Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,851

exposed torso. He settled his weight, gingerly, down through the centre of his hips.

Smiling still, Gorlas Vidikas moved into a matching pose, although he was leaning slightly forward. Not a duellist ready to retreat, then. Murillio recalled that from the fight he'd seen the very end of, the way Gorlas would not step back, unwilling to yield ground, unwilling to accept that sometimes pulling away earned advantages. No, he would push, and push, surrendering nothing.

He rapped Murillio's blade with his own, a contemptuous batting aside to gauge response.

There was none. Murillio simply resumed his line.

Gorlas probed with the rapier's point, jabbing here and there round the bell hilt, teasing and gambling with the quillons that could trap his blade, but for Murillio to do so he would have to twist and fold his wrist – not much, but enough for Gorlas to make a darting thrust into the opened guard, and so Murillio let the man play with that. He was in no hurry; footsore and weary as he was, he suspected he would have but one solid chance, sooner or later, to end this. Point to lead kneecap, or down to lead boot, or a flicking slash into wrist tendons, crippling the sword arm – possibly for ever. Or higher, into the shoulder, stop-hitting a lunge.

Gorlas pressed, closing the distance, and Murillio stepped back.

And that hurt.

He could feel wetness in his boots, that wretched clear liquid oozing out from the broken blisters.

'I think,' ventured Gorlas, 'there's something wrong with your feet, Murillio. You move like a man standing on nails.'

Murillio shrugged. He was past conversation; it was hard enough concentrating through the stabs of pain.

'Such an old-style stance you have, old man. So . . . upright.' Gorlas resumed the flitting, wavering motions of his rapier, minute threats here and there. He had begun a rhythmic rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, attempting to lull Murillio into that motion.

When he finally launched into his attack, the move was explosive, lightning fast.

Murillio tracked the feints, caught and parried the lunge, and snapped out a riposte – but he was stepping back as he did so, and his point snipped the cloth of Gorlas's sleeve. Before he could ready himself, the younger duellist extended his attack with a hard parrying beat and then a second lunge, throwing his upper body far forward – closing enough to make Murillio's retreat insufficient, as was his parry.

Sizzling fire in his left shoulder. Staggering back, the motion tugging the point free of his flesh, Murillio righted himself and then straightened. 'Blood drawn,' he said, voice tightened by pain.

'Oh, that,' said Gorlas, resuming his rocking motion once more, 'I've changed my mind.'

One insult too many. I never learn.

Murillio felt his heart pounding. The scar of his last, near fatal wounding seemed to be throbbing as if eager to reopen. He could feel blood pulsing down from his pierced shoulder muscle, could feel warm trickles running down the length of his upper arm to soak the cloth at his elbow.

'Blood drawn,' he repeated. 'As you guessed, I am in no shape to duel beyond that, Gorlas. We were agreed, before a witness.'

Gorlas glanced over at his foreman. 'Do you recall, precisely, what you heard?'

The old man shrugged. 'Thought there was something about wounding . . .'

Gorlas frowned.

The foreman cleared his throat. '. . . but that's all. A discussion, I think. I heard nothing, er, firmed up between you.'

Gorlas nodded. 'Our witness speaks.'

A few hundred onlookers in the pit below were making restless sounds. Murillio wondered if Harllo was among them.

'Ready yourself,' Gorlas said.

So, it was to be this way. A decade past Murillio would have been standing over this man's corpse, regretful, of course, wishing it all could have been handled peacefully. And that was the luxury of days gone past, that cleaner world, while everything here, now, ever proved so . . . messy.

I didn't come here to die this day. I'd better do something about that. I need to survive this. For Harllo. He resumed his stance. Well, he was debilitated, enough to pretty much ensure that he would fight defensively, seeking only ripostes and perhaps a counter-attack – taking a wound to deliver a death. All of that would be in Gorlas's mind, would shape his tactics. Time, then, to surprise the bastard.

His step and lunge was elegant, a fluid forward motion rather quick for a man his age. Gorlas, caught on the forward tilt of his rocking, was