Vol.7, Ch.5, P.4
Nay—“lunge” didn’t cut it. True to form, the levin rather flashed for a blink, and was gone in another, thrumming the air with the thunder of its wake. But within the space it’d stabbed through, there was no flesh to be found, for in the nick of time, I’d lurched out of the levin’s way.
Emilie winced. A sweat was breaking over her brow, but upon me her eyes were set and stern. Frustration flickered in them withal: likely was she diluting her levin to stun me instead than roast me alive. But too bad: it was a miss.
“…Gh!”
Biting a lip, Emilie raised her silver tip again. From it spilt a piercing light, and hither thence streaked another strand of levin. But having already started to step aside, I left the attack to pass through and pelt some yonder wall behind.
More frustration mounted on Emilie’s mien. But try as she might, she’d only miss again. No matter the fleetness of her levin, so long as it dared a direction, I had but to anticipate and dodge before the discharge. Indeed, with a dash of derring-do, it wasn’t so difficult to flee from Emilie’s aim.
“Rolf…!” she fretted, her face furrowed still. But straightway I sprang. And gaining her swift, I swung unto Emilie the sword of soot. “Agh!?” she yelped, and with a clang! her bright brand fumbled and fell to the floor. And having touched the blade of black, the levin in the knightly weapon dispersed altogether, and the grand foyer faded back into flame and fuming gloom.
Emilie gasped, staggering to her knees as I stood over her. But then the fires about all swayed, and a whoosh! wuthered into my ears—Raakel’s maul had come again to murder. Immediately I leapt aside, missing the assault, before standing ready to resume our feud.
“Be damn’d if e’er I let ye cut me mareschal,” Raakel said, stepping afront her confounded friend.
“Naught was further from my mind,” I assured her.
And that was no lie. I held no hostility for Emilie. She’d only intended to pacify a participant to the day’s parley, and requiting that with a cruel blow would’ve been unjust.
Then, it was my turn to bite the lip. I’d come this far; who was I to seek excuses for staying the sword?
“No daydreamin’, muscle-pate!” shouted Raakel.
And before I knew it, the hammer-dame was upon me, heaving hither a flurry of swings, each as exact as it was savage. But with the soot-steel dashing to the defence, I bitterly bore the brunt.
Cleng! Clang! Two clashes, three. The shock of them shook my very bones. And after fending the fourth, I fired a thrust at Raakel’s open shoulder. But yet again, her senses won. With a subtle twist of the torso, she eluded the lunging steel, before loosing from below another blurring bludgeon.
“Gngh!” I grunted, pivoting promptly and leaping away, lest even the Owlcrane’s odyl deal me another blow. And safely disposed to a new distance, I stood in stance once more.
Inly I grated. Things weren’t looking any brighter: I’d thought to attack when my foe was too much amidst her own, when even her unworldly senses could not save her. Alas.
“Hahah!” cackled Raakel. Thump-thump went her sabatons as she ambled boldly hither. And grinning against the glow of the flames, even more so like a fell griffin she appeared, to forget that such birds’ve got no beak to beam with. “Too bad, ey!” mocked the hammer-dame. “This li’l tussle might’ve stop’d by now, had Emilie gone fer me instead!”
Awfully friend-like of her to rub that in. But there it is: with that ring raying bright in her finger, Raakel could not be touched by even her mareschal’s levin, much less the sword that loosed it. In the end, Emilie was all but powerless to stop us.
But never mind that for now. I had to find some way, any way at all, to defy those fey senses. I was practically an open book to Raakel. On any other day, I should defer to calm and careful study of my foe, after finding the old feint-and-finish futile. Yet, wasn’t that precisely what’d failed me just now? Nay, I needed something different, something unfair… or foolish, maybe? A trap dared at no small danger? That’s decided, then. Dawdling would only see me dead, at any rate.
Bolting asudden, I fled aback to an arcade that ran along the foyer walls, before slipping behind one of its columns.
“Oh! Off runs the rat!” echoed Raakel’s mocking. “Come! Now’s no time fer tinklin’ yer trousers yellow, me soppy li’l swain!”
Despite her taunting, Raakel seemed in no rush to give chase. Her footfalls, as I heard them, were proud and easy as ever. I, meanwhile, was anything but, as I shot out of covert and vaulted straight into a particularly livid lawn of flames that blazed nearby.
This was intended. With Dita’s direbear leathers shielding me from the heat, I stood hardly harmed amidst the moiling fires—which blinded Raakel as I thence sallied unto her in assault.
“Egh!?” she moaned, trying to glean from the glaring flames the blackness now bent upon her flesh. Slow to ensue might the threat appear in her eyes, but that ought help little if she cannot focus upon it to begin with. And so, even as I felt the fires singeing the ends of my hairs, I threw myself into the attack, and assayed another stab of steel.
—Shhrrt!
But jerking in place, Raakel avoided the thrust. But as she swivelled, so did blood spit and stain the floor red: my blade had bitten her upper arm as it passed by.
“Shite!” she shrieked as she whisked herself away. “Still not ’nough, is it!?” And as she now stood and seethed, Raakel’s former smile faded into an indignant frown. Then, putting to breast a tight right hand, she began to indue even more odyl into that ring of hers.
“Not so fast!” I cried, dashing doggedly after her and commencing a sweeping cut. But right as the blade was about to land, her ring roared with a light more white and whelming than any it’d shown before. And in concert, the crimson in Raakel’s eyes, too, then teemed with new fire.
At that instant, she shrank whence she stood by a mere half-step, leaving my blade to miss her bosom by a finger’s breadth. And as it skimmed by, so did I glimpse Raakel’s gaze following my weapon easily as though it were a slow and witless worm. The ring had wrought again its wonders; Raakel could now track even a sword tip at the height of its haste.
“Ryaahh!!” she next bellowed, as she brandished back at me a stone-smashing swing. But I, having bewared it, managed to withdraw the soot-steel for a timely defence. And rather than bear its entire brunt, I let the maul fling me further aback as I bounded in retreat. And thudding as I landed, I lifted the soot-steel to readiness.
Raakel’s aspect puckered most unhappily. “Blummin’ gadfly…” she rasped at me. “Still… still I can’t squash ye dead.”
“A compliment, that?” I quipped as I panted. “Thanks. It’s more than your Deiva’s ever given me, at least.”
The Owlcrane grimly smirked and chuckled. “We might’ve been mates, the both o’ us, an’ makin’ merry right this moment… had ye not cheated Yoná like ye’ve done,” she reflected. And then her mirth flattened, and her voice grew hoarse. “Why… why’d it ’ave to be you!?”
Raakel… ever the choirgirl in the church of Strength she was. Yes, had I been graced with odyl, and so swung my sword alongside the Owlcranes, then likely would I long have earnt Raakel’s respect and society. But things hadn’t at all fallen out that way. Hence was the hammer-dame left to rue and glower upon the traitor afore her. And her figure as she did so, framed by smoke and flame, was terrible to behold.
“Ye ought’ve crawl’d back after growin’ ’em battle-ballocks,” Raakel rasped on. “But no! An’ even when Emilie call’d, still no!”
There, a little ways away, at the corner of my eye, was a seemingly recomposed Emilie. She was standing now and staring hither. But unlike Raakel’s, hers was a look of bewilderment and woe.
“Crawl back to what? The swamp of you foul, two-faced toads?” I countered. “No thanks.”
“Rot-arse, ye…!” hissed Raakel.
Emilie meanwhile painfully furrowed from beyond the flames. I felt sorry she had to hear that. I truly did. But this was the battlefield. If it could save me and send me home in safety, then I would assay any stratagem—even a taunt that salts our old wounds. And to judge by the rage Raakel next flew into, it seemed a success.
“Draahh!!” the Owlcrane screamed, exploding into motion. A shame her hammercraft hadn’t gone the way of her composure, however; for as Raakel careered close, her weapon swung from an unsavoury angle. No boon from her Sacrāmentum this was. Raakel’d ever got a knack for knocking things square and true; a style, an innate sense, as marvelous as it was savage—not unlike a certain Sig that I knew.
But truth to tell, Raakel could scarce compare to the likes of him. Even with that circle shining on her finger, I wager she’d be but a chewing bone for that rabid firebrand. And luckily for me, he was also my frequent sparring partner.
Thus soundly prepared, I forsook both evasion and defence. And countering more quickly than the cudgel now coming my way, I landed a cut across Raakel’s bosom.
“Khwagh!?” she yelped.
No—too shallow! I was sure that would finish the fight, but the ring proved more potent than I’d imagined; for Raakel, at a hair’s breadth away from death, had halted her hammer, bent nimbly back, and missed the full brunt of my blade.
“Raakel!!” Emilie cried after her, by which point my foe had already flown away to safety. And there, the Owlcrane put a palm to her breastplate, now drawn across which was a line drooling redly.
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