Weapons drawn, stares locked, there’s a pulse of anticipation that strikes the camp.
Tension is taught in the muscles of Arwyn’s bulking frame.
I edge closer to him, but I don’t so much as blink on the two warriors facing off on the path.
My heart is as still as their stances, frozen—and I don’t dare even breathe.
The air trembles with something older than war, like the elements themselves bristle, fire and ice.
Rust moves first.
He lunges, a blur of black and red. His blade hisses through the air, and the sound is wrong, like a screech of a live animal.
Samick meets the strike with a sideways step, faster than my eyes can see, like he’s in one place one moment, then suddenly two steps away—
Before I can even process it, the way he canshudderthrough space with the wind, the swords collide in a burst of sparks that scatter like fireflies and crystals.
I jerk back with a wince.
The headstone presses into the bone of my hip, but still, I twist into it, as though I can wedge myself between the stone of a grave and the muscle of the new ice warrior.
Samick’s stance is low, balanced.
He twists, and the blades shriek again.
The onlookers stir with a murmur, some leaning forward, eyes gleaming brighter.
Each movement is deliberate, measured, precise.
Rust is fast, practiced, but reckless—his swings are wide arcs and all his weight thrown into each strike.
But Samick moves differently.
He moves with the winds, the sudden breezes that whistle through camp, with the ice in the air. He shifts from one spot to another, suddenly behind Rust.
Each strike he meets with his own blade, each lunge of his strength forward that has Rust staggering back, is done with calm calculations.
But that doesn’t stop Rust.
His attacks keep on coming.
And it coils in my gut, the knowing of it, that he’s fighting his way through Samick—to get to me.
Samick doesn’t back down.
Swords flash in the darkness, light bending around the strikes. The blackness beyond the campfires seems to press closer.
My pulse thrums in my wrist.
Arwyn’s body is solid in front of me, immovable, a wall of carved stone, and as the fight moves off-path with Rust’s stagger, I can hardly see Samick anymore, just glimpses of pearl and ink.
The battle is blocked from my view when a cheer rises—a single shout from the crowd. Then another. Then a ripple of voices, a split between shouts and laughs.
It’s a kind of ritual excitement, a fever.
Then Rust is backed into my view again, over the graves that arch around me.
Arwyn traces the path of the fight, turning to face it, and that manoeuvres me behind him again.
