Chapter 22 Duel against a Duelist #3
Gueldefore managed to block an overhanded swing, but not Morfran’s rough kick to the man’s kneecap, where there were small gaps in his armor.
The blow wasn’t enough to make the knight buckle, but it clearly hurt him.
Morfran took that moment to swerve behind him and knock him over with a rough kick to his backside.
Gueldefore hit the ground; his armor sounded like a feral cat attacking a utensil drawer. His helmet went rolling. His bulk weighed him down. When he attempted to push himself back up, Morfran promptly stepped on his back and kicked him back into the mud.
This, obviously, he didn’t like. Gueldefore let out a roar and lashed out with his sword, and Morfran had to leap back to keep his arm from being lopped off.
But the knight’s sudden burst of anger was paired with a sloppy swing, and in the process of shooing Morfran away, he’d exposed his entire frontside—and his bare, vulnerable neck.
In that split second Morfran knew he should just hold back.
Hold back and let the knight defeat him, let the man win so he’d be so pleased with besting him that he wouldn’t think twice about where he’d come from.
But something inside him was burning. It was a familiar, triumphant burning that he hadn’t felt since his early years as a Dark Lord.
Gueldefore was one of the last existing knights of the kingdom. Would it not be pleasurable to beat him down before all their friends who were watching them now? Would it not be the ultimate victorious act to cut him down here and now? Morfran’s grip tightened over his hilt—
And that was when he heard the soft bleating of a goat. It was distant, but pastoral and peaceful, and it ripped his mind back, back to the days when it was just him, on a dirt road leading nowhere, back to the first time he’d met Beni.
It’d been a dark evening. The sun had been cloaked behind black storm clouds all day, and he was meandering a road between hamlets. Goat cries were everywhere. He was passing through a goat farm of hundreds of goats.
A man had been yanking on a rope tied to a beautiful red goat that looked like it’d indulged in a cake-eating contest for how large it was. The fellow was straining as he tugged it; the goat was letting out cries of protest.
“Too many,” the man muttered to himself as Morfran came up on him. “Too many goats! Yer eatin’ my grain fields and breeding like rabbits out ’ere. Yer going to the butcher. If he won’t have ye, ye’ll go to the river. Don’t care if yer are—”
The goat let out an ugly cry, tugging back on the rope.
It was a pathetic sight, honestly, a man as thin as reeds wrestling with a bloated goat ululating cries for mercy. But to Morfran it was a scene he’d forever remember, because he’d come across something so banal, so mundane, so…welcoming.
Yes, the man and goat looked stupid. But if Morfran’s worst troubles happened to be leading a fussy goat on a leash rather than leading an army who no longer obeyed him and an ex-wife who surely wanted to maim him most horrendously, he’d happily embrace it.
And it didn’t hurt that a scruffy goat herdsman was easily overlooked; a goat was surely a great accessory to affect that same look, since Morfran’s new life depended on just that.
He raised his hand. “Wait.”
The man squinted beady eyes at him. He had a lazy eye much like the goat. “Yer not a highwayman, are ye? I’ll bite ye if ye are.”
Morfran had no doubts the man would. He kept his distance and said, “I’ll take that goat off your hands, friend.”
The man squinted. “Friend? Have we met before? Larry, is that you?”
“We haven’t met. But I’d be happy to buy your goat, if you were planning on ambiguously offing it elsewhere.”
The man sniffed. “How much is yer offer?”
Morfran pulled out a single silver coin.
The man’s eyes widened, and then he flung the leash towards Morfran while at the same time diving for the coin.
Morfran let him take it, and the man cackled and called him a fool for spending so much on a stupid goat, right before hurrying off like a chicken on fire.
Morfran hadn’t cared. He’d knelt beside the goat, rubbing its head and whispering.
“I was once a Dark Lord,” he said, and he swore upon his mother’s thirteen graves that goat seemed to understand.
“I lopped heads off people for fun. I conquered lands I didn’t need and have never set foot in.
I corrupted a maiden destined for goodness and turned her into an evil queen with a fetish for foot torture.
I swear an oath to you, my goatly friend whom I just saved from death, that I will do no more evil in any land for the rest of my days. ”
It licked its eye, which Morfran took as an acceptance of his vow and reached out to grab the leash.
Morfran dropped his sword from his extended hand now, returning from the memory.
He was panting hard as he stared at Gueldefore.
How could he have forgotten? He’d sworn a promise to Beni that he would commit no more foul acts.
That he’d no longer kill people simply because they got on his nerves.
That he would do his best to keep his identity hidden so he could live a life of peace.
He was just about to decapitate a knight, who, as annoying as he was, was still seen as good in his newfound friends’ eyes.
“I yield,” Morfran said to the quiet silence of the courtyard. Gueldefore was gaping at him, wide-eyed. Brim’s men were shouting out in disappointment, and Hugh had stopped calling out fouls that no one was paying attention to, anyways.
“I yield,” Morfran repeated, taking a step back. He was bleeding from numerous cuts and slashes, although his body still longed to leap back into the fray. “Sir Gueldefore is the winner of this du—”
“No.” Gueldefore was back on his feet, sword gleaming red.
There was a shift in his expression, in his eyes.
He was no longer smugly angry. He was angry-angry.
“No. That isn’t everything you have. You will fight until you’re barely breathing.
You will fight until you no longer have the breath to yield. ”
It happened fast. The knight launched at Morfran, this time with a speed that belied the weight of his armor.
His sword came flashing in gray-red blurs.
Morfran blocked him, ducked a swipe that would have taken off half his scalp, and pivoted beneath the furiously advancing body of this bewildering man.
He was quick. He was skilled. He was insatiable.
Morfran couldn’t yield. He’d offended him by yielding.
What Gueldefore wanted was not just to beat him, but to humiliate him. Harm him.
“Pick up your sword!” Gueldefore shouted between slashes. “Be honorable, you rabid wolf! Fight me like you mean it!”
The sword tickled Morfran’s right side as he attempted to evade. If he’d been an inch closer it would have torn straight through his leathers and gutted him from armpit to hip bone. He couldn’t keep playing on the defensive. Gueldefore would eventually skewer him if he did.