A moment of emotional stalemate seemed to pass between them. Then Ayt’s jade aura lit with the violence of an exploding star, just as a surge of adrenaline and odd elation caught feverish hold of Shae’s brain. Ayt came at her with weapon upraised and lips curled back, and with a wild cry of effort, Shae flew Light at her, blade slicing across in a deadly horizontal blur.
It became difficult for anyone watching the contest to follow the movement of the opposing moon blades as the duelists sent them singing against each other, seeking open angles, striving with equal ferocity to connect metal with flesh. Spectators murmured in alarm and scrambled to the edge of the lawn to make more space for the fighters as they raged across the field. Shae’s reality telescoped to the desperate purity of the fight. Her conscious mind all but shut down; only Perception, training, and reflexes could possibly save her from the onslaught. She saw Ayt’s face contort in a snarl of impatience as she lashed out with a flurry of darting, unpredictable slashes meant to overwhelm and confuse her opponent’s sense of both sight and Perception. Cuts rained down on Shae’s arms and torso; her Steel trembled under the strain of constant flexing and her lungs heaved like bellows, scalded with exertion. She sensed rather than saw the impending killing blow—an upward thrust that would pierce the hollow of her throat. Instead of blocking with her own blade, she threw a tight Deflection, just enough to shift Ayt’s aim; the stab passed inches from her left cheek as her own blade lashed out for her enemy’s neck.
Ayt barely twisted away from the lethal maneuver; Shae pressed the attack with a quick upward slash, and a bloody gash opened across the side of Ayt’s head, bisecting her left ear and taking half of it clean off.
Shae heard the collective intake of breath from the watching crowd a split second before she Perceived her opponent’s pain and rage. A slashed ear was a minor injury compared to the killing blow Shae had intended, but there are few things in Kekonese culture more symbolic than a missing ear. Ayt touched the blood on the side of her face in disbelief. For a fraction of a second, Shae was equally astonished. Some part of her had not expected Ayt to be a mere mortal, a woman of flesh and blood like herself, someone who would bleed if cut, someone who could be killed—and then she snapped back to her senses. She was tiring rapidly and could not keep fighting like this much longer; these brief seconds while Ayt was unbalanced—she had to take immediate advantage of them, win while she had the chance.
Shae sidestepped and committed to the momentary opening, throwing her weight into a cleaving, decapitating strike. Far from still being distracted by her superficial injury, Ayt seemed to have been anticipating the move; she shifted her position and met the attack head-on, slamming her own blade into the path of Shae’s weapon with so much force that Shae felt the impact reverberate through her frame and clatter into her teeth. For an instant, they were both rooted in the concussion of the blow. Ayt’s roaring jade aura crashed over Shae like a tidal wave; the churn of their desperately grappling energies filled every bit of her Perception. Faster than a striking cobra, Ayt’s left hand shot out and seized Shae’s sword hand, crushing down on the meat of her thumb in a grip of extraordinary Strength. With a twist, she forced Shae’s weapon downward and vertical, and with Steeled forearm, knocked the blade out of her opponent’s weakened grip. It happened in less than a second: Shae’s moon blade went flying, and Ayt sliced across with her own weapon, snarling as she threw Strength into a disemboweling cut.
Shae Steeled for all her life was worth. It was not fast or hard enough; pain lanced across her abdomen like flame along a line of blasting powder. A sudden hot wetness flowed down the front of her pants as if her bladder had given out all at once. When she looked down, she saw blood running down her legs as if a waterfall faucet had opened up above her navel.
She felt faint; the reality of impending death emptied her mind. Time elongated and turned the world strangely still. In the periphery of her Perception, she sensed Ayt Mada’s murderous triumph descending along with the executioner’s swing of her blade. With every particle of remaining wherewithal left to her, Shae staggered backward and fell to her knees in the grass, arms wide. “Ayt-jen!” she cried out hoarsely, her head thrown back. “I concede!”
She closed her eyes; at any second, she would die. “I concede,” she declared again. She could barely recognize her own voice; it seemed to be coming from someone else. It was hard to think, to grasp words and string them together into a final effort, a thin, calculated lifeline. “You are the greater Green Bone warrior, truly a worthy daughter of the Spear of Kekon. My life and my jade are yours for the taking. If you’re merciful enough to spare me, it’ll be only so I can follow your example and continue contributing what little worth I have to the good of Kekon.”
A heartbeat passed. Another. The pain of the stomach wound was unbearable; she wanted to slump to the ground in the damp grass and curl feebly around her injury, but she held herself still. With her eyes closed, she Perceived Ayt’s flicker of hesitation; the blade paused in its descent. Less than ten meters away, Hilo’s jade aura roared like a monster in a pit, its reckless, savage intent unmistakable. Shae opened her eyes and looked into Ayt’s maddened face, the left side of it smeared with blood, and then past the other woman’s shoulder. Two large cars were blocking off the two-lane road up to the Garrison House & Gardens. Another two had pulled up along the curb behind Ayt’s silver Stravaconi. A dozen No Peak Fists were coming out of the vehicles. The watching civilians were looking fearfully from Ayt to Shae to Hilo, to the surrounding soldiers of both clans, whose hands had gone for the hilts of their weapons.
Despite the agony in her torso and the clamor of her own panicked heartbeat, Shae met her opponent’s eyes and saw the fearsome expression shift into bitter understanding as Ayt too Perceived the arrival of Hilo’s warriors, the sudden dangerous shift in the air. Even now, facing death, Shae was desperately playing what cards remained to her. With the attention of the entire country on them, she had fought bravely and well, in true Kekonese fashion defended her reputation and that of her clan, and ultimately conceded the duel to the better warrior. There had been a moment of opportunity for Ayt to take Shae’s life fairly in battle—but that moment was lost. Clean-bladed dueling was an honorable tradition; striking down an opponent who’d surrendered was not.
Killing Shae now, as she knelt injured and disarmed, would show the Pillar of the Mountain to be merciless and bloodthirsty, would publicly confirm that she was who Hilo had been reminding everyone she was—the woman who’d seized power by having her own brother murdered in his sleep. The sort of person who would behead a defeated opponent on her knees might do anything, might break aisho in other ways, might even harm a child. Ayt’s image as the patriotic warrior stateswoman, which she had been carefully cultivating for over two years as she rebuilt the reputation of her clan, would be ruined. And Hilo would seize the justification he needed—if he needed any at all—to turn the scene into a bloodbath.