I knew I wouldn’t be able to meet his strength when I saw the size ofhis armor, but I didn’t know he’d also be so bloodydamn fast. I should have fought him in heavy gravity. He has all the advantages here and he knows it. Pounding me back, he herds me toward the edge of the circle where the dome leaves no room for retreat. I’m running out of ground. His last sideways chop slams against my razors with so much force the blades are pushed back toward my helmet. His warsaw follows them, maintaining just enough momentum to take my head off if I don’t give ground. I can’t—the pulseShield is already pushing at my shoulders. There’s only one place to retreat. Up.
Gods I almost do it, but I listen to Cassius. Instead of using my boots, I lever the warsaw upward as I intended to the first time, slip underneath, and go for the kill.
Already shown the futility of slashes against his armor, I thrust for his head with Pyrphoros and his stomach with Bad Lass and follow through with my body. Bad Lass bites home but Pyrphoros glances off his helmet. Then his mass crunches into me with bewildering force. I thought I was the one hitting him. I feel a pinch in my left thigh and spin right.
Despite the quality of my armor, the collision is hard enough to send me stumbling around him. I got free, but shit it hurt. I retreat to the center of the circle. I lost hold of Bad Lass. The razor is embedded in his stomach armor. By his laughter I know it did not bite deep enough to penetrate. Damn that armor.
The pinch in my left thigh evolves into a throbbing pain and a racing itch. One of his spikes penetrated the armor enough to draw blood but not pierce the muscle. I’m surprised.
My eyes dart to the tips of the spikes on his armor. Onyxium metal. They’ll be poisoned too. The man’s a walking death trap.
A low chuckle comes from Fá as the poison races through my veins.“And now you are dead. The rest is all theater. I’ll chew your meat slow.”
73
DARROW
The Breath of Stone
Ipresumed Fá’s spikes wouldbe poisoned, which is why I took tissue samples from the wounds of the fallen Golds in the Raa grotto. I wanted to see if the poison matched that on the spines in Diomedes’s body when we found him in the pod. They did.
I only hope the blood leech Athena gave me and the anti-toxins they fit into the applicator in my suit will counteract Fá’s poison. I feel nauseous already, a little slower, and a burn spreads down my leg, but I’m not paralyzed yet.
Fá’s Ascomanni pound their spears on the dome. Thunder rattles and shakes. Fá does not let me recover. With Bad Lass still stuck in his armor, he closes in on me and unleashes an onslaught of downward blows, each strong enough to cleave through three men. My arms go numb taking the impacts. I land a dozen blows myself, but none come close to penetrating. Twice I try to grab Bad Lass, but that’s why he left it buried in his armor. Each time he lunges for me, his spikes hungry.
He issues another horizontal chop. I retreat, and he flows into the same spin maneuver he used before. The one that leaves his back exposed. A mistake. I see the opening and instinctively spring toward him, ready to flow into the Winter Storm counterattack of the Willow Way and spear him as his back presents itself.
But then I remember who Volsung Fá’s mentor is and bail out of the manuever. Atlas is the type to feign a weakness to bait an attacker, and I bet Fá is doing the same. No way he leaves his back open to me twice.
Sure enough, Fá never completes his spin. His maneuver and brutishstyle alter as he arrests his movement and flows into an elegant razor maneuver called the Horse Bane. His knees sink. With his back still to me, his warsaw comes at me off his hip like a pike rising to spear a horse in its chest.
If I’d followed through with my initial attack, it would have sheathed itself through my guts and ripped out my innards. It still almost does. Its teeth chew through a millimeter of chest armor before I shift my weight around it to the right.
I whip Pyrphoros at his leg. It snares his calf armor. He jerks his leg away from me to either pull me onto his warsaw or tear the handle from my grasp. I have a Helldiver’s grip and my power armor is not letting go, so I twist right and the saw chews a wedge from my cuirass. I retract the blade and sparks spit as it tries to cut through his leg armor. He brings his warsaw’s hungry teeth toward the whip. I give up my attempt to take his limb and pull the whip back, twist again, and deliver a two-handed chop aimed for his neck.
He just straight-lines for me and hits me in the ribs with his massive, spiked shoulder. I fly back and slam into the dome wall. Only instinct saves me, and I roll left. I don’t even see him, just a metallic blur as he slams into where I once was.
I stumble back to the center, armor dented along my left rib cage, the left breastplate sheared off down to its last protective layer. At least one rib is broken.
Fá stalks after me.
“I see Atlas taught you more than genocide and toxicology,” I call.
He hears the pain in my voice, but he is clearly confused why I have not yet been perceptibly slowed down by the poison on his spikes.
“You will not be the first Willow branch I have broken. I have your measure. You are not as fast as they claim. You are not as strong as my weakest Kinshield. TheMorning Starhas fallen from the sky. Fear not. Tonight, I will give you wings.”
He knows how to fight Lorn’s style. I didn’t go into this fight intending to use the Willow Way, but in panic we rely on our oldest mechanisms, and being bulldozed by a giant in spiked armor is enough to make any man panic. The puncture in my thigh aches, but only the puncture. I felt a little sluggish from the poison at first, but it’s fading and barely burns anymore. The leech and anti-toxin are doing their job.
My turn to do mine. I will not feign weakness to bait him. No tricks. No devices. This will be a clean kill.
I glance at Cassius. Sure enough, he’s forming a circle with his hands. It’s so easy to forget the lessons we learn. I breathe in and out, centering myself, and find the smallest of Europan breezes making its way into the dome. I realize after a beat that the cold air must be coming up from a crack in the ground, from the hollow core of the island itself. It is, just where Fá’s first strike hit and broke the marble. The stone breathes as it always has.
“The path directs itself to the Vale.”The words escape my mouth before I realize I’ve recalled them.“Same as our breath rejoins the deepmine wind.”
As Fá reaches to pluck Bad Lass from his armor like an inconvenient toothpick, I whip Pyrphoros out and draw the razor out by its pommel. I snatch Bad Lass from the air as it comes back toward me and I assume one of the stances I tested out in my training with Cassius—a nameless hybrid of Lorn’s way, Cassius’s, and my own. I crouch and I hold Thraxa’s razor like a dagger and Pyrphoros like a javelin.
“Atlas is your master.”Clang. Clang. Clang.“Confess.”
