MALIN IS COY, BROODING, and unwieldy in a crowd, yet graceful and charming at a distance. She will blush and avert her gaze when spoken to. Often, when seeking council, one can only frown at her mutterings and wonder what she said. This is true of Malin off the battlefield. For when she hauls that mighty shield—hefty in the hands of an elf of her lean stature—she embodies a warrior of appalling savagery: a general whose roar as much inspires her elves as it cowers her enemy’s, and a bold tactician whose siege gambits we will undoubtedly teach to our children for millennia. May they never know war, lest it change them as it does she, who might have been a loved potter, and not a fiend of the battlefield.
—FROM “HEAVIER IS THE SHIELD” BY SWORD SAINT HILDE
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“The silence is… unusual,” said Hjordis, frowning. “Where are my favourite zealots, Lars? I am rather fond of their derision.”
Down on one knee, the knight fitted arm and shin guards of glass onto her supple, yet toned, pale flesh. He glanced over his shoulder at the caramel sands of the coliseum’s arena; the gallery was ingloriously devoid of spectators.
“Lord Odinson is of the firm belief that public showings of might, to the right audience, are crucial for any House vying to possess a seat on the Council,” replied the knight, his voice eerie underneath his bluish glass helmet—it hid the features of his face. “More so with the vote of the century upon us, Milady. He has barred Commons from this duel.”
Hjordis adjusted her arm guards, also of a bluish shade of glass, and appreciated the feel of soft padding underneath as she admired their intricate design. She was rather fond of Saint Brunhilda’s glasswork; the arcane material cracked on impact to lessen the might of blows on her flesh and had spared her many broken bones.
“Did he, now? Sons and Daughters of Malin are often dogmatic in their old ways, but Lord Odinson is no fool,” said Hjordis. She had her hand on the cool, smooth surface of the knight’s helmet—for balance, should anyone ask—still on his knee. She smiled mischievously, seeing him down there; he had her bare foot, perfectly manicured by her handmaidens, resting on his thigh as he fitted the shin guard. “Why empty the gallery? Does he not think his daughter is capable?”
The knight met her gaze. Her eyes, often so spiteful, were like the fading silvery-blue of the sky at sunset. He liked her better amused than devious. Hjordis’s short hair, like most Potirians, was of a blond-silverish shade.
“‘Haul the shield too long, and you will defend against your own,’” said Lars, glancing back down at the shin guard. “Their adages are misleading, Milady.”
Hjordis frowned, let go of his helmet, then laughed dryly. “Is his gambit as Malik wrote: ‘To shun the Commons is to shun their fealty; but many are those who have led our city to greatness by sheer force of will and vision’? How flavourless.”
“It would appear so, Milady,” said Lars, placing her foot atop her sandal, then fastening its straps. “Rather than scavenge with the bottom-feeders, House Odinson writhes for the leviathan’s share.”
“The nobility’s fealty,” said Hjordis. She held onto the knight’s helmet again and shifted slightly so his eyes could not easily glance between her legs as Lars placed her left foot on his thigh to fit the other shin guard—not that the knight would ever leer at the noble Elven lady. Frisky was the gladiators’ attire in the City of Glass, and she had enjoyed having those eyes behind the helmet look away, abashed; more so, of late.
“Lord Odinson does not deem her incapable, then,” Hjordis added. “Rather, he trusts his daughter so—as to forsake common sense to attract bigger fish in Lady Idony’s name and at my expense.”
“‘Do not despair, my friend! Business among the peerage is not unlike business among auctioneers: it is not the House that is mightiest today these elves trust in, but the House that will be mightier in the centuries to come,’ wrote Ulrik in a letter to Saint Hilde,” said the knight as he strapped the sandal onto her left foot, then stood to meet her gaze. “But it is business no more when it is personal.”
Hjordis laughed, now looking up at him. “You do not miss the irony, Lars—Hilde’s House is now mightiest,” she said, groaning slightly as she worked through stretching motions with practised ease. “What Lord Odinson yearns for is not merely fleeting power he will inevitably lose and attain again in time, only to lose it further, but to orchestrate the ruin of House Waldemar: a gathering of the vile spawn born of a whore’s daughter Saint Malin gave a roof, out of pity—Hilde, Daughter of Dahlia, as she went by, once. That House Waldemar now deigns to brush shoulders with Odinson has him miffed—though he wears it well.”
“But which House will be mightier? This duel ought to offer a rare glimpse into the future, Milady,” said Lars. “Why else would even the shrewdest of nobles, who saw the truth of Lord Odinson’s gambit, send acolytes to witness the spectacle?”
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“The shield is a deceptively passive armament, Lars,” said Hjordis, now rummaging through a crate of glass blades, then settling on a rapier. She studied the beautiful blade with a discerning eye, then discarded it and rummaged further. “Yet it is incredibly perverse: it mauls, maims, shreds, and crushes—all while protecting its wielder’s own flesh.”
The knight stepped closer, took a small, round shield with surprisingly sharp edges from another crate, then held it up to the pale light. There were words engraved on the glass—a verse from The Tragedy of Kara: heavier is my shield—no longer will you hurt; but the rulers of The Realms sorely will.
“Hmm, do you frown at the shield, Milady? The saints hallowed all sacred armaments the same.”
Hjordis scoffed, then rolled her eyes. “I know that. Bless them for all they have done, but there is no merciful way to kill with the shield. Sons and Daughters of Malin revel in inflicting pain yet cower behind their shields, afraid to bear the same,” she said, discarding another blade—a dagger like a fang. “What does that say about their ways?”
“I do not fault them,” replied Lars, tossing the shield, then catching it. There was a sonorous hum as it cut through the air. “Would you gladly die at an enemy’s blade if it was merciful, Milady?”
Hjordis paused, then glanced at Lars, amused at the knight’s charming profile and drawn to that eerily soothing voice under a helmet that hid his face. Few believed Sons of Hjalmar, who carried not a weapon for armament but helmets, were killers capable of appalling violence—but she had seen it.
“Is it hypocritical of one who has never battled for her life to say yes?” she replied, smiling. “What wisdom have you for me this day, oh noble knight of House Waldemar?”
“It is; foolish even,” said Lars in his eerie voice, and Hjordis winced. “No killing is merciful, Milady. The act is necessarily cruel—more so, less so—but unchanging in its ways. No warrior thinks of mercy when her racing heart seeps a soporific clarity into her mind: she thinks only of taking the life that seeks her own. In time, you will learn this.”
“Perhaps… that was my mother talking. Let us forget I said that,” replied Hjordis, her smile faltering and her face a touch of red. She cleared her throat. “However, I am convinced Lady Idony is not coy or brooding, but cunning and perverse—I will prove it to you.”
She frowned as Lars chuckled.
“As you wish, Milady. But is that your dogma?” asked Lars. “It is often elves driven to prove ideas who lose to those capable of seeing reason. What is crucial in your duel today is—”
“That I see what Idony Odinson hides behind her shield and learn whether it inspires my muse!” replied Hjordis, settling on a thin butterfly knife akin to a long blade. It was much like the one her mother wielded—she thought it fitting, poetic even, for the occasion. “Upholding Hilde’s name and my House’s honour is collateral.”
“As you wish, Milady,” said the knight, bowing as Hjordis left him in her shadow with not another word. She walked into the light and toward the arena, glinting with the sands of the Floga.
Had Hjordis glanced back, she would have seen the silver light in the slits of his helmet flicker as a female voice only Lars could hear whispered in his ears under the bluish glass of his helmet,
“She is as brazen as ever; but baring her flesh for mere knights… how debased, even for her,” said the voice, scoffing.
The knight fell to a knee. “I am to believe Lady Hjordis did that for she knew you were watching,” said Lars. “Never was she so brassy with your knight, Milady.“
“Are you certain Hjordis knows?” asked the female voice.
“She seduced it out of my brother—the fool,” replied Lars, “then had Lord Waldemar whisk him to safety, spitting empty threats of drowning him for touching his daughter, before we could infer what Leif told her exactly… and dispose of him.”
“Hjordis takes after her father to a fault—she revels in play and will not ruin what pleasures her; for now, that is you, noble knight. She knows you are on her tail but cannot probe her lest you open a can of worms. No matter; the pair of them can only do so much,” said the voice. “And? What of the duel?”
“Lord Odinson is in for quite the surprise,” said Lars. “Your daughter is eager to win for a change, Lady Syrin.”
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A scorching heat. Hjordis’s pale, supple, yet toned flesh sweltered as she walked upon the searing sands of the Floga in the arena. Already, she could smell that sordid rank of her sweat and perfume blending.
The young elvenwoman took a sharp breath as she glanced at a desolate arena out of a nightmare: the coliseum’s high walls of glass long shattered; spectators in the twilight of life and death, lost to The Mirages—and cursed to watch forever the perverse savagery of gladiators—littered the public gallery. Up ahead, a vile creature, like an octopus with countless harrowing but intelligent eyes upon its large, bulbous head of magenta, gazed at her soul. It swam in the boiling quicksands of the arena, and the surface churned to its tentacles in eerie whispers that prickled her skin and left her in a trance.
Hjordis took a sharp breath, and the air seared her lungs. She bent to a knee. “The fantastic beast of the sea of sand sings of a home long lost, and the wandering warrior intones her ballad by spilling blood in the name of her land—Floga, the Great Desert,” uttered Hjordis, wincing as she slit her palm and the sand greedily swallowed the crimson drops.
And then…
What was real became a harmless mirage: the searing heat in her lungs, whispers, churning sands, the vile octopus and its thralls of spectators—it all disappeared. Only the scorching heat remained. That, and the pain of slitting her palm. Hjordis had known when her mother had brought her to the arena for her first duel that these mirages, like nightmares, were all very real.
But it was over… for now. The haze lifted, and Hjordis saw the coliseum in all its glory: thousands of pristine seats in the public gallery, shamefully devoid of zealots that day. Right across the arena, a tall, shapely elvenwoman of long, silvery-blond hair slit her palm against the sharp edge of her hefty shield, painfully slowly, as she muttered the litany to calm the beast that dwelled in the sand—yet the Daughter of Malin glared at Hjordis.
“Oh, looks like someone can handle a little pain,” said Hjordis, smiling. “Good to know, Lady Idony.”