Ser Konrad’s axes formed blurring lines of heat. Their edges glowed red hot, each swipe trailing a cascade of smoldering embers. He made elaborate patterns in the air, ones that tricked the eye and disoriented his foe.
He’s using that deliberately, I thought, impressed. Even as I felt disgruntled seeing someone else employ a technique so similar to my own, I wasn’t too proud not to take inspiration.
Ser Rubek’s salamander recoiled, letting out a shockingly loud hiss. Fire smoldered behind its jaws a moment before it let out a cough, sending a plume of broiling heat flaring through the air.
Konrad’s mount charged through the flame undeterred. Fire curled along the red knight’s heavy armor, barely doing more than leaving black marks along his pauldrons. He swept a burning axe even as the salamander skittered out of the way of its brutish foe. Rubek parried, only to have his sword literally cleaved in half as the axe swept across its middle, leaving the line of the cut glowing like it were hot off a forge. No less than half the sword’s length landed in a smoldering, melting heap in the sand. It had been struck many times already.
The thin knight’s surrender came as a choked gasp I barely heard. Konrad lifted his twin weapons and clashed them together, brandishing their blazing edges for the gathered nobles to see as the herald proclaimed his victory.
“Well fought!” The herald roared. “You may return to your fellows, Ser Konrad.”
The Crimsonbrand Knight lifted his glaring mask to the Arbiter’s Spire and boomed a response. “I will not! Let the next face me!”
Rather than show annoyance at this refusal, the herald melodramatically flourished his scepter and poised with it in the air, waiting. Slowly, theatrically, he lifted his eyes to the Emperor.
Markham raised his golden gauntlet, nodding. The herald pointed his scepter at Konrad.
“Granted! May the next challenger step forward!”
It was clear most of those gathered did not want to risk their steel on Konrad’s blazing axes. Even if they won, he threatened to ruin their precious war gear.
“Can I participate now?” Karog asked me testily.
“Wait for Calerus,” I told him. “And watch this.”
He glowered at me, unamused as I spurred Morgause forward. The scadumare stepped into the ring with imperious calm. Nearly a hundred and fifty sets of eyes watched me from the circle of waiting knights, many more from the walls.
I’d also intended to wait, but Calerus seemed suspicious of my disguise already. Better to not give him any reason to suspect I was coordinating against him, especially since he’d no doubt recognized his former ally standing next to me.
Besides. Ser Konrad was using my own technique. I wanted to test myself against it. I reached back and grasped the hilt of my sword. It hadn’t come with a proper sheath, just a leather wrap, a strap, and an iron ring to secure it to my backplate. I unhooked it.
I needed to know, before the moment it truly mattered.
If I could still fight as I once had.
The gathered warriors watched, judging, as my mare’s claws crunched the island’s brittle rock. Thunder rolled across the sky, distant wind howled, and banners flapped.
I nudged Morgause with my boot, and she quickened her step. Faster, the air whistling through the gaps in my helmet. My vision condensed, focused, locked on my target. Konrad clashed his axes together, producing sparks and intensifying the hot glow on each blade.
My world became the flex of muscle beneath my armor, the rhythmic breaths filling the inside of my helm, the ripping music of cloth as wind caught it. I kept the claymos at my back as my chimera broke into a gallop. When she advanced to a sprint, I lifted my left hand to brush the pommel with my fingers, cocking the war blade over my right shoulder. Konrad waited until I’d covered half the distance, then spurred his war beast forward. It came on like an avalanche, all leathery hide and metal and anger.
As my fingers curled around the sword’s leather-wrapped grip, I felt it all. Her blood on my hands, her lips on mine, her last words in my ears. My eyes stung. Wind, I think.
But I had other memories of the sword. A hundred battles across a hundred fields, an endless parade of triumphs and glories and regrets. I drowned myself in that sea, let it sweep me away for just a moment.
I did not fight the memories, but immolated in them.
Steel parted air with a bitter music. A burning axe swung, forming a molten blur that burned itself into my sight. A single flex of muscle, a moment of strain, a muffled grunt, a tremor of impact.
Konrad’s ornate axe shattered into fragments. Some pinged off my armor, others embedded themselves into the sand or into the larger chimera’s thick hide. One found a gap in the man’s helmet and blinded that eye forever.
We passed each other. When I turned, Konrad was slumped in his saddle. The smoldering hilt of the ruined weapon in his right hand tumbled to the ground as he reached for his face. One of the curling horns on his helmet had been sliced off, along with a decorative crest on his right pauldron.
And after I told Siriks to restrain himself. I cursed my lack of self control. I could have killed the man. The edge of my sword was glowing red hot down nearly a third of its length.
Konrad whirled his beast around with a savage yank on the reins. He looked like a demon, with his single remaining horn and red armor and monstrous chimera. He lifted the axe in his left hand. A shard of his broken weapon formed a rent in the vent-like slits on his helm, just where the right eye would be. It trailed smoke, and probably pained him terribly.
Enough to drive him into a rage. I hefted my sword back onto my shoulder while Morgause circled calmly.
“BASTARD!” He roared. “Do you have any idea how hard these axes are to make!? That’s dwarf work, you churl!”
I blinked. Was he not upset about the eye? In question, I pointed at it.
“It’s nothing!” He pointed his remaining axe at me. “I only need the one to thrash you. Defend yourself!”
With no more preamble, he spurred his mount into another charge. I didn’t have the room to meet it at full speed this time. Biting back a curse, I took my sword in both hands and swung at the same time he did, parrying the blow. Sparks flickered in the air. My sword didn’t stop, pivoting over my head as I instinctively went in for a riposte. Beneath us, our beasts strode shoulder to shoulder, keeping pace with each other. Konrad’s was larger, giving him height on me.
Too slow, I thought as he caught my counter, feinted, then nearly took the top of my helmet off with a furious backhand. Most of a decade without sword practice had taken its toll, and my opponent was no novice. He pressed me hard.
When I’d started fighting with the axe after being dubbed Headsman, it had taken many desperate battles to teach myself how to wield it with as much finesse and power as I’d once used the greatsword. Now my hand itched for the more familiar weapon.
But I wasn’t without that muscle memory, and I’d not gone long without fighting in all this time. With each parry, with each jab and cut, I felt more sure of myself.
Three times I had a killing strike I could have made. Three times I passed it by. When I saw the winning blow, I moved without hesitation. A frustrated Konrad swept his axe back, going in for a mighty swing. His chimera reared in that same moment, its heavy feet kicking out. Morgause dodged that kick, and I stabbed with all my strength, my perfect steed prancing forward to give the blow even more power. The tip of the claymos caught Konrad dead center, shoved him while he was already off balance.
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He went down off his mount and crashed into the sand. As he struggled to his feet, he found my sword’s point hovering over him. He froze.
“Yield.” My voice warbled out from my helm.
He did. When some pages emerged from one of the tunnels with a clericon to tend to his eye, he waved them off. He would refuse to remove his helmet until the fighting was done, I suspected. Foolish, but I could respect it.
“Victory to Ser Sain, the Hyacinth Knight!”
Through the noise, Konrad spoke to me. “Have you sworn your blade to anyone else, Ser Sain? The Burncastle could use an arm like yours.”
I stared at him in a moment of dumb shock. That’s where I’d heard his name before. Burncastle was a famous redoubt, a hall of warriors dedicated to martial excellence. Not quite paladins, but they were among Urn’s most famous knightly orders.
This man was their lord. Flattered and taken aback, I just dipped my head in a hasty bow before returning to my spot by Karog. He watched me with a curious expression.
“Why do you use the axe?” He asked. “You are better with the sword.”
“Because this isn’t who I am anymore.”
He said nothing to that, and we both returned our attention to the game. I rested the greatsword on my saddle, studying its fresh battle marks. The herald’s next words passed over me as so much air, at least until I heard the next name called. My eyes shot up.
Vander Braeve cut an impressive figure, in no-nonsense armor of classical gray steel scarred by more than one hard scrap. His yellow-and-white surcoat declared his House with its broken spear and bleeding serpent. Instead of a family crest, his helm sported a pious auremark worked from solid gold. His hand gripped a flanged mace, so much like a cruel steel flower. Also a very no-nonsense weapon. He rode a unicorn, pale gray and bred to sport a powerful whipping tail capped in a ball of iron, its single spiral horn also reinforced.
The Lord of Drakegrave, who was also Maxim’s son, paused in the middle of the field to wait for his challenger.
Almost, I stepped forward again. But another moved first, and I restrained myself. The one who met Vander’s challenge was a lady knight clad in green and brass armor sculpted to depict an athletic female form. Her helm resembled a screaming, snake-haired effigy, and I knew her immediately by that mask.
“Trouble,” I muttered to Karog. “That’s Myrice of House Gorgon.”
“They have a dispute?” He asked.
“The Gorgons declared for the Recusants during the war,” I said as the two knights faced off. “But they joined the Accord in the first year of its formation, and made public amends. House Braeve was newly handed over to Vander at the time after his uncle’s death, and he disputed their pardon. His uncle was killed by Myrice’s brothers in an ambush in the war’s last year. They turned him to stone with their Art. After the war, they refused to give his corpse back to the family. It’s said the Gorgons still have it displayed in their gallery.”
“Hm.” Karog’s eyes narrowed, his interest piqued. Vander’s mount was pacing. Lady Myrice said something that made him pause.
“It gets worse,” I said quietly. “I heard rumors Myrice’s father offered her in marriage to Vander, to join the Houses and stop a blood feud from starting. Vander refused, quite harshly, then killed her brother when he started a duel over the insult.”
“A woman spurned,” Karog rumbled. “And a sibling taken. You think she seeks revenge?”
“I think we’re about to find out.”
Ser Myrice — she would be Lady, but all are just Sers during tourney — wielded an eerie weapon. It seemed a sort of sword-cane, with a thin, sharp-edged rod protruding from a basket hilt. But when she flipped it to one side, the blade split into a hundred razor sharp fragments connected by a long wire, turning it into a steel whip. An alchemical sword, no doubt bonded with living mercury or some other unnatural substance. A round shield embossed with her family’s monstrous symbol occupied her left hand.
I knew the Art employed by House Gorgon. Unlike Emma’s Shrike Forest, it was not passed through their blood but rather gifted through a pact with a particularly fell creature of the Briar. I’d fought one of the dame’s cousins nine years back, and nearly run afoul of it. When I’d understood the trick, it hadn’t been terribly difficult to beat.
The question was whether she’d use it here, and whether Vander knew the counter.
Myrice started the fight with a vicious lash of her sword whip. She went for Vander’s steed, sweeping those evil little shards low to take its ankles. It danced back, and the alchesteel sword only sliced sand. A near miss. The ring of spectators stirred in distaste for that unchivalrous move.
A provocation? I felt she could have landed the blow, but wasn’t certain.
Whatever the case, it spooked the unicorn. Even as Vander spurred it on with a kick, the chimera seemed unwilling to get near that serpentine blade. Myrice made figure eights with it, daring him to get close. Her weapon audibly hummed through the air, hissing and droning like a living thing.
The technique the Gorgon was famous for didn’t work like many auratic powers. It was a curse, a bane which advanced in intensity the longer one let a fight drag out. It rested in the eyes of the caster, a light that burned what it touched. Those burns would quickly form into callous, then calcify, thickening until a victim was trapped in a shell of stone, suffocated alive within that prison.
I could see Myrice’s eyes through the fanged mask of her helmet. They glowed green.
The effect wouldn’t be lethal at first. The Gorgons mostly used it to cause lethargy in their opponent, weighing them down and slowing them so they could go in for a killing blow with ordinary weapons. It could affect inorganic material as well as flesh. The one who’d fought me had tried to trap me inside my own armor.
She’ll try to make him yield. I could practically feel the woman’s rage, but also her pride. She would not shame herself in front of this gathering with murder. She’ll leave him too heavy to move, then stop the curse.
Vander knew his enemy as well. He did not drag the fight out.
Maxim’s son flicked his mace to one side, then brought it up above his head. The motion continued, oddly mechanical, like he was indicating points on a map. I felt the change that often came over the environment when an Art manifested, that strange sense of reality bending into some strange new pattern.
Each spot Vander indicated with his weapon suddenly bloomed into a bright blue sphere, like a star. The scene before my eyes seemed to darken, so those points became uncannily bright. I could make out the lines between them, a pale wire of connectivity.
A constellation, I realized. It was a map, of the kind a navigator at sea might use.
Vander ended his ritual, and when he brandished his flanged mace it seemed to catch the shining line between those auratic stars, pulling them into his swing. He wielded his own sort of whip then, only his had more in common with a flail. The burning green points of Myrice’s eyes widened. She stopped her dexterous display and lifted her shield, just as Vander swung.
She should have dodged. The weaponized constellation struck like a comet. I didn’t even see the impact, just a blinding flash of light followed by an eerie hum that seemed to linger in the air a long time. I threw up an arm to shield my face.
When that blinding light faded and I managed to blink its afterimage away, the scene had changed drastically. There was a glowing crater in the middle of the field, still shining with hot blue aura. Myrice’s chimera was dead, its remnants scattered for nearly twenty feet. Its mistress lay on the ground. Though she lived and seemed to be trying to stand, she’d been injured badly. She had a broken arm, the metal of her intricate armor twisted and disfigured on one side. When she got to one knee, her damaged helm slipped off to reveal a shaken young woman of perhaps twenty five. She had black hair cut above her shoulders, and bright green eyes full of shocked pain.
Very calmly, Vander dismounted and approached her. He studied the fallen Gorgon a moment, and I couldn’t read his face through his helmet.
I knew he was full of anger. I debated interfering. Part of me looked at the former Recusant and saw another Hyperia, or even another Orson. An equally large part of me saw Emma.
Vander was no Headsman, and we didn’t need more spite between the land’s families. We didn’t need more Carreons, or even more Orleys. I tightened my grip on my chimera's reins and prepared to move.
But Vander paused with his mace half lifted. “Do you yield?” His voice was cold, without passion.
Fear crept through the pain on the young woman’s face. If she refused to yield, then he could kill her without censure. In tourney, being unable to compel an opponent’s surrender was considered a kind of defeat, but that wouldn’t matter to Myrice or her family.
Even still, I saw defiance flicker in the young knight’s eyes, fighting against the terror. She opened her mouth, closed it, then lifted her chin.
Vander lifted his arm above his head, and once again that flail of blue stars smoldered into reality. Doubt blotted out the obstinance in his opponent’s face, just for a moment before he swung. There was another eruption, another blinding flash.
When done, Myrice blinked. She was still alive and intact. Her alchesteel sword, however, lay in glowing splinters across the sand.
“My opponent cannot continue the fight,” Vander said aloud for the whole field to hear. “Unless someone would like to offer her a weapon?”
We all waited. Myrice scanned the ring of knights for anyone willing to enable her to continue. Everyone saw her eyes linger on the talsyner prince. When he just stared coldly, her face turned red with shame.
It was the Emperor’s own thunderous voice that ended the match. “House Gorgon is unable to continue. House Braeve will pay reparations for Ser Myrice’s chimera. Both of you, return to the circle.”
Vander turned to the Spire, bowed, and replied in courteous tones. “I have acted with ill restraint, Your Grace. House Braeve requests permission to withdraw from this tournament, and will pay reparations.”
There were mutters around me, and from the stands. Markham stared down at Vander, his distant features remote and unreadable as a moon.
“Granted. House Braeve quits the tourney. I ask that you return to the city, Lord Vander.”
Vander's withdrawal became official when he removed his helmet. He took his unicorn’s reins and started to make his way to one of the tunnels.
Karog unfolded his arms and forward. “What was that about?”
I stared after Vander. He met no one’s eyes as he left, his back straight and his chin lifted proudly. And why should he be ashamed? This tournament meant little to him. As he’d proven several times to me, he served the Accorded Realms first, even if it made him enemies. To everyone else, his actions would look emotional, simply the result of a personal drama. I knew better.
The plan was in motion.
image [https://i.imgur.com/cA3G3WK.jpeg]