Slice off the hands,

from below in both attacks.

Four are the slices:

two below and two above.

* Johannes of Skandia, Sur les Combats

☀

11th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

The smoke from burning buildings filled Trist’s nostrils. For a long moment, neither he nor the daemon Zepar moved. Trist didn’t focus on any part of the daemon’s body in particular, allowing himself to take in the whole. The rear red-enameled sabaton dug into the cobblestone street, cracking the stone, and Zepar shot forward.

Around Trist, the Narvonnian soldiers guarding the gate winch slowed, until they were still as water on a day with no breeze. The columns of smoke twisting up from shattered buildings hung like gray stone pillars. Yellow sparks of power drifted off the daemon-gate to the enemy camp, caught in midair like painted birds. Only he and the daemon-swordsman moved, as if they were entirely alone.

Trist pushed off the ground as well, bringing his blade around to meet Zepar’s weapon as they came together. The impact should have resulted in a bind, but he found himself flung backward, skidding across the flat stones of the street. He’d forgotten the raw strength of the monster. Parrying was not what was going to win this duel, Trist reminded himself. He needed to be untouchable - to use the advantage of speed that he had.

“Weak!” the daemon growled through a rictus grin, corpselike. “All of you Exarchs are weak. You won’t be able to use that sword once I rip your arms from their sockets.” It lunged forward again, this time with a rising cut that circled down to knock a chip of stone out of the road, then arced up toward Trist’s thigh or groin.

Trist leapt back, just out of range of the swing, caught himself, and jumped forward again as soon as the rising cut had passed him by, leaving Zepar open, arms raised. He extended the tip of his blade in a lunge, aiming at the armpit, exposed by how the monster’s arms stretched above his head. There was no enameled plate there, only chain. As the stab skittered off the lighter armor, drawing black ichor instead of blood, Trist poured the hot orange strand of his Daemon Bane Boon into the blade of his sword. Zepar roared in pain, and Trist continued on by it, spinning on his heel to cut at the daemon’s legs from behind.

Zepar couldn’t move fast enough to counter him, which was why Trist attempted the move at all; but what it could do, apparently, was stomp its foot. When the daemon’s sabaton impacted the cobblestone street, it left an expanding crater. Stone cracked, crumbled and shot outward in an instant as the force of the impact not only threw Trist back, but knocked both the men guarding the winch, and the Kimmerians coming through the daemon-gate, off their feet. The expanding shockwave clipped the corner of the guardhouse, breaking the beams that held the roof. Fully half the building collapsed in a cloud of dust.

Trist landed on his back, and the impact drove the air from his chest. He panted for breath; it was certain death to stay where he was, but he couldn’t rise.

Zepar, on the other hand, shot forward in a blur of motion, leapt fully ten feet up into the air, and raised its massive sword high above its head, for a plummeting downward cut that would likely send Trist to join his ancestors in the crypt beneath Camaret-à-Arden.

“Father!” Trist gasped, with the last breath in his lungs. “Tor!”

A third strand unspooled from his core, and the temperature dropped. Hoarfrost spread across the stones of the street, and the descending blade was knocked aside by a pale knight’s sword.

“Get away from my boy,” the ghost of Sir Rience du Camaret-à-Arden growled from behind his helmet.

“And fall!” Tor de Lancey shouted, swinging his warhammer against the daemon’s side. Lacquered red steel crunched and deformed under the spirit’s assault, and Zepar took a step backward, reeling from the unexpected blow.

“You are not the only one who can command the dead,” the scarlet daemon rasped. “Rise, minions! Rise, and serve me!” Leaving its sword in a one handed-grip, Zepar lifted its left hand up into the air, fingers clenched, as if grasping something that no one around could see.

No one but itself and Trist, at least. A yellow strand flared from the daemon’s chest, split into four smaller threads, and each touched the corpse of a Kimmerian. With the rattle of armor, they sat up, found their footing, and lifted their weapons. Their glassy eyes remained unfocused, unseeing, without compunction or mercy or intelligence, and they stumbled forward into the fray.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Sir Trist!” Sir Carados ran forward from the winch, spinning the flail above his head as he charged. “I will aid you!”

“No!” Trist rasped, rolling onto his hands and his knees. He was nearly able to breathe again. “Stay back!”

With the ghosts of Rience and Tor occupied by the corpse-minions it had raised, Zepar was free to act. The daemon blurred into motion, past the ineffective swing of Carados’ flail, and punched a gauntleted hand directly through the brave knight’s cuirass. For a moment, the man hung there, impaled on the daemon’s forearm, eyes wide, mouth gaping like a fish just pulled from the river. Then, Zepar shook his arm, and let the corpse fall to the ground. In his gauntlet, he held a bloody heart.

“Here, Exarch,” the daemon said, throwing it onto the cobblestones in front of Trist. “You can have that one. I will be making a pile as high as these walls, before we are done.”

Trist shouted and threw himself forward. He could almost breathe normally again, but there was no time to recover any further. He wouldn’t let anyone else die at this monster’s feet. The dust from the broken cobblestone kicked up around the two swordsmen in a cloud as they closed again, faster than any mortal eye could track.

Leading with a high feint, to force Zepar to protect its face, Trist pulled his blow at the last moment, disengaged to leave the daemon’s sword out of position, and followed with a slice high across the inside wrist of its sword-arm. The leather straps holding the Scarlet Daemon’s lacquered vambrace in place parted, and the fast cut continued into the monster’s flesh, drawing more black daemon-blood. Trist’s Boon caught, as well, and he felt the power flood out of him into the monster’s wound, igniting flesh like dry kindling thrown into a bonfire.

The gray, desiccated skin of the wrist blackened and peeled, exposing bloody, raw sinew and bone. Zepar’s fingers spasmed, and the great blade it carried fell out of its grasp, hitting the broken stones of the street with a clank. Trist slid back across the uneven ground, careful in his footing, and fell back into High Guard, raising his longsword above his head, tip pointed to the sky.

“I do not need a blade to kill you,” Zepar growled, spittle flying from its mouth.

“No,” Trist agreed. “Nor do you need a blade to die.”

The daemon charged, flexing the fingers of its left hand so that the claws lengthened, like those of a cat. Trist remembered the feeling of Adrammelech’s claws punching through his cuirass - holes which had still not been repaired, only ground down at the edges.

But he was not the same knight who had been surprised by Adrammelech in the darkness under the mountains. Slaying the Prince of Plagues had allowed Trist to push his Fae Touched Boon from a burning cord shaded deep red, to a brighter orange, and with that had come strength, endurance, and most of all, the inhuman, feline speed and grace of the fairies.

Trist pulled his sword down and snapped his wrists, whirling the blade in a short, sharp crooked cut. The move was often used to catch a spear or a thrust, but it was just as effective when used to target wrists.

This time, instead of merely crippling the wrist, Trist’s attack took Zepar’s left hand off entirely, leaving only a ragged stump that spurted black ichor. The flesh curled back from the wound, burning in the invisible fire of his Boons. The clawed, severed hand skidded wetly across the cobblestones, and Zepar sunk to its knees, gasping in pain.

“Sir Trist!” the men at the winch cheered. “He’s done it!”

“He’s beaten the daemon!”

“Did you see him move, lads? As quick as a snake!”

The Scarlet Daemon’s eyes flicked to the yawning portal, still hanging in the air not ten yards away. Trist settled into the Key Guard, one of the secondary forms. His sword was chambered and ready, held almost in an Ox position, except lower, below his shoulder and drawn back behind his chest. The stance curved his torso, thrusting his left shoulder forward and his right back, and leaving him ready to either dash forward with a sudden thrust, or bring the blade about in a powerful swing.

“Do you think you are fast enough?” Trist asked the daemon.

It wasn’t in question, really; Zepar was stronger than Trist, but that wouldn’t help it reach the gate. Nonetheless, what was the monster to do? The only option, besides accepting its death, was to run for the portal - but it would have to turn its back to take the chance.

With a roar, Zepar sprang to its feet and turned. Before it could take a step, Trist lunged forward, impaling it from behind, relying on the Tithes Acrasia had channeled into the steel to make the blade nigh unto unbreakable. The lacquered metal armor worn by the daemon was not so strong, and it broke, a single crack running vertically nearly the length of the back-plate of the cuirass.

“Curse you,” Zepar groaned, impaled on Trist’s blade. They were close enough that Trist could have wrapped his arms around the monster, like a lover. “It won’t be enough for you to beat Forneus.”

“Perhaps,” Trist admitted. “But you will not see it, either way.”

He yanked the longsword out of the daemon’s back, lifted it above his head, and whirled the blade around in a neat arc. Trist’s cut took Zepar at the neck, passing through muscle and sinew and spine as easily as carving a tender roast. The daemon’s skeletal gray head, wrapped in a lacquered scarlet helm, hit the street and rolled away.

Jolts of power poured out of Zepar the Scarlet, up the longsword and then into Trist’s arm, jerking his muscles. He felt as if he was trying to hold onto a bucking stallion, driven mad by the scent of a mare in heat. Fire shot through his veins, past his shoulder and into his heart, and Trist dropped to his knees, unable to draw breath.

“Easy, now,” Acrasia said, appearing next to him with her hand on his shoulder. He missed when she used to wear white; her black dress made her look more severe.

“How many?” Trist asked, when he could talk again.

“Twenty-one,” the faerie maid said, with a smile that reminded him of the cat who’d caught a mouse under her paw. “Seven each for Auberon, myself, and for you - putting you at ten souls, all told. How do you want to use them?”

Trist swallowed. He’d been considering this since the moment he looked out across the bay and saw the monster lift itself out of the waves. “Fae Touched,” he said, not bothering to rise as he named off the Boons. “Daemon Bane. Graal Knight.”

“As you wish,” Acrasia said, and reached into his chest up to her forearm. Light exploded out from him, so bright and blinding that even screwing the lids of his eyes closed, Trist felt the pain. His heart stopped, his lungs stopped, his entire body seized, and he fell over sideways, the longsword rattling against stone after slipping out of his spasming fingers.

When the light passed, there was only darkness.