Blood Song

The Shield’s face showed a brief spasm of either rage or fear, but he mastered it quickly. Saying nothing, awaiting death and refusing to beg.

“There was much laughter in your house,” Al Sorna told him. “When your father returned from distant shores with presents and tales of adventure, you would gather around with your brothers and listen, hungering for manhood and rejoicing in his love. But he never told you of the murders he committed, honest sailors pitched to the sharks from the decks of their own ships, nor the women he raped when they raided the Realm’s southern shore. You loved your father, but you loved a lie.”

The Shield bared his teeth in a feral grimace of hate. “Just finish it!”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Al Sorna went on. “You were just a boy. There was nothing you could do. You were right to run…”

The Shield’s composure shattered, an enraged roar erupting from his lips, charging forward, hands reaching for Al Sorna’s throat. The northman side-stepped the charge and slammed the palm of his hand into the Shield’s temple, felling him to the arena floor where he lay still and immobile.

Al Sorna turned and walked back to his seat, retrieving the scabbard and sheathing his sword. The crowd were beginning to react now, mostly in shock, but with a tinge of anger that I knew would only grow.

“This challenge is not concluded, Lord Vaelin!” Carval Nurin called above the rising tumult.

Al Sorna turned, walking to where Lady Emeren sat, shocked and staring at him in rigid frustration. “My Lady, are you ready to depart this place?”

“This contest is to the death!” Nurin shouted. “If you leave this man alive you dishonour him in the eyes of the Isles for all time.”

Al Sorna turned away from the Lady Emeren with a gracious bow. “Honour?” he asked Nurin. “Honour is just a word. You can’t eat it or drink it and yet everywhere I go men talk of it endlessly, and they all tell a different tale of what it actually means. For the Alpirans it’s all about duty, the Renfaelins think it’s the same as courage. In these islands it appears it means killing a son for a crime committed by his father then slaughtering a helpless man when the pantomime fails to go to plan.”

It was strange, but the crowd fell silent as he spoke, even though his voice wasn’t particularly loud the amphitheatre carried it effortlessly to all those present, and somehow their anger and disappointed blood-lust abated.