by Jordan Rivet
Duel of Fire
Steel and Fire Book 1
Jordan Rivet
Copyright © 2016 by Jordan Rivet
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Duel of Fire, Steel and Fire Book 1/ Jordan Rivet – First Edition, April 2016
For Sarah, Brooke, and Rachel.
Thank you for your game-changing advice.
1.
The Request
DARA struck the practice dummy with a precise lunge. The wooden figure shuddered under her blade. She recovered to a guarded stance. Breathe, retreat, advance, lunge. She stabbed the dummy three times in rapid succession. Arm. Head. Heart.
Her breathing steady, she recovered and checked her form. She couldn’t afford any wasted movements. The Vertigon Cup was only two months away, and she had to be perfect.
Breathe, retreat, advance, lunge. Again.
“Practice as you compete.” Her coach’s words replayed in her head as the air hummed with the quick slice of her blade. “If you want to be the best, you train each time like you are fighting for the Cup. This is no practice duel, no just-for-fun game. Fun is for children. You are an athlete.”
Dara hit the dummy again, the blunt point of her sword adding check marks to the battered surface. She wanted to be the best. She had trained for years, sweating through intense workout sessions, fighting opponent after opponent in an effort to show her worth as a duelist. She would not ease up in the final stretch.
Sweat dripped through Dara’s hair as she completed her forms. She did a hundred perfect lunges every day before her coach arrived. If they weren’t perfect, she started over. After the hundredth one, her arms and back felt limber, though there was a bit of tightness in her left calf. She set her blade on the stone floor and worked at the muscle. It was always cold in the dueling school, even in midsummer, and she hadn’t warmed up enough today. She usually ran across the bridges on her way to practice, but today rain fell thick on the mountain, making the boards slippery. She couldn’t afford an injury this close to the biggest tournament of the season.
Dara didn’t just want to win the Vertigon Cup. She was going pro. She had finished her basic education and graduated to the elite adult division six months ago. Her parents had grudgingly given her permission to continue training in the afternoons as long as she worked in their shop in the mornings. She’d have to start earning her keep full-time soon unless she could pull off a big victory. The prize money was part of it, but if she won the Cup, she could sign with a patron to support her training.
But Dara’s coach was late today. He usually came in while she was doing her lunges. Dara put her blade and mask beside her trunk in the corner and sat on the wide brown rug to stretch while she waited.
Rain drummed on the rooftop, and echoes played around the hall. The training space was cavernous, with a wide stone floor and competition strips painted across its length. Ash spread out from the big stone fireplace in the corner, scattered by the wind whipping down the chimney. It was past midday, but the fires blazed in the blustery weather.
Tall windows revealed a slice of the opposite peak. The king’s castle stood like a crown on the mountaintop. The rain fuzzed the details except for the piercing lights in the topmost towers.
Dara had the school to herself for now, but soon the other duelists would arrive for their group training sessions and fill the hall with the clash of steel and the shouts of competition. She loved the metallic din, the way it spurred her to perform better in every practice, every tournament. Professional dueling was an obsession—both for Dara and for the kingdom of Vertigon. Swords hadn’t been used in war in a hundred years. In fact, there hadn’t been a war in a hundred years. But the sport had exploded in popularity during the time of peace. Every competition sold out, and prosperous craftsmen and nobles paid dearly to support the best athletes. Top duelists drew more attention on the streets than King Sevren himself, and they lived like royalty by the time they retired their blades.
Only a handful of women in the city ever landed patrons, though—and Dara would be one of them.
She was more than ready, but there was still no sign of her coach. Berg Doban trained some of the best duelists in Vertigon in his school on Square Peak. Dara had been working with him for years, and he was almost never late.
The tall wooden doors banged open, and the other students began to arrive for the group drills. Dara’s friends Kelad and Oatin were among the first to stride in, laughing and shoving each other and shaking the rain out of their hair. They were both solid athletes. Kel had a patron already, and Oat was expected to make a top-four finish in the men’s division at this year’s Cup. But Dara worked harder than both of them.
“Where’s Doban?” Kel said, coming over to the stretching rug after chucking his gear in the general direction of his trunk.
“No idea.”
“You’re usually slicing him ragged by now,” Oat said.
“I thought I’d be late today.” Dara switched her long legs around and reached for her toes. A strand of golden hair fell into her eyes. “I couldn’t run with the rain like this.”
“Don’t know why you bother anyway,” Kel said. “Running is for horseboys and valley scum.”
“If you ran more, you wouldn’t have dropped those last two hits to Rawl in the Square Tourney,” Dara said. “You have to build your endurance.”
“Don’t remind me.” Kel flopped onto the rug and stretched a leg across his body, rotating his hips until his spine cracked. Kel was wiry and short for a swordsman, but he made up for it with his fine-tuned precision. He could hit a flea with a running lunge on barely a glance. Plus the crowds loved him, which was almost as important in this game. “I lost a gold Firestick to Yuri because of those points.”
“You’ve got to quit betting on yourself,” Oat said. “It messes with your head.” He stood above them, working his long arms in a slow circle. Oat was one of the tallest men on the mountain. Looking up from the floor all Dara could see was the black stubble on his chin and his windmilling limbs. He dropped into a long lunge and grinned at her.
“Better than betting on you, Oat,” Kel said. “You didn’t even duel in the last tournament because of your precious ankle.” Kel sat up and stretched his legs out in front of him.
“Don’t remind me.” Oat grimaced. Being tall gave him a great reach, but he was forever falling victim to twists and sprains. It was probably the only reason he didn’t have a patron already.
“You’ll get them in the Cup,” Dara said.
“Thanks, Dar, but we all know you’re going to be the star of the Cup,” Oat said. “Coach barely remembers I’m competing when you’re on the strip.”
“Wish he’d remember when we have drills scheduled. He should have been here half an hour ago.”
“Maybe he’s—”
The door crashed open. Coach Berg Doban strode in, water dripping from his cloak. All the athletes stopped and stared, their stretches forgotten. Berg strode into the center of the dueling hall and hurl
ed his bag of practice blades across the room. It slid to a stop at the foot of a training dummy.
“Idiot!” he roared. Then he stalked over to his trunk and kicked it open. He reached in to grab his padded coaching sleeve, but he had flung the lid up with such force that it immediately slammed back down on his hand. Berg let out a string of curses and lifted the lid again more carefully.
“Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bridge today,” Kel whispered. “I don’t envy you one bit, Dara.”
He and Oat went over to their own trunks and quietly began pulling on their gear. The other athletes became very interested in lacing up their boots and adjusting the bends of their blades as Berg grumbled at his coaching equipment. Dara retrieved her blade, glove, and mask and approached him.
“Umm, Coach?”
He whirled around, another curse on his lips, but held it back when he saw that it was Dara. “You are ready?” he said instead. “We drill now.”
Dara gulped and darted to the drilling strip marked out in paint along one side of the dueling floor. Berg stalked after her, pulling on the thick coaching sleeve and muttering under his breath.
Berg was a big, square man with big, square shoulders. He didn’t look like a typical swordsman. The pros tended to be long and lean, like Dara and Oat, but a few compensated for their shorter reach with other assets. In Berg’s case it was his knock-down-walls strength, still visible in his thick shoulders even though he’d grown a bit paunchy around the middle in his coaching years. Berg still had a temper like a cur-dragon in mating season. He was originally from a distant part of the Lands Below, but the dark look that lit his eyes as he crossed the dueling floor had become legendary since his arrival in Vertigon decades ago.
They began their usual drill sequence. Berg didn’t need to call out commands, only occasionally correcting Dara’s stance as she moved through the basic forms. Advance. Parry. Thrust. He was a demanding teacher. He knew how fierce the competition was this year and how much Dara wanted that Cup victory. But today instead of his usual criticism he praised every move she made.
“Yes, Dara, that is how it’s done,” he growled as she touched each key point on his coaching sleeve: hand, arm, shoulder, chest. “Yes, you stay focused. That is it. You do not give your opponent time to think in case you miss your target. No guarantees in a duel. You always go for the second and third and fourth shot even if you think you have number one. Yes! That is the way!”
Berg’s praise made Dara more nervous than being corrected. Her performance today wasn’t much better than their last drill session, when he’d shouted at her for ten minutes for dropping her guard before the arm shot. She tried to focus on keeping her movements efficient, but she missed a handful of hits, the rounded tip of her blade glancing off the padded sleeve. And still Berg praised her.
“Yes. Is okay. You get most, and you try harder each time. Good!”
The dull thud of her hits and the tap of boots on the stone floor filled the hall. The other students must have sensed Berg’s mood, because they kept their noise to a minimum. Finally, after what Dara thought was a perfectly ordinary series of compound attacks, Berg removed his mask and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his heavy glove.
“This is it, Dara. You are a serious athlete. You know the way.” Despite his words, Berg grimaced, his face reddening. “That young fool is too arrogant. He should be like you.” He clenched the strap of his mask in his fist and shook it. “I am wasting my time. He does not see it.”
Dara stepped out of the way as Berg hurled the mask to the floor. It bounced away from him and rolled between two young duelists practicing parries. They edged over to a strip closer to the wall.
“Um, who’s arrogant, Coach?” Dara asked.
“If he could see you train,” Berg ranted. “Or duel! He does not know how much danger he would be in from a swordswoman like you. Too foolish . . .” Berg lowered his eyebrows and studied Dara.
She shifted under his gaze, her sturdy training boots squeaking on the floor. Berg worked with a few pupils privately in the grand homes of the nobility on the lower slopes of King’s Peak. Sword masters were in high demand—if your pockets were deep enough. Berg didn’t usually talk about his private students, though, and Dara and the others figured training nobles was just a vanity project. Most of the young lords wouldn’t stand a chance in a real tourney. Berg continued to stare at Dara without really seeing her.
“Should I join the others, Coach?” she asked.
He started. “No, not yet. Dara, you must help me. I cannot abide this young fool anymore. You will come with me next time. Show him what it is like to duel a real athlete.”
“Coach, I’ve got to stick to my training schedule. Can you take someone who isn’t entered in the Cup? I’m sure half of them would be able to beat this fellow.” She gestured to the other students working through their usual drills. She was a pro, or at least on the verge of becoming one. She didn’t have time to teach lessons to some spoiled noble.
“No, he is very good. This is the problem. He is too confident because he is good, but he does not respect the danger. He must learn.”
“What danger?” Dara asked. “The worst that could happen is he gets bruised up in some parlor match in Lower King’s. That’ll teach him.” The mountain was safe, peaceful. No one had fought with true sharpened swords since the reign of the First Good King.
“No, there is true danger for this young fool,” Berg said. He looked around at the two dozen students. Kel and Oat were nearest to them. They kept slowing their footwork to glance over. Kel’s curiosity burned like a Fire Lantern through the wire mesh of his mask. Oat tapped him on the head with his blade to draw his attention back to the drill.
Berg drew Dara away from them toward the corner where the gear trunks lined two walls.
“You must not speak of what I will say. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Coach.”
“The student is Prince Sivarrion.”
Dara blinked. “You want me to duel the prince?”
“He does not respect the blade. If a swordsman ever tries to attack him, he will believe he can win. He will try to fight. But he must learn to fear. He will never be the Fourth King if he falls to his own pride.”
“But people don’t get assassinated in Vertigon, Coach. It’s not like the Lands Below here. And if he’s already good—”
“You see, this is his problem. He believes he is too good. And the mountain has more dangers than you know.” Berg took Dara’s blade from her. It was quality steel, flexible, with a rounded tip. During a match, the tip would be rubbed with charcoal to mark the hits on her opponent’s jacket. Berg rubbed a hand across the battered guard, the metal cup that protected the duelist’s hand. It was a plain design, lacking any ornate etchings or inlays. “Tell me why we fight to ten, Dara.”
“That’s just the rule for tourneys,” Dara said. “Makes an interesting bout for the spectators that won’t end too quickly.”
“It is more than that,” Berg said. “Tell me the target area for a duel.”
“Anywhere that can bleed scores a point, even the hand.” Hand touches were Kel’s specialty. The dominant hand was always the closest target on your opponent. Dara could do them too, but she was better at dependable shots to the shoulder after clearing her opponent’s blade with a clean parry. Her style was all about careful precision.
“Yes, of course. Anywhere that can bleed. Prince Sivarrion believes he can win with a single fatal hit if ever he is attacked. He must see that ten hits to the hand, the arm, the toe, will bleed enough to put him in grave danger. And he must see that the fatal shot is not as easy as he thinks against a superior opponent.”
“But I’m sure you’ve taught him all this,” Dara said. “Why do you need me?”
“He does not listen,” Berg said. “He thinks he listens. But he does not understand. I am not so fast as I once was. You are the one to show him.”
Dara didn’t want a di
straction this close to the Cup, and she already struggled to get enough time for practice when her parents needed her in their shop. It worried her that this prince was frustrating enough to send Berg into a rage. But she couldn’t refuse her coach. He had trained her for years, and she hated letting him down. Reluctantly, she agreed.
“Okay, Coach. I’ll duel him. But would it be okay if I have an extra private lesson in exchange for missing practice?”
“This will be a good lesson for you too, young Dara,” Berg said. “It will be worth one practice. Meet me by Fell Bridge at dawn in two days.”
2.
Lantern Maker’s Daughter
DARA woke late the next morning, her muscles stiff. Waves of sound and heat were already issuing from her father’s workshop. Their dwelling was a terraced house built in the mouth of a cave, with a tunnel leading back toward the workshop deep in the mountainside. Dara’s room was in the upper part of the house, jutting above the slope of Village Peak. She had a single window looking out at Square Peak, where Berg’s dueling school was located. When the weather was clear, she could just see King’s Peak, the third and tallest peak of Vertigon Mountain, off to her left.
Dara rolled out of bed and stretched on the thick woven rug covering her floor. She twisted her golden hair into a loose braid over her shoulder while she rotated her ankles, still thinking through her final bout with Kel last night. She had a new bruise at the base of her thumb from one of his expert hand touches. She may have figured out a tell that would help her counter that particular attack next time. She grinned. He was going to be mad if she found a way to beat his most famous move.
She pressed her foot against the stone wall at the back of the room to stretch out her calf. It was warm this close to the workshop. She laid her hands flat against the stone, feeling the heat and vibrations coming from deep within the mountain. Her father must have been working for hours already. The early morning was when he could focus best, and he needed a lot of focus to practice his art. It would be too dangerous otherwise.
