I don’t know how long we waited, but my people slew the last of the vhangxi in the interim. A storyteller would have measured the duration in days. Some of my companions, and all of his, measured it in lifetimes. All sounds of battle ceased and my companions-half the number they had been earlier-stopped well outside the circle. Some watched and others-those wiser-drew their own circles for protection and peered through the lenses of amulets meant to ward off magic.
My foe, still without exhibiting any fatigue, slowly extended his left leg and lowered himself into a crouch on the right. His sword remained high, but came down to point toward me. His left arm curled down, forearm parallel to his waist as he finally adopted Cobra third position-though those watching likely identified the form as Scorpion.
I drew my right leg up, touching my foot to my left knee. My sword I held high in my left hand, higher than he had. My right arm mirrored his left. I allowed myself a smirk and curled my ring and little fingers in-hardly the perfect Crane form he had displayed. I mocked him and he knew it; and I did it while daring to invite an attack.
He did nothing to conceal his consternation. If he waited as I had, he was just aping me. If he attacked, he would be less patient, more impetuous, less mature. Less worthy. Then again, if he killed me, none of that would matter.
He attacked.
As he came in, I read how he expected the exchange to go. He would lunge at my throat, and my sword would come down in a parry. I would bat his blade aside, but he would flip his wrist and use the momentum I imparted to slash me from nipple to hip on the right.
He came in, extending his blade, lunging. His right leg pushed off, his left bent. His blade’s point, without a quiver to it, flew at my throat. His eyes watched the target and also watched my blade, waiting for it to fall, waiting for the first contact. At that vibration, he would flip his wrist and open me. His slash would also hit my right arm, slashing tendon and muscle, perhaps even breaking bone. I would be sorely wounded and the duel’s outcome would be decided.
But in his planning and anticipation, he had not found the path to victory. He did not really thrust at my throat, he thrust toward it, knowing his blade would never find it. He had planned for my counter, and when it did not come-though he struck with the swiftness of a Cobra-he had no true target.
As he attacked, I lunged forward. My right leg slid down and planted itself just past his left heel. I leaned to the right and his blade shot over my left shoulder. My sword, held high, never even began to fall.
As we came face-to-face, I read his fear.
And he read my triumph.
My right hand closed on the hilt of my other sword and I drew it in an instant. The razored edge slashed up beneath his skirts and sank deep into the junction of thigh and groin. I drew it up in a long cut and it came free with a hot splash of femoral blood.
He began to fall backward slowly.
A heartbeat for me, forever for him.
He did try to flip his wrist and cut my throat as he toppled, but my robe’s collar blunted his feeble strike. I watched shock and betrayal blossom on his face as he fell, and knew it would melt into a mask of disdain.
My other sword whipped down and his head rolled away to spare me his opinion.
Ranai, standing closest to me, dropped to a knee. Her expression and the tone of her voice betrayed confusion and mild offense. “What have we just witnessed, Master?”
“An enemy who believes that by mirroring our forms, using our blades and ancient formulae, they are worthy of respect and honor.” I pointed a sword to the east. “Has anything they have done so far been honorable?”
She shook her head. “No, Master.”
“No matter how they appear, that is their nature. Do not forget it. Do not be lured in.” I kicked the sword from my foe’s lifeless hand. “They are not what they pretend to be, and we cannot be what they assume us to be. As Taichun once taught, one must know his foe to defeat him. This is true. We have one path to victory.”
She looked up. “Learn as much about them as possible?”
“No, Ranai.” I wiped my blades on the dead man’s robe, then slid them home again. “We will make ourselves unknowable, then they can never win.”
Chapter Twenty-two
7th day, Month of the Dragon, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Ixyll
Try as he might, Ciras Dejote could not shake the feeling they were being watched. He saw no one in the Wastes; he found no footprints-even old ones-to indicate that anyone else was out there. But, regardless of an utter lack of evidence, he knew they were being watched-and Borosan didn’t help matters by agreeing with him.
He would have been happy to ascribe it to paranoia, or the influence of the sword he now bore, but it was rooted in something far more substantial than that. After killing whatever Dragright had become, he’d trailed out after the giant. At first the man’s panicked footprints were easy to follow. He’d run past where the looters had hobbled their horses and conveniently stepped in manure. That petered out eventually, so Ciras returned to the camp and waited for daylight to continue the pursuit.
In camp, they cleaned up the bodies and piled rocks over them to slow down whatever scavengers might lurk in Ixyll. They contented themselves with a cold meal that night, and both wrote out prayers on strips of cloth, which they left as streamers over the tomb entrance.
When they awoke, the streamers were still in place, and the hole in the tomb’s slab had been repaired fully. Ciras had run his hand over it and not only could feel no seam around where the repair had been performed, but could not even find any stray scars from where the sledge had hit off target.
To make matters worse, after they collected the looters’ horses and continued west, they found the giant’s body-or what was left of it. Something had stripped most of the meat off the bones and scattered them, but both men were able to reconstruct enough to determine this had been their quarry. More important, their work allowed them to make a rough guess at the cause of death.
Something, it appeared, roughly a foot in diameter, had punched through his chest, pulverized his spine, and powdered the rock upon which he lay. Borosan guessed he’d have to have been impaled by a wharf piling heaved by a ballista. The utter absence of so much as a splinter cast doubts on that explanation, but Ciras couldn’t come up with anything better.
But still, both events could have been dismissed as some sort of magical retribution for disturbing the grave. The problem with that explanation-aside from the fact that no one in the Nine knew how to lay such an enchantment since the Cataclysm-came from the fact that the sword had been left with Ciras. Even before they cleaned up the corpses, and even before he’d taken care of his own sword, he’d cleaned and oiled the blade. He’d slept that first night with it beside his own sword, and couldn’t imagine why it had been left to him.
As they rode around a hill, his left hand fell to the ancient sword’s hilt. In studying the blade he’d learned a lot about it. Though he did not recognize the maker’s mark stamped into the blade, the general form indicated it was of Virine manufacture.
The sigils worked along the blade defied deciphering, though both he and Borosan made attempts. They’d been written in the old Imperial script. While both men were literate, and had even been exposed to Imperial writing, in the time since the Cataclysm the Ministries of Harmony had revised and streamlined the six thousand, five hundred and sixty-one characters one needed to know to be considered educated. Clerks would be required to learn nine times that many-and ministers, it was said, could command even more.
But the true difficulty with picking out the message was that it seemed to change. Ciras had noticed that effect, but had said nothing. Borosan, without telling him, had written down the inscriptions, then found they changed. They tried to pin it to time of day, weather, and direction they were heading, but if there was a pattern, they couldn’t discern it.