webcrawl/APGTE/Book-1/out/Ch-012.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-12-squire}{%
\chapter{Squire}\label{chapter-12-squire}}



\epigraph{``Now kneel, fools, and witness my ascension to GODHOOD!''}{Last words of Dread Empress Sinistra IV, the Erroneous}



There was a heartbeat of silence before Tamika cocked her head to the
side.

``Your plan?'' she asked.

``Don't encourage her,'' the Lone Swordsman cursed.

I smiled condescendingly, casting an eye around me to find a more
defensible position. If a monologue was going to buy the time I needed,
then I was more than willing to chew the scenery for a while.

``I'm glad you asked, Tamika,'' I announced. ``You see, while it may
appear that this is sheer bloody chaos, the whole situation was in
fact-''

The scimitar came within an inch of my throat and I back-pedalled in
panic, swinging my sword at the now-visible silhouette of Rashid.
\emph{Right. There's a reason long-lived villains don't make speeches.}
The bastard was still wearing his mask and without a word he stepped
back into the smoke, disappearing in the blink of an eye. Ah, wasn't
that going to be fun? With this kind of visibility, he had no practical
limit on how many times he could pull his stealth trick. While I'd been
busy trying not to get my throat cut, the veiled Soninke and the hero
had apparently had a breakdown in negotiations: Tamika's crossbow was on
the ground, abandoned as she tried to fend off the black-haired man with
her long dagger. She was, I noted with a degree of satisfaction, failing
pretty badly. The strange sword scored a long gash across her face,
ripping away the black veil. It sungwhen it drew blood, letting out a
loud keen as the edge of the metal flashed red. I flinched at the sound,
at how \emph{wrong} it sounded. That thing was definitely enchanted, and
not in a nice way. The crossbow wielder wasn't going to fight her way
out of this one, I assessed. The long-haired Soninke girl wasn't half
bad with her dagger -- no doubt better with it than I'd be -- but the
Lone Swordsman was in another league entirely. He moved more like a
machine than a man, calmly and methodically powering through Tamika's
defence to inflict increasingly dire wounds.

I considered joining the dance, but that seemed like a recipe for death
by Rashid. Bringing up my sword, I wiped the sweat off my brow and moved
towards the foundry in the front. For all that I'd been villaining my
way through this encounter with blatant lies and poor misdirection, I
had no intention of letting this devolve into some sort of climactic
melee involving all my enemies. I would, for one, probably lose. I was
pretty sure I was already tapping in the Learning aspect of my Name --
the fact that I'd never needed to read a page twice to remember it
flawlessly indicated as much -- but it hadn't helped me much when it
came to my swordsmanship. All I had to see me through a fight was those
unusually quick reflexes and a history of knowing the taste of blood in
my mouth. Not, I decided, the stuff victories were made of. There was
another way to deal with this mess, though: I stood less than thirty
feet away from a lit furnace and most of my enemies had helpfully
bunched up inside a flammable building. \emph{So let's set the place on
fire and hide by the exit to stab anyone coming out in the back.} Not
the most honourable of plans, but honour was for people powerful enough
to afford that kind of luxury.

I somehow managed to leave the room without a masked interruption,
losing sight of Tamika and her heroic opponent -- I had to step over the
corpse of my female guide from earlier in the process. Her neck had been
hacked halfway through, I saw with mild horror. \emph{Rashid's work, no
doubt.} That was when my cunning plan hit an obstacle: standing by the
furnace, Chider was looking back at me with an unreadable expression on
her face.

``So,'' I spoke up, moving so that a table occupied my back, ``I don't
suppose you'll be willing to hold to the truce?''

Chider shrugged, her leathery face pulling taut.

``It's nothing personal, Callow-girl,'' she replied in Lower Miezan.
``The money was just too good to pass on.''

\emph{Money?} Who would have-

``Heiress,'' I realized. ``Heiress bribed you three to take me out.''

``I don't know if she got to Rashid,'' Chider noted, ``Though I don't
think she would need to. But she found Tamika and me, yes. Not sure what
you did to tick her off, but she's willing to sink a small fortune into
seeing you dead.''

I scowled. I'd yet to meet the girl face to face and I was already
starting to hate her guts.

``You understand she's playing all of you, right?'' I said. ``She's
going to be rivals with whoever ends up being the Squire, so she's
trying to meddle in the claiming.''

``She probably thinks she is,'' Chider agreed, ``For some reason she
seems to think you're the most dangerous of the four of us and who
knows? She might even be right. But I don't mind her getting what she
wants, as long as I also get what I want.''

``And that's my corpse?'' I grunted, already preparing to duck for cover
when the munitions started flying.

``I want to be the Squire,'' Chider corrected sharply. ``I don't really
care how I get there. There's never been a goblin Squire, Callow-girl.
Or a Black Knight, or an Empress. The tribes have done more for Praes
than all of the High Lords put together, but even now all we can aspire
to is being \emph{followers}. If I have to kill a few humans to remedy
that situation, so be it.''

I could sympathize with that, I really could. I knew what it was like,
being part of a system where the best you could ever manage was being
slightly above the bottom of the barrel. But her way apparently involved
my being a corpse, and that wasn't really a point I could compromise on.

``We don't have to fight, you know,'' I told her. ``I'm still willing to
make truce until the Lone Swordsman is dead.''

Chider grinned, all teeth and malice. ``Silly girl, I'm not going to
\emph{fight} you.''

She reached inside the satchel at her hip and brought out a clay ball
the size of her fist. I ducked behind an anvil, but the expected sharper
never came. I blinked and the glimpse I'd had of the munition drifted to
the surface of my mind, clear as spring water. Creepy, that -- my memory
had never been that good, and there was no way I should have been able
to see as many details as I had. Sharpers were clay balls, yes, but
usually they had a stick protruding out. This one hadn't had anything of
the sort. It wasn't a brightstick either. A smoker? I'd never seen a
diagram of those, so I wasn't sure what they looked like. My answer came
in the form of a roaring furnace: there was a deafening blast and a
burst of green light. I snuck out a look from behind the anvil and saw
the whole front of the foundry was burning. Eerie green flames were
spreading further with every passing moment, and of Chider there was no
sign. The furnace was on fire, I noticed. The \emph{metal furnace} was
on fire. \emph{Green flames, burning metal? Oh fuck me.}

``Goblinfire,'' I gasped into the empty room, backing away with haste.

That clay ball hadn't been a smoker, it had been godsdamned goblinfire.
The most heavily restricted substance in Imperial territory -- just
possessing some was enough to earn you a hanging -- and Chider had just
casually tossed a ball of it into an open flame. Nobody except the
goblins knew exactly what goblinfire was, but the Conquest had taught
Callowans to fear the sight of the green flames: it burned
\emph{everything}, including water and even magic. Seven days and seven
nights it would keep burning, impossible to put out until it stopped on
its own. There were still parts of Laure where the ground was nothing
more than blackened glass, where the substance had been used when the
Legions took the city. If any of it touched me, the best I could expect
was to be turned into a blackened husk for the rest of my miserable
existence. \emph{Well, I guess I'm not leaving by the front door}, I
grimaced. Which meant going back into the very melee I'd tried avoiding.
New plan, then: get the Hells out of here before the Royal Foundry got
turned into the closest thing to the actual Hells that could be managed
on Creation. Possibly stab someone if I got an opening, but no need to
take stupid risks. Appearing reckless was useful -- \emph{being}
reckless was a death sentence for a girl in my position. Naturally, the
moment I'd settled on a fresh course of action was when Rashid chose to
make his appearance. Stepping out of the doorway, the masked boy's robes
fluttered as he strode forwards me. His scimitar was coated in blood and
chunks of bone, though it looked no less sharp for it.

``I told you we had unfinished business, Callowan,'' he hissed in
Taghrebi. ``I've been looking forward to this.''

``Really, Rashid?'' I complained. ``We're going to have a duel to the
death in the middle of a foundry full of \emph{goblinfire}? Couldn't we
at least move to the other room?''

``And risk one of the veiled wretches stealing my kill?'' he chuckled.
``I think not.''

Apparently that was enough banter for him, because he struck without
warning. No tricks this time, no attempt to take me by surprise: the
curved sword came for my neck, though I slapped it away with my own
blade before it could come anywhere close to drawing blood. He'd
apparently found a healer in the last two days, because the wound I'd
inflicted on the night we first met didn't seem to be slowing him down.

``Fine,'' I ground out through gritted teeth as I pushed back his
scimitar. ``The hard way it is.''

I made to sweep his leg but he spun around me fluidly, blade flashing
out to swipe across my unprotected back. I hissed at the pain and swung
my sword to force him away, already feeling the blood welling up in the
wound. \emph{Shit. I really hope that wasn't poisoned.} He darted away,
carefully choosing his distance and stalking around me like a crow
circling a corpse. From the corner of my eye I could see the green
flames continue to spread, swallowing everything in their way. I brought
up my sword in middle-line, flattening my profile so he'd find me harder
to hit. All of this would have been much easier with a shield, and I
once more cursed that it would have been a dead giveaway to the Sons if
I'd come bearing one. His footing shifted minutely, but I had no
intention of letting him go on the offensive again: I struck first,
point aimed at his sternum.

Not fast enough, though. Half a step back brought him just out of my
range, and when my blade retracted he followed it in a single fluid
movement. The scimitar flashed again, coming for my sword-arm much
faster than I'd believed him to be capable of. Angling my pommel up took
the better part of the hit, but the edge still ripped through a chunk of
my forearm before he darted away. I swallowed a sob of pain, tightening
my lips. What was happening? He hadn't been anywhere this good last time
we fought, and as far as I could tell his technique hadn't gotten any
better. He was just \emph{better}. \emph{Something about this fight is
empowering one of his aspects.} That wasn't something I could match,
damn me. The only one of mine I'd figured out was Learn, and it appeared
my Name didn't consider duels to the death to be learning opportunities.

``There's the look I was waiting for,'' Rashid purred. ``The moment
where you finally understand your place in the world.''

For once my life, I was in too much pain to think of a proper response.
I struck instead, aiming for the same shoulder I'd wounded last time,
but he slapped my point away with contemptuous ease. My hand was
shaking, and after being struck twice I'd hesitated too much to properly
commit to the strike.

``Maybe I should just leave you in here,'' the boy mused through his
mask. ``Bar the door and let you burn alive. I'm told the green flames
are even more excruciatingly painful than regular ones.''

I tried to take a deep breath but ended up inhaling some of the smoke
that was growing to permeate the room and started coughing instead.
Rashid didn't even deign to take that opening, preferring to just stand
there radiating amusement. I was losing. I was losing, and I was going
to die.

The truth of that sunk in and it was like the all the colours in the
world where whisked out.

I didn't have any tricks up my sleeves, and this wasn't the kind of
opponent I could talk my way out of fighting. Rashid had come here
tonight to spill my life's blood on the ground, and would not leave
until he'd gotten what he wanted. He was faster than me, more
experienced in this kind of fight, and every one of my heartbeats
spilled more out my blood on the floor while he remained unwounded. The
gap between us could only widen one way, now. \emph{I am going to die
here}, I realized. This was as far as I'd managed to go, for all my
grand ambitions -- killed in an abandoned foundry by some idiot wearing
a mask who just happened to be better with a blade. \emph{What a stupid,
stupid death.} Gods, I was tired. Barely two weeks since I'd left Laure,
and it seemed like it had been years. The heat of the spreading flames
licked my skin and a part of me wondered if I should just let him run me
through. It would be quicker death than letting him take me apart wound
by wound as he so clearly wanted.

``I had all these plans, you know,'' I spoke into the silence. ``To make
a different world, a better world.''

``The delusions of a weakling,'' Rashid replied with naked contempt.
``Cockroaches are for stepping on, that's all there is to it.''

The sheer scorn in those words felt like a slap in the face.

``You don't get to say that, you little shit,'' I said in a low voice.
``Even if you beat me here, you don't get to say that.''

Something in my belly stirred like old embers, a heat under the surface
that needed only the right fuel to burn. It didn't care if he killed me
-- more than anything, right now, I wanted that dismissive prick to be
wrong. It didn't matter if I was outclassed, it didn't matter if he had
every advantage and I had less than none. I was going to make him choke
on those words, choke until his face turned blue and his eyes popped
out.

Even if I bled.

Even if I burned.

Even if the flesh was flayed off my bones.

I would \emph{Struggle.}

Power flowed through my veins, the beat of it drowning out even the roar
of the flames. I raised my sword and stepped forward.

``Oh?'' Rashid chuckled. ``Are we-''

I rammed my fist into his mask, shattering the clay like the cheap
affectation it was. The scimitar came up but I grabbed him by throat and
threw him against a table. My Name pulsed under my skin like a living
thing, feeding on the fight. The Taghreb snarled and got back on his
feet as I continued striding forward, striking almost too fast for the
eye to follow. Slow. So slow. How could I ever have thought of him as
fast? My sword came down on his wrist and blood sprayed out. His hand
fell, fingers still clutching the handle of the blade. I could see his
face now, see the fear appearing in those dark eyes.

``I-'' he snarled, but I shut him up by punching the tip of my blade
through his throat.

Fear turned to disbelief and with a flick of the wrist I tore out my
sword. He dropped to the ground.

``Got stepped on,'' I finished in a whisper. ``\emph{Cockroach}.''

I watched the life bleed out of the boy, standing above him with my
bloodied blade in hand as the flames cast their hellish green light. The
moment he took his last gasping breath I felt something click inside of
me, like another piece of a puzzle I couldn't see had snapped into
place. The power inside my veins dimmed, then disappeared\emph{.} The
pain I'd stopped noticing slammed back into my senses and I grit my
teeth as I swayed on my feet\emph{.} Tapping into the Name's power had
worn me down, and not just because it'd taken away my tiredness for a
moment. \emph{And I don't think that little burst is going to happen
again. Not tonight, anyway.} With a last look at the boy I'd just
murdered, I stepped into the smoke.

My eyes wanted to close and my body wanted to curl up into a ball and
sleep until all of this mess had gone away and become someone else's
problem. I allowed myself the luxury of thinking about how much more
pleasant my life would be, were I the kind of person who was willing to
do that. Then I took a deep breath and walked towards the sound of
fighting, sword raised. \emph{No rest for the wicked.}

The Lone Swordsman had two opponents, but Chider was not one of them.
Tamika, blood dripping down her chin where the enchanted sword had
sliced her earlier, was reloading her crossbow while she fought the hero
with her spear. She was also white-veiled again, and unwounded. I
blinked, making sure that my little Name episode earlier hadn't knocked
something loose in my head: there were, in fact, two Tamikas. The one
who'd shot at me earlier still bore the wounds I'd seen the Swordsman
inflict her, but the other one was still untouched. Rashid had mentioned
\emph{wretches}, earlier, I recalled. I'd thought it was a mistake, at
the time, but apparently not.

Whatever Name trickery this involved, they were actually managing to
drive the hero back: whenever the dark-haired man managed to get the
drop on the one fighting him with the spear, the other one loosed a
crossbow bolt at him. Whenever he tried to take out the one with the
crossbow, the spear-wielder started pressing him furiously. The tactics
they used weren't particularly sophisticated and the Lone Swordsman
didn't seem to bear any wounds besides a rip in his leather coat
revealing the chain mail that covered his forearms, but\ldots{} Neither
was he making progress. Their synchronization was too good, each attack
flowing into the next with neither ever missing a single beat. None of
the three had noticed me yet. Quietly, I stepped behind the one I was
now naming Crossbow Tamika. She wore hardened leather but no helmet --
her neck was bare, and I was done playing around with my fellow
claimants. I got within three feet of her before Spear Tamika saw me.
Her eyes widened, but it was too late: I was already striking
and\ldots{} and now I was ducking when the other one swivelled to face
me and shot her bolt into the space where I'd been a heartbeat earlier.

There was no way she could have known, much less taken aim so quickly.
Were they sharing each other's field of vision? Gods, that would be a
ridiculously useful trick. Spear Tamika stepped away from the hero
before I could close the distance separating me from the other one,
coming just close enough to be able to come to her rescue if I tried to
intervene as she reloaded her crossbow. Well, that was a problem.

``Lone Swordsman,'' I called out. ``I have a question for you.''

``No,'' he replied instantly.

``You don't even know what I'm asking,'' I complained. ``I could have
been offering my surrender.''

He squinted at me. ``Are you?''

``We can get to that later,'' I dismissed. ``Evidently you're the gritty
type, but how far up the antihero scale are you?''

``As far as I need to be,'' he responded gravely.

I pushed down my urge to make something out of that. Crossbow Tamika had
already finished reloading, and the pair of them seemed to be
considering their next target. I \emph{really} wasn't liking the way
Spear Tamika was beginning to angle towards me.

``Are you the kind of gritty that works with enemies?'' I probed. ``You
know, for the greater good and such.''

I'd been paying too much attention to the spear-wielder: meanwhile
Crossbow Tamika had calmly lined up her shot and pulled the trigger. I'd
been lucky with the bolts so far, but with the last remnants of my
Name's power fading away I didn't have the kind of speed that let me
dodge those at will anymore: she missed my chest but the projectile
punched into the flesh of my shoulder with a wet thunk. I let out a cry
of pain, nearly dropping my sword in shock.

``Fuck,'' I cursed.

I hacked away the shaft of the missile with a trembling hand, but
actually taking it out would have to wait: I was pretty sure that kind
of bleeding would kill me, after how much of Rashid had already gotten
out of me. The Lone Swordsman's face was inscrutable, but if he didn't
reply in the next few moments I would have to-

``You're Callowan, aren't you?'' he asked.

``Laure born and raised,'' I confirmed.

``\ldots{} only until they're dead,'' he spoke, distaste clear in his
voice. ``Not a moment longer.''

``You're such a charmer,'' I gasped, resisting the strange urge I was
getting to roll my wounded shoulder.

The bolt was painful enough without wriggling it around in my flesh.

``She came here to kill you,'' Crossbow Tamika said suddenly, her voice
sounding strangely distant as she addressed the hero.

``He's your enemy,'' the other one told me in the same tone.

``So are you,'' I grunted, pushing myself into action.

The spear-wielder was the closest to me, so it was towards her I moved.
Without a word she burst into motion, the tip of her spear thrusting
forward in the blink of an eye. I sidestepped the strike, though it was
a close thing: both my exhaustion and blood loss were beginning to take
their toll, Name or not. I forced a spring to my tired limbs and passed
the tip of her spear but without missing a beat Tamika whipped the shaft
straight into my wounded shoulder. I dropped down on one knee, trying to
turn my scream into a curse and only half-succeeding. I grit my teeth
and pushed myself up, but the shaft struck me across the face and threw
me down sideways. I felt my sword fall out of my grip, handle slick with
blood, and as I scrambled desperately to reach it Tamika's boot came
down on my fingers. I felt the phalanges break with a sickening crack. I
whimpered and watched as the spear rose, tip headed for my throat, when
it suddenly stopped. Without so much as a word of warning, my opponent
threw her weapon in the direction of the other duel.

I was weaponless, shit, and -- and I \emph{wasn't.}

My left hand reached for the knife I'd won by slitting two throats, the
sheath hidden in the small of my back. Tamika raised her hand and dark
smoke coalesced in it, forming into a spear again, but it wasn't quite
done. With a heaving cry I rose again, feeling the burn of skin getting
ripped as I pulled out my hand from under her boot. She stumbled at the
sudden pushback and my hand arced, the small knife a silvery blur as I
drove it right under her chin. Tamika blinked wordlessly, blood gurgling
as she tried to breathe. I twisted the knife and tore it out, blood
spraying all over my upper body from the severed artery. The Soninke
took a hesitant step back, then another, and her hand came to touch the
wound as the now-materialized spear clattered against the ground. From
the other side of the room a horrible scream came until it was suddenly
snuffed out. I glanced and saw the other Tamika's head rolling on the
floor, the cut so perfect it took a few heartbeats before blood started
coming out. I'd fallen back on my knees at some point, I realized, but
my sword was within reach. I tried to pick it up with my hand but the
broken fingers refused to move.

No pain, though. Was I already beyond that? I dropped the knife and took
the sword with my left hand as the Lone Swordsman calmly walked towards
me. Behind me I could feel the goblinfire beginning to spread into this
room, and with a wet laugh I saw green light beginning to filter out of
the other exit. \emph{Chider set fire to both ends. Of course she did.}
The hero seemed unconcerned as he came to stand before me -- I stabbed
the tip of my sword into the ground to push myself back to my feet. So
much for avoiding the climactic melee. The Lone Swordsman frowned, his
face still irritatingly handsome despite it. ``Not a moment longer,'' he
reminded me.

The sword blurred and let out that horrifying keen as it spilled my
blood on the floor. I could feel a trail of fire across my chest and
something hard hit me in the stomach. I stumbled to the ground. My limbs
felt cold. Someone was walking away and I knew who, but I couldn't quite
remember the name. Smoke was snaking its way across the ceiling in
whimsical patterns and I lay there.

Dying.

I'm not sure how long I lay there. I could still hear things, but events
came disjointed. A flash of blinding light and the sound of wood
breaking. Three claps of thunder -- or was it five? Beyond the cold that
was spreading through me I could feel the most maddening itch, but I
didn't do anything about. It was like a painting almost done, but not
quite. Like all it would need was a last brushstroke, and finally
everything would \emph{fit}. I lay there, listening to the green flames
devouring the world, and itched.

And then it clicked.

Awareness flooded back into me. I was Catherine Foundling, daughter of
no one and nothing. I'd fought people for gold once, but earned only
silver. I'd taken lives, and justice had come for me with a sword that
cried like a grieving man. I was apprenticed to a monster but dreamed of
making a world without them. A traitor to all causes but my own, and my
path had brought me to this moment: bleeding out on the floor,
surrounded by fire.

The other claimants were all dead, and I was the Squire.

My mind was getting clearer with every breath. It brought no comfort.
The Name was roiling under my skin, finally mine, but it brought no
healing with it. \emph{Evil never does.} I wanted to get up, needed to
if I didn't want to celebrate my victory by merrily burning alive, but
my body refused to cooperate. I was more than half a corpse, and the
endurance I'd always prided myself on was finally failing me. More than
half a corpse, huh. The idea took shape in my mind, absurd in all the
best ways.

``I've seen a corpse raised before,'' I cackled to myself, hacking out a
horrible laugh.

I reached for the depths of my Name, sinking as deep as I could without
a second thought. It was still there, that cool feeling I remembered
from the sunny afternoon where I'd made my mount. \emph{Like water so
deep it's never seen the sun.} I grasped the power, spun it into
threads. Slowly, carefully, I tied knots around my limbs. It occurred to
me that I was making a puppet of myself and I let out another cackle.
\emph{Well, better me than someone else.} Opening my eyes, I looked at
the ceiling and pulled. My left leg yanked itself up -- the muscles
pulled taut but held, and the right leg came to join it. Mustering the
full weight of my concentration, I tugged at the largest string: my
abdomen was harshly brought up, and I stood on my feet again.

``And now,'' I announced to the empty room, ``for my next
trick\ldots{}''

One, two, three, four, five. One after another, my broken fingers
snapped back into place. I didn't feel so much as a twinge of pain from
the act, which wasn't very likely to be a good sign. I balled up my hand
and formed a fist before letting the strings go loose: the fingers
loosened, still unresponsive to my attempts to get them moving. It would
have to do. Like Creation's most demented puppeteer, I tugged and pulled
until I managed to get my sword back at my side and my knife back in its
sheath. There was a hole in the wall, I noted. Apparently the Lone
Swordsman had solved the dilemma of both ways out being on fire by
making his own. Whatever he'd used to break through reeked of magic, but
it didn't seem harmful to me: I walked out into the alley with an
indifferent shrug. The street was deserted, though close to the mouth of
it I found black goblin's blood splashed on the pavement stones.
Chider's satchel laid there unattended, spilled open by a sword strike.
There were still munitions in it, I saw. Absent-mindedly I picked up a
sharper, but the longer I looked at it the more my mind began to wander:
I looked ahead instead, leaving the street and heading into a larger
avenue.

I was near a stairway leading up to the outer walls, and up there on the
ramparts I caught sight of a coat fluttering dramatically.

The Lone Swordsman stood there, brooding away into the night as the wind
tousled his dark locks teasingly. I was halfway up before I realized
what I was doing, and by then it was too late. Manipulating your own
near-corpse apparently didn't lend itself to stealth very well, because
he turned towards me long before I was within stabbing distance. Shame,
it would have been kind of a treat to just ram my sword in his back and
push him off the wall.

``You,'' he scowled before turning pale as he took a closer look.
``\emph{What have you done to yourself?}''

I tried to reply but all that came out was an insolent gurgle. Right,
still dying. That was unfortunate. I wasn't in much of a bantering
state, so I chucked the sharper at him instead. I missed and hit behind
him, but the blast still knocked him off his feet. Small favours, I
supposed. It took me two tries to get my sword out of its sheath -- the
angle was hard to visualize -- but by the time he recovered from the
shockwave I was on him. I tugged the strings and my arm came down, blade
slamming down into his awkwardly angled parry. \emph{Too rough}, I noted
as I felt the arm's muscles tear like cheap cloth. The strength behind
the strike was monstrous, though I noted with mild surprise that the
edge of his blade actually cut into mine. Ultimately that came in
useful: when I drew back my arm with another tug, his sword was ripped
out of his hand and came away with mine. I shook it off by tugging my
arm back and forth, kicking it down into the street when it clanged
against the floor. I tried to speak up again but ended up spitting out a
fat gob of blood as he looked upon me with horror, backing away. Still,
it had the benefit of clearing my throat.

``Told you my plan was working,'' I rasped.

``You \emph{planned} to become a necromantic abomination?'' he said,
aghast and still stepping away warily.

Not really, but it wasn't like he could prove that. I circled around him
with my sword brought up, forcing him to stand against the edge of the
wall. The Hwaerte River's dark waters ran down below, yet another
defence in the arsenal of the Gate of the East.

``You're Callowan,'' he said when the silence got awkward. ``We should
be fighting side by side, not against each other. Why do you work for
them? How can you possibly justify working for these tyrants?''

He hadn't seemed as eager to make common cause when he'd been the one
with the sword, I noted.

``Who else is there to work for?'' I managed to get out, my voice so
rough I could barely recognize it as my own.

He waved his arm passionately.

``Callow!'' he replied. ``For the Kingdom and all the people who live in
it.''

``There is no Callow,'' I rasped. ``The Kingdom died twenty years ago.
Before either of us were born.''

``If even one person fights under the banner, the Kingdom still lives,''
he said, sounding like he'd just imparted some kind of great truth on
me. \emph{Heroes.}

``A kingdom of one,'' I spoke into a hacking cough. ``All hail King
Swordsman, lord of stupid causes.''

Those green eyes turned to steel and I tugged the strings to shift my
footing, half-sure he was about to attack.

``There's nothing stupid about \emph{freedom},'' he hissed.

``Going to free us, are you?'' I laughed. ``How? By killing Imperial
Governors? Nobody here's any more free than when you started.''

``So I should kneel and lick the Enemy's boot, like you do?'' he
snarled. ``Never. I'd rather die.''

I could kill him. Right now, right here, I knew deep in my bones that I
could kill him. I might not be able to the next time we met, but this
once the story's flow was in my favour. It was tempting, but at the edge
of my mind I could make out a path. It was a dark one, strewn with ruin
and the death of innocents, but hadn't I stopped pretending to be on the
side of the Heavens the moment I'd taken the knife?

``Prove it,'' I rasped. ``If you want your way to beat mine, then come
at me again. Properly. Earn your Name, hero. Run and hide and muster
your armies in the dark. Make deals you'll regret until you have nothing
left to bargain with. I'll be waiting for you, on the other side of that
battlefield.''

The Swordsman's face went blank as I let my sword come down.

``But remember this,'' I said. ``Tonight? \emph{I won}.''

Faster than the eye could follow, I pushed him off the wall. He yelled
something I couldn't make out and as he fell into the dark waters and I
took a step back from the brink. I let what I'd just done sink in,
closing my eyes. With a life spared, I'd just killed thousands. I'd just
promised cities to fire and ruin, sown the seeds of a rebellion that
would rip the land of my birth -- the very same land I wanted to save --
apart. But I'd also bought the war I needed. Damn me, but I'd bought the
war I needed. One after another, the strings holding me up gave. I
flopped bonelessly to the ground, at the edge of unconsciousness. It was
nice out. Cool and soothing, after all that time in the fire. I heard
steps against the stone, calm and unhurried.

``Busy night?'' someone murmured.

I opened my eyes and came face to face with eerie green ones.

``I got stabbed,'' I mumbled. ``A lot.''

``Happens to the best of us, Squire,'' the dark-haired man murmured, and
I felt his hand on my shoulder before darkness took me.