Dai-San - 03 Read Online Free Page B

leaned away from it instead of fighting it and they were at a deadlock, their faces only centimeters apart.
    ‘You thought me dead,’ whispered Freidal, ‘but I survived our last encounter, your traitorous blow. I clung to life, I would not die, for my mission was not yet complete. The strength of the righteous flowed through me and, as the cold days and nights passed, my scribe opened his veins to me. He knew his duty. He fed me the warmth and the life from his own body so that the Law might be served, so that I might seek you and Borros out, so that justice might be done.’
    Freidal broke away, feinted, then swept in the opposite direction, saying: ‘Law must ever be the victor against chaos!’ He cut in under Ronin’s defense and the edge of his blade sliced through cloth and skin. Then Ronin’s blade was up, breaking the momentum of the blow and he would not retreat.
    ‘Agh!’ screamed the Saardin. ‘What sort of man are you? Coward! Why do you not attack?’
    The whisper in his ear: a soft susurration with a core of steel. Ronin heard again the Salamander, his Senseii, talking to him as he took Ronin through Combat practice on one of the high Levels of the Freehold: ‘It is not just the strong arm, my dear boy, which wins in Combat. Let your eye judge your opponent. Stand your ground. Do not attack, yet neither do you retreat. Be the rock upon which your opponent throws himself, thus will you see his weaknesses. And then, dear boy, when his frustration turns inexorably to rage, his reactions will suffer and, if you are most clever, you will find the proper path to victory.’
    Thus he stood upon the unquiet deck, in the shadow of the looming obsidian ships, their strange avian sails dominating the sky, and repulsed all that Freidal threw at him. He parried the powerful horizontal strokes, he turned aside the vicious oblique cuts, he blocked the swift vertical strikes, all the while gauging the feints and false movements, the careful counterbalancing of Combat that made it such a complex art, that lifted its finest executors into a realm far above a mere warrior’s. And in this Ronin recognized the truth within the distortions the Saardin mouthed: The Freehold’s Combat system had made him a superior artist in weaponry. Knew too, on an instinctive level, just how dangerous Freidal was. His belief in his righteousness, in the iron fastness of the Law, could not be shaken. He was no mercenary, proficient but easily dealt with. His fanaticism was his power, would feed him deep reserves of strength and will. Thus at last did Ronin recognize his evil as the Freehold’s.
    Freidal feinted another blow, threw his sword at Ronin instead, and in the same motion, slammed his balled fists into Ronin’s throat. His knee lifted and smashed into Ronin’s stomach. Ronin fell against the starboard sheer-strake, his breath gone and his eyes watering. He gagged, willing his lungs to do their work. Freidal’s good eye gleamed as he swung from the hips, slamming his fists alongside Ronin’s head. He watched the other sink to his knees.
    Freidal looked down and, grinning wolfishly, bent and picked up Ronin’s fallen sword. Languidly, almost lovingly, he tested its weight and judged its balance. Ronin’s head came up and the Saardin swiped at the face with the back of his hand.
    Now he held Ronin’s sword with both hands and slowly lifted it high above his head. It gleamed all along its length, a bolt of stiff lightning that too soon began its blurred descent.
    Ronin tried to focus but all he could see was a dark shape looming over him, a streak of white light that hurt his eyes. The world drained of color: two polymorphous black entities, two shards of bitter ebon will, linked by a slashing line of white.
    His fingers like lances, stiff as steel inside the Makkon gauntlet, his body already moving without conscious volition as something bellowed darkly inside him, echoing on a torrent of wind filled with animal scents.