This Is No Victory
Una saw Keir before he saw her. Tall and pale, he was a hard man to miss. He climbed up the stone steps, a flock of Dickson soldiers at his back. Grahame men rushed towards him, but he dispatched them with almost lazy swings of his sword. As he reached the top, a hulking Grahame soldier charged at him, but Keir stepped thoughtfully aside, quicker than might have seemed possible. He kicked out at the larger man, sending him toppling backwards with a horrible scream. While the parapet facing out at the countryside was chest-high, there was no parapet behind, leaving only a sheer drop into the courtyard.
The soldier fell from the top of the wall, back into the courtyard. The man flailed as he fell, landing with a sickeningcrackon the cobblestones.
Swallowing, Una peered down. The man had landed in a rare patch of space that wasn’t occupied by fighting men. He lay spread-eagled, clearly dead, as limp and broken as a puppet. She hastily dragged herself back from the steep drop, in case she got dizzy. Nobody would survive a fall like that.
Backing away, Una looked this way and that, trying to get a handle on what was happening. The courtyard below was a seething mess of fighting men, and blood was already running between the cobbles.
Whenever the moon sailed between the clouds, however, the scene turned dark, transforming into a heaving, black mass of arms and legs and heads, blades glinting here and there.
It was hardly better on top of the wall, but there was a little more light. As the Dickson soldiers advanced, more and more archers had to turn back from the parapet, abandoning their bows in favor of swords and knives. In the narrow space, with everybody afraid of falling onto the courtyard below, they fought silently.
Una had her sword in her hand before she knew what she was doing. A Dickson man, snarling, came running towards her. She dodged, feinted, and drove her sword neatly through his chest.
He gasped, clawing at her blade. His arms were long, and he actually managed to close one hand around the hilt.
And then he fell.
He fell sideways, limp, probably already dead, the sword still stuck through him. But he hung onto the hilt. The sword was dragged out of Una’s grip. She staggered forward, the man’s weight and momentum nearly pulling her down, too. She recovered, staggering back.
My sword. I just lost my sword, only minutes after the battle’s begun.
I’m dead.
She staggered backwards, avoiding a swing from a faceless man’s sword. He disappeared, swallowed up in the melee. Una fumbled for her knife. It was a good knife, but a knife in a swordfight was no good.
And thenhewas standing in front of her. Keir, pale as a ghost and grinning like a banshee.
“Ye know, we’ve heard of ye, Una Alcorn,” Keir whispered.
She clenched her teeth. “Ye have said that already.”
He chuckled as though she’d made a joke. “Nay, lass. I mean we’ve heard of ye, and what ye have done. Seduced Struan away from his rightful place, ye have.”
Una wanted to laugh. “Seduced him away? Ye are mad. I’ve done no such thing.”
“Hm. Deny it all ye want, but ye and that sister of his have brought him low. Turned him into a traitor. He’ll pay the price, but so will ye.”
He lifted his sword, a glittering longsword with a razor-sharp point. There was no blood on it, Una noticed.
He saved it for me.
There was no further warning. Keir lunged forward, sinuous as a snake. He was a skilled swordsman, which was immediately apparent. Una barely parried his first strike, coming a hair’s breadth away from getting her throat cut. She backed away, sweating.
Is this how I die?
She gritted her teeth, pushing the thought away. She had to keep her mind clear, or she’d sink. One strike from this man, and it would be over.
She tried an attack of her own, a complex, swirling gesture that Thomas had shown her only once. Every time she’d tried it herself, she’d won, sending her opponent’s sword flying out of their hand and skittering away.
Not this time, though.
Keir flicked his wrist, twisting his sword, and the blade came shooting down over Una’s knife towards her hand. She pulled back at the last instant, which probably saved her from losing her hand altogether. As it was, his blade bit deep into her wrist, just above the curve of her thumb.
Crying out in pain, Una released the knife. It was instinctive, a gesture she could not help. The knife went clattering away, disappearing in the darkness.
That’s it, then. It’s over.
