*
It was a bad idea. He felt the thrumming in his veins that told him it was a bad idea. He watched Laurent draw a sword of his own from the wall. He remembered watching Laurent’s sword work in his duel against Govart, his own fingers itching to pick up a sword. He remembered other things too. The tug he had felt on his gold collar from the leash in Laurent’s hand. The fall of the lash on his back. The driving fist of a guard as he was thrown down onto his knees. He heard his own voice, thick and heavy.
‘You want me to put you on your back in the dirt?’
‘You think you can?’
Laurent had cast his sword-sheath to the side. It lay disregarded in the sawdust as he calmly stood with an open blade.
Damen hefted his own sword in his hand. He was not feeling careful.
He had warned Laurent. That was advance notice enough.
He attacked, a ringing three-stroke sequence that Laurent countered, circling so that his back was no longer to the door, but to the length of the training arena. When Damen attacked again, Laurent used the space behind him, moving back.
And further back. Damen quickly grasped that he was progressing through the same set of experiences that had derailed Govart: expecting the fight to be more straightforward than it was, and finding that instead Laurent was difficult to pin down. Laurent’s blade teased, slipping away without follow-through. Laurent enticed, then stepped back.
It was irritating. Laurent was a good swordsman, who was not exerting himself. Tap, tap, tap. They had by now travelled almost the full length of the training area, and were drawing alongside the post. Laurent’s breathing was undisturbed.
The next time Damen engaged, Laurent ducked and swung around the post, so that he had the length of the training area again at his back.
‘Are we just going to go up and down? I thought you’d push me at least a little,’ said Laurent.
Damen unleashed a strike, full strength and with brutal speed, giving Laurent no time to do anything but bring up his sword. He felt blade catch blade with a screech of metal, and watched the force of the impact travel through Laurent’s wrists and shoulders, watched it wrench the sword almost out of his hands, and throw him, satisfyingly, out of a balanced stance to stagger three paces back.
‘You mean like that?’ said Damen.
Laurent recovered well, moving back another step. He was looking at Damen with narrowed eyes. There was something different in his posture, a new wariness.
‘I thought I’d let you go up and down a few times,’ said Damen, ‘before I take you.’
‘I thought you were down here because you couldn’t take me.’
This time when Damen attacked, Laurent put his whole body into weathering it, and as one blade raked shudderingly down the length of the other, he came up under Damen’s guard, so that Damen was forced into a startled defence and only with a flurry of steel flung him back.
‘You are good,’ said Damen, hearing the pleased sound of his own voice.
Laurent’s breathing was showing a little exertion now, and that pleased Damen too. He pressed forward, not allowing Laurent time to disengage or recover. Laurent was forced to bring all his strength to bear to block his attacks, the barrage jarring down Laurent’s wrist to his forearm and shoulder. Consistently now, Laurent was parrying two-handed.
Parrying, and countering in a deadly flash. He was agile and could turn on a hair, and Damen found himself drawn in, engrossed. He did not attempt to force Laurent into mistakes—yet—that would come later. Laurent’s swordsmanship was fascinating, like a puzzle made up of filigree strands, complicated, delicately woven but without obvious openings. It almost seemed a shame to win the fight.
Damen disengaged, walking a circle around his opponent as he gave him space to recover. Laurent’s hair was starting very slightly to darken with sweat and his breath was quick. Laurent shifted his grip on his sword minutely, flexing his wrist.
‘How’s your shoulder?’ Damen said.
‘My shoulder and I,’ said Laurent, ‘are waiting to be shown a real fight.’
Laurent swept his blade up, ready for the attack. It satisfied Damen to force some real sword work from him. Damen drove into those exquisite counters, forcing them into patterns that he half remembered.
Laurent was not Auguste. He was cast from a different mould physically, with a more dangerous calibre of mind. Yet there was a resemblance: the echo of a similar technique, a similar style; perhaps learned from the same master, perhaps the result of the younger brother emulating the older in the training yard.
He could feel it between them as he could feel everything between them. The deceptive sword work that was too much like the traps that Laurent laid for everyone, the lies, the prevarications, the avoidance of a straightforward fight in favour of tactics that used those around him to achieve his ends; like a consignment of slaves; like a village of innocents.
He swept Laurent’s blade out of the way, slammed the hilt of his sword into Laurent’s stomach, then threw Laurent down, his body landing hard enough on the sawdust to knock the wind out of his lungs.
‘You can’t beat me in a real fight,’ said Damen.
His sword pointed to the line of Laurent’s Adam’s apple. Laurent was sprawled on his back with spread legs and one knee raised. His fingers slid into the sawdust beneath him. His chest was rising and falling under the thin shirt. The tip of Damen’s sword travelled from his throat down to his delicate belly.
‘Yield,’ he said.
A burst of darkness and grit exploded in his vision; Damen squeezed his eyes shut reflexively and shifted his sword point back a critical half-inch as Laurent whirled his arm and flung a handful of sawdust into his face. When Damen’s eyes opened, Laurent had rolled, and come up holding his sword.
It was a juvenile boy’s trick that had no place in a man’s fight. Wiping the sawdust away with his forearm, Damen looked across at Laurent, who was breathing hard and wearing a new expression.
‘You fight with the tactics of a coward,’ said Damen.
‘I fight to win,’ said Laurent.
‘Not well enough for that,’ said Damen.
The look in Laurent’s eyes was the only warning before Laurent swung at him with killing force.
Damen swerved sideways and abruptly back, brought his sword up and still found himself giving ground. There was a moment of pure concentration, edged silver all around him that he must focus on completely. Laurent was attacking with everything he had. There were no more elegant engagements, no more insouciant parries. Being thrown onto his back had broken some barrier in Laurent, and he was fighting with open emotion in his eyes.
And with exhilaration, Damen met the onslaught, took on Laurent’s best sword work, and began, step by step, to drive him back.
And this—it was nothing like Auguste, who had called to his men to stand back. Laurent’s sword cut through a holding rope and Damen had to push away before the shelf of mounted armoury it supported came crashing down on his head. Laurent shoved at a bench with his leg and sent it careening into Damen’s path. The armour that had spilled from the wall onto the sawdust became an obstacle course to force uneven footwork.
Laurent was throwing everything at him, drawing every part of their surroundings desperately into the fight. And he was still unable to hold ground.
At the post, Laurent ducked instead of parrying, and Damen’s sword swung hard through thin air and then thunked into the wooden beam, lodging there so deeply that he had to let go the hilt and duck a swing of his own before he could pull it out.
In those seconds, Laurent bent, snatched up a knife that had scattered from one of the overturned benches and threw it, with deadly accuracy, at Damen’s throat.
Damen knocked it out of the air with his sword and kept advancing. He attacked and steel met steel, sliding all the way up to the tang. Laurent’s shoulder shuddered, and Damen pressed harder, forcing Laurent’s sword from his hand.
He slammed Laurent into the panelled wall. Laurent made a sound of raw, guttural frustration as his teeth clicked together and the breath was knocked out of him. Damen pressed in, jammed his forearm to Laurent’s neck and cast his own sword aside as Laurent’s outflung hand dragged a knife from its hanging display on the wall and brought it driving towards Damen’s unprotected side.
‘No you don’t,’ said Damen, and with his free hand caught Laurent’s wrist and knocked it hard against the wall, once, twice, until Laurent’s fingers opened and he dropped the knife.
Laurent’s whole body thrashed against him then, trying to wrench from his hold, a moment of violent animal struggle that pushed their hot, sweat-dampened bodies together. Damen rode it out—shoved them both in against the wall—tightly enough to prohibit movement, but Laurent punched him in the throat with his free arm, hard enough that he choked and shifted, and then, with all the hard violence in him, Laurent drove his knee in.
Blackness exploded across his vision, but fighter’s instinct pushed through it. He dragged Laurent away from the wall and flung him to the ground, where Laurent hit, body impacting hard on the sawdust. It knocked the wind out of Laurent for a moment, but he was already pushing himself dazedly up, his eyes venomous on Damen’s. Laurent was going for the knife again, his fingers closing around it, too late.
‘That’s enough,’ said Damen, driving his knee hard into Laurent’s stomach, then throwing him onto his back and following him down. He had Laurent’s wrist in his grip, and he slammed it back against the sawdust, so that Laurent released the knife. His body was an arc over Laurent’s, pinning Laurent with his weight, with his hands on Laurent’s wrists, Laurent taut beneath him. He could feel the hot rise and fall of Laurent’s chest. He tightened his grip.
Finding himself with no way out from under Damen’s body, Laurent made a last, desperate sound, and only then finally went still, panting, his eyes furious with bitterness and frustration.
They were both panting. Damen could feel the resistance in Laurent’s body.
‘Say it,’ said Damen.
‘I yield.’ It was gritted out. Laurent’s head turned away to one side.
‘I want you to know,’ he said, the words thick and heavy as they pushed out of him, ‘that I could have done this any time when I was a slave.’
Laurent said, ‘Get off me.’
He thrust himself away. Laurent was the first to lever himself off the floor. He stood with his hand on the post for support. Flecks of sawdust were clinging to his back.
‘You want me to say it? That I could never have beaten you?’ Laurent’s voice twisted up. ‘I could never have beaten you.’
‘No, you couldn’t have. You’re not good enough. You would have come for revenge, and I would have killed you. That’s how it would have been between us. Is that what you would have wanted?’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent. ‘He was everything I had.’
The words hung between them.
‘I know,’ said Laurent, ‘that I was never good enough.’
Damen said, ‘Neither was your brother.’
‘You’re wrong. He was—’
‘What?’
‘Better than I am. He would have—’
Laurent cut himself off. He pressed his eyes closed, with a breath of something like laughter. ‘Stopped you.’ He said it as though he could hear the ludicrousness of it.
Damen picked up the discarded knife, and when Laurent’s eyes opened, he put it in Laurent’s hand. Braced it. Drew it to his own abdomen, so that they stood in a familiar posture. Laurent’s back was to the post.
‘Stop me,’ said Damen.
He could see it in Laurent’s expression, as he fought an internal battle with his desire to use the knife.
He said, ‘I know what that feels like.’
‘You’re unarmed,’ said Laurent.
So are you. He didn’t say it. It didn’t make any sense. He felt the moment changing. His grip on Laurent’s wrist was changing. The knife thudded to the sawdust.
He forced himself to step back before it happened. He was staring at Laurent from two paces away, his breathing roughened, and not from exertion.
Around them, the training arena was strewn with the disorder of their fight: benches overturned, armour pieces scattered across the floor, a banner half torn from the wall.
Damen said, ‘I wish—’
But he couldn’t speak the past away, and Laurent wouldn’t thank him if he did. He took up his sword and left the hall.
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEXT MORNING, they had to sit next to each other. Damen assumed his place beside Laurent on the erected dais, looking out at the green oblong of meadow that formed the arena, wanting nothing more than to arm up and ride to take the fight to Karthas. The games felt wrong when they should be marching south.
The joint thrones today were under a silk awning, raised to protect Laurent’s milkmaid skin from the sun. It was a superfluous measure, since almost every part of Laurent was covered. The sun shone beautifully over the field, and the tiered stands and the grassy side slopes, stage for a contest of excellence.
Damen’s own arms and thighs were bare. He wore the short chiton, pinned once at his shoulder. Next to him, Laurent was an unchanging profile, fixed as a coin stamp. Beyond Laurent sat the Veretian nobility: Lady Vannes murmuring into the ear of a new female pet, Guion and his wife Loyse, Enguerran the Captain. Beyond that was the Prince’s Guard, Jord, Lazar and the others in blue livery, standing arrayed, the starburst banners waving above them.
To Damen’s right sat Nikandros, and beside him the conspicuously empty seat meant for Makedon.
Makedon wasn’t the only one absent. The grassy slopes and tiered stands were missing Makedon’s soldiers, depleting them of half their men. His anger of yesterday having passed, Damen could see that, in the village, Laurent had risked his life to stop exactly this from happening. Laurent had stood in front of a sword to try to prevent Makedon’s defection.
A part of Damen acknowledged, a little guiltily, that Laurent probably hadn’t deserved to get thrown around the training arena as a result.
Nikandros said, ‘He’s not coming.’
‘Give him time,’ said Damen. But Nikandros was right. There was no hint of an arrival.
Nikandros said, without looking next to him, ‘Your uncle has wiped out half of our army with two hundred men.’
‘And a belt,’ said Laurent.
Damen looked out at the half-filled stands and the banks of grass, where Veretian and Akielon alike gathered for best vantage, a long, scrolling look that took in the tents by the royal stands, where slaves prepared foods, and then further tents, where attendants prepared the first of the athletes for competition.
Damen said, ‘At least someone else has a chance to win at javelin.’
He stood. Like a rippling wave, all those around him stood, and all those gathered from the tiered stands to the meadow. He lifted his hand, his father’s gesture. The men might be a ragtag group of northern fighters, gathered around a makeshift provincial arena, but they were his. And these were his first games as King.
‘Today we pay homage to the fallen. We fight together, Veretian and Akielon. Compete with honour. Let the games begin.’