Chapter 33 | Skartovius
Skartovius
My blade pitches forward past Lukain’s guard. He’s already twisting, parrying my sword so it bounces high, which I expected, the idiot.
Falling into a crouch, I’m half my height in a single breath, and Lukain’s sword is sailing over my head in the next breath.
I bring my parried sword low from the air, nicking my half-brother in the side of the calf, drawing a spurt of blood onto the mat. Lukain hisses and flutters back on his heels, swishing his sword around in case I try charging.
I don’t charge, however. I stand and step back so we can regain our foundations, slashing his blood off the tip of my sword.
The mat in the main Firehold sparring room, backlit by a flickering hearth fire, has been stained by our blood more times than I can count over the past few weeks.
More often his blood than mine, of course.
The audience surrounding the square pit—fourteen Grimsons varying in age from younglings to seasoned veterans—give a polite clap as we disengage.
It’s a lesser showing than usual, and I’m not sure why.
They also don’t seem as animated, perhaps because they’ve seen this fight play out nightly, and usually end the same way.
The people love an underdog story, sure, but I’m not willing to give them one. The Damned can fuck themselves if they think I’m going to go easy on my little brother, all for the sake of some back-slaps and smiles.
“Watch where your feet land when you twist like that, you fucking laggard,” I spit at Lukain across the way.
He bares his fangs in a snarl. “Worry about your own fucking stance, you stiff board.”
“Limber enough to duck under your sloppy swing, wasn’t I?”
Now the audience lets out “Oohs,” because they oh-so-love to hear us lambasting each other. If there’s one thing they enjoy more than fine swordplay, it’s sharp wordplay.
So, we put on a bit of a show. As usual. Except there’s nothing scripted or nice about our words. We won’t go hugging it out behind closed doors after this, because the vitriol in our voices is real.
Lukain Pierken still hates me because of my lie, and I’ve lost respect for him because he’s holding onto it so dearly. The fickle prick, acting like he’s the only man who has ever struggled in this world.
Alas, we’ve found a way to work together for Seph’s sake, even if it means trying to rip each other’s heads off.
The Damned and Truehearts know I wouldn’t be able to live if she never fucked me again, as she alluded to after screwing Palacia and warning us to get our heads on right.
My immortality can get bent if it means never being inside my little temptress again.
She pushed her temptation one step too far and ended up with that gnome-sized monster stretching her pu—
“I don’t even have my cloak to use as a distraction,” I spout off, desperate to speak words so I can shut my traitorous brain off. How can I, a nobleblood of immense stature, ever be jealous of a skinny interfolk plaything like Palacia?
I don’t let my mind finish off the thought, because it’s rhetorical: I know how. Palacia managed to get close to my woman in a way I haven’t been able to in months now.
On one hand, it fuels my frustrations, envy, and sharpens my battle skills because that’s the only thing on which I can focus. On the other hand, it pisses me off in a way that has me ready to break.
“Will you shut the fuck up about your rancid, gaudy cloak already? No one cares!” Lukain snorts, waving his sword around. “It’s in tatters. Like you’re about to be. Maybe you shouldn’t have abandoned it on the Floorboards.”
My fine eyebrows arch. “On the Floor . . . what? The hells is that? Doesn’t even make sense—”
Lukain charges headlong, waylaying into me before I can finish. I see his trick now, to confuse or distract me, but he’s not swift enough to execute his plan.
Our blades whirl and clang off one another, sending sparks and bone-jarring rasps through the Firehold. He falls into a three-part pattern that’s imminently foreseeable, and I easily smack his sword away with flicks of my wrist.
Clang—clink—shlink.
The last one pitches him left, and I riposte, falling into my own jabbing rhythm that keeps him on the back foot. He curses under his breath, angry at himself for pushing too hard with his momentum and now being forced back.
My attacks are firm, not meant to wound but to keep him honest. I need him to anticipate where my next attacks will come, so when I do change the script, he’s floundering to keep up.
Swordfighting is a game board. We each have pieces at our disposal—lesser fighters have fewer pieces to work with.
The game isn’t about overwhelming your opponent with force.
It’s about tricking them into a false sense of security and comfort and then ambushing them when they least expect it.
That’s always how I’ve fought, and it’s a tenet I live by.
The game is afoot. It’s quite good when I’m on the rider’s bench with the whip, dictating the flow and rhythm of the back and forth. My onslaught is measured, not too flashy, enough to keep Lukain centered.
Which is precisely when I widen my attacks, veering left and right of his guard, causing him to throw his arms out a little further to parry each one or else get cut in the shoulders and sides.
He throws a few strikes of his own in between mine, more defensive measures than anything so he can catch his breath, and then he’s back on defense.
The swell of the audience is rising. I feel the tension in their unified breaths, expecting the big moment to come. The moment where one of us will bleed and curse, and the other will laugh at them, victorious, and talk about how shitty of a fighter they are.
It’s all healthy competition, in my mind.
So far, I’ve been the one laughing after every bout, for a month straight.
Lukain doesn’t have the tenacity, the brain cells, or perhaps the superior speed, that is required to defeat a vampire of my caliber in a swordfight.
The sooner he realizes a dhampir can’t best a vampire, the sooner he can give up trying.
I’ll enjoy beating him down and breaking him until he does.
My finishing strike will come in seven moves. I see it now, playing out as our meeting swords clash louder and louder, our precise strikes become more frenzied and hurried. Our blades begin to blur.
I’m spinning now, which is move one—and then feinting to spin the other way while bringing my stabbing sword low—step two.
Then I’ll skitter back, force him to engage to close my guard, since I have a longer reach than him thanks to my fencing position, which will trick him into watching my sword rise up to meet his chest. That’s three and four.
By move five, he’s locked in my trap, and with a simple flick of my wrist I’ll push his blade out, six, dash forward so our chests nearly meet, seven, and my sword will either take him in the stomach or the side. I haven’t decided yet.
I fall into step three, backpedaling, and he follows, as predicted. A smirk tilts my lips, angering him, which was precisely what I needed to do for him to veer his eyes to my rising sword—
Pain lances through my mind. Steps four through seven swiftly collapse in a brain-numbing jar of sensations I’ve never felt before.
My smug smile twists away, lips parting, and I gasp a ragged sound, stumbling back. My brow threads and I glance down to see where he’s struck me, but he hasn’t. His sword is right where I need it to be.
But my tactical mind isn’t where I need it to be. Blinking wildly, I take a step back—
And that’s when pain caused from steel mixes with the psychic onslaught I’m facing. I wince, turning my gasp into a groan, and the fight goes out of me.
I’m on my knees before I can blink, stare down for a second time, and find the tip of Lukain’s sword lodged in my belly. That will take time to heal, I consider.
My thoughts go adrift, like a determined longship sluicing narrowly through the waves, thrown off-course by a sudden tsunami. The waves crash against my mind and I hear a distant thud and rattle as my sword clatters out of my hand on the mat.
I look up as reality settles in that I’ve been bested. The applause and cheering from the Grimsons audience is louder than it’s been all evening, funneling in from my foggy, hazy mind.
Blinking in confusion at Lukain, I tilt my head.
His visage is caught in a smug state of triumph, smiling down at me, soaking up his hard-fought victory.
But then it changes. There must be something on my face he sees, because his expression twists into one of . . . concern, perhaps? Worry?
“Brother? Are you all right?”
I choke a sound. Clear my throat. Try again, but my blackened heart is humming wildly in my chest. It’s not supposed to ever beat this loudly.
Vampires don’t circulate blood like humans do.
It’s a different process, keeping our bodies cooled like reptiles except when we’re fucking or fighting—and I’ve made sure to train my body to remain cool even during those moments.
So what’s fucking wrong?
Amid the cheering Grimsons and Grimdaughters, who are starting to crowd the mat now, Lukain kneels in front of me. His voice lowers so only I can hear it, and he cups a hand behind my neck. “Skartovius, can you hear me? What’s—”
I snarl and slap his hand and arm away, not wishing for any pity or concern from my weak, half-human brother. Staggering to my feet, I put on a mask of indifference, proclaiming so all the watchers can hear, “There’s a first for everything, brother. I suppose c-congratulations are in order.”
My voice stutters—a mortifying moment—and I shrug him away and push through the audience crowding us. The stuffiness, the swell, I’m starting to sweat and I don’t know why.
It’s only when I’m out of the sparring room, out of the press of bodies and warmth, that I can begin to think straight. I realize whatever happened to me came directly from my mind. Or my soul.
It’s clear something is abruptly missing inside there, and the effect was so sudden and sharp, it caused me to falter mid-combat.
I don’t have to reach too far into the shadowy recesses of my mind to figure out what’s missing. With a simple sweep of my probing neurons and synapses, I realize what is causing such a violent, worrying, visceral reaction. A thunderstorm inside me.
For the first time in seventy years, my connection with my bloodthrall, Garroway Kuffich, has been severed absolutely.
The thread connecting my blood to Garroway’s had suffered for months now. Years even, since we first tasted Sephania’s Loreblood. It has been a source of great trepidation, concern, and agony for me.
Yet it’s never been like this.
This is . . . different. Cavernous. Yawning. A hole in my soul that wasn’t there before—right around the place where Lukain stabbed me in the belly. That’s still bleeding, too, and the wound isn’t particularly shadow, though I couldn’t be bothered less by it.
I feel no physical pain. No, this is spiritual. This is all-encompassing and complete. It’s a deep, digging depression I haven’t felt since I was that thirty-year-old man getting turned by Kavorin Mortis along with my mother Alacine.
There’s emotion inside me—emotions I haven’t felt in just as long. Roiling and rocking and battering against my ribs and heart, like an unseen force wants to rip out my insides and put them outside to freeze in the wintry chill.
That’s what it is: winter. A steep, sharp winter with endless blackness and bleakness.
There’s no light on the fringes of this dark, snowy forest. Only a downward spiral I can’t seem to shake, no matter how far I walk or how quickly I go.
Deeper and deeper into the crevice of a cave that I’m hoping I can use to hide.
An hour after the initial shock, my thoughts aren’t even making sense at this point. I’m walking slack-jawed, like a damned gods-touched fool.
I don’t know where I’ve walked to—somewhere underground, which is obvious by the curved stone ceiling over my head—though I’m not sure if I’m in the Firehold or somewhere unaffiliated with the Grimsons, deeper in the subterranean network of Nuhav’s underground.
During my blind, confusing march through the web-like warrens of the labyrinth, I find a room. Well, it can’t be called a room. It’s a shallow cave dwelling gashed in from the side of the narrow corridor. A dark opening for me to stand inside and ponder my relevance and future.
There’s a roughly hewn protrusion of stone near the back of the shallow cave. Almost like a bench, at chest height. I put my hands on the craggy rock and squeeze tightly. I can feel the porous rock biting into my palms. I can’t feel much else.
It’s there that I sink my head. My chin dips to my chest. My auburn hair flutters around my face, long and thick and hiding my pale, elegant features.
It’s a good thing it hides my features, too.
Because for the first time in over a century, I begin to weep.