Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (7 page)

Since armor of any kind was prohibited in
traditional duels, Jatar was dressed in black cotton pants and a
loose white shirt. For good
footing,
he wore soft leather shoes with no heel. Tysol
wore dark blue silk pants with a sky blue silk long-sleeved shirt
and tight fitting brown shoes.

Each man used a rapier, with the blade
approximately three feet long and about a thumb’s width across,
sharp on both sides with a narrow point. They were quick weapons
that could be used for either a slash or a
stab
and had a cross piece just below the grip to protect
the hand.

On their left
hands,
each combatant had on a leather fencing gauntlet,
traditionally used to parry a thrust. Before donning his gauntlet
Jatar had placed Elizabeth’s ring in the breast pocket of his
shirt.

Tysol had on a black leather gauntlet made
of thicker leather than Jatar’s, which gave his hand more
protection, but allowed less dexterity.

The two men approached the middle of the
circle and faced each other. Their gleaming weapons swept up to the
`on guard’ position with the sword hand low, and the sword tip at
their opponent’s eye level.

Basic instructions from his old fencing
master passed through Jatar’s thoughts:
Watch the eyes; they
often signal your opponent’s intent to attack, but watch his chest
even more for it must move to supply the power. Watch the sword
least, for it will often trick and fool the unwary.

Jatar looked into Tysol’s eyes and saw
confidence in the disdainful squint that met his gaze. Jatar
decided to be cautious; something was giving his opponent the
belief that he held the edge in this fight. The two men slowly
began to circle
.

Jatar was still trying to make sense of
Tysol's challenge; he wondered what made the man so confident
against an opponent with the reputation of a master swordsman?
Could it be treachery, or did he really believe that his skills
were that much superior?

A slight tightening at the corner of Tysol’s
eye gave a
signal
of his first
attack. He tried a compound movement involving a low feint, which
Jatar ignored, followed by a quick upward thrust toward the eyes.
After the feint, Tysol’s body gave away the real move and Jatar
sidestepped right to let the blade pass by harmlessly. The
Lindankar ruler withheld the obvious riposte because he was not yet
sure of his opponent’s skill with the sword.

As Jatar stepped aside and Tysol’s sword
missed the crowd gasped, to the unknowledgeable Tysol
seemed to
nearly skewer Jatar.

Again the voice of his teacher echoed in his
mind.
Let an unknown adversary reveal his style before you
commit yourself to showing him yours. Your patience may be rewarded
when your opponent overextends in an attempt to get through your
defense, and that is a good time for your first strike.

Jatar analyzed the attack his opponent had
just launched, it was skilled and the gracefulness of the feint
showed the fine tuning of recent practice, yet the simple feint and
attack were not up to Jatar’s level of expertise. He wondered if
Tysol was acting in an attempt to draw him into underestimating his
skill. Jatar continued to be patient.

Tysol circled to his right while stepping
carefully. The two sword tips were in constant motion as each
swordsman tried to get the advantage of line. To the untrained
spectators,
it looked almost as if
nothing were happening, yet whole attack series were conceived and
as quickly discarded as an opponent countered the other's position
with minute shifts of their sword or movements of their feet.

Suddenly Tysol struck again, he beat Jatar’s
sword to the side and then came in for the heart with a lunge.
Jatar batted the foil of the sword aside with his gauntlet so that
it passed to his left, yet he still didn’t make the riposte that
presented itself; he wasn’t quite ready yet.

“You fight like a woman Jatar, which is
fitting since your puppet strings are held by one,” Lord Tysol
sneered contemptuously as Jatar stepped back out of Tysol’s latest
attack.

“Your weight shift and footwork were sloppy
on that last lunge, Tysol. You should work on that or it might kill
you one day,” countered Jatar.

With his face turning red, Tysol launched
himself into a swift attack, involving a feint followed by a
circular motion of the sword tip designed to bring his sword to the
open side of Jatar’s defense.

Jatar easily circled his blade to counter
and brought it around to confound Tysol’s move. The opening was
there and it held little risk, so Jatar performed his first
riposte. He used a blindingly fast double feint that brought
Tysol’s blade out of line, which left an opening for Jatar’s blade
to glide through and
pink
his
opponent shallowly in the upper left shoulder.

Like a rose blossoming in the morning, the
red blood of Tysol’s body seeped into his sky blue shirt in a
slowly expanding circle.

Tysol cried out in pain and belatedly beat
Jatar’s blade aside. Then rapidly, with
little
finesse, he made a counter-riposte, but Jatar used
his gauntlet and easily pushed the blade away from his body.

A rage began to boil on Tysol’s face as his
pupils closed to mere pinpoints in the irises of his eyes. A
glistening line of spittle ran down from the corner of his tightly
clenched mouth and you could almost hear his teeth grinding to
powder in his mouth.

Tysol
leaped
forward in an obvious thrust meant to pierce
Jatar’s body, but Lord Ardellen’s blade pushed the oncoming blade
aside, which caused the two men to meet nearly chest to chest in a
bind, corps et corps.

Tysol’s left hand made a quick twist and
jerk that caused a hidden dagger from within his sleeve to drop
into his waiting hand. Without
hesitation,
he brought it up in a wicked stabbing motion
designed to angle between the ribs for Jatar’s heart.

Jatar's attention was still on his
opponent’s eyes and body, so he felt Tysol’s weight shift. With the
athletic moves of a practiced
swordsman,
Jatar twisted his body at the last moment,
which caused the hidden blade to miss its intended target and
scrape along his ribs. Blood gushed from the ragged cut and quickly
soaked into his shirt, but the blade had not penetrated into any of
his vitals, so it was not lethal. The sudden shift of weight to
avoid the blade cost Jatar his balance and the two men fell to the
hard floor with Tysol landing on top.

Tysol quickly shifted his grip on the dagger
and raised it over his head and then plunged the blade straight
down toward Jatar’s heart.

The watching crowd gasped in horror at the
treacherous attack, but Elizabeth’s gaze was locked on the dagger
in concentration.

As the blade struck Jatar’s chest it
abruptly stopped; the tip barely pierced his heaving chest. The
pinned swordsman didn’t give Tysol a chance to repeat his failed
attack. All in one motion Jatar rolled the
Datorian
ruler to the side and violently tossed him away.
The two combatants scrambled to their feet and were up and ready to
face each other again a moment later. Blood soaked the side and
breast of Jatar’s shirt. A few voices called out above the din to
stop the fight, but Jatar ignored them and extended his blade with
the point towards Tysol to discourage a lunge by his opponent. He
quickly assessed his wounds and blood
loss
and decided that although he was not seriously hurt,
he did need to finish the duel quickly before he lost too much
blood and therefore strength.

“Halt!” Lord Brik called out, “a foul has
been given!” he exclaimed, referring to the dagger in Tysol’s left
hand.

“I waive my right,” Jatar called, to let the
duel continue.

Lord Jatar had watched Lord Tysol early in
the match, and now he had analyzed his style enough to guess what
form of parry Tysol would use to a specific attack. Jatar performed
a feint, knowing where Tysol’s blade would go to parry his fake
thrust, but Jatar sent the real attack in over his adversary's
wasted
parry
. The sharp tip of his
rapier pierced Tysol’s right upper forearm, which caused him to
drop his sword.

The next thing Tysol saw was Jatar’s sword
tip at his throat. With abject fear crawling across his face, the
Lord of Datoria dropped to his knees. The treacherous dagger fell
from the grip of his left hand and he grabbed his wounded right
arm.

Jatar spoke to him with utter disdain and
from his tone it was obvious that what little respect he had held
for his opponent was gone. “You are forsworn and a disgrace to the
title of ruling Lord. By all
rights,
I should kill you now, but I do not wish to soil
this fair blade any further with the sewer water of your body. Get
you gone from the sight of honorable men and women, and let no man
of Lindankar show you the courtesy due the lowest of animals.”

“I call foul as well; you bear armor to a
duel!” Tysol accused, his eyes shifting to the crowd wildly.

Jatar reached into his bloody breast pocket
and removed Elizabeth’s ring, two furrows were evident in the soft
gold, caused by the opposing edges of Tysol’s dagger where it
struck the center of the ring. “Here is my armor, my wife’s wedding
ring, given as a good luck token!” Jatar exclaimed, holding the
ring high for all to see.

Jatar turned to his guards and commanded,
“See that this piece of trash departs my palace immediately.” Jatar
turned his back contemptuously and walked out of the room, his wife
joined him at his side.

Tysol trembled with anger. “Help me up, you
imbeciles!” he hissed to his guards.

The watching crowd had been quiet until that
point. They were caught up in the drama of the moment, but now the
dam broke and debate exploded into a thousand forms of life.

As soon as Jatar and Elizabeth were outside
the room Jatar sagged against his wife, he was weak from the loss
of blood.

Elizabeth quickly helped him to a chair in
their sitting room before going to close the door. “I knew you were
more severely wounded than you let on! You had to try and end it
quickly, didn’t you?”

“Yes, he surprised me with his confidence in
his skills. I’m not sure, but I don’t think he intended to use that
concealed dagger from the start; I really believe that he thought
he could take me easily. Did you... OUCH, careful!” he exclaimed
ruefully.

Elizabeth continued removing his shirt,
though she quit tugging so hard.

He continued, “Anyway did you see the
confidence he showed early in the bout? He had me thinking that he
had more skill than he did. I was probably more cautious than I had
to be, though that may have saved me in the
bind
when he went for his hidden dagger.”

“My heart stopped when I read his intent
just before he stabbed you, and I almost interfered with my powers.
I wanted to run to you and cure the wound! Remaining outside the
circle was the most difficult thing I have ever done. I did see
from your aura that you weren’t mortally wounded, but then he was
on top and he raised that dagger to plunge it into your heart, so I
had to intervene. I only used a slight push to guide the dagger
into the center of the wedding ring.”

“You did that?”

“I’m sorry if it angers you, but I could not
allow his traitorous attack to put your life in danger! Besides,
that dagger was outside the rules,” she defended.

“I’m not angry, my love, I thank you for
your assistance; besides, at that
point,
Tysol had already relinquished his rights. That
was quick thinking to use the ring, it saved argument.”

“Yes, I could have just stopped him, but
everyone would have known,” Elizabeth noted as she examined the
wound in Jatar's side. A look of concentration came over her face
as she focused her aura powers. She used her Adept vision and saw
his aura burning in high flames of black and red in the torn
wounded area at his side. She began to soothe the aura around the
edge of the
wound
while closing in
slowly on the center. She reformed the damaged aura to match the
existing white and blue healthy aura colors around it. She worked
until the damaged area color and texture was even and
indistinguishable from the rest. His body paralleled the change to
the aura to fit the new pattern, and tissues re-knit and healed as
the aura healed.

“I’ll never understand how you do that,”
Jatar said with awe in his voice as he looked at the fresh new skin
of his side.

Elizabeth moved her gaze to his chest. The
bloody wound showed a round circle, where her ring had been pushed
into the flesh of his chest. In the
center,
there was a slash where the tip of the dagger had
also penetrated.

As she concentrated her aura power into the
wound she answered his question, “Think of the body and aura as
one, when the dagger wounded the body it changed the aura to match,
so when I change the aura back the body changes to match, you see?”
She answered, while healing the chest wound, “The aura and the body
are linked; one is the reflection of the other.”

As Elizabeth finished her minor lesson she
decided that since she had cured his body it would be a good thing
to take his mind off the whole nasty business. She leaned over
Jatar as if to inspect his side, which gave him an interesting view
of her low cut dress.

“I hear, but I don’t completely understand,”
Jatar answered, “but that’s all right, so long as you understand
how it works,
however,
you do it,
I thank you; I feel completely whole.” To demonstrate his health
Jatar pulled Elizabeth into the chair on top of him and kissed her
welcoming mouth.