The Black Shriving (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 2) (3 page)

Dawn had broken unseen behind the eastern curvature of the mountains that cupped Mythgræfen Hold like a clawed hand might cradle a ruined toy. Precariously set on its tiny island, its walls nearly following the shore, the hold was little more than dappled shadows and fallen stone, the sole sentry up top on the wall so still he might have been a permanent fixture. The ravens brooded on secrets all of their own within the lone oak tree that grew in a twisted manner before the shattered front gate. Mist rose in knotted spirals from the black water of the lake, making the rare call of a mountain bird seem ghostly, muffled, coming from a far distance.

Asho stepped out into the central courtyard contained within the Hold's walls. Aspen saplings grew there, their roots chewing up the flagstones, their trunks and bare branches luminous in the soft lavender light of dawn. The bodies and rusted weaponry that they had found upon first arriving had been cleared away, leaving a rough and uneven floor on which to exercise and work, and the wounded from the battle with Kitan's forces had been moved into the great hall for warmth.

Despite the hour, Asho saw, he wasn't the first one out here.

Kethe was exercising behind the screen of pale saplings. She was clothed only in breeches, knee-high boots and a pale sleeveless tunic wrapped tight at the waist with a long sash.

Asho hesitated. He almost turned to head out the gate, to find his own quiet corner to train. But then her movements caught him, hooked him, and he stood still, hands on hips, and watched.

Once, Kethe had been the pampered daughter of Lord Enderl Kyferin, the fearsome leader of the Black Wolves and lord of Kyferin Castle. Her days had been filled with needlework and gently riding her palfrey over the hills. Her life had been that of a noblewoman, pampered and easy, prickled by irritations that only a wealthy young woman would even notice.

No longer. She held her blade in one hand with ease. It wasn't a massive weapon, despite having a hand-and-a-half hilt - she'd not be cleaving any men in half with it - but the sustained stamina needed to keep it swinging precisely so, to control it with such finesse, was impressive. Taut muscles played across her arms and shoulders. There was a feline grace to her sweeps and thrusts, her parries and spins. He'd never seen anything like it. Her freckled face was fierce in its focus, her wide lips pulled into a tense line, her eyes narrowed as she fought an endless array of opponents. Her hair, which the sun could set to smoldering, was bound back in a tight bun. There was nothing of the noblewoman to her now beyond her poise and composure. Asho had seen her fight. Had seen her kill. Had seen her draw a demon almost fifteen feet tall to its death. She was greatly changed, almost unrecognizable as the young lady he'd served as a page.

Finally she lunged, a skewering blow that ended with her foreleg bent so deeply her thigh nearly touched her calf, her back leg extended out behind her like the tail of a comet. Her sword wavered minutely, at the very limit of her reach, and then she sighed and rose to her feet. Her tunic was dark with sweat between her shoulder blades.

"I get up early so as to avoid being gawped at, Asho."

"I - ah -" Asho felt his face flush. "I'm not gawping." It didn't come out as gravely as he had hoped.

"No?" She still had her back to him, her forearms moving as she tightened the white sash that was wrapped around her abdomen. "Then what would you call it? Leering?"

"Leering?" Asho caught his desire to apologize by the throat. He'd done nothing wrong. "This is an open space. I got up early to practice. I'd not expected to see you jumping around out here already."

"Jumping around?" Now she did turn, her gaze tempestuous. Sweat ran down the side of her freckled cheek. "Excuse me?"

Damn it
. Why was it so hard to just talk to her? "All right. Training."

"Jumping around." She swung her blade in a tight circle by her side, and caught it with a snap so that its point was aimed at his chest. "As opposed to the lumbering you execute when you're clad in your full plate?"

Asho smiled. "I'll admit it's hard to jump around like a cricket when you're wearing almost a fifty pounds of armor."

"No, you just seem to try to fall on the closest opponent so as to crush them. The height of Ennoian military sophistication." The point of her blade was still aimed at his chest. "Well, you're not wearing plate armor now. Come over here so I can prove it's not the armor's fault you fight like a drunken ox."

Asho felt a prick of anger twinned with excitement. "I swore to protect the Kyferins, not put one over my knee and paddle her with the flat of my sword."

"Oh, that's good," said Kethe. "Yes, keep it up. It's going to make embarrassing you so much more satisfying."

Asho drew his sword. It was a standard single-handed castle blade, forged by Elon of clean, polished steel, as long as his arm and with a blood groove down its center to lighten its weight. Equally adept at cutting and thrusting. Straight cross guard, leather-bound hilt, circular pommel. His other sword was buried a foot deep in stone beneath Mythgræfen Hold – a black blade with runes of fire, a blade he'd sworn not to wield again. This simple sword would do.

Asho walked around the courtyard, the shattered flagstones crunching beneath his boots, and stepped between two saplings to face Kethe. He'd not warmed up, though the Black Gate would take him before he asked for a few minutes to swing his arms and stretch.

Kethe began to slowly circle around him, her slender blade held up high behind her head, both hands beside her right ear, the sword's point aimed at the rear wall. It was a guard position that promised a violent swing, a brutal offense. Asho hesitated, then slid into a defensive stance, blade held vertically before his face, cross guard just below his eyes. She was gazing right through him, he thought, then, no; at a point just below his chin. His shoulders, realized Asho. That was what she was watching.

"I grew up watching my father's Black Wolves," she said, her voice deceptively soft. "I saw how they equated the length and weight of their sword with their masculinity. It wasn't how skillfully they wielded their blades that mattered, but rather how hard they could ram them home." Her gaze flickered up to Asho's eyes for a moment. "I pitied their wives."

Asho blinked, taken aback, and it was exactly then that Kethe launched her attack, gliding forward to swing with blistering speed. Asho stumbled back, and it was his stance's natural facility for parrying that allowed him to block her attacks, left, right, then left again, the swords crying out each time the flat of their blades met. Kethe broke off and backed away to resume circling, and Asho shook out his shoulders and re-centered himself, taking his sword with both hands.

"And your armor," continued Kethe, moving into an even more aggressive stance, sword held high again by the side of her head, but with the point now aimed directly at his throat. "Where is the logic behind encasing yourself in so much iron? It limits your movement. It drains your strength. It ensures that you will be hit, not once but over and over again, with your sole hope being that your enemy's sword will grow blunt before he is able to batter his way inside your guard."

Asho gritted his teeth as he resumed his defensive stance. He knew she was baiting him, but he couldn't hold back. "You sound almost bitter, Kethe. Are you spurning that which you don't have the strength to wear?"

"Bitter?" Her smile was cold and glittering, like a mountain stream. "Oh, I
am
bitter. Bitter about more things than you can imagine. But not being able to wear an entire smithy's worth of metal isn't one of them."

Again she launched herself forward, but this time Asho was ready for her. He sprang forward as well and caught her thrust and immediately thrust her back, following with a looping series of swings that rose and crossed in a lethal 'X', driving her back as hard as he could. She recovered smoothly, however, quicker than he'd have thought possible, and deflected his downward chop with her own obliquely angled blade just before ducking and darting behind him.

Asho spun around, his sword blocking an anticipated blow to the back, but it didn't come. Instead Kethe had stepped back and fallen into a new stance. Hilt held at waist height, the point of her blade nearly touching the floor before her. An open stance use against incompetent opponents.

"You're not jumping nearly as much as I'd expected."

She arched an eyebrow. "You're going to make me jump?"

"Watch this."

He brought his sword up into her previous stance and immediately lunged. Her blade danced up, but he broke the thrust and started driving her back and around the trees, pushing aggressively, forcing his body into her space behind each swing so that she had to give ground, not giving her time for a riposte. Her face was drawn with terrible focus, her eyes wide, yet she didn't panic; she kept her cool and gave ground just as quickly as he took it. With a cry he swung his sword up in a great circle and brought it crashing down, right into her block. She grunted and sagged beneath the blow, then flexed her legs and drove herself up till they were face to face again, blades crossed between them.

"There," he gasped, grinning. "I think that was a fair -"

She didn't give him time to finish. With liquid rapidity she grabbed his cross guard and swiveled her hilt around his sword to crack the pommel into his face. Asho cried out and reared back, but she wasn't done. She held on to his cross guard, levered her sword around and down in a flash, and tore it free from his grip, his sword swinging up to become trapped under her arm even as she brought the point of her own sword up once more to press against his chest.

Asho stared down the length of her sword, then up to her face. Fierce victory and amusement warred in her blue eyes. "Jump, Asho."

"Not fair," he said, lowering his arms. "I was about to engage in witty repartee. It's unsporting to hit a man when he's about to quip."

"I'll leave sporting to you men."

She stepped back and threw his sword underhand to him, and he caught it neatly out of the air by the hilt. Immediately Kethe was upon him, their blades flashing, and then he saw his chance for a killer riposte. He swung down, but she darted under his arm and past him, her blade behind her back so that its point whispered across his ribs.

Asho looked at the superficial cut. A thin red line appeared across his shirt.

Kethe walked away a few steps and then turned to stare at him, her eyes smoldering with a dangerous gleam. "You awake yet?"

"Oh, you're better than I thought." Asho inhaled deeply. "But, yes. You've got my attention. Ready?"

His anger and the sharp thrill of battle urged him toward a tempestuous attack, but he reined in the impulse. Instead he reached deep into himself and sought the source of power that flowed into him from the world all around. That dark and mellifluous might that made him feel like he was burning from the inside out. The pain of his cuts thinned out and disappeared. Energy suffused him.

He extended a hand toward Kethe as if asking her to dance. "May I?"

She pursed her lips, swinging her sword in idle X's before her, and then curled her lip. "If you must."

In his mind's eye she burned with a white fire, visible only now that he had soaked the roaring might of the ambient magic into himself. He could sense her, feel her across from him, and as he'd done only once before, he reached out to her and connected. Immediately the energy that had been pooling and curdling in his soul flowed smoothly out to her and disappeared, drained and purified and destroyed by her innate power.

"Ah," he sighed. The feverish feel of the magic disappeared, and while the power remained, it felt like a cool breeze passing through him instead of standing hip-deep in a stagnant pond. "Now, let's see your tricks."

He leaped high up into the air, rising some three yards above the shattered flagstones to fall upon Kethe from above, sword slicing with inhuman speed at her upturned face. Kethe didn't engage; she threw herself into a forward dive, spearing right under him, turning head over heels to come up spinning around, but Asho was already upon her.

The force of his blows was stunning. The magic was a joy, a delirious exultation as he allowed it to speed his swipes and cuts. His sword was weightless, and it danced as he willed, leaping at Kethe from all sides like the flickering flash of a nocturnal thunderstorm. Kethe gave ground, but she was grinning as well; her deflections turned to parries, and the sound of their ringing steel filled the courtyard as if a dozen people were fighting furiously instead of merely two.

A series of devastating backhand hacks drove Kethe away, forcing her into a backflip and then a second, her boots lashing up and at his face and checking his assault.

She came to a stop, breathing heavily, and Asho raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you could do that."

"No?" Her smile was wicked. "Neither did I. Here's another surprise for you."

She sprinted forward and leaped into a spin. Her body blurred as she revolved, sword extended, and with a cry Asho staggered back, her sword striking at him three times before she fell back to earth. She sank down into a crouch, leg sweeping out along the ground to catch him behind the heel. Asho's feet flew out from under him and he dropped his sword, but caught himself with both palms flat on the ground, arms taking his weight then flexing to throw him back into a flip of his own.