Chapter 40 Dueling Oaths
Dueling Oaths
“Are you that eager to die, boy?” Ditmar asked, across the rope circle where they stood.
Niel ignored him, as he’d ignored the taunts Ditmar had thrown for the last five minutes, and kept stretching, making sure his muscles were ready despite the cold. He was going to need to move fast.
Niel respected swords. One wrong or slow move could mean Niel’s death.
But he was used to fighting with a disadvantage.
For once, he was grateful for his father’s and his brother’s abuses.
All Niel’s formative training had been learning to hold his own against someone stronger, and when it came to it, he doubted Ditmar fit that mark.
All Blackfell’s strength came from beating people who couldn’t defend themselves.
Still, if Niel let that sword so much as touch him, it could mean a lost limb or a lost life. Rolling his left ankle slowly, he narrowed his mind to one single goal: kill the man before him, at any cost. Even if Niel died in the process too.
The crowd parted to let Corin in. Niel’s brother stood at the edge of the circle, halfway between the two of them, and looked first at Niel, then at Blackfell, then at Niel again.
The soldiers and watching townsfolk were silent now as they watched, no longer calling questions, or screaming as they had when Niel was marched in.
“Sir Niel,” Corin said. “You sought a knight’s honor-duel, to the death, and Sir Ditmar agreed. Do you still seek satisfaction?” Corin paused, and Niel nodded in response. “Will you swear a knight’s dueling oath, even be it that you have broken faith with the crown?”
Niel recognized the language, traditional as it was, though it sounded stilted on his brother’s tongue.
He sank quickly to one knee. The ground was cold and hard, frozen over. Blackfell town was small enough that its square was packed dirt, instead of cobblestone.
“I swear to the truth of my cause, and the evil of my enemy’s. By my body and my life, I seek justice. I will fight honorably,” Niel said without emotion. He rose.
“Sir Ditmar,” Corin said, turning to the older man.
Ditmar didn’t kneel. He dug his swordpoint into the frozen ground, resting his weight on the pommel.
“I won’t swear oaths to a traitorous rat,” Ditmar said. “But if he wants to die by my blade, I’ll gladly take his head off myself.”
Corin stared at Ditmar in what Niel could only interpret as open disgust. Niel, unbothered, finished stretching.
“So be it,” Corin said at last, after a short silence. “Take your marks.”
Neil straightened, hands loose at his side, and drew a steady breath. There was no sense panicking. He knew what he had to do. The dread settling into the base of his stomach couldn’t be helped, but it could be ignored.
He had to believe Ayla had found the cloak. That she would live, and find happiness without him.
Ditmar swung his longsword up in front of his face in salute, to Corin rather than Niel, then dropped it.
For a moment Niel could feel his brother’s eyes on him hard, studying Niel, as if committing him to memory.
“You do not have the right to yield, unless the other chooses to accept it,” Corin said, his voice flat.
“The match ends when one of you is dead. Do not attempt to leave the circle. If you step outside it, you will find these men’s spear-hafts pushing you back in, for the crowd’s protection.
” He gestured at the soldiers ringing the crowd.
Then Corin stepped back into the first ring of the crowd.
“Say your prayers, boy,” Ditmar said. Niel kept his mouth shut.
“Begin,” Corin announced.
Ditmar paced forward, sword loose in his hand.
Niel paced a quarter of the way into the ring.
He couldn’t let himself get too close to the edge.
If he were caught between the sword and the soldier’s spears, he’d be done for.
As Ditmar closed the distance, Niel saw his hand tighten on the sword’s hilt.
Blackfell’s lord hefted the weapon, raised it up, and then slashed down diagonally at Niel.
Niel ducked and weaved away from the strike, missing it by inches.
He hadn’t expected Blackfell to move that quickly. The blade itself was some three feet long; its reach even greater at the end of Blackfell’s extended arm. For a moment Niel was at Blackfell’s unguarded side, the sword pointed away from him.
He didn’t take the opening. Not before he’d gotten Blackfell’s measure. Someone like Corin could’ve gotten the sword around and through Niel’s gut before Niel could so much as tap him on the shoulder.
Niel slipped behind Blackfell instead.
The crowd was shouting, but he could only hear them distantly.
Most were yelling for his own death, worked into a bloodthirsty fervor at the idea of a traitor’s downfall.
A few shouted back that Blackfell was a coward.
But all Niel’s focus was narrowed to the fight.
He kept his eyes on Ditmar’s torso, not the sword, so that he would see the man’s movements before they became full-fledged strikes.
It was easier for Ditmar to turn and face Niel than it was for Niel to get back behind him.
With the sword’s reach, Niel would have to run a wide circle, while Ditmar had only to pivot in place.
That was no good. Niel would wager his stamina far outpaced his enemy’s, but he needed to keep it that way.
Ditmar raised his sword for another blow.
Instead of circling under it again, Niel slid back just barely out of reach.
Ditmar lunged, and Niel skipped back further.
He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder to see the rope.
He couldn’t afford to take his eyes off the blade, and he didn’t need to.
He could see how far he was from the edge in front of him, and he’d studied its shape well enough as he stretched that he was fairly confident about how much distance was behind him, down to the half-foot.
He was going to need to stop retreating soon, or get Ditmar behind him. He was getting too close.
Ditmar’s face turned red with what Niel thought was fury. With a bellow, the lord charged at Niel, sword primed at his side to thrust forward on an impale.
For a half-breath Niel stayed frozen, watching the blade draw near.
And then he pivoted, side-stepped, and spun behind Ditmar. As the lord’s feet carried him past, to where Niel had been, Niel thumped the man’s right shoulder with a fist. Then Niel jumped back, to keep out of Ditmar’s sword range as the man turned.
It hadn’t been a good blow, but he allowed himself a moment of cold triumph all the same. He’d landed the first hit.
Now he just had to keep Ditmar from landing one in retaliation.
He’d annoyed Blackfell, or perhaps frightened him, and now the man slashed and advanced like an angry, half-blind hornet.
Seeking to overwhelm Niel, his strikes bled one into the next, slashing up and down and diagonally, pressing towards the younger knight.
Niel bobbed, weaved, and sidestepped, tracking the blade with years of practice.
It whistled past him so close he could feel the air against his cheek.
Niel jumped back, then dipped and dodged forward, dancing always out of Ditmar’s reach.
He could see the older man getting tired.
The blows had become less precise, and he raised the sword less high at the start of them, as if its weight was already beginning to tire him.
And while Ditmar was smart enough not to waste his breath on taunts, Niel could hear him breathing all the same, panting open-mouthed as he hacked at the younger, unarmed knight before him.
The next time Ditmar swung the sword in a downward diagonal slice, Niel slid to Ditmar’s open side and slammed the ball of his boot into the front of Ditmar’s right knee.
He heard a crack, and then a bellow of pain as Ditmar whirled towards him, dragging the sword in a wide chest-height arc.
Niel tucked and rolled back. He sprang to his feet and circled Ditmar, feeling now almost like a cat playing with a wounded mouse.
He couldn’t afford to be over-confident. That was how good swordsmen lost fights. But it had been even easier than Niel anticipated. Being the Duke of Eyron’s son wasn’t good for much, but it was good for this.
Ditmar threw himself towards Niel, but his injured knee wouldn’t let him advance smoothly or turn quickly. Ditmar thrust towards Niel, throwing himself off balance. Niel pivoted just to the side of the blade. He wasted no time getting more distance than a few inches.
Instead, he rushed Ditmar, got within the sword’s guard, and wrestled the Lord of Blackfell to the ground.
Lord Blackfell called out and thrashed, trying to angle his sword to cut Niel without stabbing himself, but Niel pinned the man’s arms under one knee and slammed a fist into Blackfell’s face.
Then another. The man’s hands loosened on the sword, and Niel reached to pick it up as Blackfell thrashed beneath him again.
One of Blackfell’s knees connected with Niel’s groin.
Nausea flared so swiftly he thought he’d hurl bile onto the man below him.
With a grunt of pain, Niel tossed the sword across the ring, out of Blackfell’s reach.
Then he pinned the lord beneath him so that Blackfell could not land any other blows.
Blood smeared the man’s face from a broken nose.
“Mercy,” Blackfell said, his voice coming out nasal.
“Did she ask for Mercy, too?” Niel answered coldly.
He smashed his fist back into Ditmar’s face. Blood made Niel’s leather gloves wet. He heard a strained gasp of air from the man beneath him.
Niel stood and settled his boot on Ditmar’s throat.
The lord of Blackfell looked up at him, the man’s dark eyes desperate.
Blackfell’s lips moved again in a silent plea, his hands grasping at Niel’s leg.
Niel pressed his foot down slowly, and heard the crunch of Blackfell’s neck.
With one last desperate wheeze, the life left Ditmar’s eyes.
His hands spasmed, then stilled. A drop of blood slid from the man’s mouth.
His dead eyes kept staring at Niel. Niel stared coldly back.
The fight was over. It had been easy.
But the triumph he’d expected to feel didn’t come. A part of Niel had truly believed he could change the world, if he could just remove the men like this one from existence. It seemed futile now. There were more. There would always be more.
He’d freed Ayla, and that was worth any cost. But the entire war, the lives he’d taken, the soldiers he’d lost—Ditmar was all he had to show for it.
The crowd kept shouting. They sounded loud, now that he wasn’t focused on the battle anymore. He peeled off his bloody gloves slowly, and dropped them onto the corpse at his feet.
The death should have been longer. Long enough for Ditmar to contemplate all the crimes of his life. Perhaps then, Niel would feel better, like he’d done something. But Ditmar was gone now. There was no more vengeance to be had.
The crowd fell to hushed whispers, and Niel looked to see his brother Corin holding a hand up to silence them. Niel raised his chin and met Corin’s eyes defiantly. Corin looked back, his own expression heavy.
“You’ve had your duel,” Corin said. “Now honor the terms of our deal, and submit to the crown’s justice.”
For a moment Niel looked away, at the sword he’d thrown across the ring, and wondered if that wasn’t a better way to go. He could fetch it before his brother could reach him. And then he could prove, once and for all, which of them was the better swordsman.
But he was tired, and sick, and suddenly he didn’t want to see his brother skewered on a blade.
He just wanted… he didn’t know what. Things he could never have.
Ayla, and peace, and to lay his head down on a pillow and sleep without wondering whether he’d be attacked during the night.
To feel like he had any chance at a future, and any reason to hope for one.
To believe there was a point to a world in which men like Ditmar and Hannes and his father could not just exist, but rule.
But hadn’t he learned, long ago, that he was not a man whose hopes came true?
“I surrender,” he said, and held his hands out to be shackled.