‘Have you decided to take up magic tricks?’ the Blacksmith asked. ‘Is that what you brought with you to this fight?’
‘You know,’ I said, completing the three yard diameter circle, ‘the funny thing is, I think I might be starting to like magic.’ I planted my feet outside the line and looked up at the God on the other side, steeling myself against his gaze. ‘I am Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats and Chief Magistrate of Tristia. I find you guilty of the murder of Birgid, Saint of Mercy, and of Anlas, Saint of Memory. I find you guilty of a hundred other deaths and a thousand other crimes’ – I looked out at the wreckage all around us – ‘including several counts of vandalism. Do you submit to my judgement, or will you plead for trial by combat?’
The God lent a moment of his attention to me, drawing away some of his attack on Ethalia, who was struggling against his Awe. I will ride the roads, I murmured under my breath. I will find my way inside every castle and palace, every filthy hovel and rundown pigsty. I will judge fair and ride fast and fight hard.
‘Marked,’ the God said, beginning a ritual as old as the country itself. He reached a hand back to the axe strapped on his back and brought it forth. The wide blade of the head was made of the smoothest steel I had ever seen, the long shaft wrapped in the most beautiful tracings of silver and gold. The grip itself was made of raw iron.
Ethalia joined me on my side of the circle. ‘Marked,’ she said, her forehead slick with sweat, leaving me to wonder how long she could hold out once the true fight began.
The Blacksmith shook his head in disgust. He sounded almost sick with disappointment. ‘You could have lived, Falcio – you could both have found happiness somewhere far from here. Do you truly believe you can fight a God with those rapiers of yours?’
‘No,’ I confessed, and I tossed them aside. I walked over to a fallen Knight’s warsword lying on the ground. I picked it up in both hands, and it was just as heavy and clumsy as every other broad-bladed weapon I’d ever used. I aimed it at the centre of the God’s gleaming breastplate. ‘This will make a bigger hole.’
*
The opening of a judicial duel begins with both opponents walking the circle. As they trace each other’s steps, they look for the opportunity to attack. Errera Bottio says that no matter how good an actor he might be, every fencer reveals his weaknesses in those first sluggish movements. He wrote: Find your enemy’s fears - seek out his hesitations as he walks and there you will uncover the means to defeat him.
Ethalia, the God and I all moved around the circle in agonisingly slow steps, like dancers waiting for the music to start, but I was fairly sure that my opponent wasn’t going to be revealing any weaknesses to me.
‘I suppose it is fitting to end it like this,’ the Blacksmith said, standing a few feet away from the circle. ‘When I first heard about you and your penchant for duelling, I thought, “Here is a man with only one tool in his belt, one weapon he uses for every purpose.” It led me to make a bit of a study of the subject, a way to better anticipate your actions.’
‘I’m flattered,’ I said, keeping my eyes on my opponent and making sure not to bump into Ethalia. Once the pacing has begun, either opponent can enter the circle and the other must meet them there within the beat or forfeit the duel. The idea is to wait until your opponent is slightly off-balance, or a little distracted, and then you begin the fight with the advantage.
‘I found it quite fascinating, all those sanguinists and avertieres, persegueres and ludators – it made me curious. A man of your profession must spend a lifetime mastering just one style – knowing that for every strength it holds a weakness, however did you decide which one to choose?’
For a moment I almost laughed; only a real amateur would ask that question. I gave it the answer it deserved. ‘That’s simple. I mastered them all.’
With that, Ethalia and I stepped into the circle and claimed the centre ground. As she set the Awe of her Sainthood against the God’s will, I met him, steel for steel.
The moment our weapons touched, I knew I couldn’t beat him.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
The Duel
As that first clang of clashing weapons shook the air, I found myself crouched in a field of tall stalks of corn. I felt small, skinny, and there was a chain around my ankle. I’m a slave, I realised. The God was my owner, screaming at me in a language I couldn’t understand as he whipped me over and over, on my face, my chest, my back, with a thick loop of rope. I tried to grab the rope away from him, but before I could—
—I sat across the table from the Blacksmith. Between us was a board with strangely coloured pieces of all different shapes and sizes. He picked up a boar, but when he set it down it became a Knight on a massive charger.
‘Your turn,’ he said.
I looked down at my pieces, now tiny, pale bits of bone carved to look like emaciated, terrified men and women cowering before an endless shadow. ‘I don’t know the rules.’
The Blacksmith smiled. ‘Of course you don’t. That’s the point.’
I reached down, picking up one of the pieces at random, hoping it would counter his Knight, only to find—
—that I was no longer one man, but many, a dozen – no, a hundred. We hunched over small fires on a cold night, rough wooden clubs at our sides, praying the night would pass quietly, but suddenly horses came at us from all sides, men in armour riding them with swords held high. With a roar, we grabbed our clubs and turned to face them, knowing the fight was already—
—lost, I thought, finding myself back in the duelling circle. My arm hung heavy at my side, the point of the warsword trailing on the ground. Ethalia was trying to keep me standing, even though her own legs could barely hold her upright. The God didn’t look as if he’d even moved.
‘I’m disappointed,’ the Blacksmith said. ‘I wouldn’t have expected a master duellist and a Saint to tire so quickly.’
How long had we been fighting? Time moves unnaturally in the duelling circle, sometimes racing by, other times grinding to a halt as an enemy’s blade comes for your belly. Five minutes, I guessed, maybe seven?
‘Just give me a second to catch my breath,’ I said. ‘I’ll be happy to beat your God senseless in a moment.’
‘Catch your breath?’ the Blacksmith chuckled. ‘Falcio, the fight just began. You only parried one blow.’
*
Hells. This isn’t going to work. I looked at Ethalia, wondering if there was some way I could distract the God long enough for her to flee – the others could protect her while she gathered her strength or found a way to help them escape. She caught my eyes. ‘Stick to the plan,’ she said, her voice haggard, her breathing laboured.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘How about a kiss for luck.’
It was a stupid thing to say, the kind of glib remark that comes out of your mouth when you’re desperate to hide the fact that you’re terrified.
‘I would,’ she replied with a weak smile, ‘but of late neither your kisses nor mine have been particularly lucky, have they?’
Before I could respond she drew her shoulders back and once again turned her Awe against the God. I saw shining, shimmering images of a man crawling across dry sand, his lips so parched and cracked they glared an angry red, only to have a young girl, the daughter of the enemy who sent him there to die, give him water.
The God’s eyes wept, just for a moment, and the head of his axe dropped, and immediately I leaped at him, swinging my warsword around in a horizontal arc as if felling a tree. He batted it aside easily, the force of his parry sending me stumbling backwards to the edge of the circle.
He started coming for me, but Ethalia bound him with the vision of two miners climbing down a deep shaft to save a dog that had fallen in and broken its leg. The dog whined, but its tail wagged as one miner held it close to his chest and the other helped pull them back up.
I needed to separate the God from his weapon. I flipped my sword around and holding it by the blade, I smashed the pommel l
ike a hammer against his hand, all the while wondering if Gods had bones that could be broken. It turned out the answer was no, and an instant later I watched the blade of his axe sweep up from the ground, aiming for my throat. He missed, though, stumbling forward as Ethalia drove him off-balance with another vision.
This one I recognised: a broad-chested man with big, merciless hands and a jaw that could bite through bone stares down at the prisoner he’s been ordered to torture endlessly – this is his job; this is what he knows and what he does. But this time he hesitates. He looks down on the foolish prisoner, who is singing in a broken voice of the Laws of a long-dead King. And the torturer leans down and lifts his victim in his big arms, carrying him down the hall and up the stairs to freedom: an act he knows will cost him his own life. A foolish act. An act of Mercy.
I never thought I’d say this, but I really miss you, Ugh, or whatever your real name was.
‘Falcio . . .’ Ethalia said.
I thought we might be winning, but then I saw how pale she was, the way her mouth was hanging open as if she no longer had the strength to keep it shut.
The God gave a roar that banished her visions and shook the ground beneath us. ‘No. More. Mercy.’
Ethalia fell against me and I tried to hold up my blade, but it felt so heavy that I couldn’t get the point into guard.
The God walked towards us, the wood of the dais bending under the weight of his steps.
There was an expression of pity on the Blacksmith’s weathered face. ‘I warned you, Falcio. I begged you not to begin this fight.’ He signalled to the God and as the full force of his will struck us, the images he’d been holding back – the true blade that would cleave our souls – overwhelmed us.
‘No . . .’ I said, as I saw the vision sweep over me. Something tugged at my wrists and I saw that my arms were tied high above my head, against twin posts. My muscles screamed as dozens of needles were stuck in, all the way to the bone. There was something holding my mouth open, and a slight, strong man dressed in dark blue slid a small knife inside and tore strips from my tongue. I tried to remember the words of my oath, but they were drowned out by another voice. ‘Shall we begin?’ Heryn asked, over and over again.
I heard a scream sounding over my own: Ethalia was caught in the vision with me.
‘Do you know how Gods execute mortals for their crimes, Falcio?’ the Blacksmith asked as his creation knocked my blade aside. ‘It’s . . . Well, let’s just say it’s very different from any punishment you or I could ever render. There is no release when a God traps your soul. It becomes a plaything, a toy that can be shaped, a box that holds you inside, for ever. The box my God has made for you and your woman is the Lament: over and over, Falcio, repetition without end. This is the death you’ve brought her to. This will be her eternity, and yours.’
‘No,’ I said, my voice pleading as every inch of my body started shaking. I couldn’t even try to imagine myself somewhere else now. ‘Please, no— I’m sorry, I’m—’
‘Do not ask for mercy, Falcio. There is none left for you. I gave you a chance to flee, to let me complete this great work to restore this broken country, and instead you came at me with your tricks and your clever insults and your childish Laws.’ For the first time I saw the cold, empty hate behind his eyes as he turned his gaze to Ethalia. ‘I warned you, my Lady: it takes more than a Saint’s power and a kind heart to challenge a God.’
Ethalia’s hair was falling across her face as she raised her head slowly and said, ‘And I told you, Blacksmith, that I brought all the spirit with me that I need.’
There was no fear in her voice, unlike mine, and I looked at her to see what was happening. Everything about Ethalia is in the eyes, and that’s why I finally understood what she had done, and how she planned to fight back. Her words outside the cathedral echoed in my mind: I hear her when she talks to you, Falcio. Sometimes she speaks to me too.
Ethalia looked at me. ‘I’ve been carrying her for a long time, I think,’ she said in that last moment before the pale blue ocean of her irises gave way to the dark brown of fresh-turned earth. ‘No one else could love you the way she does.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
The Spirit
Time moves in strange ways inside the duelling circle. Sometimes it’s too fast, sometimes impossibly slow. Errera Bottio calls the latter ‘the grace before the blade’.
The God walked towards us, coming to rip apart our souls, and yet nothing seemed to move. I stood there holding onto a woman whose eyes belonged to another.
‘Well, husband,’ Aline said, her voice coming from Ethalia’s lips. ‘You appear to be losing quite badly again.’
‘It’s been a rough couple of months,’ I replied.
‘Poor darling. It will all be over soon.’
I glanced around at the scene before us, though I knew I wasn’t moving. ‘Am I already dead?’
She looked up, the way she used to when calculating how much seed we could afford to buy for the spring planting. ‘Not quite yet.’
I sighed. I had really thought I was done with living. I’d fought so long and so hard, for a dream that was doomed to failure – you’d think I’d be grateful to end things. Instead, I heard myself say, ‘I don’t want to die.’
She wrapped her arms around me, and never has anything felt so real in my entire life. ‘Have you forgotten what I told you?’ she asked. ‘Do you not remember the oath I took?’
‘You said you’d protect me.’
‘And haven’t I done so?’
I was going say something funny, but it was a sob that escaped my lips. ‘Every day.’
She let go of me and patted my cheek with Ethalia’s hand. ‘Poor Falcio. For a duelling magistrate who leaps at every chance to risk his life, you really are quite sentimental. Do you know, I think you wept during our entire wedding ceremony?’
I took in a breath, about to explain that the tears had come from the realisation of just how cold-hearted my future wife was going to be, but the air in my lungs suddenly felt very different – cold. Real. Aline put a finger to my lips. ‘Hush now, Husband, save that breath. It’s about to begin.’ She patted the sword hanging loosely in my hand. ‘Time to stick the pointy end through the bad man’s heart.’
*
Everything speeded up again as the heel of the God’s foot met the floor of the dais and the blade of his axe came for the centre of my skull. But the blow never landed; instead, he fell backwards as a dozen visions of mercy and valour smashed into him with the force of a hurricane.
I brought my sword up into guard and glanced at Aline standing next to me, that wicked grin of hers on Ethalia’s face. I felt a moment of perfect joy, as though the greatest failure of my life, the unpardonable sin of having failed to protect my Aline, had been erased. She was here, alive. We were together, and together we would stare down the Blacksmith and his God and every foul thing the world had ever made. It was foolish, I knew – a desperate child’s fantasy – but it was nonetheless, for that one brief instant, glorious.
The God’s axe whirled in the air, fast as ever, but now each time he tried to strike, the force of Aline’s will channelled through Ethalia’s Sainthood knocked it aside. ‘Did you think I would let you have him?’ she cried out, her voice a symphony of rage and mercy, of love and tenacity. ‘Did you believe something so small as death could withstand a wife’s vow, you feckless, callow creature?’
The God reeled from the force of her Awe: the weight of an ocean crashing down on the tiny wooden boat of his strength. This was why the Saints had been born, I understood finally; this was how we had resisted the yoke our own Gods had tried to force on us.
‘Stop,’ he said, and he started pulling in the Faith of his followers, winding it around and around the blade of his axe until it became so pure and full of power that I knew it would pierce Aline’s will and kill Ethalia.
‘No!’ I shouted, striking with the warsword, interrupting him and drawing his attention back to me.
He swung the axe in a wide horizontal cut, so much raw fury behind it that I knew even if I managed to parry it, that blade would smash right through my own weapon. I fell back, feeling the edge slice through the top layer of leather on my coat.
Aline redoubled her efforts, and he slid backwards in the circle, but sweat was flooding down Ethalia’s forehead. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’ she panted, ‘he’s just too strong . . .’
The God roared with joy as he felt her will slipping and turned his attack on her, his axe whipping through the air like a scythe, shredding the visions that were shielding us. ‘You may carry the powers of a Saint,’ the God crowed, ‘but you are still just a woman.’ He backhanded her across the face with such a force that I thought her neck would break.
I ran for him, trying to throw myself at him, but he knocked me aside effortlessly and stepped forward to grab Aline. Wearing Fost’s face, his grin, his rapacious hunger, he flooded her with a thousand cries born of her own terror. ‘Look upon me,’ he commanded.
She did, and suddenly the corners of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. ‘You see, this is why the Gods can never rule,’ she said, suddenly no longer panting for breath. ‘You’re all so very gullible.’ She reached out with both hands and the air around us ignited, becoming a pure, white light that lit the world and, just for an instant, made it as clear and beautiful as the memory of first love. The God of Fear turned away, blinded by it, Aline turned to me and shouted, ‘Husband – now—!’
In one of his more poetic passages, Bottio insists that at the moment of the final blow, the mind simply ceases to be: there are no more thoughts or choices to be made so the body, of its own volition, becomes a single, unstoppable weapon.
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