a blinding wound, though not without suffering a deep cut above his jaw.
Cursing, Obvar jerked to the side, avoiding the follow-up slash Vaelin aimed at his shoulder. Blood sprayed from the face wound as Obvar cursed again, although the rage-fuelled clumsiness Vaelin hoped for proved unfounded when the Stahlhast’s obscenities transformed into a laugh.
“Not bad,” he said in a wet rasp, Vaelin seeing the gleam of his teeth through the red mess of the wound. “Not bad at all.”
Moving with the same unnerving swiftness he launched into a series of attacks, lunging and slashing, sabre and sword ringing as Vaelin fended off the blows. Obvar advanced with every stroke, forcing him back, attempting to close the distance and gain the advantage of his greater bulk. Vaelin continued to back away, parrying every blow and watching for an opening. It came when Obvar fractionally overextended a thrust, allowing Vaelin the split second he needed to open a cut on his forearm.
You can’t fell a tree with a single stroke of the axe was Master Sollis’s advice from Vaelin’s earliest days in the Order. Skill can beat strength, but only when married to patience.
Obvar grunted in rage and pain before launching another flurry of attacks, this time advancing too fast. Vaelin allowed him to close the distance, tempting Obvar into making a grab for his sword arm. As the fingers closed on his wrist, Vaelin let the blade fall from his right hand, caught it with his left and slashed it across Obvar’s belly.
The Stahlhast danced back with his typical speed but not before suffering a foot-long cut from abdomen to chest. It wasn’t deep enough to do serious injury, but still bled profusely. Seeing him wince in pain Vaelin slipped under Obvar’s flailing counterstroke and delivered another cut to his upper thigh. He felt the sting of the opposing sabre’s tip score his back as he whirled away, a shallow cut only.
He began to circle Obvar, sidestepping his repeated blows and administering wound after wound to his limbs. Soon a circle of spattered blood surrounded the Stahlhast, his head beginning to sag as his strength seeped away.
“Give it up,” Vaelin told him, deflecting another thrust, the slowest so far, and replying with a slash to Obvar’s bicep. “You don’t have to die today, not for him.”
The Stahlhast staggered back, red vapour leaking through his face wound with every laboured breath. “Die?” he asked, words slurred by blood although Vaelin heard the bitterness they held. “I already died.” He stumbled and slumped to his knees, propping himself up with his sabre. “When I heard that bitch’s song.”
“What was it?” Vaelin asked, pausing. Despite Obvar’s growing weakness, he kept a sword’s length between them. He knew this was foolish, that he should finish the Stahlhast now, but the need to know overrode his caution. “What did you hear?”
Obvar gave a weary jerk of his head at Kehlbrand, who was still watching the contest with his unmoving vigilance. “He . . . has no love for me,” Obvar said. “He never did. Not when we were boys, not now. I was only ever just . . .” He bared crimson teeth in a smile. “Useful.”
There was no warning before he lunged, no change of expression or renewed tension to his form. It was his swiftest attack yet, the sabre sweeping up from the ground as his legs propelled him forward, the blade angled expertly towards Vaelin’s waist. He saw in the brief instant before the blade bit home that there was no chance of blocking it, but in his haste Obvar had allowed him a killing blow of his own.
The sword sank into Obvar’s gut just below the rib cage at the same instant the sabre cut deep into Vaelin’s side. But for the shock caused by the sword thrust, Obvar might have cleaved all the way to Vaelin’s spine. Instead, the sabre stalled, having cut deep enough to birth an explosion of agony that sent Vaelin to his knees, sapping all but the last vestige of strength and forcing his hand to slip from the hilt of his sword. But it wasn’t deep enough to kill, at least not immediately.
“A god . . .” Obvar said, grunting with the effort of tearing the sabre free of Vaelin’s flesh, “is still a god . . . even if he despises you.” He stumbled back a few feet, Vaelin’s sword still skewered through his midriff. “And,” he said, raising the sabre above his head for