The demon’s motion brought him incrementally closer to Haakon. As the pole-arm flashed toward him, Haakon took one more step, jerking his sword up so that the blade smacked against the palm of his left hand.
You never withdraw when you’ve broken the bind. Taran had drilled them relentlessly. A warrior doesn’t flee from a fight. He closes to finish it. Had Haakon been fighting one of his fellow Brethren, they would not have withdrawn their blade from the first contact. They would not have given him the opportunity to go to half sword.
He braced his sword in both hands and took the demon’s swing. The shock of the blow traveled down his arms, but Haakon let it go. The energy ran through his chest and legs until it left his body through his right heel.
He felt the difference—wood against metal. His blade against the shaft of the pole-arm. Inside his range.
Haakon brought the pommel of his sword down. Much like running his hand along a flat wall, he could feel the demon’s weapon plainly against his sword blade. Using the wooden shaft of the pole-arm as an axis, he performed a complicated finishing technique: levering his weapon so that the hilt could hook around his opponent’s hands, tangling the other’s weapon, and snapping the point of his sword forward with his left hand.
The demon pulled his head back, avoiding Haakon’s sword point, but all that accomplished was to give Haakon enough room to line up perfectly for a short thrust.
The demon fled from the unexpected thrust with an almost dainty back step and twirl. He had to let go of his pole with one hand in order to extricate himself from Haakon’s hilt, and as he retreated, the pole-arm dragged behind him, a long tail flapping against the dirt.
For a second, the demon’s back was turned to Haakon. Desperately, he shifted his hands to a two-handed grip and let loose with the sort of flailing strike one expected from a boy when he first picked up a sword. If it connected, he told himself, pride wouldn’t matter.
Remember the first rule: do not die.
The swing missed, and as Haakon recovered for another attack, the demon pivoted and snapped his pole-arm back up.
Sword and blade connected. They stared at one another: Haakon, with his sword half extended toward his opponent; the demon, crouching as if he were making ready to spring. The pole-arm was pointed up, its blade scraping against the crossguard of Haakon’s sword.
In the moment where they sized each other up, Haakon became aware of the shouts coming from the audience. By now, he realized, the rabble who lined the arena had seen enough to handicap the opponents, choose up sides, and lay wagers. They were cheering accordingly, and some were calling out, “Che-val-ier! Che-val-ier!” Had he not been so distracted, he’d have enjoyed a laugh over the idea that he, a monk descended from Nordic fishermen, had been mistaken for a knight of the Crusades.
The remainder screamed out, “Zug! Zug! Zug!”
The skull-maker wanted blood, wanted to feel bones and flesh separating before its shiny blade. It pulled at Zug, and he had to follow its desire.
But he knew a mistake had been made.
As the pole-arm—the naginata—whirled around for should have been the final stroke against the armored knight, Zug felt like a stone falling from a great height. When the knight’s sword connected with the wooden shaft of the pole-arm, a shock went through his body. He gasped, suddenly conscious of the constricting weight of his armor, of how difficult it was to breathe in his mask. Sweat ran down his back, and it felt like claws raking his flesh. His bowels trembled, and he nearly lost control of his bladder.
Suddenly aware, like being jerked out of a deep sleep.
Sunlight shivered off the knight’s helm, and Zug squinted against the glare, pulling his head back as his opponent moved closer. Distantly, like the sensation of wind-blown rain sluicing across the felt roof of a ger, he felt the knight’s blade slide along the pole in his hands.
The knight’s hands came down, metal fingers wrapped around a plain pommel, and a point of metal danced in front of his face.
Zug hissed. His body responded slowly—the way a boat turns on a placid lake when its occupant has no oars. He had been gone too long, lost in his mind, and the flesh had become a slave to other masters: the crowd, the skull-maker, the arkhi. He had become nothing more than a ghost.
Not yet, he thought. The naginata’s blade dragged on the ground as he retreated from the knight’s thrust. I am not a ghost.
His hands tightened on the shaft of the pole-arm, and he knew where his feet were. The skull-maker sang as he snapped it up. The knight was close behind him…
Haakon spotted a tiny movement of the demon’s—Zug’s—forward leg as the other man shifted his center of gravity. The motion gave away Zug’s intent; he had settled too far into his guard, and now he had to shift his weight before he could execute his next attack.
Even before Zug started to move the pole-arm, Haakon was already moving. He lunged forward, keeping his blade in contact with the pole-arm. As his blade slide down onto the wooden shaft, he lifted his elbows and locked the shaft between his blade and crossguard. Zug couldn’t extricate his weapon, and as Haakon took another step forward—flee toward danger!—he forced the pole-arm up. With a flick of his wrists, he rotated his sword around the pole-arm and clasped the blade with his left hand again.
He wasn’t close enough for the half-sword thrust to be deadly, but the move was a replay of a few moments ago. Haakon hoped the repetition would break Zug’s concentration for a second or two as the other man tried to second-guess Haakon’s intention. Would Zug think he was foolish enough to try for the hilt snare again?
Haakon closed, rolling his sword around the pole-arm so that his arms reversed their position. His point was no longer in Zug’s face, but he was still inside the reach of the pole-arm’s blade.
With a sharp motion, he snapped his hilt toward the triangular opening behind Zug’s left forearm. It was a similar lock to the snare he had just used, but his target was different. Brother Rutger liked this technique: tangling the other warrior’s arm with the hilt of his own blade before he stepped in and stripped the weapon free. Haakon doubted he could get the pole-arm from Zug—the technique worked best with shorter weapons—but at this range, the pole-arm was about as dangerous as a willow switch.
Zug was not to be entangled a second time, and his hand darted out, seizing Haakon’s hilt before the lock could be completed. His response wasn’t unexpected; Haakon would have been surprised if the other man’s martial arts didn’t include close-quarters fighting techniques. As Zug pulled at his sword, he let go of his blade with his off hand, grabbing at the shaft of the pole-arm. Zug was caught in a tug-of-war, trying to retain his pole with one hand, jerking the heavy sword from Haakon with the other.
This divided his energy. Haakon could feel his focus smearing, two flows going in different directions. And right there, in the middle, was a swirling mass of confused energy. Without thinking, Haakon did something Brother Rutger never would have done, something that, if he took the time to fully consider the implications, he never would have done either.
Haakon let go of his sword, grabbed Zug’s pole-arm, and heaved upward.
Zug grunted as the lower length of the pole sword slammed into his groin. His stance had been too deep, and during their tussle, the pole had drifted between his legs.
Haakon was much taller, and he put all the strength of his legs into the dead lift. He had no idea what sort of armor Zug kept down there, but if it was anything like his own, it wasn’t much. Hardly a killing blow, but no man liked getting hit between the legs.