“Your father . . . was a good man before he lost his wits,” said Unver. He let his hand stray to his own sword and its muddied hilt. “You are nothing like him.”
Odrig pulled Kulva close, clenched his hand in her hair and pulled tight, so that the bridal headdress tore free and fell to the ground in a tumble of ribbons and bright pins. “She will never be yours, outsider. I would see her dead first. I will see her dead first.” And then, in a swift, terrible instant, Odrig’s knife was out and in his hand. He dragged it across Kulva’s throat below the chin, freeing a leaping spray of red. Women and even some men shouted out in horror. Kulva’s hands came up as if to close the dreadful wound, but then the thane released her and she dropped to all fours, blood gurgling out onto the ground.
Fremur felt himself grow faint. The world darkened to a great tunnel around that cataract of red. His sister. Their sister. Odrig had killed their sister.
Unver yanked at his sword so hard that he half-pulled the scabbard from his belt, then leaped toward the thane with a bellow of helpless, furious pain. Odrig drew his own blade, calm as a man sitting down to eat supper, and stepped over dying Kulva as though she were nothing but a rock or a tuft of grass. The two swords clashed and rebounded. Guests screamed and cursed as they threw themselves back from the fighters.
Unver’s struggle with Drojan had been a thing of dirt and grunting silence, two drunken, angry men rolling on the ground, fighting over a single knife. This was something entirely different, a flicker of shining blades, a dance of clanging metal. Within moments the grass around the pair had been torn away or stamped down into the black mud. Unver, Fremur could see, was still slowed by drunkenness, but his eyes blazed with a fury Fremur had never seen, even in battle against the men of the cities. Odrig was even larger than Unver, the biggest man in the clan, but he recognized the power of his opponent’s anger and did not waste any more breath on taunts or curses.
Fremur could no more prevent this fight than catch lightning in his hands. He knew it would only end when someone died, and Fremur could not make himself believe that Unver might win. He ran to Kulva’s side and kneeled beside her, but the blood was running out of her too fast to be stanched. He tried to hold the wound closed, but blood pulsed out between his fingers. It all seemed like a terrible dream—his own helplessness, the clanfolk’s shouts and shocked faces, his sister’s dying noises.
Odrig and Unver circled each other, and their curved swords flew back and forth like the beaks of birds, neither man able to get past the other’s guard, neither foolish enough to engage too closely too soon. Unver, still hot with rage, took a swipe at Odrig’s face; then, when the thane blocked him with his blade, he tried to score Odrig’s face with his sword’s point. He missed by the length of a fingernail, but Odrig’s eyes widened and he redoubled his efforts, hammering away with blow after clanging blow so that Unver could do nothing but defend himself and slowly give ground. The circle of trampled grass and pitted mud widened beneath them, wedding guests now stumbling over each other in their hurry to get out of the way.
The sun was high in the sky. Both men were sweating heavily, and Unver Long Legs was covered with blood, much of it his own. He lost his grip on his sword for a moment and Odrig almost flicked the weapon out of his hand, but although he had to throw himself to the ground and roll away to avoid Odrig’s slashing attack, he managed to hang on to his weapon and direct away another strike that had been intended as a killing blow, but this time the sharp edge of Odrig’s sword bit into his left shoulder before he could knock it away.
Now that his enemy was bleeding from his shoulder as well, Odrig backed off a step and took a slower, more deliberate approach, fighting mostly to keep Unver moving and the blood flowing from his wound until it exhausted him. It seemed like a strategy that could not fail, and indeed, after several more rattling flurries of blows, it became apparent that Unver was slowing down. He ceased making attacks, concentrating instead on keeping Odrig’s long, probing blade away. Odrig responded by changing his tactics to slash at Unver’s legs and exposed arms whenever possible, and by doing this gave him several more small, but bloody wounds.
Unver misstepped, barely avoided a blow to his head, then stumbled again, his free hand clutching his belly. It seemed plain that the fight was nearly over. Sickened, Fremur turned Kulva closer to his chest, as if to shield her from the sight of Unver’s imminent death, but could not look at her face for more than an instant: Her eyes were open, as if she looked at him in accusation.
“I did nothing,” he said quietly, but a black, hopeless rage boiled inside him. “I could do nothing.”
At the sound of several loud clangs in succession he looked up. Unver was in a half-crouch, doing his best to slip Odrig’s heavy strokes. Clearly, the thane meant to end this. The sun beat down, and the grass sparkled with wet scarlet: Unver had several more wounds, so many that it was hard to count them in the general mire of his bloodied clothing.
Then, just as Odrig drew back for a better killing angle, Unver leaped up at him with what must have been his final strength and swung at his head. Odrig guided the blow away easily with his own blade and then turned his sword over, trapping Unver’s weapon, but the sound of their two weapons striking each other seemed so odd and muffled that even Odrig, the path of his death-stroke now open, hesitated for a moment to glance at the blade he had turned aside.
It was not Unver’s sword that had swung toward the thane’s head, and was now imprisoned by the grip of Odrig’s own blade. It was Unver’s scabbard, torn loose from his belt. His sword was still in his other hand.
Odrig had only a moment to gape; then, even as the realization of what he was seeing drained the blood from his face, Unver plunged his own curved blade into Odrig’s belly so hard that its point tented the back of his feast-day garment.
The ending came so suddenly and so surprisingly that none of the guests even cried out. Odrig’s knees went limp. He collapsed onto Unver, who held him up for a moment, his own legs shaking, then stepped out of the way and let the thane fall into the mud.
Unver, bloody and silent, walked toward Fremur. The guests between them nearly flew in their hurry to get out of his way, but the tall man did not seem to see them, as though he passed living through the Land of Shadows. When he reached Fremur he said nothing, but only bent and lifted Kulva’s body out of her brother’s grasp. Unver was exhausted, and the dead weight of her made him stagger, but he managed to put her over his shoulder. Then, still without a word, he turned and walked across the paddock, two bodies left lying in the grass behind him and the clan guests shrinking back as from a leper. He walked unsteadily toward the gate that led out of the paddock, Kulva bouncing on his shoulder, her hair unbound now and waving behind him like a horse’s tail. For long moments, no one around the wedding tent said anything, but only watched Unver’s diminishing figure.
“Don’t let him go!” someone shouted at last. “He killed the thane!”
“Murderer!” someone else cried, and there was a general roar of agreement, mostly from the men.
A few guests near Fremur drew their swords to go after Unver, startling Fremur as though from a sudden dream. The anger that had bubbled inside him was still hot, but now felt hard as stone. He pulled his own blade and slapped the nearest man on the arm with it, hard enough to make him drop his weapon.
“What are you doing?” the man snarled. It was Gezdahn Baldhead, one of the friends who had been drinking with Drojan and Odrig only an hour before, his face bright pink with astonishment and thwarted anger. “We must catch the halfblood before he gets to his horse!”
“No.” Fremur held his sword out sideways in front of Gezdahn and the others, like a paddock gate. He felt curiously clear-headed, as if he alone had stood soberly by while everyone else had drunk themselves into madness.
“Get out of my way, Fremur-mouse,” Gezdahn snarled, “or you’ll get the same thing.”
Fremur placed the point of his own curved sword against the man’s chest. “You will do nothing. Odrig is dead. My brother the thane is dead. That means I am thane of the Crane Clan until we choose another at the next clan moot. Do you deny the law?”
Gezdahn stared at him, anger fighting surprise as if the Fremur he knew had disappeared and been replaced by some strange demon from another world. “You?”
“I am eldest male of Odrig’s house. That means I am thane.”
“But he stole your sister’s body!” cried another man. “He will shame her.”