Creusus's Arc

Chapter 4 of 21

For three days Creusus worked the post and the wooden blade. He hired the older fighter again and paid him in bruises. He drilled the inside step until his shoulder went numb. He wrapped his knuckles at dawn and unwrapped them at dark. By the third night he could catch the practice sword blind, by sound alone. He slept well. He ate. He walked to the arena at second horn feeling ready for anything a man with steel could show him. Then he crossed the sand and saw the figure waiting on the far mark, and the ease went out of his chest. The knight stood in black plate from boot to gorget. A purple plume rose from the helm. The visor showed no face. The sword hung at his side, long and clean, the point resting in the sand. Creusus had heard the rumor in the bunk lane the night before. Marshals had tried to strike the bout from the card after the squire vanished. This man had walked into the registrar's room with a sealed paper and made them put it back. Creusus was standing here because the knight wanted him standing here. The horn blew. Creusus raised his wrapped hands and set his feet the way the old man had shown him. He waited for the first cut so he could read it. The knight did not cut. The knight took one step forward, then another, unhurried, the sword still low, the plume steady. No shoulder tell. No wrist tell. Nothing to read. Creusus gave ground. He had never given ground in a ring before. His heel found the chalk line and he stepped over it and gave more. The knight kept walking. The crowd noise thinned to a hum inside the helm Creusus was not wearing. He had trained for a blade that traveled. This blade was not traveling. It was only coming closer, held by a man who did not seem to care whether Creusus was ready. Creusus circled left and made himself stop backing. He lowered his hands a finger's width and set his weight over his front foot. He would take the first strike on his forearm the way he had drilled it, whenever it finally came. The knight closed to sword length and stopped. The point lifted from the sand for the first time. Creusus watched the tip and understood, in the space of one breath, that everything he had prepared for the last three days had been the wrong lesson.