Damen looked back at the village, and from it to the thin, winding road leading south. He said, ‘Sicyon.’
* * *
The indoor training arena at Marlas was a long, wood-panelled room, eerily similar to the training arena at Arles, with packed sawdust floors and a thick wooden post at one end. At night, it was lit by torches that flickered light across walls ringed with benches, and covered over with mounted weaponry: knives sheathed and bare, crossed spears, and swords.
Damen dismissed the soldiers, the squires and the slaves. Then he pulled the heaviest sword from the wall. He liked the weight as he lifted it, and, setting his body to the task, began to wield it, over and over again.
He was in no mood to hear arguments, or to speak to anyone. He had come to the one place where he could give what he felt physical expression.
Sweat soaked into white cotton. He stripped from the waist up, used the garment to wipe off his face, the back of his neck. Then he flung it aside.
It was good to push; hard. To feel exertion in every sinew, to gather every muscle to a single task. He needed the feeling of grounding and certainty amid these repellent tactics, these deceptions, these men who fought with words and shadows and treachery.
He fought, until he was only his body, the burn of flesh, the pounding of blood, the hot slick of sweat, until everything concentrated into one simple focus, the power of heavy steel, that could bring death. In the moment when he paused—stopped—there was only silence and the sound of his own breath. He turned.
Laurent was standing in the doorway, watching him.
He didn’t know how long Laurent had been there. He had been practising now for an hour or longer. Sweat sheened his skin, his muscles oiled with it. He didn’t care. He knew they had unfinished business. As far as he was concerned, it could stay unfinished.
‘If you’re this angry,’ said Laurent, ‘you should fight a real opponent.’
‘There’s no one—’ Damen stopped, but the unspoken words hung, dangerous with the truth. There was no one good enough to fight him. Not in this mood. In this mood, angry and unable to hold back, he would kill them.
‘There’s me,’ said Laurent.
* * *
It was a bad idea. He felt the thrumming in his veins that told him it was a bad idea. He watched Laurent draw a sword of his own from the wall. He remembered watching Laurent’s sword work in his duel against Govart, his own fingers itching to pick up a sword. He remembered other things too. The tug he had felt on his gold collar from the leash in Laurent’s hand. The fall of the lash on his back. The driving fist of a guard as he was thrown down onto his knees. He heard his own voice, thick and heavy.
‘You want me to put you on your back in the dirt?’
‘You think you can?’
Laurent had cast his sword-sheath to the side. It lay disregarded in the sawdust as he calmly stood with an open blade.
Damen hefted his own sword in his hand. He was not feeling careful.
He had warned Laurent. That was advance notice enough.
He attacked, a ringing three-stroke sequence that Laurent countered, circling so that his back was no longer to the door, but to the length of the training arena. When Damen attacked again, Laurent used the space behind him, moving back.
And further back. Damen quickly grasped that he was progressing through the same set of experiences that had derailed Govart: expecting the fight to be more straightforward than it was, and finding that instead Laurent was difficult to pin down. Laurent’s blade teased, slipping away without follow-through. Laurent enticed, then stepped back.
It was irritating. Laurent was a good swordsman, who was not exerting himself. Tap, tap, tap. They had by now travelled almost the full length of the training area, and were drawing alongside the post. Laurent’s breathing was undisturbed.
The next time Damen engaged, Laurent ducked and swung around the post, so that he had the length of the training area again at his back.
‘Are we just going to go up and down? I thought you’d push me at least a little,’ said Laurent.
Damen unleashed a strike, full strength and with brutal speed, giving Laurent no time to do anything but bring up his sword. He felt blade catch blade with a screech of metal, and watched the force of the impact travel through Laurent’s wrists and shoulders, watched it wrench the sword almost out of his hands, and throw him, satisfyingly, out of a balanced stance to stagger three paces back.
‘You mean like that?’ said Damen.
Laurent recovered well, moving back another step. He was looking at Damen with narrowed eyes. There was something different in his posture, a new wariness.
‘I thought I’d let you go up and down a few times,’ said Damen, ‘before I take you.’
‘I thought you were down here because you couldn’t take me.’