Idgen Marte scowled at him and fiddled with the hilt of her sword. “I want to meet him skill to skill. I’ve fought my share of duels. I know the speed of my wrists is his match, and more. I don’t need the speed of my Gifts.”
“You are not Idgen Marte the duelist, sword-at-hire, the adventurer any longer,” Allystaire replied quietly. “You are the Shadow of the Mother. You have responsibilities to live past this day, however you must.”
“Would you take that advice?”
“If the Mother’s Gift of strength came to my arm, I would not ignore it. I would end the fight as quickly as I could.”
“Allystaire, for the last half score of years, all I had, all that I was, I earned with this,” Idgen Marte wrapped her hand around the hilt of the long, curved sword she always wore. “I don’t mean to stand here and tell you my story, but when I left my home, I did it with nothing but this sword, a decent pair of boots, and some stolen clothes. The boots and clothes are long since gone. I’ve earned a fortune, drunk it away, earned it back, and lost it again more times than I care to count. I’ve lived and fought and collected stories in the Concordat, Keersvast, and Goddess help me, this frigid northern waste. Because of this, and what I could do with it,” she said, lifting the scabbarded blade off the frog on her belt. “Because my wrists and my feet were faster than anyone else’s. The sword-at-hire, the warband life, it’s hard on a man, you know that. The weak die quick, the cowards never last, and most of ‘em who do live have seen so much they’ve given in and become right bastards. Now just imagine it for me.”
Idgen Marte paused for a deep breath, looked down at her sword, wrapped her hand around the hilt again. “I’m not asking for pity. I could’ve chosen another life, after the one I wanted was barred to me,” she rasped. “I chose it. It meant something to me, something about myself that I can’t put into words. You probably felt the same about your knighthood, about teaching, about leading men at war. Well, the Goddess may have made us something better, something more noble or pure, than a knight or a hired blade. Somethin’ closer to a story. Yet there’s a part of me that wants to know, am I still the woman who made her own way? Am I still my own master? Can you understand that?”
Allystaire thought a moment, taking the time to let “after the one I wanted was barred to me” sink into his thoughts and lay there till he knew he’d remember to ask about it another time. “I do, Idgen Marte. I do. I felt that way when we came upon that press gang back in the summer, and that Delondeur knight with the blue cockerel lowered his lance. For a moment, I was doing what I was bred to do, spurring Ardent into the charge and couching my lance and trying to find the spot where his shield would not be. For a moment I was my old self again, Lord Coldbourne, Castellan of Wind’s Jaw, Marshal of Oyrwyn, almost always a winner in the lists. And then I remembered whose knight I was now, and Her strength filled my arm. Who we were only matters as it prepared us to be what we are now. Please do not forget that.”
“As if I could. And yet if I lunge and run him through faster than anyone can follow, am I helping our cause, or hurting it?”
“Maybe just slow down enough for everyone to see it.”
She snorted. “Why’s he doing this, anyway? He knows the rest of his men are walking away.”
“He is afraid of what he faces if he returns to his church in disgrace. And I think he is a little ashamed of how the acolyte duped him.”
“As if he were the first man led astray by the promise of parted legs?”
“I do not think Joscelyn’s were the legs he had in mind, and I believe that weighs on him as well.”
“Well, he’s a fool. A little ashamed is better than dead.”
“Mayhap. Could be that a clean death here is what he is really after. Under the sun, with a sword in his hand, rather than knives in the dark, or a quick fall off a ship.”
“You think Fortune’s temple would murder him?”
“I do not doubt that Braech’s priests would. And do you think most of Fortune’s clergy are more like Cerisia or more like Joscelyn?”
“Not sure what the difference is.”
“Joscelyn was willing to do murder to advance herself. Cerisia came here hopeful of avoiding bloodshed.”
Idgen Marte stopped near the door, her silhouette outlined by the thin band of bright daylight it let in. “Are you so sure of that? Not at all distracted?”
Allystaire frowned thinly, choosing his words carefully. “I may have been, at points,” he admitted. “Mildly. Yet not when I compelled the truth of her. She is genuine on this point, if not others.”
“Let me hazard a guess. You valiantly resisted her advances in the name of chastity and piety.”
Allystaire laughed, though faintly, as the memory of Cerisia’s fingers, her lips, her scent drifted across his sense. “I would not say chastity and piety so much as politics.”
Idgen Marte sighed, shaking her head in mock sadness. “You probably made the smart choice. After a fashion. Still—when it comes to Fortune’s clerics, I never saw one didn’t have gold sticking to their fingers. And she’s no different.”
“Enough gossip. You have a duel to fight.”
Allystaire led Idgen Marte out of the Temple, acting as her second. On the long walk to the roped-off field at the other side of town, a crowd tried to follow without pressing too close upon them. When they reached the Temple field, Ivar and her Ravens had joined with Renard and his villagers to keep the crowd back, and the disarmed prisoners cowed. Cerisia paced nervously, wearing her white silks and her mask, while Joscelyn and Gerther, hands bound, hunched miserably nearby in dirtied rags.
Iolantes wore his mail and helm and a longsword and a heavy dirk on his belt, though he’d dispensed with Fortune’s surcoat. His guards stayed a pace behind him as he approached Cerisia and knelt.
Fortune’s Archioness, unreadable behind her mask, seemed to pay little attention to whatever Iolantes had to say. The man knelt before her, speaking quietly, no words carrying across the stillness to Allystaire’s ears. He made no grand gestures, did not raise his eyes to her mask, simply staring at the ground as he spoke. Finally, after several moments of this, Cerisia raised her hand to his head and bent over him, speaking, Allystaire assumed, some kind of blessing.
After a few quick words, she turned away from the kneeling guard. There was a kind of finality in the gesture. He called softly after her, then stood, his back as straight as the blade on his hip, and awaited his opponent.
The day was cool and cloudless beneath a bright sun. Allystaire led Idgen Marte to the edge of the flat space that was serving as their field.
Cerisia had circled around and met them, as well as Iolantes and the guard serving as his second, in the middle of the field. Mol did the same, gliding from one side where she had stood with Torvul.
“Is your servant bound to this foolishness?” The young priestess addressed her older counterpart directly, with that curiously adult, unmistakably educated voice Mol had grown into.
“He is no longer my servant.” Cerisia’s voice was flat and muffled by her mask, but colder than Allystaire remembered. “His life is his own to throw away as he wills it, foolish or not. Do not look to me to dissuade him.”
“Enough of this,” Iolantes snapped. His skin was tight across his jaw, but otherwise he was the picture of professional, soldierly calm. Even his voice softened when he spoke again. “Let us set the terms.”
“The terms are that you die when I kill you,” Idgen Marte said, “and that afterwards your men go free, with what food and stores they can carry. Their weapons, armor, valuables, and mounts are forfeit.”
Iolantes spat. “That is no fair bargain.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting,” Idgen Marte said cooly. “Take it and die clean. Refuse it and you’re the first of many to hang today.”
“Fine. And if I win?”
�
��Hadn’t given it thought,” the swordswoman answered.
“If I win, my men go free with all their gear and goods. All my men, any that were witched into staying must be set free.”
“Believe what you like and make peace with this world. May the Mother grant you mercy in the next.” Idgen Marte turned sharply away and barked, “Clear the field.”
Allystaire tried to catch her eye as he, Mol, Cerisia, and the other guardsman all hurried away, but Idgen Marte’s eyes locked on Iolantes as she turned to face him. The bright, deceptively gentle curve of her sword gleamed as it cleared her sheath with hardly a whisper. With her left hand, she lifted the scabbard free of the frog it rested upon on her belt and gave it a good toss, clearing it away from her legs.
Iolantes drew more slowly, his heavier blade coming free with a loud and angry skirl. He lifted his shield and, mail rattling, trotted straight towards her, picking up speed as he moved. Shield lifted in front of him, he raised his sword for a brute-force overhand swing straight down at her.
Rather than even attempt to parry, Idgen Marte stood still, so still that even as his blade reached the top of its arc and began to descend, she seemed not to move. Allystaire’s breath caught in his throat.
The heavy longsword swung through empty air. With an economical grace, Idgen Marte had sidestepped, planting her left foot wide to one side and pivoting on it. Her right foot only whisked against the ground. As Iolantes’s sword over-swung, she lifted hers and lashed a sharply snapped kick at his hand. His arm shook and his hand loosened around the hilt, but he wasn’t that easily disarmed.
Iolantes swung his shield in an arc in front of him, but Idgen Marte was already rolling away. She popped back to her feet several paces in front of him. Resettling his grip on his sword, he danced forward again, more warily this time, shield advancing, sword probing.
She declined to meet any of his attacks with her own blade. Tentative as they were, she simply skittered to either side of them. Finally, some frustration beginning to wear on him, he tried a vicious, wide swipe at navel height. She brought the edge of her sword down along his flat and knocked his sword harmlessly away. Holding his weapon pinned with one hand on her sword, her left hand darted inside his shield.
Whatever soft spot or gap in his chainmail she found, or technique with her hand Idgen Marte performed, was hidden from their view, but the effect was immediate. Iolantes’s left arm dropped nervelessly to his side, shield starting to slip from his grasp.
She didn’t wait to press him, but stepped forward even closer, and snapped her elbow straight into his face.
His helmet’s noseguard smashed into the soft bone and cartilage it was meant to protect with a loud thud. His nose wasn’t broken, but he was stunned in surprise, and she used the moment to dance around behind him, unpinning his sword.
He spun around to meet her, shield trailing on the ground and slowing him down, forced to advance with his right hand, his sword hand, forward.
“Don’t worry,” she taunted, “your arm will come back in a few moments. Provided you’re still alive.”
“Witch!” Iolantes shouted through gritted teeth. With a hard shake of his torso, he swung his dead arm loose of the straps and let his shield fall to the ground with a clank.
Idgen Marte smiled, but otherwise stood pat, her posture relaxed, sword at her side.
She is taunting him, Allystaire thought. Then, trying to direct the thought at Idgen Marte, hoping she would hear him: Stop this! Be what you are, not what you were.
She was distracted, for a moment, by Allystaire’s thought, her eyes flitting towards him from yards away. Iolantes saw her brief distraction and lunged forward, leading with his right shoulder and swinging his sword in an upwards arc, its tip starting near the tops of his boots.
Idgen Marte stepped backwards to avoid it, casually, as before, barely shifting her grip on her own blade.
And then she tripped.
She recovered quickly, flinging herself backwards and rolling back to her feet in little more than a blink. But the effect was chilling, her easy confidence replaced, if only briefly, with uncertainty, and her sword flickering as she brought it up into a more secure guard position, both hands on the hilt, fingers moving uncertainly.
I have never, Allystaire thought, a slight shiver moving down his neck, seen her put a wrong foot. Even in her cups.
Iolantes took another wild swipe, and instead of tumbling away, Idgen Marte lifted her sword and turned the swing away with her flat.
Finally, Idgen Marte lashed out with her own attacks, darting her sword in three short, swift swings to his left, then right, then left again, clearly trying to exploit his weakened, shieldless arm.
Iolantes parried the first and second, swinging his sword almost blindly. The clash of steel on steel was made louder by the silence surrounding the combatants. The third swing, faster than the first two—but not with the unnatural speed Idgen Marte had since her Ordination—he danced away from, backpedaling with deft, if not graceful, feet.
Allystaire spared a moment to look at Iolantes’s dangling left hand, saw the fingers flex, curl into a fist.
Idgen Marte saw it too. She stamped forward and launched a low, sweeping swing at his left side. His blade met hers, guided as much by instinct, by luck, as intent. Again the clash of steel, again her attack knocked harmlessly aside.
Iolantes, gritting his teeth with the effort, brought his left hand up and wrapped it around the bottom of his swordhilt. Smiling then, he lifted his arms, bringing his hands up to his right shoulder as if preparing for a swing.
She went on the offensive again, a cut starting low near his left knee that sliced towards his right shoulder. Trying to draw him one way and go the other, Allystaire recognized, even as she made her cut.
Iolantes knew it, too, and he swung his blade down faster and harder than his bad arm should’ve allowed, trapping her sword against the ground for a moment. In that moment, he lifted his boot, stomped down on the tang, and snapped Idgen Marte’s sword off less than a span above the hilt, the bulk of the curved blade falling to the dying grass in a brief, mirror bright shower of steel.
Iolantes let out a loud but inarticulate cry of triumph, and while shock widened Idgen Marte’s eyes, she wasted no time. She flung the broken end of her sword at Iolantes with her right hand, while seizing the dirk on his belt with her left. He deflected the improvised missile by batting it away, but as he swung, she sprang backwards and away from him. Luck may have been with him in the fight, but speed was hers.
Staggering backwards a few steps, she shifted the dirk into her right hand and crouched, making a smaller target of herself, and holding the dagger in a forward guard.
Allystaire realized he was holding his breath, and felt a kind of curious, anxious buzzing creep up the base of his spine. His hand fell to his hammer, contemplating the distance, weighing consequences.
The buzzing grew louder. Idgen Marte backpedaled, catching and turning away a few probing strikes from Iolantes’s sword. Blood trickled down around his mouth where her kick to his noseguard had opened his skin, turning his smile into a bloody rictus.
Suddenly a voice rang out over the crowd, and the combatants froze. The faces of the crowd snapped towards the source of the noise.
Gideon stood an arm’s length away from Joscelyn, who still knelt, hands bound behind her back. One of his hands was upraised, and Allystaire could feel some power flowing between the boy and the acolyte.
“Break it! Break it!” the boy was shouting. “Break it or I swear I will draw so much of your Goddess’s power through you that none will ever feel her benison again!”
Iolantes looked over Idgen Marte’s shoulder, distracted by the sudden interruption, though she kept her eyes locked upon him. Take him now, Allystaire thought, at her. He is distracted!
She gave no indication that she heard. Her mouth moved,
forming words he could neither hear not make out.
“It might kill me,” Gideon suddenly hissed through gritted teeth, “but it will kill you. And it could kill your Goddess. The world will not miss you. Will it miss Her?” He raised his other hand. It began to glow, then his flesh seemed to disappear behind the dazzling concentration of light at the end of his arm. Joscelyn’s eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth clenched, and she collapsed.
Gideon’s hand clenched into a fist, and then he released the coruscating ball of energy that he’d gathered. Tongues of heatless flame had begun to lick around his hand.
A cloud passed across the sun as the ball dissipated.
The tableau was broken. Iolantes charged, sword raised in both hands for a killing blow.
As the shadow from the moving cloud fell over her, Idgen Marte blurred from view. Iolantes stopped in his tracks, then suddenly stiffened as his own dirk was plunged into the back of his skull, slid just beneath his helmet. Behind him, Idgen Marte had reappeared, though instead of the tall, dusky-skinned warrior Allystaire had met, she was the Shadow of the Mother, a twisting, barely visible figure of light and dark blended into a shape of terrible reckoning.
The blade was placed with the precision of a dwarfish chirurgeon. Iolantes fell straight to the ground, bone and muscle gone slack.
Idgen Marte stepped back, leaving Iolantes’s dagger buried in the back of his own limp head. As the cloud passed away from the sun, she was herself once more.
Allystaire started to her side, but then veered towards Joscelyn and Gideon. I wanted you to stay out of sight.
“I couldn’t any longer,” Gideon answered aloud. He knelt beside the prone but steadily breathing form of Cerisia’s acolyte, put a hand to her neck, and then her head. “I felt her calling upon her Goddess, drawing power. She was modifying the probabilities of the fight. It is what they do.”
“In words I can understand, Gideon,” Allystaire said.
“She was lending unnatural luck to Iolantes,” the boy said. “Did you not think his blind parries meeting Idgen Marte’s strikes was unusual?”
Stillbright Page 35