Chapter 141 - 140: Skillful Prince.

Chapter 141: Chapter 140: Skillful Prince.

Mouth suddenly unexpectedly dry, Khobi swallows, and quickly sets his gaze back on Montrel, who has eyes only for his approaching opponent.

His prince.

The very prince he’s sworn to protect and serve, and the same prince that he openly detests protecting and serving.

​But today Montrel isn’t a castle guard. Today he’s just a soldier trying to prove that he deserves to be one.

And don’t the crowd just love a story like that? The roars that roll out into the open sky are deafening; who they’re supporting it’s impossible to know.

It’s a mob out there; a cacophony of different voices; some screaming for a good fight, and others for a dirty one, and more still who just want to see another man’s dignity shattered.

​They don’t even really care which one.

​But if they’re expecting games this time, they’re disappointed.

Because it’s clear from the moment Loac sets foot in that arena that this time, he’s got no intention of messing around.

His sword is in his hand long before he even reaches Montrel, and there’s a gravity to his stride that hadn’t been there the previous fight; not even in the last moments.

It draws the helpless eye, like the moon pulls the tide, and it could be entirely Khobi’s imagination, but each step he takes seems just that little bit longer; just that little bit faster, until he’s leaning so far out of his chair he’s practically on his feet, anticipation building in his veins like a tidal wave about to break as Loac all but hurtles towards Montrel’s motionless form.

​And Montrel rises up to meet him like a cliff face facing the ocean in a storm, and with both swords little more than shards of light, the wave breaks upon him.

​This time there are no games. There’s no pretense with this fight; no tentative circling, or testing each others’ guard.

​This time it is all out war .

​And it blows Khobi’s fucking mind .

​From the very first moment their blades meet --Loac’s swinging in a deadly, sweeping arc and Montrel’s there in the nick of time to stop it dead in its track, they do not stop .

It’s incredible; so fast the bare eye can hardly keep track of whose blade ends where --but Khobi finds himself trying, desperately, to keep up; red eyes darting to and fro like fireflies in a frenzy.

Because he knew Montrel was fast --he was one of the fastest soldiers in the castle guard when it came to wielding a blade --but this is the first time he’s ever really gotten to see exactly how fast.

​And Loac, unbelievably , is just as fast.

​Maybe even faster.

Despite his personality, Montrel has a keen sense of control over his sword, and can deal out vicious attacks at a relentless pace that even Khobi has had trouble with on occasion.

But Loac keeps time with him, parrying whatever Montrel sends him; no matter how difficult to counter.

The way he moves is seamless, his body twisting in ways that would look awkward and off balance on anyone else --that would be awkward and off balance on anyone else.

But he just shifts from one movement into the next like each step that follows is the only natural next step; part of a sequence he knows by heart.

​It’s so clean; each movement so crisp, that if Khobi didn’t know better --didn’t know that such cooperation would never be possible --he’d think they’d choreographed the whole thing.

That this was something they had spent hours painstakingly rehearsing over and over; perfecting this obscene, piercing song of fast, shrill tones that cut off like screams in the night, to perform and thrill a crowd of thousands.

​Because it is thrilling .

​They dive at each other, over and over again, setting a breakneck pace that has to have the soldiers waiting in the wings sweating in their boots for fear they may not be able to keep up with them.

Because although some of them have been fast, this is on an entirely otherworldly level.

Trying to read an enemy’s movements when they move like this is...fatal.

Something that Khobi knows well. Trying to read an enemy’s shape and anticipate his next move is important --an art, in some respects --but there’s always an element of guesswork.

A gut feeling, of what they’re about to do next. He’s learned from fighting with Montrel, some of his tendencies --like that he prefers brute strength over feints, and considers offense the best defence, but Loac doesn’t have that.

​What makes Montrel a dangerous opponent is his speed. If you can’t read him fast enough, that fraction of a delay is enough to let him slip through.

​But Loac doesn’t falter whatsoever --no break in his stride or hesitation in any of his movements, not even with the onslaught he’s facing, and the one that he’s beating down on Montrel. It’s like he’s not even trying to read him.

It’s like he’s moving on pure instinct. Like some unseen force is guiding him; swinging him to and fro like a puppet without strings.

And as he watches, Khobi could swear he feels the gypsy fires this time; burning high and red and then low and gold all around him, with the rhythm of those two swords ensnaring his heart and making it dance to the beat they choose.

​The beat is fast, almost frenzied, and Khobi watches, spellbound, as Loac’s sword beats back Montrel’s and chases it through the air; hacking and slicing his way through the air like he wants to rend the world in two.

​There’s blood, he thinks, dripping down into the dirt, but from here it’s impossible to tell whose; impossible to tell which blade hit its mark, and when.

​(Deep down, he knows, somehow, that the blood belongs to Montrel.)

​He’d glimpsed it in the moment just before that lance had crashed into Rogard’s chest --that Loac’s aim was impeccable, and that he had an uncanny gift for seeing, or perhaps just feeling where to strike.

​Khobi has to correct his earlier assessment. He’d thought, with the way he moves, that Loac was like water, but he’s wrong.

He’s more like a storm, a wild tempest of a man. Whenever he moves, flickering from place to place like flashes of lightning dancing amongst the clouds, the very air shifts around him, and sucks the breath clean out of Khobi’s lungs.

They kick up dust in their wake, and it joins the whirlwind of Loac’s making; longingly chasing after him and following where he goes like it is powerless to resist his pull.

​It’s just dust, but when Khobi finally blinks, there’s a split second there before his vision clears where sees them as tiny sparks fawning upon a silhouette; embers birthed from the gypsy fires burning into the night.

​It’s... otherworldly .

​When he was young, he used to listen to songs by the fireside about mythic princes and warriors, who fought magnificent creatures in the sky with blades of lightning and wind, and who shattered stars with their swords and made thunder when they beat their shields.

Khnoji used to tell him that the songs were once about men, who fought so beautiful that it was thought it could only be the work of magic.

​He never really understood back then. Men were just men. Duelling was incredible, but nothing that even his childish mind would have called magic .

​He understands what Khnoji had meant a little better, now.

​And it’s not fair.

​How can someone like Loac move the way he does, and weave spells with a sword like he does? Watching him, Khobi thinks of wind coursing through a forest, and of gales beating down upon the rocks by the sea.

He’s not watching a duel right now, but an intricate, deadly dance --one set to a rhythm that doesn’t hear so much as feels .

​And he thinks how incredible it would be to fight him. What it might feel like to face down a force like that; to feel that strength against his body and against his skin.

It’s a dangerous thought, but one that brings fire back to his veins with a vengeance and a heat that will not be ignored.

​There’s something smouldering inside that man, he can feel it in the way he moves --something alive trapped behind those dead eyes that is pulling him in; refusing to let him look away, and he wonders, palms dripping , not from fear but anticipation , what it would be like to come face to face with that.

​He’s not worried, though.

​Because as brilliantly as Loac can move with a blade, he’s not the only one who knows how to move like that.