While the main hall bogged down with proclamations and recitations of prayers the likes of which would bore even the most possessed of historians, the Skaldish bard Frierdrich slipped out. He had heard tale that the angel Acheliah had made a scene earlier, and he decided to investigate that rather than listen to her talk about the ancient founding of Vassermark. The angel had a way of meandering in her speeches when she got onto history, because she largely drew from her own memory and biases. It had personal flair but not the narrative seduction that a bard like Friedrich would have enjoyed. Not the least of which reason was because he was a foreigner.
His delight at spotting Leomund was genuine, and the two men spent a time drinking and exchanging news about their homeland. Neither had been to the frigid north in some years and both found the conversation subtly distressing. In the spirit of the holiday, however, Friedrich squeezed onto the bench beside Kajsa. While the others refilled tankards of ale, he buttered a bun and made his ultimate inquiry. When news reached the guest table that Kajsa had been requested to join the main hall, he accompanied her, almost in a daze as the sandy heroics filled his head and kindled music within him.
He had asked Leomund, “I heard you fought Mihael during the rebellion.”
Leomund nodded. He knew that most of his story had already been leaked through the taverns and cities of Vassermark. “I did, though neither of us were at our best. That’s what happens when you spend an entire night chasing each other through the wilderness.”
The bard asked, “If you had been at your best, who would have won?”
“What a silly question,” Leomund said as fire-roasted chickens were brought to the tables. They were too hot for most to touch, but he snatched one for himself regardless. Chilling his fingers with his drink, he said, “I haven’t been at my best in years and that’s no excuse. When you fight, you fight with all you’ve got. Your life is on the line. Sometimes, other people’s lives are too. If someone would whine that they were sick, or didn’t get enough sleep, or they were injured from another fight, how is that any different from whining that they would have won if they had just tried harder? If they hadn’t slept around with so many whores? There’s no fundamental difference between the two once you’ve committed to a fight. Excuses are nothing but a salve for defeat.”
Friedrich nodded and asked, “Then you accept that you were bested?”
Leomund scowled. “I certainly lost the fight, if that’s what you’re asking. Maybe it would have gone differently if I’d been more levelheaded. Maybe I underestimated him. Doesn’t matter. I lost.”
“At least you’re here today,” Friedrich said, trying to console the man by slapping him on the shoulder. “Why did you lose your temper? Did the good man of the faith have a foul tongue?”
“Nothing like that. It was because I shouldn’t have been in the fight at all. The girl shouldn’t have been snatched from under our noses like that.”
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The night had been blissful for Leomund. A soma to numb the mind with the pleasures of the material world. Only when Sacerdote arrived at the Jawhara den did it come crashing down. The two men had split guard duty for Aisha between each other, allowing each some time for personal desires. Sacerdote had dug through the temple libraries, and Leomund had spent his time with Vita.
That Aisha would be without either of their protection was beyond thought. It through the northman into a rage but he stifled it against the wastelander. Drunk as only an off duty soldier can be, he burst out of the brothel and ran through the streets. He barreled through a crowd that had taken notice of the spurred horses. Through the front door of the Canta household he burst, fear welling up from the moment he saw it open.
There he saw Master Canta dead upon the floor and he understood what had happened. Gritting his teeth, immediately he drew on the power of his stigmata. The berserker rage–just a taste of it–was enough to squash the inebriation. As a force, he moved to the stables prepared to throw out the helper, but found that the boy was already dead. He had to saddle his horse alone, before the guards realized who he was. The fact that they would only get in his way was already evident. With nothing but his blade, he leapt atop his horse and snapped the reins.
That night, the desert had three dervishes. The night was clear with the glow of the moon above, a blessing of the wolf mother for her wayward son. The abductors could not keep up their pace and hide the plumes of their sand from Leomund’s keen eyes. For hours he tracked them, utterly certain that they knew they were pursued. He gave his horse no quarter, diggins his heels in and striking its hind bloody. He rode the animal until its heart nearly burst between his legs, until it was a wild eyed and frothing animal stumbling over its own hooves.
But that was enough.
As the morning sun warmed the horizon, the two criminals had given up their flight. The sand and stone of Giordana had begun to give way to the loam of the central kingdoms. In the shallow beside a cleft of stone, springwater flowed northward and in that shelter were six more men of Jeaumeax. They were unprepared to take flight at once, so they had no choice but to rally to arms as Leomund hounded them down.
Berserker reflexes pulled his head aside as a steel tipped arrow soared for his throat. Two more lanced the air around him, pelting the beleaguered horse and felling it. Then he was upon the recruits. His blade smashed through an upraised bow and through the man holding it. He kicked the lad into their tethered horses, making the animals yelp and kick as Leomund leapt at the next closest archer. That one too was cut down, a blow opening his back from shoulder to hip.
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Then Mihael jumped in. “Face me!”
Leomund considered the challenge only long enough to reject it. He was outnumbered and without support coming to help. What was more, it wasn’t merely his own life in the balance. In the pause it took for the other vagabonds to wait for him to accept Mihael’s challenge, he flicked a dagger through the air and caught a boy beneath the chin with it. Three remained as the idea of a fair fight vanished. Rage had taken the youths however, and they closed in with clubs and swords.
It was all the swordmaster could do to pressure Leomund, but the northerner just kept jumping back, playing the crowd. He weaved between bodies and took his cuts where he could. Chaos was the essence of fending off a crowd, but it also let him scan the encampment. There had been two horsemen, but only the one remained. The Aillesterran–though he didn’t know it at the time–was gone. There was a chance they would have put a blade to Aisha’s throat, but they needed her life to bargain against Lucius. The threat would have been moot against Leomund.
Finally only two of the six boys stood beside Mihael and he ordered them back. He had done so many times already, but his voice finally broke through the melee frenzy. When they backed off, cowed by the violence as much as by hierarchy, there was only the swordmaster of Skaldheim and the swordmaster of Jeaumeax. That was a duel people the world over would have paid to see, at least to have reputable witnesses regale them with the clash of steel. Their talent clashed in the spring-water mud. Both men were exhausted from a full night on horseback, but both knew how to overpower fatigue.
Their swords moved like hissing vipers. They twisted and pulled, sidestepping and retreating before lashing out. The clang and chip of edge against crossguard was all that protected their hands and wrists. Neither could get close enough to land a mortal blow. Leomund was faster, surging with the strength of his stigmata, but Mihael’s blade was longer. The other swordmaster held his pommel in one hand, easily twisting from one guard to the next.
Soon they began to circle one another more than they fought. The chaos of a battlefield, which suited Leomund more, was a poor behavior for a one on one fight. While in a mash of steel and blood, the berserker could jump from one surprised opponent to the next, there were few options to surprise a trained duelist.
Mihael grinned, sweat pouring down his ruddy face. “I see why the cyclops said a swordmaster was needed.”
The calm part of his mind wondered about the cyclops, but that part was no longer in charge of his mouth. The berserker panted and growled, more a beast of reflex than of contemplation. In his experience, that gave him a very specific chance.
He closed with Mihael, twisting his body as he attacked. He aimed at the other man’s blade, driving it aside and opening himself up to getting the crossguard smashed into his face. The counter was natural, but Mihael’s training betrayed him. Before lashing out, he fixed his footing. That one instant was enough for Leomund to draw a hidden blade and stab it up through Mihael’s arm. Blood gushed out before Mihael even knew he had been struck, and not fast enough to stop the edge of the cruciform guard from ripping a hole through Leomund’s cheek.
Where a regular man would have been dazed, the berserker rebounded into the fray, now with two weapons. Neither had the reach of Mihael’s longsword but the northman was faster. Mihael’s injury slowed his parries, forcing the man to use his feet. The duel became nearly a chase until Leomund caught their blades together, Mihael’s back to the cliff. He lunged with the dagger, only to be met by the man’s boot to his gut.
He was sent reeling back, ready to leap again.
Then the duel was decided by a plunging spear to his back. One of the others had snuck in behind and with trembling hands thrust the short lance into his lungs.
Leomund was able to spin and decapitate the lad, but the damage was done. Without a surgeon, he would die there, drowning in his own blood. As his enemies waited and hoped he would fall over, he had but a few thoughts. Mostly, he was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to live up to Lucius’ trust. And he was disgusted with what he was about to do to a man so well trained in fighting without even a stigmata.
Basic martial arts is the art of killing. Advanced martial arts is how to kill without getting injured. These two categories are refinements of the brute instinct carved inside the feral minds of man, which can be drawn out when survival no longer matters.
Leomund stepped forward. He leaned as feeling began to vanish from his exhausted body. As he lunged, Mihael drove the tip of his sword out like a spear and skewered the northman’s heart. That left approximately ten seconds of life in Leomund’s body as he landed atop the swordmaster. He pummeled with his right hand and stabbed with his left. Mihael’s hands smashed at his face and he bit off fingers. As his lifeblood left him, he drove his dagger through Mihael’s eye and pierced his brain, ending the lives of both swordmasters with but a single witness to their gory demise.
There, in the early morning, Leomund Tolzi died for the first time, and the Aillesterran bastard continued north with Aisha in tow, none the wiser of her friend’s demise. Word was never brought to the rebels. The only man that could have was felled by a stone from a sling before he was able to saddle a horse.
Sacerdote’s body had much muscle memory to make use of like that.
We hadn’t expected Leomund to die. Our plan was to be oriented towards Mihael in fact, but all plans waver in the face of the enemy and I didn’t hesitate to salvage what I could. Leomund was a far greater asset than a zealot from Baker street of all places, and our butchery would only allow for one to rebuke the Shepherd’s reapers and knit their flesh back together.
Vita tossed down the trussed up body of Lumi’el, taken by drugs and by force from the Jawhara. The angel had cowed beneath the might of myself–he thought me there in the flesh–and Vita both. I think he never imagined we would kill him until the very last moment. He couldn’t understand why he was trapped in the ravaged body of a human, and unable to return to his true form in Bièremarché. The confusion of such a degenerated host body kept him trapped with us as much as the robes that bit into the girl’s body whose he had stolen.
And so Vita helped me spit in the face of the gods that day. She earned her place as one of my accomplices, and in payment, the bonds of slavery I would have put on Mihael were instead forged between Leomund and her.
Our swordmaster awoke the toy of an angel, and only Lucius could rescue Aisha by putting an end to the rebellion.