding were stanched, he’d live.

Into the dead silence of the Lakans pierced the laughing cheers from above of the Yeolis. “Ha ha haaaah! What did we tell you brown shit-eaters? Your shit-tower there never stood a chance! We’ve rubbed your faces in it all day, and now you have to let us go, ha ha haaaah!”

Sakrent lifted his sword weakly, fixing me with a fight-stare that was desperate, expecting me to come in for the kill. I stepped back. He dropped his sword to grip his cut arm, his gaze turned dull, and he fell senseless, his armor creaking beneath his weight.

Klajen’s cheeks were dark with rage; he expected a sure victory, I thought. Based purely on size, never wise. “I claim my victory and thus our freedom, but not your champion’s life,” I said to him.

“Fine, barbarian,” he said through grit teeth and narrowed eyes, then gave orders in Lakan.

Three Lakans came running out to Sakrent, one seizing his arm-stump to stanch the bleeding. I beckoned the Yeolis to come down, wiped Chirel with my rag, and sheathed it.

The stroke of the past is in the past, but for a long time after this, I ran over all the other paths I could have taken. If I’d sensed, if I’d seen, if I’d kept Chirel unsheathed, if I’d known how Lakans herd cattle… Yet, in long hindsight, my life would have been less.

My body tingled, but did not know what to evade. Something fell on my shoulders like a necklace—I had a moment to see it was a rope—then snapped tight around my throat and yanked me to the ground. What a lasso was, and could do, or that the skill is common in Laka, I had not known.

I went down choking, and two of the men with Sakrent leapt on me; I could not even yell warning to my warriors. I felt my thighs pinned, my arms seized; I saw a coil of rope, got a wisp of breath, fought roaring like a madman. Their bodies, stinking of sweat and Lakan spices, blocked out the light of the sky.

Fingers clawed at my helmet strap, yanked my helmet off, and then fists smashed into my head, making lightning bolts flash behind my eyes, and day fade into night. Distantly I heard a faraway voice scream Che-e-e-ennnnnng! In the gathering darkness I felt one last thing, that seemed to linger long as a night: a blade hacking off my hair.

†

What happened while I was unconscious I had reported to me by Krero later.

†

We were so furious to see them do that to you [he told me] that we just all went pounding down the stairs, grabbing spears and drawing swords, and charged out the door mindlessly. That oath-breaking wool-knot of a Lakan noble just pulled your head back and put his dagger to your throat. I ordered halt and we all froze in our tracks, and he said, “Ah. He’s that valuable.”

You hadn’t rescinded the order for us not to give away who you are, and you sure as shit weren’t going to now. I thought fast. “He’s… a very good friend,” I said. And I thought, next thing he’s going to say is “All of you surrender or he’s dead.” That would have been that. It would have gone chalk unanimously. But he didn’t, and then he didn’t some more, and I thought, maybe if we go back in and lock up again, it’ll put it further out of his brain… so I ordered “Back inside double-time!” and we did exactly that.

Once we had all the bolts shot and the tables and chairs up against the door again, everyone looked at me as if to say, or else came right out and said, “Now what?” We were all trembling all over, and all the men at least in tears. “Back onto the roof,” I ordered, and so we went, and looked back down from behind the parapet. Now the child-rapers were plundering you of your gear. Chirel, in those shit-brown hands… You were still limp like the dead.

The noble, Kyashen son of Kyashtongue or whatever his name was, hailed us again. “You godless snake-belly-skinned savages are more trouble than you’re worth!” he yelled up. “Go free, as per the agreement, I won’t be bothered with the rest of you.” I thought my heart would fall out through my backside. He was so dead-set on ransoming you he wasn’t even going to threaten us. And if he had, he’d have been able to ransom all of us—ha ha, what an idiot.

I trusted his oath about as much as a Lakan minding a healthy strong-looking child, though. “Oh sure!” I yelled back. “We saw how good your last oath was!”

“He broke the sacred rules of dueling!” the brown kyash-eater shouted. “He used magic! You saw it!”

“What? He did not! He’s just that good!” all of us who knew Enchian yelled.

“Well, actually he kind of did,” Isatenga said. “Shut up!” I hissed.

“Even if his oath’s good,” Kunarda said, his brows black like storm-clouds over his eyes and his cheeks soaked with tears, “what are we going to do—leave Cheng in their hands? Let’s pretend to take the asshole’s safe conduct and—”

“We do that, it’s as good as putting a sword through his heart. The plan is to ransom him, that’s why the child-raper is letting us go. He said as per the agreement, that means we’re armed, so if they attack us we’re not totally helpless anyway… it’s our best bet.”

By this time the miserable kyash-heads had you naked and were trussing you up. Cheng, I can’t tell you how hard it was to leave you. We kept saying to ourselves and each other, “This is for the best, he’ll be all right, we’ll get him back,” and trying not to think what they might do to you. We all tried to forget what you’d said about being as good as dead if you fell into their hands, and remember what Mana had said about there being holes and cracks for captives. “As soon as he wakes up, he’s thinking, and then maybe it’s the Lakans who’ll be in trouble,” I kept saying.

What would we find once we were out of Kantila? I had no idea. I got everyone to fill up their water-skins and stuff their packs with food. This time the dirtskinned asshole’s oath was good. If we didn’t run into anyone who gave us orders otherwise, we decided, we’d go to Tenningao. And report to your aunt, that we’d let them capture you.