| Ficbit Challenge 5
Ten -
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| The heavy black blade with its garish crossguard whistled diagonally
past his ear, and Geddoe lunged into the space formed by the blade's passing
and brought his own (smaller, lighter, faster) sword up sharply. It would
take a much better swordsman than this--a much stronger swordsman
than this--to reverse that heavy blade and bring it back up in time, and
Geddoe knew before his sword even struck that he'd won. In a perfect world
the flat of Geddoe's blade would have crashed into the boy's temple and
he would have been knocked out but otherwise unharmed--no, in a perfect
world Geddoe wouldn't have gotten involved in this useless battle at all.
Still, too late to think about that.
But this wasn't a perfect world. This was Le Buque, and in many way Le Buque was as far from perfect as it could get. Instead of good honest hard-packed dirt under his feet there were oddly springy woven rush mats, and as he lunged the mats rebounded and almost threw him into his opponent, and then the boy was down as he had planned but was also bleeding profusely from a savage cut that threaded from his eyebrow back into his red hair. Geddoe breathed out an annoyed breath and wiped his sword clean, then sheathed it. "So you've won," the sword said, laying on the mat next to the boy's lax hand, where it had been dropped. "I suppose I'm yours, then. You're worthier than he is, that's for certain." "I don't want you," Geddoe told it, automatically speaking to the little face on the crossguard. "I don't trust a sword that talks more than I do." Instead of touching the sword he unhooked its scabbard from the boy's waist and nudged the sword's tip in, guiding the scabbard onto the blade instead of taking up the sword and sheathing it. The sword cursed at him until the scabbard clicked home, at which point its voice became muffled and it stopped talking. Geddoe could only suppose it was sulking. When he laid the sheathed sword on the boy's chest the boy's hands both came up to curl possessively around it, even though Geddoe was certain that he was still unconscious. "You can keep it," Geddoe told him. "Don't know why you'd want it, but you can keep it." The line between the boy's brows immediately smoothed out, and he sighed in his sleep. Geddoe watched him for a moment, then crouched and touched two fingers to the pulse at his throat. His heartbeat was steady and strong, even though the side of his face was smeared with blood that was beginning to drip onto the rush mat beneath him. On one knee beside him, Geddoe considered the matter, and came to the conclusion that he ought to leave the boy here to be robbed by the hungry Le Buquans, considering that he'd been asking for just this. Having come to that conclusion, Geddoe felt free to ignore it. The boy was just exactly as heavy as he'd looked, stocky and muscular, and Geddoe was forced to hold him close against his chest to keep from dropping him. Blood from the cut on the boy's temple soaked into Geddoe's collar, and his breath was warm against the side of Geddoe's throat. "You're going to be trouble," Geddoe grumbled to no one in particular, and the sword muttered angrily in its scabbard, caught between their bodies. |
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