“What would you know of honor, Kallistos?” Nikomedes scoffed, meeting the other man’s impetuous gaze with a short-lived sneer of contempt.
“Give me the Minos Sword,” Kapaneus said heavily, causing Nikomedes to shift his attention to Nykator’s protégé, “next to our Protector, I am the most capable warrior in Argos. I will return it after I have taken his head, Nikomedes, but we cannot afford to falter in this thing,” he added, and though Nikomedes was amused by his rival’s supplication, he had no intention of surrendering the Minos Sword to anyone but Kephus for any period of time.
“I fear that will not do, Kapaneus,” Nazoraios said with a loud sigh. “Nikomedes has borne the Minos Sword for some time now, and is certainly more familiar with its eccentricities than you could possibly be with merely a few practice swings.” When Kapaneus opened his mouth to argue, Nykator held up a silencing hand before gesturing to the blade strapped to Nikomedes’ back, “Have you ever held a sword as large as that one?” When the other man failed to reply as his eyebrows beetled in anger and his fists clenched tightly at his sides, Nazoraios nodded knowingly, “Though your abilities likely do exceed those of Nikomedes in martial matters, in this affair he will prove the stronger choice for the Hold and, by extension, for those warriors who call it home.” He cast a level, iron gaze around the assembled warriors and said, “Would we not see honor satisfied after this invader has plucked the finest flower from the fields of Argos, and in so doing disdainfully declared his superiority to all and sundry?”
Grunts of approval came from the warriors—including from Nykator—and though Kallistos and Kapaneus seemed unwilling to surrender the argument just yet, they clearly knew that public opinion was against them. So they wisely held their tongues, but their faces turned red with indignation.
“Then I believe the choice is clear,” Nazoraios declared as he turned to his warlord and made his obeisance with a deep, self-serving bow. “Nikomedes will fight the outlander.”
Nykator scowled but eventually nodded, “Agreed.”
Chapter XXV: The Duel of Duels
Nikomedes made last-minute adjustments to his armor—which Haldis had expertly fitted over the previous days until it felt as though it had always been a part of him—and drew deep, cleansing breaths as he stood opposite the scar-faced warrior in the massive armor.
“Unleash your fury, Protector,” Lady Adonia said, invoking the time-honored phrase which should by all rights have been spoken to Nikomedes and not this brown-skinned, flat-nosed, small-headed warrior. Hearing her say those words, and offer the sword’s hilt for the scarred warrior to accept, sent Nikomedes’ blood pressure skyward.
He would show this man the folly of crossing Nikomedes Minos. He would teach him the price for swooping down—like a buzzard—to collect what was rightfully his.
But he would also reveal his true fighting ability in this particular duel, since by emerging victorious he would have earned his place at Lady Adonia’s side. It was far from automatic that she would install him as her new Protector after he ripped the brown man’s head from his twitching corpse, but it would be difficult for her to refuse his claim outright.
She might pit the other warriors of Argos against him after he defeated the other man by using the Men-granted Minos Sword, but he had little doubt that after this particular battle they would think twice before stepping to him in the hope of taking that which he had taken for his own.
As Adonia’s brown-skinned Protector drew the blade she now bore for him, Nikomedes’ and Nazoraios’ concerns were justified as the blade of the shorter, more slender weapon looked to be the virtual clone of the Minos Sword in composition—and nearly identical in design, as well. It was clear that they bore great similarities which went beyond the normal similarities between such large, powerful weapons, but Nikomedes pushed such thoughts from his mind as he gripped the Minos Sword before his body.
For a brief moment, the assemblage at large silently came to terms with the fact that, for what was almost certainly the first time in Argos’ history, two Dark Swords of Power were about to be employed in a duel against one another in the Great Hall itself.
Nikomedes’ mind flooded with imagery as he fought down the rising tide of anger and, before he even realized he had done so, he growled, “Die, scar-face!”
He lunged forward with the Minos Sword raised in a powerful, overhand blow that was nearly identical fashion to that which Nykator had employed with his simple, plain metal sword. The taut silence throughout the Great Hall was shattered by the sound of metal on metal as the newcomer raised his thinner, shorter blade to defend against the potential deathblow.
The Minos Sword crashed down with enough force to cleave through a bull at the shoulder, but it barely caused the newcomer’s balance to shift as he took a steadying step in order to maintain his defensive posture. But Nikomedes had not intended for the blow to end the fight, and his feet were already moving with every bit of speed, grace, and power his finely-tuned body possessed.
The time for hiding his true strengths was at an end. Now, for the first time since returning to Argos, he would tell his rivals the truth of Nikomedes Minos by using a language which allowed no possibility for miscommunication: battle.
As the scar-faced warrior shifted his balance within his bulky, magical armor, Nikomedes sidestepped and slammed the Minos Sword into the newcomer’s midsection with enough raw power to prevent him from regaining his balance.
Before the scarred warrior could bring his blade into an interposing position, Nikomedes spun completely around by pivoting on his back foot and stepping completely across the newcomer’s front. As he reached the now-vulnerable point in the small-headed usurper’s guard, he slammed the Minos Sword into the warrior’s thigh with a blow mighty enough to fell a tree as thick as Nikomedes’ chest in a single swing.
But Nikomedes was almost mindless of his blows’ effects—which seemed to be less significant than possible, given the Minos Sword’s fearsome edge and mass—as he stepped beneath the scarred warrior’s off-balance counterattack and drove the Minos Sword’s heavy, dark pommel into the newcomer’s right, inner arm. The parry-like blow drove the newcomer’s sword arm out of position, and Nikomedes chopped the Minos Sword down on the scarred warrior’s left leg in the opening the parry had created—an opening which was barely large enough to maneuver the massive Minos Sword into position to exploit.
A deep gash opened in the metal covering the brown-skinned warrior’s thigh, and Nikomedes felt a thrill of anticipation as he saw proof that the Minos Sword could indeed pierce the seemingly invulnerable armor in which his foe was encased. This anticipation fueled his movements, which blended one into another as he hammered blow after blow into the scarred warrior’s armor. His ferocious, lightning fast attacks prevented the newcomer from fully regaining his balance, and Nikomedes had every intention of taking full advantage of the initiative.
He had not employed his true speed since the duel with Kratos, and he found that doing so felt more liberating than even he had expected it to be. His footwork was flawless, and the Minos Sword felt like an extension of his body as he hammered blow after blow into the formidable—but not impervious—armor wrapped around his flat-nosed enemy’s body.
Eventually—and before Nikomedes could see any blood seeping from the rents he had opened in his enemy’s magical armor—the outlander regained his balance and authored a reasonably quick, straight lunge, trying to buy himself the space to present a proper defensive shell with his blade. But Nikomedes was simply too fast, and his years of training had prepared his reflexes to take over without his conscious mind’s involvement.
Nikomedes sidestepped the counter-lunge and, while doing so, brought the massive Minos Sword over his head and slammed it down with brutal, savage ferocity in a series of strikes which landed against his adversary’s pauldrons. The first blows narrowly missed his scarred, brown skull as the other man deftly weaved his head this way and that to avoid the long string of d
eathblows before finally getting his blade up and intercepting the attacks.
But the brown warrior was once again backpedaling, and Nikomedes had no intention of surrendering the initiative to the flat-nosed thief—a thief who meant to steal Nikomedes’ very destiny out from under his feet!
Nikomedes swept his foot out, trying to hook his foe’s near leg and send him to the ground, but the brown-skinned warrior seemed not to notice as he continued his surprisingly quick, nimble movements which kept him in an upright posture. Nikomedes growled bestially as he slammed the Minos Sword into the warrior’s upper arm, but aside from a deep gouge in the armor he saw no sign that it had affected his opponent in any way.
Just as the outlander looked ready to regain his balance and posture, Nikomedes feinted high with the Minos Sword’s pommel lined up on the scarred warrior’s head, before spinning and sending the Minos Sword’s reverse edge toward the flat-nosed thief’s hamstring. Even if it failed to cleave the flesh beneath the armor, such a blow would almost certainly put the man down on a knee—a perfect opportunity for Nikomedes to take his head with a quick, clean swing of the Minos Sword.
But the newcomer did something unthinkable: barely assuming a crouch beforehand, he leapt straight up into the air, easily clearing the path of the Minos Sword as he did so. Nikomedes tried to hold up the blow after seeing his adversary’s feet leave the floor, but the Minos Sword was simply too long, too heavy, and moving too fast for him to do so and he briefly found his balance hanging precariously over his toes.
The brown warrior took full advantage of the momentary opening caused by Nikomedes’ lack of balance, and it was all Nikomedes could do to awkwardly block an incoming sweep of the lighter, shorter blade—an attack which would most certainly have separated Nikomedes’ torso from his legs.
After that, the newcomer’s onslaught of offense was like nothing Nikomedes had ever experienced. It was all he could do to dodge, parry, and block the lightning-fast series of short, crisp attacks his enemy employed as Nikomedes found himself in the unusual position of giving ground without having expected to do so.
The look in the newcomer’s eyes was one of calm, calculating, almost emotionless poise. He grimaced occasionally when Nikomedes blocked a blow with unyielding force, but aside from the occasional appearance of that particular expression, his scarred features were unreadable as he went about his work with seemingly every confidence in his eventual victory.
It was a look Nikomedes had seen before, and he knew it presented an opportunity to end the fight if he could execute properly.
He suspected his adversary was too engrossed in directing his own limbs to notice that Nikomedes was purposefully leaving his blade in a blocking position for a fraction of a second following each clash of their weapons. Nikomedes needed to give the impression that he was unaccustomed to backpedaling and countering, and he also needed to give the impression that his guard could be overcome with a specific series of blows.
Sure enough, his foe took the bait and executed a nine strike combination which saw Nikomedes’ Minos Sword move dangerously out of position by the ninth such strike, at which point the newcomer sent a precise, lunging strike aimed at Nikomedes’ upper torso—a center mass shot which, under normal circumstances, would end the fight in the brown-skinned warrior’s favor.
It was precisely what Nikomedes had hoped for, and with long-practiced footwork he spun his body around the incoming blade while bringing the Minos Sword around in a deadly arc aimed at decapitating the small-headed warrior once and for all.
But before his opponent had even completed his lunge, the newcomer’s grip on the slenderer Dark Sword of Power released and the brown-skinned warrior spun his body while raising his arms to intercept the Minos Sword with his already heavily-damaged vambraces.
The Minos Sword struck metal, and Nikomedes was enraged to find that the flat-nosed fighter had successfully spared his neck from any sort of injury as he had somehow brought his left vambrace up into a blocking position. The Minos Sword was deflected from its decapitating arc and the flat of the mighty blade’s barely grazed his exposed skull, before sailing harmlessly over it and carrying Nikomedes’ torso well over his hips with the accumulated momentum of his barely-deflected blow.
Nikomedes saw the flat-nosed warrior fall to his knees but, before Nikomedes could recover his own position and finish the job, he felt his foe’s metal-bound arms grasp around him. The brown warrior’s left hand flailed uselessly, but his right quickly found purchase on Nikomedes’ torso and with a burst of strength greater than even Kratos could generate, the flat-nosed warrior trapped Nikomedes’ left leg with his right, heavily gauntleted hand and drove his armored bulk into Nikomedes’ midsection.
Nikomedes barely managed to keep his feet beneath him as the scar-faced, small-headed man churned his legs beneath his heavily-armored body and drove for a takedown attempt while his eyes rolled around as he attempted to clear the cobwebs which had gathered in his mind due to Nikomedes’ deflected decapitation.
Just as Nikomedes was about to extricate himself from the inhumanly strong grip of his opponent, the brown warrior’s left hand struck him in the jaw, dislodging a pair of molars in the process and causing Nikomedes’ mouth to quickly fill with blood.
He momentarily lost his sense of balance, and Nikomedes quickly found himself kneeling before and slightly to the side of his opponent as he, too, fought to regain his equilibrium. In the process, he somehow lost his grip on the Minos Sword but was too focused on the emerging struggle to look for it.
This man was, in spite of his blatant disregard for honor and tradition, a mighty warrior who was giving Nikomedes everything he could handle. Nikomedes felt himself swell with outrage at the other’s presumption that he could usurp that which Nikomedes had planned to claim for so long.
“I don’t know what she sees in you that she doesn’t in me,” he heard himself snarl before a wholly unexpected addendum passed his lips in a roar of rage, “you’re nothing but a stupid, brown monkey!”
His legs sprang into action, launching his body toward his kneeling adversary with Nikomedes’ forehead aimed squarely at the other man’s jaw. The crown of his skull struck the warrior in the cheek, rather than the jaw, and the brown-skinned warrior reeled from the brutal, unexpected attack.
As his foe reeled, Nikomedes sighted the Minos Sword and reached out to take it up so he could finish the job. After grabbing it, and seeing his foe’s eyes rolling around in his head as he lay flat on his back with his bulky armor seemingly making the task of regaining his feet far more difficult than it would otherwise be, Nikomedes moved to his foe’s side and growled, “Now…prepare to account for your insult!”
He raised the blade high, feeling the eyes of every assembled Argosian on him as he prepared to deliver the coup de grace with his legendary weapon—and thus end the first of what would certainly be many equally legendary battles from which he would no doubt emerge victorious in the coming years.
But before he could deliver the killing blow, the warrior’s leg lashed out violently, taking Nikomedes in the knee and causing ligaments to tear with an audible series of pops in rapid succession. Nikomedes collapsed down to his good knee as he stifled a cry of pain as his ruined leg gave out beneath him.
The Minos Sword was now out of position, and the warrior kicked again and again, hammering his massive boots into Nikomedes’ armored torso as Nikomedes brought the Minos Sword around and slammed it into his foe’s back and legs. But there was something wrong; Nikomedes’ vision was badly blurred and there was an almost empty, hollow feeling quickly expanding throughout his skull.
He suspected the blow he had sustained to his head had been more injurious than he had initially believed it to be. Just as that thought coalesced in his mind, the brown-skinned warrior smashed his boot into Nikomedes’ skull, causing his vision to narrow dangerously as his hearing cut in and out sporadically while the world began to spin so violently that he nearly retched up his st
omach’s contents.
Nikomedes knew he needed to end this fight quickly or risk failure—and such failure was not only unthinkable, but could be considered heresy of the highest order for having failed to carry out the ordained Will of Men.
His foe, however, would not yield. The other man’s eyes seemed to gain a measure of clarity as they focused on Nikomedes, while Nikomedes himself rapidly lost his own clarity.
The scar-faced warrior switched one of his kicks mid-motion and unexpectedly struck Nikomedes’ sword hand instead of his chest. As he did so, he shifted his weight forward and leaned his massive, bulky casement’s entire weight down on Nikomedes’ hand, crushing several bones as the robust, finely crafted metal of his new gauntlet twisted and caved around his fingers beneath the immense weight.
“Who’s the monkey now, pretty boy?” the warrior asked, almost playfully, as he leaned down to claim the Minos Sword from near Nikomedes’ pinned hand, which was the last thing Nikomedes heard before his world spun into darkness.
Before he slipped into the abyss, Nikomedes had one strange, unexpected question in the fore of his mind. It was a question which somehow stood apart from the crushing sense of defeat which he knew he should have felt, but somehow did not. It was a question which begged several other questions he could not begin to comprehend as his mind was finally bathed in the abyss of a deep, dreamless rest:
What in the name of Men was a monkey?
Chapter XXVI: The Pain of Loss
Nikomedes roused from a stupor and found himself lying in a cot located in one of the houses of healing near the Inner Keep. As he went to sit up, he found that his body ached from head to toe and he had a pounding headache which seemingly threatened to split his skull cleanly in two if he did not quickly return to a prone position.
He laid back down as his vision blacked out, and drew several breaths—each of which hurt, signifying he had broken several ribs on each side of his chest—and his leg began to throb with pulsing, rhythmic agony which made him wince as he looked down, fearful he had suffered an amputation.
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