A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

This, he knew. . .

His opponent, this Georgios, had a broad forehead plastered with a sweaty crop of curly hair. He looked pleased with himself. Complacent. Erlan scoffed inwardly. Gods, hadn’t he been facing down muscle-bound muttonheads like this one since he was knee high to his father’s boot?

Georgios was stripped to the waist and wearing a kind of short skirt. To Erlan’s eye, he looked ridiculous, like a man in woman’s clothes, although his torso was anything but womanly – all hard muscle and sinew, lean as a hunting dog. His skin was already glistening with sweat.

He recalled the advice of his old spear-master, Garik. A man loses a fight more often than another wins it. In short, wait for your opponent to screw up. Erlan had seen him make a few strokes when they led him in. He had a long reach and didn’t look like he would tire easily. Even so, there was one advantage Erlan could always count on. Every man he’d ever faced had underestimated him.

The big man tossed him one of the swords. It landed at his feet in a puff of dust. He picked it up. It was an odd blade, shorter than Wrathling, but weighty, almost like a club. He made a few cuts at the air, then brushed his thumb against its edge. It was sharp as sin. Suddenly it felt like an age since he had stood in a training circle, while this brawny bastard looked like he lived there every day of the year. For a second, his stomach felt hollow, his ankle throbbed, his heart quickened, and then Arbasdos called them to guard.

‘Fight!’ The breath was hardly past his lips before Georgios lunged, his point darting up at Erlan’s throat. Erlan pivoted off his right foot and swung clear and the Byzantine’s momentum carried him past. He was fast but too heavy, too slow to change direction. Erlan could have split the man’s spine right there but instead he smacked his buttocks with the flat of his sword as he went lurching past. Georgios spun, fury burning in his eyes. Erlan laughed. ‘Dress like a woman, get slapped like a whore,’ he growled in Norse but no one understood him.

Georgios muttered his own curses in Greek. But Erlan thought he had the man figured. His sword arm was accurate but too strong for his legs. This offered many ways to throw him off balance. That the general couldn’t exploit this told Erlan something about him, too.

He let Georgios get to his feet, allowed him a few more strokes, shifting his weight one way, then the other, small, tight movements on the ball of his right foot, breathing steady. Now and then he parried the other blade with his own to the ring of steel, but the hardest blows went sweeping harmlessly by. Only when he was sure of the man did he make his own move. He scuffed right and ducked low, inviting a killing blow from up high. Sure enough, Georgios obliged, slashing down at Erlan’s left shoulder.

Erlan shoved hard off his right foot, springing under the falling blade to come up behind the Byzantine’s sword arm. He snatched a fistful of hair and pulled backwards, then sank his teeth into the exposed cords of muscle. Georgios roared in agony, whaling his sword-arm uselessly, but Erlan already had his blade to the man’s throat. He tasted bloody iron, and victory. If he wanted, he could finish the man off in a heartbeat, and it was damn tempting. Although that would win him few friends here. He had made his point. He was about to shove his opponent away when his groin exploded with pain and a wall of bone slammed into his nose. He staggered back, blinded by the stars swimming in his skull, then his leg gave way as Georgios crushed his ankle under a hobnailed sandal. He went down like a sack of manure, sprawling in the dust and cracking his jaw on the paving beneath. The sword skidded away and came to rest at the general’s feet. The air was filled with laughter.

They were laughing at him. These bastards were laughing. He rolled onto his back and saw a walkway above the courtyard crowded with other guards looking on. No doubt they thought this was good sport. They were laughing too. And suddenly it was no longer their laughter but the laughter of the gods, of the Norns, of the Witch King who’d cursed his blood; of Saldas, of Vargalf, of Ramedios, of every fucker who had ever stood in his way. He remembered Inga and Kai and Bodvar and Adalrik and Leikr and Aska and his father. . . and Lilla. All that he had lost. And rage bloomed inside him, wave after wave of it, tumbling over itself into an eruption like the fire-mountains of old. He got to his feet. Arbasdos’s smile curdled into a sneer and he kicked the sword towards him. ‘Again!’

Erlan snatched the hilt and flung himself back into the fight. He cut and stabbed, he gouged and punched. Hack, slash, snarl. He was the Aurvandil. Hadn’t he cut his way out of the pits of Hel, hadn’t he carved a swathe through briars of steel and flesh, hadn’t he swum through an ocean of blood? But he was still here, wasn’t he?

Georgios fell back in the face of his fury, shocked at the change in intensity, slow to match it. But at length he rallied and the fight pitched into the lowest, dirtiest, meanest of brawls. Erlan took cuts and blows on his body until suddenly there was his chance. The dust shifted under Georgios’s hobnailed sole, his balance faltered, Erlan slammed his foot into his groin. The Byzantine howled and doubled over. Erlan’s knee lifted to strike his nose and the bone crumpled. Georgios fell back and Erlan was on him like a wolf, beating his face with the pommel of