Chapter Fourteen #2
He shook it off. Skinned the Huldu noble a grin, laid the McCulloch on the ground.
He shouldered his way out of his coat, laid that beside the gun; it was only going to slow him down.
Caress of cool night air through the loose shirt he wore beneath.
The trench knife was shoved unsheathed into his belt, the Slaven family sgian dubh thrust into the top of his right boot.
He knelt and pulled the ancestral weapon, took it in a blade-down grip.
For one poignant breath, he remembered the moment his father handed it to him, the day he left for the Channel and a troop transport across to the front.
He thrust the memory down, no time for that now, slipped the fingers of his left hand into the guard loops of the trench knife, and pulled the weapon free.
He faced Stordalen, poignard and rapier style, like some musketeer hero out of a Dumas tale.
He jerked his chin at the Fae. “Come ahead! Let’s see what you’ve got, pixie!”
Stordalen drew in breath, an eerie moan. At its peak, abruptly, he leapt forward, fangs bared, screaming, slashing right to left with the saemdil blade.
“For the Final Isles!”
Duncan flinched back. He knew better than to try and match the Huldu’s speed this early in the duel. The Fae were mercurial, quick to anger, cobra swift. No weakness there at all.
But—
They were instinctively flamboyant, too.
The blade came flailing back, blue glint, the slash reversed.
Predictable. Flinch back again, then dodge the reach of the blade again and there—Stordalen, frustrated, off balance, raising the knife now on high—Duncan kicked out, hard.
Stomped full force, into the Huldu’s left thigh.
His opponent staggered, snarling, lost the stroke.
Came straight back in, but clumsy this time, the saemdil knife chopping downward.
Duncan threw up his left arm to block, met the Huldu’s arm with a force that stung his own forearm, drove back the blow.
In close, he hooked with the sgian dubh, tried for the eyes.
Stordalen threw a lightning block of his own, snagged Duncan’s right hand at the wrist, twisted the blow away.
They locked up—trial of strength the human had no way to win.
Duncan leaned harder into the clinch for a beat, then yanked his arm abruptly back, the way Stordalen wanted it to go.
The Huldu stumbled with the sudden give, side of the face offered.
Duncan set his neck, headbutted Stordalen full force in the temple and cheek.
Stordalen yelped, flung the human bodily away from him. Duncan flew back with the force of it, barely stayed on his feet.
Stordalen swayed a moment, shook his head groggily.
“Had enough?” Duncan spat. “Not up to much, these Fae from the Final Isles, are you?”
The taunt was calculated, tribal, in front of witnesses. It could not go unanswered. Snake-strike swift, Stordalen rushed him.
Far too fast for another kick—Duncan blocked low with his arm, was slow.
The saemdil blade got partway past, licked his ribs.
Hot line of fire, sudden seep of blood. Aye, well, fucking live with it—the sgian dubh hooked in again, gouged a thin line across Stordalen’s chest. Where the steel touched flesh, it smoked and flared like a lit fuse.
The Huldu howled, twisted away—Duncan came up from the block with the trench knife, sliced his opponent across the right arm with a jubilant yell.
More dazzling fuse-burn flare, more smoke and smolder.
Stordalen screamed and whipped his arm free, was turned almost side-on now.
Duncan yelled again, stomped for the nearest knee.
He felt it connect, heard Stordalen grunt with the pain. On a human, the joint would likely have popped, but the Fae were simply better built. Stordalen staggered, did not go down—
Fuck!
—lashed clumsily sideways at the human instead.
This time, getting out of the way was easy.
Duncan kicked out again as Stordalen went stumbling past, put a boot into the Huldu’s arse, knocked him forward almost to falling.
Not much force to it, there wasn’t time, but the ignominy must have burned deeper than the iron cuts Duncan had already inflicted.
Stordalen swung about, face distorted with fury, involuntary scraps of shape-shift, bone deep transformative instincts boiling up, urge to remold features, fangs, the mouth gaping wider, teeth sharpening, lengthening past anything that could ever pretend to be human—
Duncan rallied, panting. Raised both arms to guard.
“Come on!” he screamed.
The Huldu lunged—as fast as anything Stordalen had so far done, but it was wild with rage, erratic, prone to ill luck and maybe, just maybe, a certain ribald witch’s thumb in the balance…
Duncan flinched into the block, slipped sideways, chest into the move, solid body blow. Slam down with his arm, keep the blade at bay. He felt the tip of the saemdil knife skip across his ribs again—
Ignored it again—
Hook slashed again with the sgian dubh, this time head height.
The blow landed lucky, opened a wide, coruscating wound across the Huldu’s forehead, spilled fragrant blood in a curtain down Stordalen’s face.
Blinded him. But Duncan was not done. His elbow scythed in behind the knife, hard into Stordalen’s temple.
Some shit still going on with that saemdil blade—all artifice and elegance lost, the enraged Huldu shrilling, trying to batter the weapon up through Duncan’s block with gravity against him…
And Duncan went to work with the sgian dubh.
Into neck, and throat, and throat, and chest, and belly, and belly, and chest—a savage, indiscriminate volley of blows, machine gun speed, each stab and twist a detonation of greenish fire and roiling smoke and fresh shrieks from the Fae as it hit.
It was butchery, sheer thuggish desperation given flesh, the hand-to-hand trench savagery of France and Flanders.
A tight fury that Stordalen could not, in his languid centuries of life, have known, could not begin to understand.
For the Huldu, the duel was ritual and form, courage and honor, a working demonstration of thousand-year-warrior origins and lineage, a cold, structured mastery of weapons and will before peers and witness.
In the chaotic confines and press of one overrun trench after another at the Somme, Duncan had learned a different warrior’s lesson.
Close in, close down, swarm and batter, hurt and damage, until there is no more damage to be done. Field-gray uniformed bodies prone and prostrate at your feet, begging or dead. You don’t stop, you don’t measure, you don’t listen, or feel, or care, you don’t stop.
You take that trench.
Eye to eye with Stordalen, he tore smoldering ruin into the Fae’s flesh with the sgian dubh, felt the Huldu weaken and the saemdil blade fall away.
He loosened his blocking arm, smashed upward with the spiked knuckle-duster guard of the trench knife, hit Stordalen under the jaw, sent him crashing to the ground.
Dropped and straddled him.
Slashed his throat open with the trench knife, so deep he felt the edge of the blade catch on the spine.
Threw back his head and howled at the watching trees.
—
Not done yet, Duncan.
The flare from the wound in Stordalen’s throat had Duncan part blinded; blotchy patches of green swam across his vision.
He tried to blink it out of his eyes, made out horrified Fae faces staring at him from the margins of the arena.
His shirt was plastered to his left side—blood seep from the wounds across his ribs.
He grimaced, suddenly aware of the damage and the cold night air on his opened flesh.
Stealthy trickle, all the way down into his waistband—it didn’t feel too bad, but it’d need looked at.
Later.
He pegged the sgian dubh in the dirt at the dead Huldu’s shoulder, got stiffly off the body.
He swapped the trench knife to his right hand, raised it high, brought it down hard into the rib cage.
Flare of fire at the wound, but more muted now in the dying flesh.
He sawed downward hard, felt ribs shearing and snapping apart before the blade like the bones on a malnourished chicken.
He reached into the wound he’d made, wrenched the severed ribs upward in the wound with his free hand. Reached deeper inside.
Seized the still-warm heart, dragged it out in his fist.
Pipes and all manner of clinging tissue like bloodied muslin came with it. He sliced it all impatiently away, eyes slitted against the glare it made.
Crammed the heart into his mouth and bit down.
They say Arthur managed it once—
Tough and knotty under slick, he had to dig in his nails to hold it. Warm blood sliding past the chunk in his teeth, down his throat. He tried not to retch, tore a morsel loose…
—but then again, he’s a myth, and so is that story.
He chewed, over and over, for what seemed like an eternity, while his gorge tried repeatedly to heave itself all the way up his gullet.
There was an awful, nameless taste in his mouth, a ringing in his ears.
Finally, he swallowed some macerated fragments.
Then some more. Gagging a little as muscle strands caught in his throat.
He looked up—saw the Fae still gathered, peering at him like frightened children. A grin plastered itself across his face. He spat out blood and tissue.
“The fuck are you looking at?” he roared.
And—in the same instant—felt something give.
Intimate, unbalancing—like the crack of a rotten tree root giving underfoot as you step, the little plunge. Like a decayed tooth come finally free of the gum.
And a sudden clearing in his head with the snap, sense of clouds coming loose of the sun behind him and the brightening of everything as they leave…
The curse, lifting.