The Lies of Locke Lamora - By Scott Lynch Page 0,244
blur, his brutality unmatched by anything in Locke’s memory. Behind his blade, there were twenty years of experience and twenty years of blackest hatred. Some tiny, detached part of Locke’s mind cooly registered his own inadequacy as he desperately flailed parry after parry, chasing phantom thrusts with his eyes and hands even while the Gray King’s steel was punching through cloth and flesh.
Once, twice, three times—in between breaths, the Gray King’s blade sang out and bit Locke’s left wrist, forearm, and biceps.
Cold surprise hit Locke harder than the pain of the thrusts; then the warm blood began to flow across his sweat-slick skin, tickling devilishly, and a wave of nausea rose up from the pit of his stomach. The dagger dropped from his left hand, red with the wrong man’s blood.
“At last we come to something you cannot pretend your way out of, Master Lamora.” The Gray King flicked Locke’s blood from the tip of his rapier and watched it splash against the wooden deck in an arc. “Goodbye.”
Then he was moving again, and in the wine-colored light of the alchemical globes the full length of his blade was bright scarlet.
“Aza Guilla,” Locke whispered, “give me justice for the death of my friends. Give me blood for the death of my brothers!”
His voice rising to a shout, he thrust, missed, and thrust again, willing all of his desperate hatred and fear into each cut, driving the blade faster than he ever had in his life, and still the Gray King caught and turned his every thrust; still the Gray King displaced himself from the path of Locke’s cuts as though fighting a child.
“It seems that the final difference between us, Master Lamora,” said the Gray King between passages, “is that I knew what I was doing when I stayed here to meet you one last time.”
“No,” gasped Locke, “the difference between us is that I am going to have my revenge.”
Cold pain exploded in Locke’s left shoulder, and he stared down in horror at the Gray King’s blade, sunk three inches into his flesh just above his heart. The Gray King twisted savagely, scraping bone as he withdrew his rapier, and the sensation sent Locke tumbling to his knees, his useless left arm thrown out instinctively to break his fall.
But instinct, too, betrayed him here; his hand struck the hard deck palm-up, folded awkwardly under the full weight of his arm, and with a terrible sharp snap his left wrist broke. He was too shocked to scream. A split second later the Gray King slammed a vicious kick into the side of Locke’s head, and Locke’s world became a kaleidoscope of agony, tumbling end over end as stinging tears filled his eyes. Reynart’s rapier clattered across the deck.
Locke was conscious of the wood pressing up against his back. He was conscious of the blood that misted his vision. He was conscious of the bright, hot rings of pain that radiated from his shattered wrist, and of the slick wet agony of the hole in his shoulder joint. But most of all he was conscious of his own shame, his own terror of failure, and the great weight of three dead friends, lying unavenged, lying unquiet because Locke Lamora had lost.
He sucked in a great gasping breath, kindling new flickers of pain all across his chest and back, but now it was all one pain, all one red sensation that drove him up from the ground. Bellowing without an ounce of reason in his voice, he pulled his legs in and whipped himself up, attempting to tackle the Gray King around the stomach.
The killing thrust that had been falling toward Locke’s heart struck his left arm instead; impelled with every ounce of the Gray King’s ferocity, it punched fully through the meat of Locke’s slender forearm and out the other side. Wild with pain, Locke threw this arm forward and up as the Gray King struggled to withdraw; the edges of his rapier worked a terrible business on Locke’s flesh, but stayed caught, sawing back and forth at the muscle as the two men struggled.
The Gray King’s dagger loomed before Locke’s eyes; some animal instinct drove Locke to lash out with the only weapon available. His teeth sank into the first three fingers of the Gray King’s hand where they wrapped around the hilt; he tasted blood and felt bone beneath the tips of his teeth. The Gray King cried out and the dagger fell sideways, rebounding off Locke’s left shoulder