Creusus's Arc

Chapter 8 of 21

Creusus pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and listened. Under the ringing in his skull there was a pitch, a low steady note the black plate poured into him with every touch. He had heard it in the sword. He heard it now in the man. He filled his chest and hummed. Low. Deeper than his own voice wanted to go. He matched the note under his ribs to the note the knight was pushing into him, and the ringing in his ears thinned. His legs came back under him. One breath. Two. The knight cocked a fist for the blow that would end it, and the shoulder telegraphed the strike the way it had in the first pass, before the speed came. The speed was in the drain. Kill the drain, kill the speed. Creusus stepped inside the punch and threw everything he had left from the hip. His bandaged knuckles landed clean on the jaw, humming as they struck. The head snapped sideways inside the helm. The knight's knees folded. Creusus did not let him fall. He caught the black pauldron in one hand and the belt in the other and held on, still humming, chest against the cold plate. The wave came the way it had come for the squire. He felt the arena go out from under his feet like a floor dropped through. Sand, horn, banners, the shouting from the marshals' box, all of it pulled away. There was no light. There was the knight's weight in his arms and the note in his own chest and nothing else. Creusus kept humming into the dark. Wherever the tournament sent the ones it took, he had gone with it, and he had brought the knight with him.