Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(48)

“I’ll do it,” he said, stepping over the low rope.

The fight began poorly. Valyn would have preferred to square off against Yurl while Lin faced Balendin, but the leach managed to engage him first, leaving Lin to defend herself. She was a full head shorter than her opponent, and certainly weaker as well, but she was savvy. As Yurl’s blades snaked in and out, slicing, probing, she fought elbow to elbow with Valyn, refusing to be drawn off her guard by a series of clever gambits.

When Valyn first arrived on the Islands, he had thought bladework was all about strength, technique, and courage. The reality was far more pedestrian. Although those qualities all mattered, they paled before the necessity of discipline, the ability to wait, to watch, and to avoid mistakes. The first step in winning, Hendran wrote, is to avoid losing. While Valyn battered back the leach’s attacks, Lin held her own at his side, playing a tight, cautious game, her breathing heavy but steady. Valyn felt himself smile. If Lin could just hold Yurl off for a while longer, he would find an opening, and then they could both press Yurl.

Then the leach started talking.

“I never understood,” he began in a laconic voice that belied the sweat dripping from his forehead, “why the Kettral let women fight.”

Valyn swatted aside a thrust and forced him back a couple of paces, but the youth kept up his taunts.

“I know all the stated justifications, of course: women can pass unnoticed where a man would draw attention, they’re often underestimated by a foe, but it just doesn’t add up. For one thing,” he observed, “they’re small and weak. For another, they’re a distraction. Here I am in the ring. I should be focusing on my bladework, and all I can think about is ripping the pants off this bitch.”

Lin growled at Valyn’s side as she parried a sweeping overhand slice.

“Ignore him,” Valyn said. “He’s just trying to get in your head.”

“Actually,” Balendin countered with a leer, “I’d be more interested in getting inside something else. What do you say, bitch?” he demanded. “I’ll go easy on you here, as long as I can make you moan later.…”

Sami Yurl chuckled—a low, nasty sound—and took a step back, flamboyantly dropping his guard.

“Leave it…,” Valyn started to say, but Lin wasn’t going after Yurl. Instead, she used the opening to drive at Balendin, cutting across Valyn’s line of attack and breaking formation to drive the leach back.

For a second Valyn thought she was going to batter him straight into the ground, so great was the fury of her blows, but as she forced her way forward, her foot twisted on the packed sand beneath her, and she went down with a scream of rage and frustration.

Balendin grinned and, with a feline grace, leapt over her crumpled body to engage Valyn once again. The leach wasn’t the strongest blade, but he knew how to tie up an opponent, and Valyn found himself pushing forward but unable to drive his enemy back.

Behind the screen, Sami Yurl took a step toward Lin. She swung at him with one of her swords, but he parried the blow easily. Then, in a rush, he was on top of her, driving her face into the dirt while she screamed. Valyn tried to keep his mind on his own fight—he couldn’t help Lin if he, too, ended up sprawled out on the ground, but it was hard not to hear her shrieks of rage, and he felt his own anger rising, hot and bloody. Yurl had straddled her, and instead of ending the struggle with a blow to the back of the neck, he was reaching down between her legs, trying to force her thighs apart as she thrashed and writhed.

It’s a trap, Valyn realized grimly. Yurl wants you to rush. The knowledge was as clear as it was irrelevant. He couldn’t just trade ineffectual blows with Balendin while Lin was screaming. ’Shael take it, he spat. Then, with a roar, he launched himself forward, hammering the leach back with a flurry of savage attacks. For a moment he thought it was going to work. Balendin gave ground, falling back with a look of alarm on his face, opening a path to Sami Yurl. Valyn stepped into the gap, but somehow, in his haste, he tripped, stumbled over what had seemed flat ground, and then he was falling. He had time to twist, to try to raise his guard, but the leach was too fast. The blunted blade came down on his forehead like midnight.

*

“That son of a whore,” Lin cursed as she savagely scrubbed the blood from her cheek. Instead of reporting to the infirmary as protocol dictated, she and Valyn had made the walk down to the harbor, away from the chatter and stares of the central compound, in order to clean their wounds. “That ’Shael-spawned, ’Kent-kissing bastard.”