Book 6: Chapter 10 |
“YOUR LORDSHIP.” KURT VON HARTHA was trying hard to contain his anger and indignation. The emotions flowing through him were so powerful that he even switched back into his native Astlandic, even though I hadn’t heard anything but flawless Vestonian out of him since the moment we met. “You’re acting far too rashly!”
“You think so?” I asked nonchalantly.
Our conversation was taking place in my tent, a few minutes after the departure of our uninvited guests. In addition to the two of us, there was also Sigurd, Aelira, Georg von Linz, and his ward Elsa Backer, who kept throwing absent-minded glances my way. The kind of glance that suggested she already considered me a dead man.
The sour, perpetually unhappy face of her mentor and commander Georg von Linz might as well have been stamped with the words “I told you so!”
Sigurd and Aelira, who were already well used to me by that point, just watched the goings-on with placid expressions on their faces.
“Do I think so?!” The tense muscles on Kurt’s face kept twitching. He was having quite a hard time maintaining something resembling composure.
Seeing that his commander was losing his patience, Georg von Linz laid a broad palm on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. Then he turned to me.
“Fenrax,” he said darkly. “That’s the nickname Friedrich von Neumark earned for himself, many years ago.”
Hearing this word — a loanword from witching tongue — I raised my right eyebrow slightly and glanced at Sigurd. He just nodded quickly in response. My bodyguard had once told me about the most powerful strykers in Mainland, but this Neumark hadn’t been among them. Which, I guess, merely meant that he didn’t make it into Sigurd’s list of the top ten most powerful. Nevertheless, it seems that my bodyguard had heard of the Baron.
“Torturer,” I confirmed laconically.
“Exactly,” the old stryker nodded. “But that’s not just a word, or just a nickname. The Fenrax is one of the most dangerous predators in the Shadow. People who have survived a meeting with one — and you could count the number of such people on one hand — all say that the Fenrax is capable of rational thought. It doesn’t just hunt its victims; it draws pleasure from their suffering. Its most peculiar ability is creating particularly agonizing pain, which it uses to torture its victims before it lands a killing blow.”
“Neumark is a butcher, a monster in human form,” said Kurt, who had calmed down a little by that point. “He’s one of those who doesn’t resist the power of the Shadow — the power that awakens a stryker’s darkest and most vile inclinations if they’re not careful to guard against it.”
“That son of a bitch has killed a lot of our brothers,” added Georg, his voice suddenly hoarse. I heard a crunch, and looked down; his fists were clenched so tightly that his knuckles had cracked. “It was he who captured the Steel Duke — Conrad V’s nephew, hero of the Battle of Erfurt — and subjected him to brutal torture.”
“I need to kill this monster and avenge our fallen brothers,” Kurt concluded firmly. “So I ask you, please — before it’s too late, please reconsider and let me fight this duel.”
“Well,” I said through pursed lips as I shook my head. “Your story has moved me, gentlemen. But alas, I’m not a man to go back on my word.”
“Your Lordship,” said Georg, sounding more tense. “We know about your achievements and the accolades you’ve received. You’re popular not only among the common people, but the aristocracy as well. But with all due respect, a duel against a stryker this powerful is something much more serious and dangerous... Neumark is a fantastic swordsman and one of the most powerful combat mages I’ve ever met in my life. He’s experienced. He’s been through countless battles and won dozens of magical duels. You, on the — “
“I understand,” I interrupted him. “You don’t need to continue. I have a rough idea of what you really think about my achievements and accolades. And also about my age, experience, and rank. And as long as we’re on the subject, let’s continue to be frank about it. I know perfectly well who I’m going to be fighting tomorrow. No, don’t get me wrong — I didn’t know about Friedrick von Neumark’s bloodthirsty quirks before you told me. But what I know for certain is that neither you, Kurt, nor you, Georg, stand a ghost of a chance in a duel against him. And I’m not willing to lose good soldiers right at the opening of a campaign, which technically hasn’t even begun yet. I’ve told you before, gentlemen, and I’ll tell you once again: you and I have an important mission, with a lot depending on its results. So please trust me, your leader, to solve this problem the way I feel it needs to be solved. I think that’s all. You’re all dismissed.”
I said all this in an icy tone, staring firmly into Georg’s eyes as I spoke, and my intensity seemed to have the desired effect on him. That said, he pulled himself together pretty quickly.
His ward was staring at her mentor with a mouth wide-open in surprise. The look on Kurt’s face, though, was different. After what I had said, the captain was staring at me with a look that suggested he was thoroughly dumbfounded, but at the same time highly intrigued. It was like he was seeing me for the first time.
The dour-looking strykers left my tent in silence, without saying a word.
I stopped Sigurd as he was lifting up the tent flap to leave.
“See that I’m not disturbed unless absolutely necessary. I need to prepare. And have Gunnar bring in the chest with my armor in it.”
My bodyguard nodded silently and stepped out of the tent.
* * *
By 11:00 the next morning, I was fully decked out in my snakeskin armor. The sword and dagger made from the River Terror’s fangs hung from my belt. All the cells for crystals were filled with whole bruts, both in the main structure of the armor and the amplifying segments.
This would be the first time people would see me in full battle array, so the effect was likely to be impressive, to put it mildly. When I walked out of my tent, the “Savages” who were waiting for me to appear suddenly froze.
As the stunned strykers looked on in amazement, Gunnar led me to my horse with a happy smirk on his face. It was a massive black mistral, who I had renamed “Storm” after purchasing him. Judging by how quickly he started responding to it, he seemed to like the name too.
I decided against bringing Chickadee. I needed to make a very specific impression. Something akin to the one I had just made on my own people. It was funny to see the way Kurt and Georg’s eyes bulged, so soon after trying to talk me out of fighting the previous evening.
Mind you, they hadn’t been the only ones to make the attempt. Marshal de Clairmont’s young aide-de-camp came galloping out to see me, accompanied by several other soldiers with the de Clairmont sigil on their armor.
With an arrogant tone, and after introducing himself as the Viscount de Puzet, he handed me a note from the Duke informing me, in his usual peremptory style, that His Grace had already arranged things with Baron von Neumark, and that all I would need to do was allow Kurt to fight the duel in my place.
At the end of the note, the Marshal made sure to mention the importance of my mission, and the fact that he didn’t want to have to answer to His Majesty for this rash decision, which would inevitably end in my death.
Given the way that the aide left my camp without waiting for an answer from me, Marshal de Clairmont didn’t seem to consider an answer necessary. Apparently, he was confident that I would do as instructed.
The Duke thought he had found the perfect solution to the situation. He had come to an agreement with the leader of the Astlandic mercenaries that would see everything settled, and wouldn’t cost much in terms of blood. Well, he was in for a surprise.
Upon catching sight of me, Storm let out a loud snort and slammed a broad hoof down onto the ground. A shiver of anticipation rippled across his massive, muscular body. After handing him an apple, I patted him on the neck and hopped deftly up into the saddle.
Sigurd and Aelira appeared next to me almost immediately. Both were decked out in brand-new armor. Aelira was holding a long pike in her hands, with a banner fluttering on top sporting my new sigil.
All nine of my strykers accompanied me to the duel. The other soldiers stayed back at the camp. I brought Gunnar along as well. You should have seen the pleading, hopeful expression on his face.
Accompanied by two of his soldiers, Hans Krasue had set off for the field at sunrise. He brought money to bet on the fight. By the way, he seemed extremely surprised that all my veteran soldiers put their money on me without a second thought.
As noon approached, I made my way into the main camp, and it just so happened that Marshal de Clairmont was making his entrance at the exact same time. The Duke trotted over to me, accompanied by several dozen Vestonian nobles.
As our two cavalcades dovetailed and joined into one, the aristocrats in de Clairmont’s entourage perked up noticeably: my armor and my horse immediately attracted everyone’s undivided attention.
The Marshal, on the other hand, was morose, and his expression suggested a powerful feeling of anxiety. He seemed to have already guessed why I was all “dressed up.”
“Monsieur!” He greeted me coldly once we were next to one another. “I’m counting on your good sense to prevail.”
“Oh, you need not worry about that, Your Grace!” I nodded with a smile. “I promise you that even the most cautious and wise man in the world will have cause to envy my good sense today!”
Everything was already prepared for us in the center of the camp. A broad area, surrounded by a multitudinous, armed throng, had been hastily cleared and covered with sand from the river.
The Vestonians greeted our appearance with a friendly roar. The Marshal waved to them, then headed toward a row of wide armchairs that had been specially installed for the senior leadership.
Although the shouts of “bastard sword” I kept hearing suggested that the men of Vestonia weren’t just excited to see the Marshal.
Besides them, there were also Mertonian archers from the Foggy Isles. Hunters all (a necessity in the severe conditions of their homeland), these people had mastered archery as children. They were watching the proceedings with rapt interest. My scanning ability told me that there were both true gifted and shadow mages in their ranks.
The Stone Knights were there as well. They were positioned next to the Marshal. But the Frozen Spears (or more specifically, their representative Sister Fria) were nowhere to be seen. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she was hidden somewhere in the crowd, keeping a careful eye on me.
The Astlandic mercenaries were thronged together like a big, living fortress. My unit’s appearance was greeted with shouted insults and whistles. The front rows were filled with strykers in their armor, with the sigil of the “Uncrushables” on their chests. I counted fifteen combat mages. Friedrich von Neumark was the only avant. The others were mediuses or experts. And there were more of the latter than of the former. In that sense, of course, they were inferior to the “Savages.”
After ordering my people to stay where they were, I rode across the fighting ring, stopping only when my horse’s nose practically bumped into the “Uncrushables.” Friedrich von Neumark watched me approach with a condescending smile on his face, and when I stopped, he greeted me mirthfully:
“Monsieur, what a pity! That armor would have been the jewel of my collection! And those fangs! Truly a work of art! Where did you manage to find such wonderful materials?”
He was speaking loudly, making sure everyone could hear. He obviously assumed (to be fair, he probably knew about the Marshal’s note from the previous evening) that I was about to start hemming and hawing, and that I would eventually order Kurt to fight in my place. He wanted to humiliate me. Revenge for my audacity the day before.
“Baron!” I replied in the same tone, although I ignored his question. “You need not worry! You’ll have an opportunity to claim this armor for yourself very soon!”
“Really?” Baron von Neumark was surprised. “So you refuse to listen to the voice of reason? You’re so young, Margrave! And this isn’t your fight! I repeat, there’s no honor in stepping in to save a pack of traitors and cowards!”
“The voice of reason?” I scoffed, before throwing a quick glance at the Marshal. The Duke de Clairmont looked dour and angry. “First of all, on the subject of honor, Baron... I may be young, but my age is no impediment to me understanding that a Margrave who sends his people to the slaughter will soon find that no one’s willing to serve him at all! Second, I’d like to remind you, Baron, that your excessive self-assurance in no way corresponds to your own experience! You know it yourself: your best years are long past! Your reaction time and your mastery with the sword are nowhere near what they once were! That’s why, in deference to your advanced age, I want to give you a chance to excuse yourself from this fight! Admit your mistake and do your duty to your employer! Surely you haven’t forgotten that you signed a contract to fight?”
The silence that followed was deafening. Everyone present had heard my words. Friedrich von Neumark was obviously enraged. He was staring me up and down, ready to throw himself into battle at any moment. His nostrils were flared, and a big fat vein was bulging on his forehead.
His strykers didn’t look any calmer than he did. Like a pack of hungry wolves, they were waiting expectantly for their leader to give them the green light and let them rip the insolent boy to pieces.
I have to give the Baron his due, though. He recovered his composure quickly, jerked his chin up into the air, and with a vicious grin he said:
“So I’ll be adding that armor to my collection after all!”
This evidently pleased his strykers, who turned to look at me as though I were a walking corpse. Excited whispers spread through the assembled ranks.
“Baron, I advise you to take a few more bruts with you!” I shouted loudly as I turned my horse around. “You’re going to be doing a lot of running before you die! And that’s pretty exhausting at your age!”
I returned to my side of the ring, accompanied by the soldiers’ laughter. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a particularly piercing gaze from somewhere in the ranks of the “Last Chances.” I turned my head and tried to see who it was, but I couldn’t find them.
After rejoining my people, I jumped quickly off my horse, took my helmet from Gunnar’s hands, and pulled it down onto my head. Then I drew both my blades from their scabbards. I was no longer paying attention to anyone else at that point; I just turned around and headed to the center of the ring, where Friedrich von Neumark was already approaching from his side with a confident saunter.
“Baron!” I shouted when I was about fifteen steps away from him. “I’ve heard about your nickname! Is it true that you like to have fun with your opponents before killing them?”
“You’ll soon see for yourself, Your Lordship!” The black-bearded avant grunted as he drew his narrow-bladed sword. Through the slits on his helmet, I could see the savage glint in his eyes.
We started moving around the ring. I counted ten lilac nodes in his armor. Almost all of them were full to the brim with mana.
“And I’ve also heard that you took the Steel Knight prisoner and tortured him. You know — Conrad V’s nephew, the hero of the Battle of Erfurt!” I shouted. “Is that true as well?!”
“He was a traitor, and he died like a dog!” The Baron grunted as he took two long, gliding steps toward me.
“So neither you nor your people are upset by the fact that such behavior is beneath the dignity of a noble?!” I shifted easily to the right.
“Enough talk, little pup!” The Baron barked. And then I watched as he pulled a large clot of mana out of two large bruts on his chest, which dissolved immediately into his energy system.
I have to say, he did it like a master. But he still wasn’t as quick or as graceful as Sigurd. In fact, Baron von Neumark would have had a lot of work to do to catch up to my bodyguard.
An instant later, the completely-predictable “avant lunge” came at me. To the eye of a normal person, the Baron would have appeared to dissolve into thin air and reappear several yards in front of where he had been standing just a moment before. And he appeared right in the spot I had been standing in — just a moment before. He thrust his blade like a lightning bolt — right into thin air. Judging by the fact that he turned his head and couldn’t find me immediately, my agility was a surprise to him.
But Baron von Neumark was an experienced fighter. Without missing more than a fraction of a second, he made another lunge and moved about three paces to the right, obviously trying to dodge the counterattack he expected from me.
That could have worked with a normal stryker, even maybe with an avant, but not with a seer who could control the movement of every muscle, and who was twice as fast as him to boot.
I caught the Baron right at the moment when he finished his lunge. I sent a thick clot of lilac mana into my blade and swung a powerful blow that hit him in the chest and knocked him off his feet. He rolled along the sand, but was back on his feet almost instantly. The leader of the “Uncrushables” had a magic-suffused shield, and it held firm against my blow, but I noticed that the smallest brut in his cuirass had crumbled to dust. That meant it had exhausted its mana.
I had no intention of giving the Baron time to recover. A long lunge. A surge of dark-lilac mana into the tip of my sword. And then came the blow.
Friedrich tried to parry, but he was moving too slowly. A stabbing blow to the body sent the Baron flying back onto the ground again. He flew a few yards farther this time. Once again, his magic shield had absorbed all the damage. But he had also used up a second brut.
He only barely managed to rise to his feet by the time I made it within striking distance. He tried to put some more distance between us, lunging first to one side, then to the other, but I followed him mercilessly, pummeling his shield with a hailstorm of blows the whole time.
I could see panic in my opponent’s eyes. He hadn’t been expecting this from me. More than half of his bruts had already turned to dust, and the duel was just beginning.
I also noticed the look of tense excitement on Sigurd’s face. He wasn’t a seer, but he obviously knew what was going on all the same. After all, I hadn’t shown the full extent of my abilities before.
The Baron tried to counterattack, but all his blows landed on thin air. He was simply too slow and cumbersome to hit me.
When there was only one brut left in Friedrich’s armor, with about a quarter of its original mana supply left, I made my final lunge. Pumping as much mana into my blade as I could, I whipped it through the air with a whistle and down into the Baron’s right arm, hacking it off at the elbow.
He let out a loud groan and collapsed onto his knees. But he was still conscious. With his shaking left hand, he reached down toward a little pocket on his belt. I could see a scarlet glow emanating from inside it. What’s this, I thought — you want a potion? I’m afraid not... I’m not going to let you live.
A clot of mana — a swinging blow. And the Baron’s head rolled off across the sand.
In the sepulchral silence that fell across the audience, I took off my helmet and walked over to the “Uncrushables,” stepping gingerly across the convulsing, headless body as I went.
The mercenary strykers looked devastated. I could see fear and panic in some of their expressions. They had obviously never seen a battle quite like this. Their much-vaunted leader had just been killed by some measly little expert.
Dietrich von Neumark’s chest was heaving. He was staring down at his brother’s headless body with eyes wide open. Almost as if he expected the body to stand up and continue fighting. He still couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Baron!” I turned to address him, whereupon he startled and turned his befuddled gaze to meet mine. “Remember your promise!”
Without waiting for him to respond, I turned and looked around the assembled crowd. Then, with the tip of my blade pointed down at the headless corpse, I announced:
“I am the Margrave de Valier! I give you my word that this will be the fate of anyone who dares to threaten me or my people!”