Swords seared through the air, meeting with a resounding crash. Ivkhara pressed on with her frenzied assault, hacking at her foe time and time again, seeking to overwhelm him with the speed of her strikes, the raw power behind them. Each blow was met with a parry, smooth, calm, flowing from one to the other, turning aside the blows with a minimum of effort. For all of her endeavours, Ivkarha could not get close to striking the man, to pierce his resolute defence.
The exuberance of the wilds met the cold, calculating style as taught and refined in the cities, and for a time the style of the cites was superior.
“Once more you prove my point,” he man stated as blades rung and locked together, the two pushing against each other, seeking dominance. “You put too much of yourself into each strike, impetuous and uncontrolled. All passion and no control.” Another hacking blow came from Ivkhara and a withering riposte came after the parry, lightly touching her cheek.
She stepped back, raising a hand to her cheek, to feel the warmth of blood oozing beneath her fingers. Then once more, her eyes burning dark, she launched herself at the man, a snarl on her lips as she she pressed at him, strike after strike whistling in, some high, others low, pressing against his defence. Back and forwards they danced across the barren earth, dust kicked up around them, and soon it mixed with sweat and blood across their faces.
Not once could Ivkarha penetrate the defences of the man and as the battle rolled on, her strikes came in slower, with less force behind them, her movements less sure. Defiance never left her face, the resolute will of the deserts, yet telling were her movements. She saw a smile appear on the man’s face, one triumphant in nature, and more often he turned parries into ripostes, forcing her into desperate defence to fend steel from her flesh.
“I am the desert storm,” she murmured under her breath.
“I am death that walks the land.”
“I am the blade upon the wind.”
“Praying to your heathen gods?” the man asked, turning aside a wild thrust and lunging forward himself in reply, the strike barely missing her arm as she flung herself aside. “They soon shall fall as well, forgotten as will you be.”
Ivkarha snarled again and swung wildly, a blow that cleaved the air, forcing the man to duck beneath it, yet once more he appeared unhurried by the attack, moving just enough to avoid it and no more.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“A reckless expenditure of energy,” he stated. “You need to conserve yourself.” He spoke placidly, as if he was an instructor drilling a trainee in the ways of battle.
Ivkahra stepped back, taking deep breaths as she did. She took a moment to wipe her brow of dust and sweat and blood. “You talk too much,” she snarled.
“It is the cornerstone of civilised people, the spreading of ideas, of instruction in ne ways. You could have learnt from it, but that will not be. It is time to end this.”
He came at her, sword swinging low, and it was his turn to launch a series of attacks, blade flickering quicksilver at her. Desperately she turned them aside, forced back step by step, blows singing home closer and closer. One strike glanced across her arm, another took her in the side; blood soon flowed freely down it, dripping to the earth.
Then came a strike thrust low, towards her leg; it slipped passed her defences and she grimaced as the tip of the blade dug in. Yet rather than reacting to it, she instead stepped forward, twisting her leg so that blade became trapped in it. Ignoring the pain, the flow of blood, she let out a roar and thrust with her sword, driving with all her might, all her rage, all her determination. The crimson cloaked man, defenceless, could not prevent her sword driving into his neck above his armour.
His eyes went wide with shock, with pain and his mouth opened and closed but no words came out.
“You believe you are the only ones who can thing, who can plan?” she snarled at him, her eyes locked on his. “Some times plans require sacrifice,” she told him, tearing the blade free. The man staggered back, grasping at his neck to try and staunch the flow of blood that flowed free, to no avail. He managed but a few steps before he toppled over, to crash into the dirt that had been stirred up by many feet. He twitched for a moment before falling still, and a widening pool of blood began to form beneath him, to soak into the earth, staining it deeper red.
Ivkarha grasped the hilt of the sword trapped in her leg and, with a grunt, pulled it free, teeth grimacing at the pain of it. She tossed it aside before collapsing to the ground, pain and bone weariness and the loss of blood all conspiring against her.
She tried to push herself back to her feet, to force herself by dint of will to return to the battle. To one knee she rose, spotting Aedmorn as she did.
The big man limped her way, still in the form he had taken, and he was more crimson than white. One arm hung limply at his side and he had been slashed many times. He managed to half stagger to where she was, only to fall as well, an as he did he faded back to his true self, human, but barely that anymore from the number of wounds he had taken on his body.
Ivkarha scrambled to his side, on hands almost as much as her feet. He looked up at her, one eye swollen shut.
“We fought well,” he said weakly, managing half a smile.
“That we did,” Ivkarha responded, grasping his hand. Feet were pounding nearby and the screams of shouts of battle still echoed about; all was lost in the dust, the glare of the sun and vision fading from all she had been through. “It is nearly done though. One last time, old friend.”
“Defiant to the end,” he replied and together the two, battered and bloodied but not broken pushed themselves up with their last reserves of energy and will, to face what came upon their feet.