you. I am entitled.”
Fiallic shifted sideways. Shraeve matched his movement. Beyond them, Aeglyss was watching. There was such contemptuous confidence on his inhuman face that Kanin felt a flicker of alarm.
“I make a claim on the place of Banner-captain,” Shraeve insisted. “Fate’s judgement is infallible. Let us face it together, Fiallic. There is nothing improper in my challenge.” She bowed low, bending from the waist, her head almost brushing Fiallic’s chest in its descent.
Again Goedellin thumped the butt of his walking stick down, punching a hole into the snow. Fiallic looked round to the Lore Inkallim, and in the raven’s expression Kanin saw the betrayal of everything he had hoped for from this day.
“She is entitled,” the Banner-captain said. “The rule of the Battle permits it.”
“No,” Kanin said before he could help himself, but no one paid him any heed. Shraeve was still bent over, perfectly poised and still. Fat snowflakes dotted her back.
“It will be no service to the creed for either of you to die today,” Goedellin growled.
“Do you fear to let fate play itself out, old man?” Aeglyss shouted. “I do not. Let the ravens dance their dance. If she fails, you can have my life, and welcome to it.”
Fiallic was already backing away. He settled himself a spear’s reach from Shraeve, and slowly bowed down. Goedellin gave an irate snort and stamped away. Shraeve straightened.
“Choose the field, Banner-captain,” she said.
There was, on bare, rising ground beyond Hommen’s southernmost dwelling, a great sheep pen: a low stone wall that described a perfect circle across the slope. Snow had piled up against the wall: and laid itself into every crevice between the stones. Outside that circle, another assembled itself, Battle Inkallim ringing the killing ground within. They stood in single rank, thirty of them, widely spaced. Each one of them took position and then set their own weapons down on the snow behind them. Beyond that ring of swords and knives the crowds assembled.
Hundreds were there, of many Bloods, of many callings. Warriors and commoners, Inkallim and Kyrinin. And one Thane. Kanin stood above the pen. The snow blew into his face, carried on a sharp wind, but he barely felt it. The flakes were coming down thickly enough now to almost obscure the village below them. The old watchtower was an indistinct hulking mass, the cottages spread around it blurred into a single grey-black shape. The harbour and the sea beyond were gone, sunk away into the winter. Kanin spared none of it more than a moment’s glance.
His attention was upon the two figures alone in the centre of the stone enclosure, facing each other in the heart of the white circle that it contained.
Fiallic had sword and shield, Shraeve her twin blades. Neither of them moved for what seemed an interminable time. Snow spun between them, caught in eddies of the air.
“My feet are on the Road,” Shraeve said.
“My feet are on the Road,” Fiallic replied.
They began to circle one another, taking small, tight steps. Each was as graceful and balanced as the other. There was not a sound from all the great throng gathered to witness the trial between these two warriors. Kanin could hear the soft crunch of snow beneath their precise feet, and the threnodic calling of a crow somewhere far off to the south, and nothing else. The tension was acute, stiffening his back and drying his mouth.
Fiallic, he knew by reputation. It was said he had only ever been defeated once, by Nyve himself, in a wrestling match. That had been many, many years ago, when Fiallic was a teenager and Nyve not yet First, and the loss had, supposedly, cost the future Banner-captain a dislocated shoulder and a broken jaw. Shraeve, Kanin had seen for himself, dealing out slaughter on the battlefield at Grive, and at Glasbridge. She was as ferocious a warrior as he had ever shared a field with, but single combat was — should be — different. Kanin had to believe that Fiallic was more than a match for her in this narrow, snowy arena. The alternative was too bitter a prospect to contemplate.
They were like fighting dogs, he thought, taking the measure of one another. Round and round they circled, their eyes locked and almost unblinking, blades steady. Kanin brushed snow from the crown of his head.
Shraeve moved so completely without warning that he lost track of her for an instant, and only heard rather than saw the clatter of steel on shield, the flurry of quick feet advancing and retreating. Fiallic spun out of her path, cutting at her flank as he went. She blocked the blow with one sword, stabbed in over it with the other. But Fiallic was gone already, gliding over the snow. Neither of them was breathing hard, Kanin could see. Neither looked as though they were engaged in anything more serious or strenuous than a casual training exercise. Shraeve shook her arms, shifted her weight from one foot to another and back again, and rushed in once more.
They battled their way around that walled killing ground, and the patterns they described with bodies and blades were as intricate as any dance. There was, indeed, a certain intimacy, a certain isolation, to the intensity with which the two of them engaged. They were shaping something, together, alone, that belonged to them and to no one else.
Fiallic deflected an assault, then countered with the shield itself, slashing with its rim at Shraeve’s face. It was as smooth and fast a movement as Kanin had ever seen in combat, but not quite fast enough to catch Shraeve. She ducked aside. For just that one fraction of a heartbeat, her balance was less than perfect, and Fiallic’s sword came hacking down on her weight-bearing leg. Kanin broadened his shoulders, ready to cry out in acclamation of the victory. Shraeve sprang, drove herself up off that leg, twisting in the air to swing it out of the path of Fiallic’s blade. The blow still caught her, but it was only glancing, skidding off her calf. Still, it tumbled her. She landed on fists and knees in a spray of snow. There was blood on her leg.
Fiallic darted in. Shraeve spiralled up and away, like an acrobat, and was on her feet, flicking his attack aside. He has her, though, Kanin thought. He has the tiniest fragment of greater speed, the minutely sharper eye that is required of the victor. He will kill her. And then Aeglyss.
At the thought of the na’kyrim, Kanin tore his eyes away from the furious struggle within the enclosure, searching for him. Aeglyss was there, further down the slope, some way round the perimeter of the crowd. He was amongst his Kyrinin, thirty or forty of them. One of them was supporting him. Look at him, Kanin thought. Unable to even stand straight. Any eye can see the man’s sick; dying already, perhaps. Why would Shraeve sacrifice herself in such a perverse cause? What hold is it that this creature exerts?
The ringing of blades snapped his attention back to the sheep pen. Fiallic was rushing Shraeve, driving her backwards in a blindingly fast flurry of blows and blocks and feints. He forced her to the wall of their arena, pinning her against its rough stone surface. His shield pushed back one sword, he parried her second with his own blade, and butted her across the bridge of her nose. Kanin saw the blood bloom, and smear down her face, and once again he thought she must be finished now. But Shraeve ducked down, put her shoulder into Fiallic’s armpit and heaved him, by sheer strength, backwards and away from her. Blood dripped from her chin.
Kanin glanced back towards Aeglyss, wondering whether he would see fear there; whether the halfbreed could see his own death, coming down the track towards him. Instead, what he saw was Aeglyss swaying, his head twitching as if fending off flies. Even at this distance, Kanin could see a sheen of sweat on the halfbreed’s forehead. There was a faint ringing in Kanin’s ears, so faint he could not be sure he heard it.
He saw Fiallic falter, taking a hesitant half-step and giving his head a sharp shake. Shraeve closed on him. Kanin stared at Aeglyss, fury rising in him. The na’kyrim ’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in a coarse grin of pain or pleasure. His mouth slowly opened. His inhuman eyes were following Fiallic’s every movement. No, Kanin thought. No. His skin was tingling.
Fiallic blocked an attack, but he was slow. Shraeve got a cut in at his shoulder, putting a deep wound there. She had blood across her eyes. She should have been barely able to see. Fiallic staggered. He was blinking furiously. There was a look of strained surprise on his face. Inexplicably, he made no attempt to put his shield between himself and Shraeve. She squatted, bringing both blades flashing round in a flat sweep, one above the other, and a fraction behind. The first took Fiallic in the back of the knee, cutting one leg from under him. The second opened his hamstring.
He fell in the snow. Shraeve straightened, slow and considered now. She wiped one sleeve across her eyes, smudging a track through the blood. She walked towards Fiallic. He was rising unsteadily to his feet. Neither leg could take his full weight. He levered himself up with his sword, its point driven into the ground. Shraeve steadied both her blades, one low, one high, and ran at him.
Kanin was moving before Fiallic hit the ground. Intent and purpose had hold of him, and he was pushing his way through the crowd, elbowing people aside blindly. He could see Aeglyss, amongst his wight guards, could see
