Creusus's Arc

Chapter 6 of 21

The knight lifted the sword to the shoulder again. Same mark. Same patient start. Creusus stood in the sand with his bones still humming and knew he could not keep rolling. Another graze would take more of whatever the first had taken. He wiped his palm on his belt and watched the black plate, and this time he did not watch the blade at all. The knight cut. Creusus rolled outside and came up close, and while the sword was still traveling he looked at the gauntlet on the hilt. The fingers. The way they set and reset before the shoulder moved. He had seen those fingers before. Not the size, not the reach. The small clean grip. The knuckles that closed one at a time from the outside in. He had watched a boy hold a practice sword that way three bouts ago, right before a single punch put him on his back and a wave of force took him out of the world. It was the same hand. Older. Bigger. Same hand. Creusus decided to test it. He set his back foot into the sand and pulled from the hip, the way he pulled at the post when no one was watching. He let the knight begin the sixth cut and stepped inside it. The sword came down past his shoulder and bit only air. He drove up under the visor with everything he had, aiming past the strike, past the man, at the helmet itself. His wrapped knuckles struck the side of the helm above the ear. The ring came back the instant his skin touched the metal, worse than before, up his arm and into his teeth like a bell swung against his skull. His knees almost went. The helm did not. It turned on the gorget, tipped, and slid off the head beneath it and dropped into the sand. Creusus stumbled back and made himself look. The face inside the black plate was the squire's face. Older by years he had not lived. The soft cheeks were gone. The jaw had set. The brown eyes were the same eyes that had looked up at him from the chalk before the wave took the boy away. The boy who had vanished was standing in front of him in a man's armor, holding a sword that fed on him every time it touched him. The crowd in the tiers made a sound Creusus did not hear. He kept his fists up. The helm lay between them in the sand. The knight did not pick it up. The knight lifted the sword to the shoulder again, and Creusus understood the bout had only now begun.