The boy leapt back, barely avoiding the blow, and stumbled on the loose shale beneath his feet. He feinted low, to the right, drawing the black warrior's defenses towards a strike that, at the very last moment, he reversed and slashed upwards. The tip of his blade opened a shallow cut across the axeman's belly to his sternum, but even as it did, the wound sealed itself behind his sword and Alymere felt burning pain slice deep through his own belly and up towards his throat. He looked down at the gash that had opened up, and the blood soaking through his shirt, and staggered back before the axeman's silent onslaught.
He gritted his teeth against the pain and stuck again, this time slicing through the muscle and tendon of the axeman's left arm, feeling the muscle tear away on his own arm as he did so.
They fought bitterly in and out of the shadow of the towering cairn. Twice he had struck the axeman, twice the blows had bitten deep, and twice Alymere had come away wearing the wounds whilst the axeman remained unmarked. He staggered back another step, wondering how he could possibly best the warrior without slicing through his own throat.
The black warrior came on remorselessly, still saying nothing.
Alymere brandished his sword, holding it out before him and cutting at the air wildly in an attempt to keep the axeman at bay, but it occurred to him that all his opponent had to do was simply walk into his wild cuts and he'd cripple Alymere without having to lift a finger. He lowered his sword, letting the tip drag against the dirt, and stared at his opponent. There was no sign the man was winded, or that the exertion of running up the hillside had taken the slightest toll on him. There was no sign he was breathing at all, Alymere realised.
He circled his opponent warily, never taking his eyes off the huge double-headed blade.
The giant made no move to swing, though he could quite easily have cleaved Alymere's head from his shoulders.
Or could he?
Could he inflict any sort of hurt of his own volition? Or was he merely a mirror-soul?
There had to be a way around this thing — whatever it was, he was absolutely sure it was not a man, or not a mortal one — all he had to do was use his head and think.
Think.
His mind was the key that would set him free.
Could it be as simple as cutting himself? He tried it, running his thumb along the edge of his blade, and drew blood.
The axeman did not bleed. So that couldn't be it.
What was this thing, then? Perhaps the secret of its undoing lay in its true nature?
He could see nothing of its features, obscured as they were by the cloth wound around the axeman's face. His eyes were empty — no, not empty, he realised. They were obsidian, reflective. They only gave back what they were offered. So when Alymere saw emptiness behind them, it was his own emptiness he was seeing.
Alymere lashed out with his blade a third time, deliberately pulling the blow at the very last instant. He cut and parried, transforming the fight into a dance of cuts without ever delivering the final blow. The black warrior mirrored each blow perfectly, his wrists twisting to turn the axe-blade away from Alymere's flesh each time. The moves were more than merely familiar to Alymere; they were ingrained, the axeman mirroring his own technique perfectly. It wasn't just the way he used his weapon, but in the way he moved his body, how he leaned and shuffled his feet on the ground and how as he pushed off with his left foot the toe of his right scuffed. He was toe-to-toe with himself, or a version of himself. He didn't need to see the guardian's features beneath the woollen scarf. It didn't matter that he had never wielded an axe in his life. What was it the Crow Maiden had said? There were countless possibilities of the man he could be. This was one of them. He scrambled back, ducking beneath the warrior's final blow, and the silver heads of the huge axe passed inches from Alymere's face.
He was breathing hard now, thinking harder.
"Talk to me. Tell me what to do!" he called upon the voice, but it remained silent.
He cursed it. Hawked and spat into the dirt at his feet.
The Devil mocked him with his silence.
The axeman was a reflection, then? A ghost? An automaton?
Was he here to protect the Chalice? A grail guardian? Was he a true man? Good? Evil? Did such concepts even exist on this side of the veil? And even if they did, how could he kill something that he could not harm, or even strike, without injuring himself? Did he have to kill it to defeat it? Could Alymere simply throw down his own sword? Would that be enough to render this copy of him impotent?
He thought about it, but at the last moment couldn't relinquish his grasp on his sword.
The guardian came forward again, and Alymere realised it was trying to steer him away from the cairn. Alymere cast a quick glance toward the stones. The cairn now rose to almost five times his height, hundreds and thousands of stones gathered from about the mountainside and from the land hereabouts, laid one atop another, slate, granite, basalt. All hard, dark stones. But Alymere saw a shape picked out right in the very centre of the cairn's curved wall, formed out of pale stones that obviously didn't belong.
It was a cross.
The holy symbol for a god the pagan clansmen surely did not worship?
He licked his lips.
It could not be a coincidence. Indeed, just then the book pulled heavily on his shoulders.
Break the cross. Beyond it lies the great laird's tomb, where you will find my Chalice.
There was no way he could break the stone cross, not with his bare hands and not with his sword.
He looked back to see the axeman moving relentlessly towards him once more, and an idea began to formulate within his mind. He raised his sword, shuffling sideways and bringing himself in line with the stone cross.
He dropped his shoulder and feinted for the black warrior's legs, drawing it into a heavy swing for his head. Alymere pulled his blow, ducked under the swing, and backed away until he felt the stone wall of the cairn press up against his back. There was nowhere to run, but running was the furthest thing from his mind. Now he had to use his head. He had to press the advantage he had given himself.
Alymere forced himself to stand stock still, rooted to the spot, as his chest rose and fell. The blood flowed thickly from the shallow cut, which burned whenever he tried to move. He winced through the pain, hefting his sword in his right hand, knowing that in a moment the agony was going to be blinding, but it was his only hope.
The guardian wouldn't strike until he did, that much he knew. Alymere took a moment's respite, mastering his breathing. His vision swam. The world reduced to the thing before him, and beyond that mist and pain. There was nothing else.
"Come on, then," he muttered. "Let's finish this."
With that, he lunged forward desperately, cutting high from the left, then rocking back on his heels to block and thrust at the guardian's left shoulder, reversing at the last moment to deliver a sweeping cut across the thing's midriff, barely pulling back before disembowelling it and leaving his own guts to unfurl across the mountain top.
The guardian mirrored every move with unerringly silent precision; not making a sound as it threw the weight of the huge axe from hand to hand, twisting to sweep it through low scything arcs or bring it down overhead as though chopping wood. Amidst the manoeuvring, the scarf slipped down around the black warrior's neck, baring its face for the first time.
Alymere's breath caught in his throat. He was looking at himself, but not in any form he recognised: the beard was thick, the jaw square. Indeed, the man looked uncannily like Bors. Was that the man I was meant to become? Alymere thought, even as he rammed the point of his blade deep into the axeman's belly. The guardian's obsidian eyes flared, not in pain but in triumph, as Alymere drove the point through the boiled leather plates of his armour.