by Greylady
Despite what other people believed, it was not for suicide. The Albans had no time for suicide; their lives were fraught with threats enough, and for a man to kill himself instead of striving on while breath remained in his body was tinged, just slightly, with the hint of cowardice. Like the Undeclared, safely out aboard their ships, it was seen as the choice of someone unwilling to make a choice.
The Overlord Albanak was conspicuous by his absence; this duel was a personal matter between the combatants, thus officially none of his concern – and since one of the principals had been recently promoted by him and the other had been recently in the company of his advisors, he was not risking being seen to give active or tacit support to either side.
This was a private fight.
4. - Combat
For such a private fight, it had a large enough audience. Bayrd watched the crowd gathering, and wondered was it his own unsuspected popularity which had brought them, or that Lord Serej ar’Diskan was so cordially disliked by all except his personal retainers. They stayed well back; a swordblade or axe-haft had been known to snap under the stresses of blow or block, and the flying shards could do more harm among the unprotected spectators than to either armoured duellist.
Despite the formality of the rituals leading up to it, the duelling-ground was starkly plain. Except for the banners planted in the sand, nothing had been done to mark out a perimeter. The reason was simple enough: there was no perimeter. This combat could finish in the sea, or in the sand-dunes, or as far up or down the beach as either man could go before his stamina gave out. Bayrd even gave momentary consideration to that as a means of ending the fight in his favour without even needing to lay a blade on ar’Diskan’s skin.
Then he dismissed it. There were too many risks. Unforeseen risks, like the chance he would discover too late either that Lord Serej could outlast him or, worse, was far enough out of condition to die from the strain. Or he might turn Serej into a far more implacable enemy by making the high-clan lord look foolish. Or he could lose whatever reputation he might have by making himself and thus all of clan ar’Talvlyn look foolish instead, by spending the entire duel running away…
It wouldn’t matter that he wasn’t running, or that though he might be on the defensive he was also in full control of the conduct of the fight. Bayrd put no great faith in the ability of rumour to transmit truth. Given the choice between an accurate and an offensive way to describe the sort of constant retreat such tactics would involve, malicious tongues would choose the insult every time.
He shrugged, and turned his attention back to the style of ar’Diskan’s armour. And specifically its weak spots. Like the Overlord Albanak, and perhaps in flattering imitation, Serej wore an old-style tsalaer, red with white lacing, bulky and inflexible. That same inflexibility made it more of a problem than armour hammered from a single sheet of iron. If a blow fell wrong, both were smooth enough to glissade it off without harm. But where the single sheet would dent inward with brutal force under a severe impact or even crack completely, the tsalaer’s lamellar boards would just shatter back into separate scales, and they would still be held together by the tough leather and braided silk of their lacing.
Going through to break bone was not an option. He would have to go around. Hamstringing, perhaps, if he could sidestep neatly and let Serej go blundering past him. Or a thrust through one of the bigger man’s meaty thighs, remembering always to stay outside the bone and well away from the big arteries running down from the groin. Or…
There were several possibilities, though when he discussed them with Marc ar’Dru, as a principal was allowed to do with his Companion, Bayrd was surprised and then sardonically amused to see the young man go slightly green. It was no reflection on Marc’s courage; in the heat of a fight he was probably fierce enough, but this cold appraisal of how best to cripple someone and be obviously skilful about it was not to his liking at all. Bayrd ar’Talvlyn wondered how his Companion would react to the first sight of blood.
Then, belatedly, began to wonder how he would react as well. He had seen men die before, but for all his expertise with the wooden taidyin practice swords, or in exercises with live blades, he had yet to cut an opponent in earnest. Bayrd looked across the beach at Serej ar’Diskan, holding forth loudly to his own Companion and a circle of retainers and hangers-on, and concluded that there could be few better ways to start.
There were other elyu-dlasen in the crowd now, red and green, yellow and white – those were Lords Keo ar’Lerutz and Gyras ar’Dakkur in person – and a gaggle of kailinin in ar’Sanen purple and blue. Whether as a compliment or from simple curiosity, all the Colours were there, worn either by a clan-lord, a Head of House or by their highest retainers. In the presence of so much power, Bayrd almost bowed in a formal obeisance, but restrained himself for no better reason than he didn’t want to include Lord Serej in the courtesy even by accident.
Then steel rang as it was drawn. The clan-lord’s sword grated slightly as it cleared the scabbard. A named-blade, it was called Lethayr, and it had seen three hundred years go by. And three thousand lives, if the stories were true. A long, slightly curving ribbon of bright metal, beautiful in its simplicity, it was dishonoured by the ugly spike and pick of the battleaxe that Serej hefted in his left hand.
That second weapon dishonoured more than his sword; it stained Clan-Lord ar’Diskan as well. The agreed weapon in this duel was the taiken. No matter that no-one had said so aloud, custom required – and this was a genuinely old tradition, not something created for effect – that it was for other, lesser weapons to be mentioned by name. The use of taikenin needed only to be assumed.
Bayrd held out his hand in silence to Marc ar’Dru, and felt the weight of his own sword-hilt laid into it. Another tradition had it that in duelling, the principals did not approach each other with their blades still sheathed: supposedly as a token of respectful intention. The truth was less respectful.
One of the classic forms in taiken-play was a double cut: achran-kai, the inverted cross. Employed properly – which usually meant at the very beginning of a duel – that stroke would end most combats almost at once. In achran-kai the swordblade came out of its scabbard without any advance warning of stance or posture, and into a full-force focused cut at chest or throat or eyes; then it swept around almost full circle for an equally powerful downward strike through the upper part of the forehead. It was said that if the first cut was delivered properly, the second was never needed.
As he made the little twisting motion to release its locking-collar and let his sword slip free, Bayrd recalled with almost too much ease that there were also cuts, or combinations of cuts and thrusts and pommel-strikes, for the proper disposal of men armed with axes. Their only drawback in the present circumstances were that each and all of them were meant to kill…
That was not an option available today.
Let the man who can least spare the effort do all the moving, his swordmaster had said. So he poised the long hilt in both hands and waited for Serej ar’Diskan to come to him. There had been many small, easily-remembered dicta like that, so many that he had begun to suspect Chalad of decorating his private rooms with them. More than a few ignored the combat completely and had to do with watching the opponent even before the fight began, studying strengths and weaknesses in the man as well as in his armour.
Serej’s principal strength was obvious: he had physical size and power, with possible endurance to match. His weaknesses were less conspicuous; a preference for strength over skill, as Bayrd had felt in that single blocked cut last night, and thus a possible lack of any but the most basic ability with his fine blade. The presence of the axe bore that out; though a long-handled horseman’s weapon and relatively light, it was still no feather. Bayrd knew it; there was one slung from his own saddle on most days. But Lord ar’Diskan carried this one as easily as a riding-quirt.
And used it as readily.
Just as soon as he was within reach, he batted Bayrd’s sword
to one side with the axe and slashed Lethayr’s long blade into the opening. It was a crude beginning – so crude and unexpected that it might have worked.
Who needs achran-kai any more? Bayrd thought wildly. If ar’Diskan had possessed sufficient patience for another step forward, he suspected the man would have had him. Even then he had felt the wind of the taiken’s passage on his face, and that was far too close. Regardless of what Chalad-eir had said, Bayrd ar’Talvlyn broke ground backwards as fast as he was able – and
Serej ar’Diskan came after him, as lumbering and unstoppable as the black bears on his crest.
He kicked, sending a great spray of sand at Bayrd’s face, and then at once the two swordblades clanked together as he repeated his first move, batting with the sword instead. This time, sand or not, Bayrd was ready – and instead of resisting with braced wrists to block, dropped his own taiken under the clan-lord’s blade and swung upwards to meet the axe as it came down. He felt the jarring contact up to his shoulders, and heard it too: not a metallic sound, but a dull, solid clunk as steel chopped wood and the keen blade bit a wedge out of the axe-haft just between the long tongues of iron that were meant to strengthen it.
Better…
The brief moment of assurance was knocked out of him along with his breath. Not by any weapon, but by the battering-ram impact of ar’Diskan’s ironclad shoulder as the clan-lord discarded any more of what he regarded as fancy swordplay in favour of his own armoured bulk. Bayrd lurched backwards far enough that he heard splashing and felt cold seawater seep into his boots, but he rolled with the impact like a barrel sideswiped by a passing ship and thanks to that was not quite where he should have been when the axe came down again. Rather than hitting him square on the crown of the head, it struck the flared neck-guard of his helmet instead, knocking it crooked and briefly blinding him on one side when the warmask inside it shifted.
Bayrd rammed the helmet back up on his head with the heel of one hand shoved under the peak, and with the other, the right, stabbed at the exposed back of Lord ar’Diskan’s knee where it was protected only by the leather of his leggings. He cursed as he felt the swordpoint snag and then release immediately after, aware that if he had used his left hand, which had been holding the hilt down near the pommel, those few inches of extra reach would have been enough.
Now it was all to do again.
But there was one thing that could be done right now, and he did it – a quick, savage cut aimed not at Serej, but at the damaged axe. More splinters of wood flew, and suddenly that wicked pick-backed blade was sagging sideways, held in place by no more than a single rivet.
Serej ar’Diskan roared something that might have been an oath or nothing more than a wordless, furious noise, and flung the shattered weapon at Bayrd’s helmeted head. Ducking to avoid it, the younger man heard outraged yells behind him, cut through by a shriek of pain as the missile found a target somewhere in the crowd of spectators.
One of the hazards, he thought dispassionately, and took the longsword Lethayr’s blade on his own in a series of clanging exchanges that left his ears ringing in sympathy and his forearm muscles quivering with strain. He could see ar’Diskan’s teeth bared under the black moustache, and hear his hoarse, ragged breathing. At least the exertion wasn’t all one-sided; but he was heartily glad he hadn’t tried to outlast this man in a contest of manoeuvres along the shoreline. He would have won eventually, but it would have been a close-run thing, and who was to say what might have happened before that.
Sweat ran down his face, stinging as it reached his eyes. Hot work. Damned hot… There was still no fear, no sense that he might actually be killed, only a growing anger against Serej ar’Diskan’s foul temper and honourless behaviour. If this was an Alban clan-lord, then he, Bayrd ar’Talvlyn, would make a better one himself. The anger built inside him, a thick heavy sourness that he could both feel and taste. Had anyone ever tried to describe righteous wrath to him in terms of a form of indigestion, Bayrd would have laughed in their faces.
He wasn’t laughing now.
There was fear behind the rising fog of fury that threatened to overwhelm him, and all his skill, and all the schooled control which kept that skill in check. It was a fear that if he let the anger take over, he would have Serej’s head off his shoulders at the first chance he got, and to the Hot Hells with the consequences. And there was a fear that had its birth in memory, a memory of the last time he lost his temper in this country.
The two blades clashed again, grating together as he blocked another cut, and for all the red rage colouring his vision, Bayrd could see how the sparks torn from their edges had begun to burn bright blue in the sunlight…
No…!
He fought now against his own passions as much as against ar’Diskan, struggling to regain the composed inner stillness that allowed him to focus the force of a cut to best effect. Instead he could find only the heat of rage and the roiling of another force eager for release. It rose through him like a tide, and it felt…
Light of Heaven help him, it felt wonderful…!
There was nothing evil in it, no more than an avalanche was evil, or a tidal wave, or a fire, but the single small cool place that remained in Bayrd’s brain knew that if it only flowed along his arms and into the swordblade, then Serej was dead.
Dead too would be any respect he might have now, and any honour he might have gained for the winning of a fair fight. If his own people – his own clan – even permitted him to remain among them, there would be the stares, and the muttering, and the words exchanged behind his back, and the backs turned towards him as he passed. Bayrd had seen it before, in the way they had treated Skarpeya. And in the way for a short time that they had treated him, merely for speaking civilly to the sorcerer.
But it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t stop it any more than he could stop – no, he didn’t want to stop, it felt so – O God, he was going to – going to…
“Alarm! Alaarm…!”
Nobody knew who shouted, or why, but everything stopped. That cry, backed as it was by the frantic clangour of a gong brought all the way from the barracks in Kalitzim, was almost the only thing short of an earthquake more immediate to Alban senses than a good swordfight. Over four centuries the urgent sound of the warning gong had meant precisely that; nothing else. It was never used as a casual summons for drills, parades or exercises, so that when the clans and families heard it ring, they knew the message was real.
Bayrd ar’Talvlyn gasped and staggered backwards, his heart slamming against his ribs like that of a sleepwalker woken suddenly on the lip of a precipice. His guts churned, his eyes burned – but it felt as if he could see clearly for the first time in hours. For all the sweat born of heat and fright and exertion filming his body inside the carapace of black steel, he was shivering hard enough that his teeth chattered, and the chilly water halfway to his knees had nothing to do with it.
‘Later for you, turlekh,’ snarled Serej, and flicked up his left hand in a vulgar sign before stumbling off towards his camp, and his horse, and his retainers. That was all he could do. During an alarm, even a high-clan lord in the midst of a duel was required to set side his private quarrel, no matter how helpless his opponent – and Bayrd, sagging inside his armour, was horribly aware of how vulnerable he was. He could no more have defended himself against Serej ar’Diskan with Lethayr in his hands than against a child armed with a wooden sword. He had seen the frustration twisting the older man’s face, for they both knew it.
Safe now, and not caring for the moment about what it might do to the metal, he lowered his own nameless taiken until its point dipped into the sea. There was a small, sharp hiss like that of an angry cat, and a wisp of steam came drifting up. Bayrd caught his breath, and released it in a little sound that was more groan than sigh. He drove the blade deep into the submerged sand, then folded slowly over its pommel until he was on his knees in the beat of the shallow surf.
There would be questions asked, there was no do
ubt about it; but at least he had acquitted himself well enough that none of those questions would concern his courage. Or his ability with a sword, for that matter. There had been enough chances for him to kill Serej, chances he had deliberately – obviously – ignored, that his restraint would have been commended by the watching clan-lords.
But what they would have said if the magic roaring up inside him had managed to burst loose, he didn’t want to even think.
Bayrd raised his head at the sound of footsteps splashing down from dry land. He looked up at Marc ar’Dru and managed to summon up a sort of smile for his Companion. There wasn’t much to smile about, but enough: he hadn’t won, but he hadn’t lost, and most of all, he hadn’t humiliated himself in public. That was enough for one morning’s work, with the sun still not two hours from dawn.
“What’s happening?” he asked, leaning on his taiken to heave himself back to his feet. It wasn’t made any easier by the long blade sinking even further into the wet sand, and Marc caught him by the arm as he all but lost his balance.
“Never mind what’s happening! What happened? To you?”
That was the first. How many times would he hear that same question, or its variations? “Momentary weakness?” Bayrd ventured, his mouth shaping another smile, but this one was even more feeble than the first. “Sun in my eyes? Lost my footing?”
Marc looked at him and waited for the real reason, but when he realized he would wait for a long time, shook his head slowly. “Bayrd-ain,” he said amiably, “you’re remarkably full of shit today.”
That would be more easily explained away, thought Bayrd sourly. “I don’t see why – I went to the latrine first thing.”
