The Steel Remains

Someone moving, scuffing softly among the trees, off to the left of the path. Maybe more than one. He grunted and flexed the fingers of his right hand. Called out in the damp, still air, “I’m not in the fucking mood for this.”

And knew it for a lie. His blood went shivering along his veins, his heart was abruptly stuffed full with the sharp, joyous quickening of it. He’d love to kill something right now.

Movement again, whoever it was hadn’t scared off. Ringil whirled, hand up and reaching past his head for the Ravensfriend’s jutting pommel. The sword rasped at his ear as he drew, nine inches of the murderous alloy dragging up from the battle scabbard and over his shoulder before the rest of the clasp-lipped sheath on his back split apart along the side, just as it was made to. The rest of the blade rang clear, widthways. It made a cold, clean sound in the predawn air. His left hand joined his right on the long, worn hilt. The scabbard fell back emptied, swung a little on its ties; Ringil came to rest on the turn.

It was a neat trick, all Kiriath elegance and an unlooked-for turn of speed that had cheated unwary attackers more times than he could easily recall. All part of the Ravensfriend mystique, the package he’d bought into when Grashgal gifted him with the weapon. Better yet, it put him directly into a side-on, overhead guard, the bluish alloy blade up there for all to see and know for what it was. Their move—up to them to decide if they really did want to take on the owner of a Kiriath weapon after all. There’d been more than a handful of backings-down in the last ten years when that blue glinting edge came out. Ringil faced back along the path, hoping wolfishly that this wouldn’t be one of them.

Nothing.

Flickered glances to the foliage on either side, a measuring of angles and available space, then he dropped into a more conventional forward guard. The Ravensfriend hushed the air apart as it described the geometric shift, faint swoop of the sound as the blade moved.

“That’s right,” he called. “Kiriath steel. It’ll take your soul.”

He thought he heard laughter in return, high and whispering through the trees. Another sensation slipped like a chilled collar about the back of his neck. As if his surroundings had been abruptly lifted clear of any earthly context, as if in some way he was gone, taken out of everything familiar. Distance announced itself, cold as the void between stars, and pushed things apart. The trees stood witness. The river mist crawled and coiled like something living.

Irritable rage gusted through him, took the shiver back down.

“I’m really not fucking about here. You want to waylay me, let’s get to it. Sun’s coming up, time for scum like you to be home in bed or in a grave.”

Something yelped, off to the right, something crashed suddenly through branches. His vision twitched to the sound; he caught a glimpse of limbs and a low, ape-like gait, but crabbing away, fleeing. Another motion behind it, another similar form. He thought maybe he saw the glint of a short blade, but it was hard to tell—the predawn light painted everything so leaden.

The laughter again.

This time it seemed to swoop down on him, pass by at his ear with a caress. He felt it, and flinched with the near physicality of it, twisted half around, staring . . .

Then it was gone, the whole thing, in a way he felt sink into his bones like sunlight. He waited in the quiet for it to return, the Ravensfriend held motionless before him. But whatever it was, it seemed it was finished with him for now. The two scrambling, maybe human shadows did not return, either. Finally, Ringil gave up an already loosening tension and stance, angled the scabbard carefully off his back, and slid the unused sword back into place. He cast a final look around and resumed walking, stepping lighter now, rinsed out and thrumming lightly inside with the unused fight arousal. He buried the memory of the laughter, put it away where he wouldn’t have to look at it again too closely.

Fucking krinzanz nerves.

He came to Eskiath House in rising tones of gray as the sky brightened from upriver. The light pricked at his eyes. He peered in through the massive iron bars of the main gate, felt oddly like some pathetic ghost clinging to the scene of an earthly existence there was no way back to. The gates were secured with chains, and ended in long spikes that he knew—he’d done it when he was younger—there was no easy way to get over. No traffic this early; outside of the servants, no one would even be stirring. For a moment, his hand brushed the thick rope bellpull, then he let his arm fall again and stepped back. The quiet was too solid to contemplate shattering with that much noise.