Chapter 11 - The Tournament.
Part I
The open sand of the arena lay under the morning sky, where two knights in full plate stood facing each other and thousands of people had gone motionless around them, their silence holding over the whole ring of the stands.
Sunlight lay on the polished steel of the pauldrons as the knights' arms moved and they shifted their weight from foot to foot, testing the footing.
The horn fell silent, and both knights, standing in guarded stances with their weapons angled slightly forward, became sheathed in a layer of light. A pale yellow, translucent glow, barely visible in the daylight, coated their bodies evenly and spread along the blades, where it thickened and warmed in color.
"What is that…" Aren asked.
"Magic." Leo answered, not taking his eyes off the arena.
The knights broke into motion at the same instant, throwing sand out to either side in two wide fans, and the speed of their bodies was implausible for men in full plate.
They met at the center, the impact rang short and dry, and a flash of yellow light burst out of the point where the blades met, spreading in a quick radiant pulse, and after it a cloud of dust rose off the sand and covered them both in a solid curtain.
A heavy unbroken roar from the stands ran up through the whole ring of the arena, while Leo shouted beside Aren and Bernard leaned forward.
The dust cleared and left the knights already in motion, changing positions fast and without stopping, while the glow on their blades did not go out, holding thick at every swing.
Aren held his breath and did not move.
Riddard went low, shifted right and drove his blade up on the diagonal, gathering the yellow glow on the sword into a short knot at the point of impact.
Cross took the blow on a block, turning the blade aside with a quick circle of the wrist, the sand under his feet pressing deeper with the effort, and the two of them stepped two paces apart.
Riddard let no pause open up and threw himself forward, striking from above and at once carrying the blade off to the side, changing the line in the middle of the swing.
Cross gave ground, keeping his distance and taking his body clear of the straight blows, while in those seconds his energy moved from the blade to his forearms and shoulders, making the armor there harder and more rigid, so that every glancing hit that reached his body slid off without the plate flexing.
Cross stopped his retreat, braced his back foot in the sand and drove himself forward into Riddard's next swing, closing to a grapple before the other man could finish the movement.
His free hand came down on Riddard's forearm and sent its energy into the point of contact in a heavy crushing pulse that spun Riddard around.
He kept his feet, but he had lost his stance and given up the fraction of a second in which Cross had already reset and landed a clean blow to the side, flat, meant to knock him down rather than cut him open.
The glow on the blade flared brighter at the moment of contact and went out at once, emptying its energy into the other man's body, and the force threw Riddard a meter to the side, dropping him onto one knee in a spray of sand as the stands answered with a heavy solid rumble.
Riddard got up straight away, blood running from a split in his brow, though he did not touch it, and the blow had not changed the look in his eyes.
He moved the energy back onto the blade and concentrated it along the cutting edge, where a band of denser glow ran along the edge of the metal, and then they closed again.
The tempo was different now, since Riddard worked in short exact strikes, aiming for the joints of the armor and the exposed spots, and Cross for his part answered with displacement, taking his body off the line of the blow and spreading the glow unevenly across himself, thickening it exactly where the next blade was going.
A strike went into a block, the block into a shift, and after that came a new strike.
Every collision of the blades knocked out a short flash of yellow light, and the flashes came in a rapid series, almost without a break, so that the stands answered each one with a single breath.
Cross caught the moment when Riddard was a little late shifting his weight after a displacement, moved into the opening, seized his opponent's sword arm with both hands and put all the energy stored in his forearms into the lever.
The plate cracked at Riddard's wrist and the blade dropped into the sand, and Cross stepped straight back and turned his own weapon on his disarmed opponent.
Riddard raised his eyes to Cross, dropped them for a second to his empty fist and lifted an open palm, surrendering.
Silence covered the arena for a second before the stands broke into an answering roar.
Leo shot up off the bench and shouted along with everyone else, both fists in the air, and his voice went under in the general roar, which only made him shout louder, and then he turned to Aren and stopped short.
Aren sat without moving, his mouth open and his eyes wide, and down below Cross was still standing over Riddard's raised palm.
"This is only just the beginning," Leo said with a grin, and clapped Aren on the shoulder.
Aren came back to himself at the clap, just looked at Leo for several seconds, then gave a short laugh and shook his head.
"That was just unbelievable," he said.
"I couldn't have come anywhere close to imagining how cool it looks."
Leo nodded and lifted his chin, keeping his eyes on the sand below.
Cross took off his helmet and turned his head to the stands, where his gaze went straight to the right place in the front row.
The young woman in the light dress was looking back at him, without turning her head to her neighbors or to the arena, and Cross answered her with a short open smile.
Cross turned to Riddard, who was down on one knee with a hand at his side, looking into the sand in front of him, then came over and held out a hand.
Riddard raised his eyes to him, waited a moment, took the hand and stood, and Cross laid a palm on his shoulder.
"That was a worthy bout, my brother," he said.
Riddard clapped his shoulder in return and gave a silent nod, and then the two of them turned to the exit and left the arena to the fading noise of the stands.
The sand was left churned up, with deep marks from their stances and the print of a fall where Riddard had been thrown aside.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
A few servants came out from the edges and quickly leveled the surface with wooden scrapers before the announcer took the center of the arena again.
He raised his head to the stands, waited for them to quiet down and lifted his voice.
"The next bout. Sir Kardis Rivor!"
Out of the left passage came a knight in plate with a dark red crest on a green cloak, walking to the center at an even pace and bowing to the crowd, and the stands answered with applause.
"His opponent, Sir Oliver Gayard!"
Out of the right passage came the second, with a silver crest on his cloak, and he repeated the same bow.
The two of them came to the center and went down on one knee together in front of the queen's box.
"Listen, is the magic the same for all knights? Or does everyone have their own?" Aren asked, leaning in to Leo.
Leo opened his mouth, closed it and scratched the back of his head.
"Well… this is my second tournament… I don't know much about knights' magic, honestly."
Bernard smirked without turning his head.
"Well, well. When it's northerners and foreign technology you're the expert, and you know nothing about the magic of your own country."
Leo folded his arms across his chest, muttered something under his breath and stared at the arena.
Bernard gave a short laugh, leaned back and turned to Aren.
"All right. Look. Our Blessed have energy inside them that they know how to let out. The ones whose gift is weaker can only use it inside their own bodies," he said, tapping his own breastbone.
"Recover faster, shake off tiredness. That's called the first threshold, and most of the Blessed have it."
He was quiet for a second, looking at the kneeling knights below.
"The second threshold is more serious. A Blessed like that can push the energy out past his body and wrap himself in it, his armor, his weapon. The layer comes out dense, almost solid. A blow does less against it than against bare metal. In the first bout you saw how Cross was taking hits to the body, well, that was it."
Aren nodded, remembering the way the blades had slid off Cross's shoulders.
"But there's one thing," Bernard went on.
"On a weapon that shell wraps the whole blade, and that blunts it. The energy sort of fills the cutting edge and smooths it out. So a sword like that hits harder but cuts worse."
He turned his palm edge-on, showing the flat of a blade.
"An experienced knight can get around it by handling the energy so precisely that he forms a sharp line out of it along the outermost edge of the blade. Then the hit is powerful and it cuts properly. And that is skill, the kind you build over years."
Leo made a show of not listening, though he turned his head a little.
"At a tournament…" Bernard added.
"The experienced ones leave it out on purpose and keep the edge blunt. Why cripple a man when the job is only to win. That's why most bouts end in broken bones, bruises and lost weapons rather than serious wounds."
He nodded toward the arena, where the announcer was already reading out the rules to the new knights.
"So watch more closely now. You'll see who holds his energy how."
This much knowledge from Bernard was news to Aren, who until now had assumed Bernard's learning went no further than smith's work.
Below, Rivor and Gayard already stood on opposite sides, their weapons lowered and angled forward and both of them covered in the same translucent shell as the previous two.
The horn sounded, and Gayard went first, moving with more assurance than all the earlier entrants put together.
Rivor took his attack on a soft turn of the blade and answered from below at once, forcing Gayard to shift back, and from there they parted and came together again.
The strikes came in rapid alternation, with no pauses and no wind-up, and the stands reacted to every exchange with a short tight breath, since by now it was no longer easy to follow the separate movements, only the overall shape of it, and that was changing too fast.
Then Gayard drove his blade straight forward, and instead of taking the blow or going aside, Rivor tossed his own sword up above him, turned Gayard's arm away with his free hand and went into a roll, legs over his head, coming across the sand and up on his feet exactly where his sword finished its fall.
His hand closed on the grip in a fraction of a second, and he went straight forward on the attack without losing a step of tempo.
Gayard reacted, turned halfway around and caught the strike on his blade behind his back without looking, by the sound and by the line of it, which he read off his opponent's movement before it was finished.
Metal hit metal with a high ring, and a yellow flash went up in a short pulse.
The stands rose at that strike with one shout, while Aren did not look away from the arena, where the two knights broke apart and closed again, going on trading blows at the same speed and the same precision, with no visible advantage to either of them.
They broke apart once more and stopped.
Both straightened up, looking at each other across the sand of the arena, while a short silence hung over the distance between them.
Rivor lowered his eyes to his sword, and his posture changed, his shoulders went down and he stood still, no longer shifting his feet in the sand.
He dropped the sword on the ground, and the metal hit the sand with a dull sound, and then Rivor unfastened his left steel gauntlet and threw it down after the sword, then the right one, as the stands went quiet.
Bernard straightened on the bench as Rivor raised an open hand and aimed it toward the sword lying there, without taking a step toward it, and a moment later the sword came up off the ground by itself and slid into his palm.
Gayard dropped straight into his guard, covered himself in an extra layer of energy and brought his blade up in both hands with his elbows wider than usual.
Rivor swung and threw the sword, and it flew at a speed unnatural in a sword that heavy, so Gayard went aside and let it pass him, but then the sword changed its line.
It turned further in the air and followed Gayard, so he had to take it on his blade, and the collision threw him half a step back.
In the same second an empty steel gauntlet flew into his side.
He had not seen it, since he was watching the sword, and the hard exact blow came in on his open side, into the gap between the breastplate and the side plate.
Gayard rocked, and in that moment the second gauntlet struck him from the side, square on the helmet, so that the blow was audible even up in the stands.
Gayard went down on one knee as the sword was already sliding back into Rivor's hand, and Rivor himself was in the air with the blade raised over his head, directly above his downed opponent.
Gayard rolled aside, letting the strike pass over him, came out of the roll several meters away, got up and gave more ground, keeping his distance and getting his breath back.
"That's…" Leo began, and stopped, finding nothing to follow it with.
"Third threshold," Bernard said.
"He keeps his energy on objects after he lets go of them… and on top of that he can work that energy at a distance. That's another level entirely."
Rivor walked over to the gauntlets and picked them up off the sand himself, closing them in one hand, and the yellow glow on them had gone out even before he touched them.
Yet the moment his fingers shut on them the energy came back, filling both gauntlets with an even shining layer, and they rose slowly off his palm and hung in the air on either side of his shoulders, not falling, holding at a precisely judged distance.
The two knights began closing on each other slowly, circling and keeping their eyes on each other.
"When he threw the gauntlets down and took his hand off them, the glow went out. So energy doesn't hold on an object very long without direct contact?" Aren asked, leaning in to Bernard.
Bernard shook his head without taking his eyes off the arena.
"That depends on the strength of the gift. A weak Blessed lets go of a thing and the energy comes off it in seconds. A strong one holds it longer, and the better he feels the object, the longer the link lasts. Rivor, by the look of it, holds it steadily enough, but he still chose to pick the gauntlets up himself rather than pull them off the ground from a distance. Which means distance costs him more."
"Clever," Bernard added after a moment's silence.
The circle on the sand narrowed as the gauntlets at Rivor's shoulders swayed slowly in the air, and Gayard never took his eyes off them, holding his attention on three points at once.
Rivor moved forward, and the gauntlets went first.
The left one shot at Gayard in a straight thrust, but he knocked it away with his blade and sprang a step back.
The right one came in from the side, Gayard slipped it and pulled back again, opening the distance after every clash, and each of his withdrawals came out the same length.
Rivor read that and put on speed, breaking into a run and cutting the distance while the gauntlets went on working the flanks.
Gayard was now fending off three directions at once, parrying and slipping in time, and doing it cleanly and fast, until the gauntlets began to dim.
The glow on them was eaten away with every impact, and after one more clash with Gayard's blade the left one dropped into the sand as dark metal, and the right one after it.
Gayard raised his eyes to Rivor, who was close now, and evened out his stance for a straight attack, but he did not look behind him, since the wall was at his back, and Rivor was already striking, putting all the speed he had gathered into the blow.
When Gayard's sword took the blow, the body behind it came up against stone with nowhere to send the pressure, so Rivor drove him into the wall and held him there, leaning his whole weight blade against blade as Gayard held the block with the last of his strength, keeping the sword off his body.
Rivor let go of his sword, and it stayed in the air, held by magic, and went on pressing, pinning Gayard's block against the wall, while Rivor himself was already driving a fist into the body, into the unguarded side under the breastplate.
Gayard let out a short breath at the blow before the second one came to his head.
The helmet clanged and his head went back into the stone, and then a boot drove into his knee.
Gayard sagged, his block came apart, and Rivor's sword went into the wall above his shoulder with a dull thud, driving him down for good.
Gayard ended on one knee at the wall, his head thrown back and his sword knocked out of his hands, and Rivor scooped up the grip and set the edge to his throat.
The arena froze for a second, and then one long shared cry ran through the stands.
Leo jumped to his feet, Bernard rose after him, Elara was clapping, and in the middle of all of it Aren sat without moving, while down below Gayard raised an open palm in defeat and Rivor took the blade away and held out a hand to him.
At the same time, in the royal box, Vector Fray turned his head toward Lieutenant Schtance, who was watching the arena.
When their eyes met, Fray gave the barest smirk and turned his eyes back to the duelists without a word.
Meanwhile Rivor caught Gayard under the shoulder, holding him up on the side where he was limping after the blow to the knee, and from there the two of them started toward the exit side by side.
Gayard dropped a couple of words, Rivor answered, and both of them grinned, heading back toward the barracks.
The stands saw them off with the last of the applause, while the servants came out onto the sand again with their wooden scrapers and set to work, leveling the marks and gathering up Rivor's fallen gauntlets, which had been left lying by the far wall.