by B N Miles
"Ah! A good choice!" Hilda clapped once and the sounds rolled across the sand like a crash. "Yes, yes, very smart. As my great-grandmere would say, two things to kill people with is better than one!"
Hilda made a circle in the air and spit to the right. "Torlesh rest your soul, honored elder."
Delcan hefted his sword on his shoulder and scanned Sam's body slowly, from head to toe. Sam stiffened under his scrutiny and his eyes darted to the sword carelessly crossed over the blonde's broad shoulders. He was right-handed. Self-assured, probably overly so, and from what Sam could tell from watching him interact with people yesterday, the man didn't have a single care about what others might think or feel.
He wouldn't try to assess Sam's strategy and beat him to its execution. There was that, at least. It was helpful to have an oaf as an opponent. The muscle memory of said oaf was going to screw him, though.
Sam slid his foot to the side and spread his stance as if he were waiting to pounce from the shadows.
Delcan rolled his eyes and swung his sword down, the point laying in the sand.
"Now . . ." Hilda took a step back and the big grin she had was unnerving, "fight to the death! I mean, the pretend death. Do not kill each other, that's for third years only."
Sam's eyes shot to Hilda, wide and disbelieving. She had to be joking.
A sharp whistle was the only warning Sam got before his face exploded in pain and he toppled backward like a felled tree. His skin felt like the surface of a cracking mirror. Blood, red and tangy, poured into his mouth. His nose throbbed.
That had been a big mistake. He shouldn't have expected Delcan to give him the consideration of actually paying attention to the attack before it happened.
Sam looked up and the light of the skygrate covered Delcan's expression. All Sam saw was a rather large male body falling toward him and his own body reacted accordingly. He pressed his fingers to the side of his nose and forced it back into place with a wince and a meaty crunch. Asshole.
His left hand, still grasping an axe, flung in an upward arc as he rolled aside. Sand sprayed the other man in the face and he lurched aside, spitting and rubbing at his eyes.
Sam shot to his feet and crouched, the pain in his gushing nose disappearing with the sort of paralysis that came when death was a more immediate threat than something like a broken arm or a stab wound. Or a broken nose, in this case.
When Delcan managed to get all of the sand out of his eyes and mouth, he glared at Sam as if he killed the blonde's mother. Like Drina, it seemed he didn't like it when people played his game with him.
Sam watched Delcan's movements, maintaining awareness of the things in his peripherals. The rack of weapons was far to the left, Hilda and the others far to the right. There was the sand beneath him, the bleachers around him, and the sky above.
He could work with that.
Delcan stalked back and forth in front of him. Sam was waiting for the other man to go on the offensive again; he was probably a lot less patient than Sam. Judging by the way he wasn't attacking, though, he was probably waiting for Sam to do the same.
So, he tested his theory.
He jerked his right arm up and Delcan lurched forward, but Sam just scratched his chin and smiled.
When Delcan's nostrils flared and he bared his teeth, Sam knew it wouldn't actually take much to push him.
"What's the matter, your majesty? Scared to come any closer?"
Delcan stiffened, but then his body untensed and he threw Sam a deceptively friendly smile.
"That might work on a five-year-old, but I am fifteen years past such amateur mistakes, though I don't suppose the same could be said about you. After all, the rats in the gutters couldn't have been very good instructors."
Sam felt a smile stretch across his face, and the funny thing was, it wasn't on purpose. This really was quite fun once he forgot he was being thoroughly judged on his skill level. "Oh, I wouldn't say that, Delcan. Your mother was quite the thorough teacher."
Somebody cackled and Delcan's easy gait vanished. When he looked at Sam now, there was something in his eyes. Something missing, almost, like his soul had suddenly fled. When he spoke, his voice was not angry or irritated, but flat and devoid of inflection. It was familiar, and Sam could taste that tone on his tongue, could recall the icy void that bled into his bones when somebody forced him to remember his mother's bloated fish-white body drifting beside the pier.
"You will not say anything about my mother again," Delcan said.
Something swirled in Sam's insides, a small vortex of an unnamed sensation, like he was creeping close to a bear's den and trying his best to make not a sound. Delcan's mother was dead, he knew it as surely as he knew his name.
Unshed grief can often recognize its twin.
Sam swallowed. The question was, would he be enough of an ass to use that piece of information to his advantage? On the one hand, he would never be so cruel to somebody, even an arrogant bastard like Delcan, even his worst enemy. On the other hand, it would set the other boy off, and Sam could use that to exploit the one advantage he could currently see in front of him.
The other students wouldn't target him for being a weakling, and his two crewmembers would be safe from being harassed due to association. He would have to do and say much worse whenever he ascended to the ranks of a true Varin spy.
It was good for the crew.
If he were facing a real enemy, if his country depended on his defeating his opponent, if the safety of his squad depended on the death of one man, and if Sam could guarantee his defeat by uttering one single sentence, would he do it?
"Of course, I wouldn't be so disrespectful as to say anything incriminating about your mother," Sam said.
Delcan's shoulders relaxed.
Sam sent a silent prayer for forgiveness to whoever was listening and said, "Even though she was a bow-legged whore."
Delcan roared and ran at Sam, who dove to the side. The larger man stumbled toward the group and they scuttled out of his way.
Sam planted his palms in the sand and left his axes buried beneath the grain, they would only take up his palms when he needed them to maneuver on the ground. He threw his foot into the side of Delcan's knee. The larger man shouted and stumbled back, his eyes round and wild.
If somebody talking badly about his dead mother was all it took to make Delcan's training melt away, he would have a very hard time in this profession. Sam was used to it. If he had to guess, nobody dared insult the other man's mother before now.
"That's the spirit, Ivrer!" Hilda shouted.
Delcan came at Sam again, both hands on the hilt of his sword as he swung in a wide arc. Sam rolled underneath the blade and it almost clipped his ear, the metal singing death through his ears. The other man was really going for it, then. If Sam's head would have been a few inches higher, it would have been shorn clean from his shoulders.
Maybe he'd tire the blonde out if Hilda didn't call time first. Sam may not know how to go toe-to-toe with a swordsman trained by masters, but he could evade one. After all, he'd been doing it all his life.
Sam kept dodging Delcan's punishing blows, dancing aside when the blade hammered down, ducking low as it cut to the side. When he rolled between Delcan's legs, the other boy let out a mighty shout that sounded more beast than man.
A sudden blistering heat was at Sam's back and he dropped to the ground on instinct. He was just in time for a thick arc of fire to fly right above him, singeing the flyways on his head.
Sam rolled away. He didn't even bother looking over his shoulder. When he was on his feet, Delcan was halfway across the arena and the other students were scrambling up the walls to the bleachers.
Hilda stood near with her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed and calculating. Sam looked at her, but if he expected her to enforce the rule she already set about magic, he would be sorely disappointed because she didn't stop Delcan.
The blonde tossed his sword aside and raised his hands to the sun, heat waves s
naking from the flesh of his palms. Flames appeared out of thin air. They cradled in his fingers and rolled like twin snowballs until they were great masses of fire. He swept his arms forward and the balls of fire roared toward Sam. It was all he could do to get away from them.
Delcan chased him around the arena, throwing whips of fire and hurtling boulders of heat. If Sam wasn't so quick on his feet, he'd have been burned alive by now, and the instructor would have let it happen.
Maybe Sam's assumptions had been right, maybe they let the nobles chew on the lower castes here, just like in the city.
Well, this wasn't the city. And this time, he wasn't going to let a high born hurt him without giving some pain in return.
He waited until he was directly across from where he'd placed his axes, and then he suddenly stopped running and faced Delcan. The other man's face was no longer wild and wrathful, but focused and mean as a bull. Sam breathed in the shadows, cast to the northwest thanks to the sun and Delcan's personal handfuls of fire.
He inhaled and the shadows moved. They thinned out and away from Delcan until there was nothing but a thin black line connecting him to Sam. They filled his mouth and when he grinned, black tendrils danced between his teeth like smoke.
Delcan held his fireball high, watching Sam with narrowed eyes.
Sam spit the blackness into his palm, holding its form over his head in a rolling round mass, mirroring his opponent. Delcan growled and launched the blazing ball toward Sam's head, and Sam moved just as he did.
The shadow passed through the fire unharmed. The fire soared toward Sam's head. He ducked and the flames splashed on the wall behind him. Delcan yelled a string of curses and Sam didn't have to look up to see what was happening. Looking wasted seconds, and seconds were sometimes all that separated life from death.
He ducked as he ran toward his opponent, who was covered in a sarcophagus of undulating blackness. The other man was howling in anger, random fireballs hurtling from the shadows. He probably hoped one got in a lucky strike.
It was the work of a split second. Sam bowled into the withering mass of shadows and grabbed Delcan about the waist, tackling him to the ground precicely where he laid his axes. Delcan got his hands in front of his face and the heat was building up quick, but Sam knocked his hands aside with one arm and grabbed the axe buried in the sand beside Delcan's head with his free hand. He snapped the blade to the blonde's throat.
Delcan froze. Sam pressed the blade of the axe hard into his throat, dimpling the skin and coaxing the flesh to stretch taught, ready to split at the flick of his wrist.
Sam could hear Hilda's excited voice shouting behind him but it was drowned out by the sound of Delcan's ragged breathing. His fire spells had taken a lot out of him, as did swinging his heavy sword and chasing Sam down. His eyes were half-lidded, his mouth pulled down into a heavy scowl, the pupils set in his blue eyes as small as pinpricks. He wouldn't soon forget this, Sam knew that, but it was better to have one true enemy than two dozen.
"Are you going to yield or what?"
Delcan's lip curled. "You're a nasty piece of work, you know that?"
Sam snorted but didn't reply. He knew this trick; it had worked on him a long time ago and he learned from that mistake—he would never let an enemy coax him into a conversation while he held the upper hand again.
"Makes sense, I guess. Considering where you come from," Delcan continued.
Stating the obvious—that Sam was a gutter rat—was not going to hurt his feelings.
"I wonder what those girls are doing hanging around with you. I guess they don't know any better, poor things." Delcan grinned this time. "I suppose I'll just have to teach them a thing or two. Tell me, how hard do you think it would be for me to get that little redhead bouncing on my lap? I was thinking two days at the most, less if I have a bag of specs in my hand, but since you know her best, I'll defer to your judgement."
Sam's eyes narrowed. He knew he shouldn't have given Delcan the satisfaction of a response, but he was talking about Sam's crew. Delcan could have insulted Sam's dead mother, or his toothless bootlegger of a father, wherever he was. He could have insulted Sam in any way he wanted to, but nobody talked about his crew like they were worthless. Especially not Mattie.
"Now Drina . . ." Delcan lifted his hand, flat palmed to the sky. He yielded. Sam might have gotten off of him by then, he should have, but he was tensed and waiting. Daring him.
"I know Drina would bend over for me in the hallway before the next class. If she's so cock-hungry that she's letting you between her legs, I bet she'd let my whole crew pound her into the wall. All I'd have to do is dangle mine in front of her face and she'd come drooling for it."
Sam's jaw hurt from the amount of pressure he had on it. He tried to stop his hands from shaking, but all he wanted to do was lay into Delcan's face and make him apologize for the words so easily falling from his lips.
"Ivrir!" Hilda's hand was on Sam's shoulder. "I said to get off when your opponent yields. Are you hard of hearing or just daft?"
Delcan grinned and Sam tried not to, but he pictured the disgusting scenes that the other man so thoroughly painted. Don't do it, Sam.
Then the other man's tongue pressed into the inside of his cheek a few times, making the skin bulge and flatten as if he were thrusting a cucumber into the side of his mouth.
One moment, Sam had control, and the next, his knuckles crashed into Delcan's jaw and the other man's head snapped to the side.
Before Hilda could do anything about it, Delcan bucked Sam off and then swung him around into a chokehold. Sam kicked backward and cracked Delcan's knee. Then there was crushing pressure on the back of his neck before he was yanked away from Delcan, his feet suddenly dangling a few inches from the ground.
Hilda held both of them by their scruffs, hanging them in midair like damp laundry. Just as swiftly as she grabbed them, she grunted and tossed them to the ground.
"When I say enough, I mean enough."
Hilda was standing above Sam, tall and strong like some cursed mountain. "And as I said before, using your magical hoo-ha is forbidden. That means totally, not just in my classroom. If any other teacher catches you, you'll be expelled quicker than you can pay a blood debt."
Delcan sat up with a huff. Despite the quick swelling of his jaw, he still managed to shoot Hilda a saccharine smile. "I apologize profusely, honored elder. When I disobeyed you earlier by speaking to my . . . brethren while you instructed us, I must have missed that rule."
Sam seared the side of Delcan's face with a heated look. What a disgusting display of opportunism.
"I swear," Delcan pressed a closed fist to his chest, "by my ancestors that it won't happen again."
Hilda nodded, her face softening as she stared Delcan down. She was actually buying his cow dung. When her eyes swiveled to Sam, he considered doing the same as Delcan so he wouldn't be outdone, but he didn't need to manipulate his instructor.
"I am also sorry." Sam averted his eyes respectfully, as he would any elder. "I was aware of the rule, but it was the only way I could defend myself."
Hilda snorted and Sam grimaced. He realized it sounded like an excuse only after it had left his mouth.
"You see these scars on my arms, boy? Go on, don't be shy, look at them. I said look at them."
Sam's eyes snapped to her arms as she held them out for his inspection. There were so many, too many to count.
"These marks honor the souls I have sent to the beyond. There are three hundred and twelve of these lines, three hundred and twelve people that I have slain between the ages of nine and twenty-five. These marks can only be applied by a priest of the True God. Since I left my homeland after I received my last one, I have not been marked by a priest in twenty-seven years. If it took my child-self sixteen years to kill three hundred and twelve people, how many more do you suppose I've destroyed in twenty-seven years, at the peak of my physical prime, hm? And how many of them do you suppose had magic, hm? Do you want to gues
s how much magic hoo-ha I can cast? None, boy. So, if a brat of thirteen can open a man's belly while being struck with lightning, then a brat of twenty can do the same. I don't ever want to hear that you can't beat magic without countering it with magic. If I hear you say it again, I'll slice one of your fingers off and eat it in front of you. Don't think I won't, either. It's been a while since I've had man-flesh, and it was always one of my favorites."
Sam swallowed and nodded. He didn't know how much of what she said was true, and he didn't care as long as he could get out of this lecture unscathed. He would manage to avoid his teacher reporting that he was incompetent to the administration, at least. No need to get reported for insolence.
Hilda sniffed dismissively and gave Sam her back. He got to his feet. He knew when he was being excused.
He wasn't surprised in the slightest when she patted Delcan's head like a good dog and said, "You are forgiven, and you honor your ancestors with your candor and commitment. Go join your people, your next class will start soon."
When Hilda turned to march away, Delcan shot Sam a smug smirk and it was all he could do to simply walk away instead of punching the blonde again.
The group was already filing down the bleachers and climbing over the rail to hop onto the ground. Sam made a beeline toward Mattie and Drina, who were standing in the sand and waiting for him.
"Wow, I guess you were right, Mattie." Drina smiled right at him as she spoke, "He is a badass."
"Is that why you volunteered me?" Frustration and adrenaline were ebbing away, elation crowding his chest. He didn't think he'd actually win, but he did.
"We made a bet." Mattie shrugged.
"Well, I hope the wager was good, because I almost got killed by that lunatic."
Sam narrowed his eyes and flicked them toward Delcan, who was joining his own group. They were all giving Sam nasty glares. Great.
"You could say that . . ." Mattie said. She shared an unreadable look with Drina and Sam sighed. He guessed he'd find out what it was sooner or later.