I shoved him backwards, but he was trained for such things and twisted and rode the force of my movement. I was pulled off-balance by his judo move and I lost my grip on his knife hand. He sprang away from me and I did the same. We both lifted our weapons and circled. Sand spit out from our shuffling feet.
“Again you sneak up on me,” I told him. I was angry, but scared. He was so much more trained than I was. I’d fought and learned things, but I had no military training to back it up. It was one thing to fight a mindless monster that came at you while you hacked at it. Fighting a man who had made a lifelong study of combat was quite another.
“I moved on that witch not you,” he said, “but I can’t save you Gannon, I know that now. No more than I could save Wilton, or that thing at the bottom of the lake.”
I lunged at him and my sword flared up like a torch swept about in the air. It made no sound, but flared and brightened eagerly.
He dodged with expert precision and slid his dagger under my blade, but could not reach me. He barely managed to get his shoulder out of the way before the tip skewered him. He recovered quickly and so did I. We went back to circling. I hesitated to attack again. It might be just what he wanted.
“I wondered if it would come down to this,” I spat at him, “you and I deciding who would tell the tale to the others, deciding who was the changeling and who the hero after the other was buried in a shallow hole.”
“I’ve never planned to murder you,” he said.
“But you killed my mother, didn’t you?” I demanded, and I saw the surprise in his eyes. For just a second, he stopped tracking my blade tip and instead glanced up at my face. That was the opening I needed. Instead of lunging, I went in slashing this time in wide arcs. Slashing is much harder to dodge than thrusting, and so he moved to block me instead. His long knife and my longer sword clashed and rang. He gave ground, and I kept up the attack, advancing, hoping he would stumble while shuffling backward in the sands.
He tried to gain the initiative, making a few counterthrusts to back me off, but I kept coming and with his shorter weapon he couldn’t stop me without exposing himself. I pressed the attack and our chests heaved.
Overhead the stars twinkled and the lantern that lay on the sands beneath my coat shot out occasional rays of light. The colored beams fluttered over the scene and intermittently illuminated our feet and spurts of kicked-up sand. My blade shined green, then red, and then back to blue-white again as the shifting rays touched it.
The Captain’s right boot slid back and located a piece of driftwood. He stumbled and went to one knee. I hammered down three blows and he caught them all with his knife hilt. He was good and very fast, I had to admit. Perhaps, with more even weapons he could have beaten me. But he was down now and I tasted victory.
Then the driftwood he’d stumbled over came up and smashed me in the face. I was shocked, but I knew that knife would be following the driftwood, so I used the hilt of my weapon to bash blindly down. I cracked the steel counterweight at the bottom of the hilt into his skull. It made a satisfying thump.
Both blinded by pain and nearing exhaustion, we disengaged and climbed to our feet again. Breathing hard, we went back to circling. He had the piece of driftwood in his hand now; it was about the size and weight of a fireplace log.
“How long have you known about your mom?” he asked between ragged breaths.
“The Hag told me.”
“For what it’s worth kid, I didn’t-” he paused to breathe. “I didn’t murder your mom. She had changed. I killed a changeling, that’s all.”
“I’ll kill you for it, all the same,” I said and attacked again.
He blocked with the driftwood and the dagger and I had an even harder time getting through. Then he came at me, reversing the tempo. I had no idea how to stop two whirling weapons, a club and a knife, I only knew how to stop another sword, and so I retreated, parrying as I went. I counterattacked with stop thrusts to keep him honest, but he kept moving in on me, catching my blade, beating it out of the way, and trying to get in close for a finishing move.
I realized I needed to do something fast, so I feinted, and then tried a move I’d learned from our fencing instructor. It was quite illegal in the fine sport of fencing, but the duelists of centuries past weren’t above such a thing. It was risky, so I waited until he was in mid-step and wasn’t ready to make a good counterattack.
I lunged and stabbed at his foot. I received a crack on the shoulder from his block of wood for my troubles, but was gladdened to see my saber come back out of his boot darkened by blood.
He howled and his breath blew through a line of clenched teeth. He made a staggering attack and I skipped away easily. He switched stances, putting his injured foot behind him.
“I’ve beaten you,” I said.
He ignored me, and advanced, favoring his foot. I hopped back.
“I’ll I’ve got to do is wait it out, that foot is already getting stiff. Soon, you’ll start to tire and slow down.”
“Shut up.”
I exulted. I was getting to him.
“Only one of us is leaving this beach and it won’t be you,” I said.
He stopped chasing me then, and stood up straight. He grinned, and I didn’t like the feral cast to his face. He hefted his knife and reversed it with a casual flip of his wrist. He now held it in a throwing position.
My face fell. I recalled his legendary throwing ability. He had even done a few exhibitions at the county fair. I backed away a few paces.
“You’ve only got one throw,” I reminded him.
“That’s all I’ll need, boy,” he responded confidently.
I felt a wave of frustration. “You started this. You were going to knife me while we stood there together, after everything we’ve been through down there, after I went down there to save your worthless hide.”
He shook his head. It was his turn to be exasperated. “You aren’t Gannon anymore, boy. Look at your hand. Look at that crazy magic rock you dragged out of the bottom of the lake like you were mothering an egg. You’re carrying a magic sword you got from hell-knows-where and that Hag, that thing, whatever, had you in her spell, and don’t try to say she didn’t.”
“A good enough reason to kill me?”
“What would you have done if I’d gone crazy over a magic chunk of glass and had grown a hand like a dead man’s claw?”
I chewed my lip. “And my mother?”
“It wasn’t your mother. She had turned.”
We stood there glaring at each other for perhaps another minute.
“Make your move, boy,” he growled.
“I need to think,” I said. “Truce for now?”
He thought about it, “Truce,” he said.
I backed away and left him with the lantern on the beach. Somehow, when it was covered, I didn’t care about it that much anymore.
Thirty-Three
As I stumbled up the slope in the woods I felt a tiny hot wet spot on my face. It was a single tear. I hadn’t shed a tear since the day I’d found my parents. I felt ashamed, not for my weak emotions, but for my selfishness. So many had died, but I could only cry for my own losses.
I felt confused and disgusted and wished with everything I had I’d never gone down there. The Hag was different from all the others. She was far stranger and more powerful, I knew, than even Malkin had been hiding in his little limestone hole. She wasn’t just a normal being, twisted into something new, she was older. She was a creature who had walked the Earth in past supernatural ages like this one. I wondered how many more alien creatures had awakened like Malkin and the Hag, and shuddered at the form our new world was taking.