“You think so?” Terian said, and his hand flew up in a quick motion, as though he were flinging something at Cyrus with it.
Cyrus stood back smiling grimly as Terian blinked then thrust his hand at Cyrus again. “Pick up your sword, dark knight,” Cyrus said, “and let’s truly see who will win this battle of blades.”
Terian looked around as he stooped to retrieve his blade. “Mendicant,” he said, seeing the goblin standing a distance away. “You’ve had him place a cessation spell over us.”
“Over us and everything nearby,” Cyrus said, noting that several of the bundles on the ground, officers of Sanctuary who had been sleeping were stirring now, sitting up in their bedrolls with tired eyes. He saw J’anda look at him with an openmouthed astonishment that turned into a smile. Cyrus nodded his head at the enchanter and turned back to Terian. “You tried to kill me dishonorably and failed. I give you one chance to do it in a duel and perhaps save that shredded rag you call your honor.” Cyrus held his sword upright, in front of his face. “I wish you the best of luck, because I suspect you’ll need it.”
“Luck,” Terian said with unmistakable sorrow. “Never did seem to have much of that.” He hoisted his sword above his head in a high guard, waiting for Cyrus. When Cyrus beckoned him forward, Terian attacked without warning, striking with his blade as Cyrus blocked it, knocking the red sword aside.
The camp was awakening now, the sounds of a battle echoing through the night. Cyrus heard the cries of surprise, of alarm, of his name, and he felt the warm flush that battle brought to his skin, coupled with the chill of sweat that had long since settled and grown cold from the mountain air. He tasted the embers in his mouth, the ashen desire to strike back at Terian for knocking him asunder and cursing him, and it was the bitterest thing he had ever eaten. From out of the darkness, figures strode closer, whispers were exchanged by those who knew what was happening, and Cyrus could smell fear in the air, mingled with the metal of his blade as he set it against Terian’s again and again as the dark knight raged against him.
“What’s the matter, warrior?” Terian said with fury, bringing his sword down for another attack that Cyrus blocked. “You’re not attacking me. Am I too fast for you? Were you too arrogant for your own good?” He clashed with Praelior and then drew the blades close to look at Cyrus between the locked swords. “Was this how it was with my father? Did he overmatch you until someone else had to save you?”
Cyrus pushed him back, sending Terian staggering, and then brought Praelior back to a defensive position in front of his face. “No. Your father attacked me when I was wounded and near dead. When Vara kept him from killing me,” he said, circling the dark knight as Terian watched him with smoldering eyes, “they fought for a spell, and before he could land the coup de grace on her, I stabbed him through the back.” Cyrus spun Praelior in a neat circle in front of his face. “Your father was a coward, like you, and I ended him like a coward-”
“LIAR!” Terian lunged at Cyrus, his weapon high over his head, coming down in a furious attack that sent reverberations through Cyrus’s armor from his gauntlets to his boots. “My father was a hero of the Sovereignty!” He brought the blade down again and again against Praelior, and still Cyrus repelled each blow and turned it aside. “He was the most powerful dark knight in all Arkaria! He could kill you and Vara a hundred times over!”
Cyrus batted another thrust aside and finally attacked with the speed that his sword granted him; each of Terian’s blows was slow and telegraphed, the dark knight’s rage keeping him from intelligent action. Cyrus brought his sword across Terian’s body in a slash that caught him under the pauldrons, in the armpit, and the dark knight cringed and staggered back as Cyrus pursued him. The warrior’s next attack caught him across the arm, went through the niche at his elbow, and Cyrus saw blood fountain out of the gap and splatter the ground in large drops.
“Your father was a coward and a plunderer,” Cyrus said as Terian backed away from him. “He came to Termina at the head of an army bent on destroying the city, harming her occupants, and doing so without an army to stand up for them. He did it after burning Santir, an undefended human settlement, and cutting a swath across Confederation territory without mercy or care for who they killed or whose lives they wrecked in the process.”
Cyrus brought his sword down in an overhand strike that caught Terian across the wrist that held his sword. The blade hit the dirt and fell out of his hand. Cyrus brought Praelior down again and Terian’s hand was severed, his armor broken, shattered and sundered metal over a stump that drained dark blood onto the ground as Terian clutched it with his other hand.
“Your father was a coward,” Cyrus said again, holding Praelior at Terian’s throat. Terian’s face dissolved from agony into rage as he tried to stand. Cyrus’s blade stabbed down, into the gap in his greaves and laid his knee open. Cyrus felt Praelior cut through the chain beneath and Terian screamed, writhing as Cyrus forced the tip of the sword into his leg. “He lived as a coward and died as coward, as a man who followed the orders of a coward, without regard for those he inflicted pain upon. It would appear,” Cyrus twisted his sword in Terian’s knee and the dark knight screamed in a voice loud enough to echo through the mountains, “that his character bred true in you. That Alaric-and all of the rest of us-were wrong about you. Thou art a dark knight. And thou never didst crawl out of thy father’s shadow.”
Terian was breathing heavy, but he managed to gasp out a response. “And what are you, warrior? A man who follows Alaric’s every suggestion like a lapdog? Who doesn’t think for himself but snaps to attention when someone calls you, asking for help, regardless of the rightness of their cause? At least I believed in something, in someone. You professed to be of Sanctuary too, but you left Baron Hoygraf to bleed to death in agony. So which is it, Cyrus Davidon?” Terian managed a wicked grin. “Are you the virtuous knight? Or are you like me and don’t care what it takes to get the job done, even if that means getting a little blood on your hands? What do you believe, Cyrus?”
“I believe,” Cyrus said, and leaned down, taking a knee, but keeping his sword pointed at Terian’s uncovered throat, “that I just beat you in a duel.” Terian writhed, chafing at the edge of Praelior pressed against his skin. “I believe that makes your life forfeit.” He gripped tighter at the hilt, felt the power of the sword run through him, and he hesitated. The wind picked up again and a chill ran through him. In the great emptiness within him he heard a call for him to stop-heard it, and ignored it. Cyrus could smell the blood now, the sweat running down his face, could taste it as he licked his lips, and as Terian’s eyes widened, he drove his sword into the dark knight’s throat and watched the light fade from his friend’s eyes.
Chapter 39
“That was unnecessary, Cyrus,” Curatio said, stepping out of the circle that had grown to surround them and pausing by Terian’s side. “He was humbled, defeated.” Curatio thought about it for a moment. “Well, he was defeated anyway.” A glow encompassed his hand, and he brought it down to Terian’s face. Cyrus watched the dark knight stir back to life. Blood proceeded to geyser out of his open throat until Curatio’s healing spell took hold and the wounds were mended, new skin stretching to fill the gaps rent by Cyrus’s blade as his hand was joined back to his arm. “Terian,” Curatio said, “you know what’s to happen now.”
“I won’t go,” Terian said, his eyes dull as he retched, his hand reaching up to his neck and wiping the blood from the newly knit flesh found there. “Let me loose here, in the wilderness, and I’ll make my own way.”
“And a month or a year from now, I find a blade in my back?” Cyrus turned Praelior back to rest above Terian’s face. “I think not.”