Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (8 page)

    
He pointed his sword’s point directly at my eyes, using a hand-over-hand grip.  This would keep me from judging the distance from the end of the point to me, then he could stab at my face or he could swing from either side, changing his grip as he swung the sword over his head.

    
I stood my ground.  I’d chosen a spot too near the crowd behind me.  If he lunged, I would be unable to retreat without crashing into the spectators.  As well, I’d taken a purely defensive posture.  I had no assault from this position; I could only defend against his attacks.  I would have to change my stance and my grip to fight, while he could keep swinging.

    
I knew I’d be facing the best swordsman they could throw at me.  They wanted me bad, and this whole situation smacked of expense.  They wouldn’t skimp at the end of the game.

    
He came right in for the kill.  Ten feet from me, then eight, then five.  I couldn’t tell the exact distance to the point of his sword.  He held it perfectly in line with my eyes, creating an illusion of it being shorter than I knew it had to be.

    
I stood still as stone, barely even breathing.  A good swordsman would think me scared of him, and finish me.

    
I didn’t face a good swordsman, I faced a great swordsman.  He thought five steps ahead where most couldn’t manage one.  I had a reputation for being devious and he knew that nothing ever appeared the way it seemed with me.

    
He stopped, and he took a good hard look at me, trying to tell what game I might be playing.

    
And the point of his sword wavered, and I knew the exact location of the end of that sword.

    
And I made a move that Saa Saraan from Outpost IX would have beaten me for, had he seen it.  I hopped forward like a kangaroo, his blade scraping the armor on my shoulder and laying right next to my neck, and jammed the Sword of War into his breast plate like a spear.

    
Whatever the breastplate consisted of, the Sword of War didn’t go through it like it usually did every other thing created by living hands. I actually expected that.  The blow knocked him back, putting his sword right at the level of my face, and I immediately brought my own sword up within his guard, turned sideways so that I looked at the edge of his blade, and wrapped his arms up with my own.

    
He pulled back but couldn’t disentangle himself.  Our swords pointed out at crazy angles from our bodies and I’d put him totally off his guard.

    
He stepped in to disengage, and I stomped the instep of his left foot with my right cleat.  He grunted in pain and I took a one-handed grip of my sword, using my left hand to push him away.

    
The blade of his sword scraped down my arm, but my armor took it.  I went back to my two-handed grip in time to block a chop he sent to my knee, another to my head, and another back to that same knee.

    
I hopped back, and he limped forward, favoring his left foot.  I immediately circled to his left, forcing him to pivot on his right to keep facing me.  When he tried to advance on his right instead, I hammered at his defense, my sword spinning over my head to rain blows on his head, his legs and into his torso.  He blocked them all, but he couldn’t do that and advance, and he had a hard time retreating, having led on his right foot.

    
His sword finally met mine in the air, and he caught my cross guard with his.  Leaning his weight on me, he took a step back and tried to pull me off balance as he retreated.

    
I leapt forward again and landed on his left foot with my right.  He grunted again and I pushed him as hard as I could, jumping back from him.

    
His sword dinged the front of my armor.  I left a trail of his blood from my foot.

    
I didn’t offer quarter.  I needed to finish this.

    
I kept circling to his left.  He left a red smear on the cobblestones as he pivoted to face me.  He worked it out now, trying to come up with a better strategy to come at me.  I knew that, given time, he would probably do so.

    
And I couldn’t just rain blows on him.  He could probably fight me off and strategize at the same time.  I had to go in for the kill while I had the advantage.

    
I faked for his head, faked for his right foot, faked for his head again and chopped down on the handle of his mace.  He returned with a direct stab at my midsection, hoping either to pierce my armor or to force the point of his sword into a seam.  I let him push me back with his sword, not knowing if his weapon could do what mine could not.  The mace’s handle clattered to one side.

    
I kept out of his reach, and the head of his mace pitched forward, no longer having the weight of its handle to counter-balance it.  He stepped to his left and stumbled, his balance thrown off, and I darted in for the kill.

    
Right for the head – and he blocked me.  Then for the leg, and he blocked me.  I crossed the guards of our swords and then pushed at him with all of my strength, and he stumbled backwards, his left foot slipping on his own blood.  I pulled my sword free and then swung right for his center, raining blows with all of my strength, taking shots that he could block easily.

    
After the seventh blow, I changed my grip just slightly and brought the sword down right on his hands.  Defending your hands is the first thing you learn when you fight.  Now I had him off balance and wondering what the hell I might be trying to do.  Three fingers flew off and the sword slipped in his grasp.

    
I knocked the sword aside with a left-handed sweep, then punched him in the face with my right.  He staggered, and I punched him again, holding his sword to the side with my sword in my left hand, and again.

    
Teeth dropped to the ground.  I stepped forward, planted my cleat on his right foot, and pushed him.

    
And immediately slipped on his trail of blood.  I fell on my back with a
whack
to my head, seeing stars.

    
I felt my armor ring as his sword crashed down on it.  I felt the Sword of War in my left hand, but I couldn’t bring it up to protect myself.  My lungs ached from the fall and my sight became a confused blur.

    
I heard a shout from the crowd.  He must be bringing up his sword for the kill.

    
I brought my left knee up and kicked straight out in what I hoped to be his direction.  My cleat connected, with all of the force I could muster behind it.

    
The crowd moaned.  I had a pretty good idea where I caught him.  I brought the sword up and, as my vision cleared, saw him stepping back from me in a crouch.

    
The handle to his mace lay beside me.  I threw it at his injured feet to slow him down, then took the chance and rolled to my right, to try to stand, knowing that I left myself totally open to him as I did so.

    
I heard him fall before I could get back on my feet.   He had to have slipped on the handle.  When I stood, shaky and my sword still in my left hand, I could see him on his butt, with his left elbow supporting him, and his right hand pointing his sword at me.

    
You had to admire his skill.  Still not beaten, still a threat.  I stood outside of the range of his sword and, with two blows, cut his feet off.

    
Which is what he should have done to me, but he wanted that glorious, killing blow.

    
He would be every bit as dead as I wanted him in a few minutes.

    
The crowd moaned again.  I’d provided an inglorious end to a defining battle.  As I had been taught, you could beat a better swordsman if you kept your wits about you and didn’t give up.

    
I turned to the captain of my Wolf Soldier guard and with a whistle they stormed the gate and took the gate guard.  We saw a little resistance, but most remained stunned by the site of the man painting the square with his life’s blood.

    
The gate flew open and my heavy horse thundered in, trampling the bounty hunter where he lay dying.  Yerel stood stunned to one side, his wife and a few kids around him.  His eldest boy, probably thirteen by the look of him, looked up at me with hate in his eyes.

    
I’d gotten awfully used to that look.

     Duke Jaheff of Uman City sat his throne uncomfortably.  I stood beside him, this time as Heir, with the Eldadorian standard to one side of us.

    
All persons in the gallery bowed low to their liege lord. 

    
“I am going to be really bad at this job,” he told me.

    
“Nah,” I said.  “Those who can’t, teach.  Those who are really lost, lead.”

    
He smiled up at me.  “You lead a whole nation,” he noted.

    
I looked down at him.  “Those who don’t watch their tongue, often get to see that organ right in front of them, where it’s easier to watch.”

    
He grinned up at me.  “Good point, your Highness,” he said.

    
I thought so.

     We held court.  Some people wanted compensation for the damage they’d suffered during the invasion.  We decreed that taxes be lowered to fifteen percent now.  That went over big; Yerel had been a hold out to the old ways.

    
He had a
lot
of soldiers here.  He’d been waiting for us; he’d likely just hoped that it would take longer. 

    
The treasury held a bunch of gold, too, although not nearly enough to pay the city’s tax burden.  I arranged to take a portion now and a portion later.  I allowed Yerel to keep a son here for Jaheff to foster, and a daughter here for him to marry.  Hopefully he’d learned enough as a court baron to at least tread water until he got the hang of things.

    
Yerel came with me with his wife, his eldest son, and two more daughters.  I couldn’t judge him as Heir, but I could take him prisoner as Lupus the Conqueror.  It wouldn’t be hard to get Glennen liquored up and decree him to be a common, and then I could do with him what I wanted.

    
I had already promised to foster his son.  Yerel didn’t seem as concerned about the daughters, and he knew his own fate.

    
So, after court, I poked around thinking these thoughts and wondering if I would be seeing the Free Legion coming late over the horizon when I found myself back outside of the throne room.

    
So, for a lark, I walked down a hallway that led from there.  It had windows on one side and rooms on the other.

    
It ended in an octagonal room, with doors leading to different places.  One hallway stood to my left.

    
I followed that one, which had dust on the floor and a groove down the center, leading upward at a slight incline.

    
This hallway led to a blank wall.  Above it, up against the top of the wall, I saw what probably looked to any passerby as nothing more than an interesting design.

    
But I could read Cheyak, and to me it said, “Outpost V”.  I knew right then what probably lay on the other side of that blank wall.

    
And suddenly, it felt really, really good to have an Uman-Chi who had bound himself to my future.

     His name was Avek Noir, of the House Noir, in disgrace in Outpost X.

    
He had been a Viscount.  I had no idea what that title meant.  I really, really didn’t care.  All Uman-Chi had titles.

    
He stood a little over five feet tall – right around Shela’s height.  His hair hung long down his back and around his shoulders, green in color and wavy.  His face seemed more pinched than most Uman-Chi, who had longer faces.  His nose pointed more like a beak, his chin was wide and flat and, like all Uman-Chi, his eyes were silver-on-silver.  He had sworn on his honor, on his faith in Adriam, the All Father, and on the blood of his sons and daughters for all time, that he would be bound to me and be in my service, were I to give him the opportunity to prove himself again.

    
When he saw the inscription, he about fainted.  It took him a while just to stop sputtering.

    
“You cannot know –“ he began.

    
“I know exactly what is behind that wall, or should be,” I said.  “I know that it will be warded with a trap that shoots poison darts that will slowly kill whomever they hit.

    
“And I know that this city is built on the ruins of Outpost V.”

    
“How is this possible?” he asked me.  I knew I couldn’t tell him the theory of how some Outposts had been covered in The Blast.  I could, however, explain to him how it happened in my world.