Stay invisible, Frakir. When I turn and snap my wrist, let go. Stick to him when you hit, find your way to the throat. You know what to do when you get there.
Right, boss, she replied.
“Draw your blade and turn, Merle.”
“Doesn’t sound too sporting to me, Borel,” I replied.
“You dare to accuse me of anything less than propriety?” he said.
“Hard to tell when I can’t see what you’re up to,” I answered.
“Then draw your weapon and turn around.”
“I’m turning,” I said. “But I’m not touching the thing.”
I turned quickly, snapping my left wrist, feeling Frakir depart. As I did, my feet went out from under me. I’d moved too fast on a very smooth patch of ice. Catching myself, I felt a shadow drift into place before me. When I looked up, I beheld the point of Borel’s blade, about six inches from my right eye.
“Rise slowly,” he said, and I did. “Draw your weapon now,” he ordered.
“And if I refuse?” I inquired, trying to buy time.
“You will prove yourself unworthy to be considered.a gentleman, and I will act accordingly.”
“By attacking me anyway?” I asked.
“The rules permit this,” he said.
“Shove your rules,” I replied, crossing my right foot behind my left and springing backward as I drew my blade and let it fall into a guard position.
He was on me in an instant. I continued my retreat, backing past the big slab of ice from behind which he had appeared. I had no desire to stand and trade techniques with him, especially now that I could see the speed of those attacks. Parrying them took a lot less effort while I was backing off:
My blade did not feel quite right, however, and as I scanned it quickly I saw why. It was not my weapon.
In the glittering light from the trail, bounced off the ice, I saw the swirling inlay along part of the blade: There was only one weapon like this that I knew of, and I had only just seen it recently, in what might have been my father’s hand. It was Grayswandir that moved before me. I felt myself smile at the irony. This was the weapon which had slain the real Lord Borel.
“You smile at your own cowardice?” he asked. “Stand and fight, bastard!”
As if in answer to his suggestion, I felt my rearward movement arrested. I was not run through when I ventured a quick downward glance, however, for I realized from his expression that something similar had happened to my attacker.
Our ankles had been seized by several of those hands which extended up through the ice, holding us firmly in place. And this made it Borel’s turn to smile, for though he could not lunge, I could no longer retreat. Which meant-
His blade flashed forward, and I parried in quarte, attacked in sixte.
He parried and feinted. Then quarte again, and the next attack. Riposte.
Parry sixte- No, that was a feint. Catch him in four. Feint. Feint again.
Hit-
Something white and hard passed over his shoulder and struck my forehead. I fell back, though the grasping hands kept me from collapsing completely. Good thing I sagged, actually, or his thrust might have punctured my liver. My reflexes or some touch of the magic I’ve heard may dwell in Grayswandir threw my arm forward as my knees buckled. I felt the blade strike something, though I was not even looking in that direction, and I heard Borel grunt surprisedly, then utter an oath. I heard Jurt mouthing an oath of his own about then, too. He was out of my line of sight.
Then came a bright flash, even as I flexed my legs, stabilizing, parried a head cut, and began rising. I saw then that I had succeeded in cutting Borel’s forearm, and fire spurted fountainlike from the wound. His body began to glow, his lower outline to blur.
“It was by no skill you bested me!” he cried.
I shrugged.
“It isn’t the Winter Olympics either,” I told him.
He changed his grip on his blade, drew back his arm, and hurled the weapon at me-right before he dissolved into a tower of sparks and was drawn upward and vanished above.