The Forge of Men

by Caleb Wachter

  Kratos, on the other hand, had clearly planned for Nikomedes possessing superior stamina, which was why he had begun the battle with shorter, less energy-intensive moves and stopped periodically to catch his breath while ridiculing seemingly everyone in the hall.

  But Nikomedes had feigned a poor constitution, including regularly biting his cheek so as to ‘cough up’ blood on regular occasions between ragged pants during the vast majority of his time among the Ice Raiders. Kratos clearly had not suspected his labored breathing—which Nikomedes had regularly blamed on the cold air—to be a ruse.

  Looking briefly over his shoulder at the open door, Nikomedes had an idea—one he hoped would drive the aged warlord even deeper into a blood rage. “I could use some fresh air,” Nikomedes declared, backing out through the ajar doors. “Coming?” he called out loudly just before backing through the doors.

  Poking a murderous beast like Kratos—even verbally—was always dangerous. But as with the kraken when he had screamed his wordless challenge to entice it into his trap, it was not as though Nikomedes risked anything by doing so. In both cases, he would die if he could not turn events in his favor.

  The last thing he wanted was to give Kratos a chance to call the duel off, or dishonorably withdraw, so he needed to keep the one-eyed tyrant coming toward him.

  “I will break every piece of you, boy!” Kratos bellowed as he charged through the door after Nikomedes, answering his call with gusto.

  The two quickly found themselves in the driving snow atop the battlements of Blue Fang Pass, which was kept free of the snow by regular cleaning by the on-duty guardsmen.

  Those guards looked stunned to see the battle at all, let alone to see it taking place on the nearly hundred meter long walkway which crowned the fortress itself and spanned the gap between the mountainsides. They quickly backed away, giving room to the combatants as those who had previously occupied the Main Hall flooded out through the open doors like water pouring through a crumbling dam. It was clear that everyone who knew of the contest wanted to keep their eyes on it for as long as possible.

  Nikomedes braced himself just before Kratos launched another brutal assault. This time, Nikomedes’ feet were less than steady on the cold, snow-covered stones, and Kratos buried Glacier Splitter’s butt in his belly before reaching out with his left hand and grasping at Nikomedes’ collar.

  Nikomedes barely managed to lean back in time, causing the massive warlord’s fingers to only briefly find purchase on his blood-slicked collar before the two separated once again. Nikomedes was distinctly aware of that fact that, had the collar been devoid of the blood which flowed from his nose, Kratos almost certainly would have successfully grappled with him.

  While that was no longer an automatic death sentence, since Nikomedes was markedly fresher than his opponent, Kratos still outweighed him by six or seven stone. He would be looking to finish the battle as quickly as possible now that his breathing was coming heavier and more labored.

  Nikomedes had not yet launched any kind of meaningful attack, partially because Kratos’ savage attacks had been just as balanced as they had been brutal. He left precious few openings for Nikomedes to exploit, but part of that was because to this point, Nikomedes had fought in the classic, right-handed stance.

  Backing away, he switched his grip on the jeweled blade—a blade which was bent near the foible from its first clash with Glacier Splitter—and could not help but say, “I have another confession to make, Kratos…I’m not right-handed.”

  Kratos growled as he lunged forward, but Nikomedes parried much more efficiently since switching his grip and stance to a left-handed one. Kratos’ attacks with the hammer were decidedly effective, but that was in no small part due to the fact that he had been fighting a right-handed opponent.

  Nikomedes was more left-handed than right-handed, and had been since his youth, but it was yet another fact he had hidden from his opponent. As a result, Kratos’ movements became less confident and purposeful, as he paused between combinations for brief intervals. One of these created an opening that was long enough to allow Nikomedes to lash out with Ektor’s blade, which nicked the warlord with a short, quick stab to the right side of his chest.

  After Nikomedes withdrew to a ready posture, Kratos looked down pointedly at the wound before doing likewise to Nikomedes’ new stance. He flashed a fierce grin, reversing the grip of his own weapon into a left-handed stance, and said, “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  Less than surprised at seeing Kratos adopt an off-handed stance, Nikomedes braced for what could prove to be the decisive exchange of the contest. For a fleeting moment, he remembered something Felix had said years earlier about hammers and swords when it came to dueling, but Kratos was on him before he could fully recall the words.

  Kratos’ attacks came with well-practiced precision as he switched from low to high attacks and landed the occasional short, quick blow to Nikomedes’ body. But the attack lacked the ferocity of the earlier assaults, and Nikomedes managed to land a handful of his own strikes against Kratos’ armor as the older warrior’s attacks continued to come.

  Still, Nikomedes knew that even an exhausted Kratos was more dangerous than any of the roving warlords he had faced during his time at Blue Fang Pass. He seriously doubted that there could be a much more fearsome warrior in the whole of the world, given Kratos’ impressive list of accomplishments tallied in the rafters of the Main Hall, along with the fact that he was essentially never challenged by those who followed him.

  Against the odds, it seemed Nikomedes was actually wearing the aging warlord down. Nikomedes’ own breaths were finally coming labored, as his broken nose had reduced his outstanding advantage in the stamina department to a merely significant one. His limbs still responded quickly, but the fiery sensation had spread throughout them once again.

  But he knew that however badly his own body protested the continued life-and-death level of exertion, Kratos was suffering even worse. It was that thought, and that thought alone, which kept Nikomedes’ mind and movements sharp as he parried, thrust, dodged, and swiped at the burly warlord while Kratos did likewise with increasingly deliberate movements.

  Nikomedes found himself backed against the short wall of the ramparts, briefly robbed of his ability to backpedal and keep Kratos coming forward. He lunged forward instinctively, but Kratos pivoted his weight in concert with the hammer’s momentum, clotheslining Nikomedes with the haft of the powerful weapon and slamming him into the stone wall.

  Nikomedes bucked as hard as he could to create space between his back and the wall, but Kratos moved with the implacable tenacity of a predator sensing the moment of the kill. He drove his body against Nikomedes’, trapping his arm with the hammer as he slid the haft up beneath Nikomedes’ chin. Choking instantly, Nikomedes knew the warlord would soon crush his throat if he did not free himself, so he dropped his sword and gripped the hammer with both hands before pushing with every ounce strength he could—which he knew from experience would easily allow him to lift thirty stone when bench-pressing in a similar, but more horizontal, posture.

  Kratos seemed genuinely surprised at Nikomedes’ strength, but the taller, thicker warlord had physics on his side and his leverage proved too great for Nikomedes to overcome.

  Then, inexplicably and just as Nikomedes felt the muscles in his arms begin to shred in rapid succession, the short wall of battlement at his back gave way and the two of them cried out in mutual surprise as the stones of the battlements fell two hundred meters to the icy ravine below.

  Somehow, the combatants remained perched perilously on the now-ruined patch of the fortress’ wall, and Nikomedes managed to buck upward with his hips hard enough to unbalance the warlord during the brief moments as they fell nearly over the edge of the battlements.

  Nikomedes’ fingers gripped the haft of the hammer tightly as he braced his legs against the nearby ledge of still-intact stones, knowing that the rest of the battlement could give out at
any moment and straining to keep Kratos’ weight from dragging him into the ravine.

  Blinking against the stinging snow as it drove into their bodies, Nikomedes realized that Kratos had already fallen far enough over the edge that if Nikomedes were to release his grip on the hammer, the one-eyed warlord would fall to his death.

  For a brief instant, he tried to do precisely that, but his fingers were briefly locked into a gnarled claw which refused to open due to a combination of exertion and the cold. Apparently they had been fighting outside for longer than he realized, and he heard Kratos begin to laugh heartily beneath him as he kept his own grip on the giant weapon’s haft.

  “This would be a fine death, boy,” Kratos declared. “But will your honor let you kill me?”

  “What do you mean?” Nikomedes snarled, finally finding control over his hand return to him as he adjusted his grip on the hammer’s haft.

  Kratos seemed more amused than scared, which Nikomedes supposed he should have expected from the man, as he tilted his chin toward the press of bodies near them. Nikomedes looked briefly and saw Valeria standing at the fore of the group with a decidedly cool, calculating look on her face.

  It was the look of a proper Hold Mistress, rather than a puppet as Nikomedes had long believed her to be, as she regarded a battle fought for the privilege of standing at her side. Nowhere in her visage was the distressed look of a daughter whose father was about to be killed by a man who had publicly declared he wanted nothing to do with her.

  “If you kill me,” Kratos explained between deep, panting breaths as his body relaxed beneath Nikomedes, “you accept the mantle I hold as her Protector, according to those traditions you claim to hold so dear, even if only until she finds a suitable replacement.”

  Nikomedes’ eyes narrowed, “If you think I’m going to let you live—“

  “You’ve got me all wrong—” Kratos laughed before coughing violently for several seconds. When the fit had passed, he set his jaw, “I should have hoped it was obvious by now: I hope you do it!”

  Their eyes locked for what seemed like an eternity before Nikomedes finally arrived at the conclusion that Kratos was actually right.

  “I told you before, lad,” Kratos said in a lowered voice, drawing a deep breath as he looked out over the snowstorm-filled valley, his head upside down as he took in the wall of white moisture which buffeted their faces, “I love my daughter more than you can know. I even love her enough to make the ultimate sacrifice on her behalf if doing so will improve her chance to do better in life than I did.”

  Nikomedes doubted the crowd had heard Kratos’ words, and he slowly stood as he pulled on the hammer. “I won’t do it, Kratos,” he declared adamantly, in no way unmoved by Kratos’ unexpectedly honorable fatherly sentiment.

  Kratos pulled on the hammer, drawing Nikomedes near to his face as he growled, “If you don’t, I will kill you.”

  That gave Nikomedes pause, but then he remembered the entirety of what Felix had said about hammers and swords. Any fool knows that the blade is best for duels, he had said during what had been their last training match. But for field battle against less-skilled warriors, especially those relying on formations, nothing compares to the hammer.

  Since Nikomedes was alone in the fight with Kratos, the bit about formations clearly did not apply to him. And Kratos was far from a fool, so why would he choose the hammer when he could have easily used a blade which was just as good as the one Nikomedes had taken from Ektor’s corpse?

  The answer seemed so obvious to Nikomedes that he set his jaw and hauled the larger man back to his feet, using the hammer as linkage between their bodies.

  “No, Kratos,” Nikomedes said, shaking his head and releasing his grip on the hammer, “I told you that I won’t accept your offer, no matter how generous it may be, and I meant it.” He lowered his voice and added, “Any fool knows the blade is best for duels. You chose the hammer because you knew it would give me an advantage if I survived the early exchanges.” He shook his head again—this time emphatically—as he said, “I neither need, nor want, your charity.”

  Kratos regarded him coldly, the burning rage melting away from his features while Nikomedes had spoken. He then unexpectedly discarded Glacier Splitter to the stones of the battlements and began to strip out of his armor. “Then we do this the old way, as we were when we came into this world,” he growled between deep breaths as he continued unfastening his armor, “and I will kill you this time, boy.”

  Nikomedes did likewise, unbinding his armor and removing it as pain flared through his left leg and the right side of his chest. He kept a stoic expression, not wanting to give away any unnecessary information which Kratos might use. But a quick look at his ribs saw that they were already black and blue so he allowed himself a wince of pain as he turned to face Kratos, who took longer to remove his heavier armor than Nikomedes had needed with his lighter leather gear.

  “You should have let me drop, whelp,” Kratos growled as he squared off with Nikomedes, who wasted no time initiating what would doubtless be the final exchange of this particular battle.

  They grappled immediately, with Nikomedes fighting to snake his arms beneath Kratos’ shoulders so he could grip him in a body lock which would let him slam the larger man into the stones beneath their feet.

  But Kratos was an experienced grappler, and he clamped his elbows to his sides with crushing force as he trapped one of Nikomedes’ arms between the warlord’s arm and side.

  Nikomedes fired a short, quick punch with his free hand at Kratos’ throat but the massive warlord tucked his chin and sharp pain shot up Nikomedes arm. If chopping Kratos’ neck had felt like knife-handing a tree trunk, then punching his chin felt like slamming a fist into a mountainside, and Nikomedes had little doubt that he had broken at least two bones in his hand by doing so.

  Kratos wrenched Nikomedes’ arm violently, causing something to pop in the younger man’s shoulder, but the movement exposed Kratos’ hips momentarily. Acting purely on instinct, Nikomedes ducked his body down and reached between Kratos’ legs with his free hand. Before the warlord could sprawl, Nikomedes heaved with all of his might as he tried to lift his foe’s feet from the ground.

  It was far from a textbook position, but Nikomedes’ best effort managed to upset Kratos’ balance enough that the younger man was able to drive the older one off balance, sending them crashing to the stones in a savage, desperate scramble as each fought to gain the top position on the other.

  Kratos slammed his elbow down into the back of Nikomedes’ head repeatedly, causing the world to go dark.

  It was only due to hard-earned, instinctive reactions honed by hundreds of hours sparring with Felix that, when Nikomedes’ senses returned following the savage blows, he had managed to wrap his legs around Kratos’ right leg and extend them as far as he could.

  This had kept the larger man from ending the fight—and Nikomedes’ life—in the short-lived blackout with brutal knees to his head while it was trapped awkwardly against the battlements.

  But Kratos sensed the end was near, and he slammed his massive fists into Nikomedes’ head and neck as the younger man twisted and squirmed, trying desperately to keep the larger man off him long enough to regain complete control of his faculties.

  Each glancing blow Kratos landed saw stars bloom into being in Nikomedes’ decreasingly spotty vision and, when he was certain he could manage it, Nikomedes wedged his shoulder up against the stone wall of the battlements and separated his legs. He quickly scrambled to his feet, but as he did so Kratos took the opportunity to drive his knee into Nikomedes’ liver—and this time, without his armor to protect the vital organ, Nikomedes felt his body begin go limp as the vulnerable organ spasmed.

  He knew he could not remain on his feet, so he fell to his back while keeping his eyes on Kratos—and keeping Kratos in front of him. Nikomedes knew from experience that he had only a brief window to act, after which it would take him several seconds to recover from the
potentially fight-ending blow, and he needed to change the momentum of the fight before he lost control of his body.

  Kratos lunged toward him, his fist cocked above his head as he prepared to deliver a killing blow to Nikomedes’ exposed face as the younger man’s back and shoulders fell to the cold, snow-covered stone.

  But as the larger man descended, Nikomedes drew his left leg back and launched his heel at Kratos’ jaw, extending every inch of his body behind the blow as he braced his hands and shoulders against the stone beneath him for leverage.

  Clearly unprepared for the attack, Kratos’ jaw literally cracked against Nikomedes’ foot—which stung so badly that he was fearful he had just broken his own heel—and the one-eyed warrior’s head snapped sideways before his body came crashing face-first onto the stones to Nikomedes’ right.

  Nikomedes wanted to move, but his liver was still spasming too badly for him to stand just yet. It was all he could do to weakly bat away the blindly pawing hand of his adversary as Kratos’ own instincts took over while his brain recuperated from the vicious up-kick.

  But he did manage to fend off Kratos’ hand long enough to push away from the warlord and gather his feet beneath himself. Almost as quickly as the strength-sapping shot to his liver had drained his body, Nikomedes’ energy returned, and it did so just as Kratos managed to get to all fours and shake his head like a bull that had just knocked himself out by charging headlong into a tree.

  Nikomedes drew his left leg back and delivered a full-force kick, with his shin cracking into Kratos’ face, sending the massive warlord tumbling to his side as his arms flailed wildly. Kratos’ breaths were deep, labored, and uneven as he fell against the stone walls, and Nikomedes dove for one of his still-flailing arms as he straddled the larger man’s body.

  In less than two seconds, Nikomedes had snaked his right arm around Kratos’ right forearm and clamped his left hand onto Kratos’ right wrist. He then gripped his own left wrist with his right hand and, just as clarity returned to Kratos’ eye, Nikomedes wrenched the one-eyed warrior’s arm up with every shred of power he could generate with the muscles of his thighs, trunk, and arms.