Knight's Shadow Read Free Page B

the nightmist would dissipate enough for me to make out figures in the distance, fighting and dying, the next it closed in on me, suffocating me while it revealed only glints of light reflecting from steel swords clashing in the distance like fireflies flitting in the night air.
    I hate magic.
    ‘Falcio!’ Brasti called out.
    His voice sounded far away but I’d run only a few feet before I saw him fighting two men dressed all in dark cloth with masks covering their faces. For an instant I froze, thinking,
Dashini!
Trin has sent the Dashini for us
. In my mind I envisioned hundreds of the dark assassins, fighting in pairs to kill us one by one. I had barely survived facing two of them in Rijou, so if Trin had managed to—
    ‘A little help?’ Brasti shouted, breaking the spell, and I got to him just as one of his opponents swung a warsword down in a vicious arc that would have taken Brasti’s head off if I hadn’t crossed my rapiers above his head and blocked the blow, my still-unsteady legs feeling the weight of my opponent’s attack. Brasti dived and rolled out of the way – a dangerous move when you’re holding a shortsword – but he kicked out with one foot at the back of the man’s knees and drove him to the ground.
    The other one turned to me and beckoned teasingly with his sword. ‘Come, Trattari,’ he said, his voice thick and resonant in the mist. ‘Amuse me with your Greatcoat tricks before I break you – or better yet, show me to the one who calls himself the Saint of Swords. I’ll happily take that title from him.’
    It wasn’t like a Dashini to bluster in a fight. They say creepy things like, ‘You are tired . . . your eyes wish to close . . . let peace come to you . . .’ – that sort of thing. And a warsword? No, they fought with long, stiletto-like blades, not military weapons.
So not Dashini then. Someone else.
    I stepped forward and flicked the point of my rapier in his face, but he didn’t try to parry, instead using his forearm to swipe the blade aside. I heard a clang of metal against metal.
Aha. That’s a metal vambrace
, I thought.
You’re wearing armour under that dark grey cloth
.
    ‘Shouldn’t you introduce yourself, Sir Knight?’ I asked.
    He took a swing at me with that great big sword of his. I was still moving too slowly and barely leaned back in time to watch it sail by; when I tried a thrust for his right armpit I missed by a good inch, hitting steel plate instead of flesh: I definitely hadn’t fully shaken off the vestiges of my temporary paralysis. Had Kest been there he would have reminded me, in that way he has, that a good swordsman would adjust for the stiffness.
    The problem with fighting Knights is that they tend to wear a great deal of metal, which means you either have to bludgeon them to death, which is hard to do with a rapier, or find the gaps in their armour and strike there. The dark grey cloth my opponent was wearing made it harder to find those spots, and the nightmist wasn’t helping either. Brasti and his opponent had already disappeared from view.
    ‘Hardly sporting,’ I said, goading the Knight by moving clockwise around him, counting on his plate-mail to make it hard for him to turn gracefully. ‘Aren’t Ducal Knights required to wear their tabards and show their colours in combat?’
    ‘You’d lecture me in honour,
Trattari
?’ the Knight asked, his tone mocking me, and to add injury to insult, he tried to drive the point of his sword through my belly. I shifted on my heel so it went by me on the left and drove the pommel of my rapier against the flat of his blade, knocking the point down towards the ground. He stepped back before I could take advantage of his lowered guard.
    ‘Well, I don’t like to brag about honour,’ I said, ‘but I shouldn’t have to point out that I’m not the one sneaking in under cover of nightmist to murder a thirteen-year-old girl. In the dark. Like an
assassin
. Like a
coward
.’
    I thought that would