The Lost One (5)
The Helmeted Knight did not draw his sword.
The greatsword wound in chains stayed bound at his waist, its blade still sheathed. Rather than draw it, he leveled the spear in his hands at Najin. Najin studied the spearpoint aimed at his chest.
It was a spear of unusual make. Its head looked like a cross-shaped star stretched long and thin—no ordinary spear at all. A weapon built for both thrust and cut. Najin's eyes narrowed a fraction.
Tap. Taptap…
Sparks leapt from the campfire and died. A fresh ember sprang up and, in the instant it faded—
Thud.
Najin drove his heel into the earth. His heart hammered, racing blood and mana through him. The constellation that had blossomed like a flower along his blade became a tangle of thorns, coiling tight around the longsword. Aura compressed hard against the edge.
Aura spread wide was useful for cutting magic, for defense, for intercepting ranged weapons. In a close-quarters clash of steel on steel, packing it dense was far more efficient. All the more so when the opponent was stronger than you.
I have to raise the density of the aura.
Aura compressed to its limit. White and gold flashes flickered endlessly along the blade—light that put the campfire to shame. The moment that brilliance made the Helmeted Knight's body shift a hair, Najin kicked off the ground and charged.
Tick.
Barely a second had passed.
By the time a single spark had leapt and died, Najin was already swinging for the Helmeted Knight. From the first step he had come in with everything he had. The man opposite him was worth nothing less.
The blade cut the air and drove in.
To Najin it felt like a perfect strike.
To the Helmeted Knight, it was not.
KA-AAAAANG!
Where Najin's motion was loud and full, the Helmeted Knight's was light. Light—but without a tremor. Grey aura blooming along the spearhead took Najin's sword clean and full.
Then—a smooth turn of the wrist.
He spun the shaft. Najin's blade, caught between the cross-shaped edges of the spearhead, rode the turn. Najin's torso opened wide. The Helmeted Knight drove a kick straight into that gap.
Najin shifted his two-handed grip to one hand and shot his free arm out to catch the kick. A wet crunch answered as the greave crushed down on his fingers; they screamed, but he could bear it.
Using the shove of the kick, Najin spun in place. The sword jammed between the spear's points tore free with a grinding kagagagagak! as it scraped the edges. The draw, the retreat, the full turn on the spot—all of it flowed like water. Because it flowed, slipping one more motion into the sequence was no great trouble.
Evasion into attack.
The blade, heavy with centrifugal force, came straight for the Helmeted Knight. Of course the man answered. A ringing clash of aura and aura. The rebound shoved Najin back. He lifted his head.
Their eyes met.
A single exchange. A handful of impacts. Yet it was more than enough to take each other's measure. Without either needing to speak first, both of them laughed. The Helmeted Knight took a step forward, spear gripped in both hands.
"I'm coming."
"Whenever you like."
The duel began.
2.
The instant the Helmeted Knight shifted to the offense, what Najin felt was surprise—and, at the same time, a kind of dismay. The brute strength of a frame twice his size was part of it, but it was not only that.
Thud. The Helmeted Knight stamped the ground and drove the spear.
Written out it was a single sentence. Yet Najin's eyes could read every process that filled the white space between the words.
The depth of the foot biting into the earth with a heavy boom. The degree of movement in arm and shoulder. The tilt of the spearhead, the angle of the extended arm, the exquisite distribution of force. Every motion meshed like gears. Not one element was too little or too much. When each motion was perfect, the strike they formed together was perfect as well.
SSHHHRAAAK!
Najin's eyes flew wide before the oncoming spearhead. He took the blow and was shoved back. And the man did not stop at one strike. Motion linked to motion. Blow after blow gathered into a current.
Kang! Ka-ang!
Aura crashed against aura and threw off sparks. Lightning flashed before Najin's eyes as well—not physical light, but the warning flare of senses standing on end.
Insane.
Najin groaned and, in the same breath, marveled.
Even with his eyes racing, he could barely track the Helmeted Knight's movement, and reading the intent behind it was harder still. For a man of Najin's dynamic vision and gift for seeing, that was astonishing.
Most techniques he grasped at a glance. Taking the same attack twice was rare, and he understood at once how the motion should be performed. That was his talent, the strength he had always relied on.
It did not work on the man in front of him.
He needed to see the same motion two times, three times, before he could barely begin to understand it. Understanding was one thing; matching it was another. The exquisite distribution of force born of near-perfect bodily control was still a realm Najin could not touch.
A Transcendent. A superhuman.
Those called Masters—men who had attained mastery of a single weapon. Their techniques Najin still could not copy. The man before him was no different. Even if he was no longer a Transcendent now, he had clearly been one once.
Stars and aura and sword-aura might erode.
The technique they had built did not.
The Helmeted Knight's craft was flawless. He pressed Najin without pause. Najin met the assault with bloodshot eyes, then began to break the flow and counter. Simply enduring was not in his nature.
KA-AAAAAANG!
Aura rebounded off aura. The moment Najin started answering, the Helmeted Knight laughed. As if he had been waiting for the counter, he began to show techniques different from anything before.
As if to say: try handling this as well.
Najin answered that expectation. SSHHHRAAAK! He set his blade at a slant and caught the spear cutting the air. The instant steel met steel, the Helmeted Knight shifted from thrust to cut and swept the shaft; Najin twisted his sword with the motion and warped the arc the spearhead was drawing.
Whoosh! The shaft passed over Najin's head. A spear already swung once—range and power both vast—left a large opening when it missed. Large, yes.
CRACK!
The Helmeted Knight stamped the ground and seized his own shaft hard. Tendons stood out on the forearm visible through the broken armor. Then he whipped the arm down. The arc that had been drawing a half-circle reversed. The path broke and the spear came down like a hammer.
When an attack misses, a spear leaves a larger opening than most weapons. That is one of its flaws. A warrior who has reached the level of a Transcendent would not be ignorant of that flaw, nor would he fail to prepare a technique to overcome it.
Thud! Najin threw his sword up in time to catch the spear, and his knees creaked. The crushing weight felt as if it would grind him into the dirt. But he held. He held, and he struck back.
Kang! Ka-ang!
Several exchanges passed in a single second. Each read the other's motion and thought ahead. Sometimes the prediction was right; sometimes it was wrong. What filled the gaps was improvisation and split-second judgment.
SHHHHHRAAAK!
Najin took a blow and skidded backward in a long slide. Then he set his stance at once and charged the Helmeted Knight again. It was not the fighting style he usually favored.
No hiding. No using the terrain. No running, no opening distance. No hunting for variables. Only facing the opponent head-on, fair and square.
Not the combat of Ivan's hunting dog.
The combat of Ivan's squire and knight.
Even driven onto the back foot, even knowing he was clearly the weaker man, Najin did not give ground. He met the Helmeted Knight honestly from the front. The Helmeted Knight was not blind to that. The face under the helm stayed hidden, but the expression he wore now was the same as Najin's.
Expectation of the other. Excitement. And a laugh that kept slipping free.
It was a fight with lives on the line. Blood flew, bones broke, flesh tore—a combat that bordered on the savage. But so what?
This was a duel. A duel entered after they had given their names.
They were bound to face each other fairly, honorably, with pride. Who, then, would call this duel savage? For as long as the two of them took it seriously, it was a sacred contest.
KA-AAAAAANG!
No fight is without variables. Victory and defeat turn on the smallest things. A clash of full strength that ends only when one man is broken almost never happens. And yet countless warriors and knights long for exactly that kind of fight.
That is why duels exist.
Thud. Boom.
A pile of stones collapsed and dust swallowed the field of view. Until the cloud cleared, neither Najin nor the Helmeted Knight attacked the other. They only swung their weapons to cut the dust away. Through the thinning haze they confirmed each other's movements, and both of them let out a breath mixed with laughter.
Then spear and sword crossed again.
It was a foolish fight. Almost childish.
There was no rule that said they had to do this. Only a tacit understanding—the kind of rule you could break on the spot and no one would blame you for. Even with lives at stake, the two of them kept faith with each other. They observed the form.
Anyone watching might have laughed and called them idiots, might have pointed and said they were stubborn fools… but that is what knighthood is. Honor and pride and romance stand only a hair's breadth from childishness.
This was a duel.
What did other people's eyes matter? Nothing mattered except the man before you whose spear, whose sword, met yours.
Kang!
The two of them watched each other's aura.
Ka—gagagagagak!
Najin's aura was a pure white line joined by glittering gold—an aura that looked like a constellation. Untouched by the years, it shone brilliantly.
Boom!
By comparison the Helmeted Knight's aura was grey. Ashen. An aura stained by years, faded by everything it had endured, like looking at old rusted armor. Yet when it met Najin's blade, that aura shone with a lonely, stubborn light.
As if it were crying out that it could still shine.
You're taking this?
Not yet. Is that all?
They laid technique after technique on each other. Every time Najin moved, the Helmeted Knight unsealed another of his arts, one by one, as if testing how far the boy could follow.
A razor-thin tightrope walk went on and on. At some point along that line the Helmeted Knight drew a breath.
The air changed.
He took a stance different from anything before. Najin knew at once. A great technique was coming. He forced his eyes wide and drank in every motion.
The man stamped the ground. With both hands on the spear he locked the shaft against his side. He sank low and twisted the grip. His armor rattled loudly; the sound of straining muscle followed. It looked as if he were compressing force to its absolute limit.
Then the compressed force was released.
The Helmeted Knight drove the spear. Najin could not see the motion. It was simply too fast. The man wrung his whole body as if wringing water from cloth and thrust; the packed power burst from the tip of the spearhead.
The most basic technique of all: the thrust.
A technique of almost insulting simplicity.
But the fundamentals shown by a Master-class warrior are never simple. The pure essence of the martial path he had built rode on that spearpoint.
SSHHHRAAAAAAAK!
Air coiled around the spearhead. The feathers bound to the shaft whipped like a whirlwind. The blade itself did not spin, but the wound air created rotation. Najin could not answer the strike properly. Raising the flat of his sword to meet it was the best he could do.
"…!"
The instant the storm exploding from the spearpoint met Najin's blade, his body lifted clean off the ground. His vision lurched. The rocks around him tore out of sight. The Helmeted Knight who had stood right in front of him receded.
The man had not moved.
Najin had been thrown.
KRA-AAAASH!
After a long flight Najin slammed into a massive boulder. The rock could not take the impact and crumbled as he coughed out a choked breath. His back burned. Shoulder, arm, and fingers all screamed. Something was almost certainly broken.
Gritting his teeth, Najin shoved the rubble aside and stood. The duel was not over. He had to answer. Sure enough, the Helmeted Knight had closed the distance in a heartbeat and was already driving the spear at him.
Najin raised his sword. The blade, gripped in a broken arm, shook. To steady it he pressed his other arm against the flat as reinforcement. Even if he blocked this way he would only break another arm—but that was better than a hole through the body.
And after that? What next?
Najin's mind spun hard.
The worry proved pointless.
The next attack never came. The Helmeted Knight's spear stopped short in front of Najin's blade. When Najin blinked up at him, the man spoke through a laugh.
"I win. I trust we can leave it at that?"
He jerked his chin at Najin—a signal to concede. Understanding what the Helmeted Knight was saying, Najin could not help laughing himself.
Not every duel ends in life or death.
When both sides have given their all and one man accepts defeat, the duel ends there. Victory and loss are already decided, even without drawing the line between the living and the dead.
Just as Najin had turned the Helmeted Knight's hunt into a duel, the Helmeted Knight had turned a duel that would have decided life and death into an honorable contest of skill.
"Yes. I lost."
Najin nodded and lowered his sword. The Helmeted Knight lowered his spear in turn and held out a hand. Najin took it and rose to his feet.
What remained at the end of the duel was neither prey nor hunter.
Neither the dead nor the living.
Only a victor and a vanquished.