Page 19 of Fate’s Bane

T HE D UEL

“Let me take this duel, brother,” murmured Modin-father-sister as Garadin Clan Fein stormed back to our pallets. “I will right this.”

I stopped in my tracks and my middle father-sister bumped into me in the darkness. Laudir-father-sister caught herself, and then gave my shoulders a rough squeeze.

“Did you order this, Father?”

My father half turned to look at me over his shoulder.

His eyes rose to Laudir, behind me. She squeezed my shoulders tighter, fingernails digging into my naked skin, then shoved me forward.

I followed like a gosling behind them, clutching the dagger in my hand, tingling from Hadhnri’s presence in the Making.

“Who will he send to fight for Clan Aradoc?” Laudir asked.

“Gunni First-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc,” I spoke up without thinking.

If Pedhri did not suggest it, Gunni would demand the chance to prove himself before all the clans.

The next words—what I knew of Gunni’s strengths and weaknesses, his fighting style—burned away like mist under the blaze of a memory:

Is there no loyalty in you at all? To me, if not to my clan?

There I stood, caught between Hadhnri’s scorn and my father’s reservation, his dark eyes gleaming in the starlight. As he weighed me, I held my chin up. I had learned that much, in the years since I stopped wearing a collar.

“Then I must send one of my own children.”

Now, I bowed my head. I was no match for Gunni, but he was First-Born Clan Aradoc, and I was First-Born Clan Fein.

“I will stand for Clan Fein.”

Garadin Clan Fein continued to stare at me, and when he spoke, it was not without affection. “I will send Onsgar.”

Relief and disappointment split me in half.

Perhaps Onsgar had told our father about Hadhnri.

I did not want to duel Gunni and was glad to have the choice taken from me, but I could not bear to be deemed unfaithful by someone else I thought I loved.

To be pushed beyond the borders of the light and warmth of a clan every time I came too close.

“Do you not trust me, Father? I will fight him for you.”

My father draped a wiry arm around my shoulder and steered us onward to our pallets while my father-sisters trailed alongside.

“Fear not, my child. I know you are mine. The adder at his breast.” He snorted. “Come. You will tell Onsgar what you know of Gunni First-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc.”

So I told him all that I knew, and the next morning, the clans circled about Onsgar and Gunni, one my trueborn brother whom I’d known only a few years, and one my foster brother, whom I’d known as long as I could remember.

They were of a height, though Gunni was older by a handspan and clearly had strength on his side.

Onsgar had speed, though, and he was clever as Bannos.

The steel of their swords shone bright as the Sunstead sun.

Our fathers stood on the edge of the circle behind each son, pretending they did not fear.

But I feared, and I stood beside Hadhnri, halfway along the circle between our fathers.

“This is your fault,” I whispered to her. “That sheath was a Making. You promised me —”

“ I did not pull that dagger, Agnir,” Hadhnri said. “If you Fein weren’t planning betrayal all along, how did this happen?”

“No one in Clan Fein has claimed the attack.” Though I knew the truth, and it thickened my throat.

“Then Clan Fein are liars and cowards both.”

I turned on her in rage, then, tearing my eyes away from our brothers. I wanted to shout, but I could not look at her without seeing the girl she once was, kissing me in the spring and giving me her oath. Pain stole my breath, and all I could do was whisper.

“Do not speak of my family so, Hadhnri.”

The rebuke silenced her and we turned at Lidwul Clan Pall’s shout. The duel had begun.

Relief that my father did not choose me grew with each exchange.

More than one warrior had been maimed for the good of their clan’s honor or their own.

More than one had died. Though Garadin Clan Fein made me keep closer to the blade than Pedhri Clan Aradoc, I was no prodigy, not so strong as Gunni, nor so quick as Onsgar.

There was a wind that morning, and it rose the hair upon my bare arms. I thought of the wind in Bannos’s chimes, and hoped it was a sign of his favor.

Hadhnri’s breathing slipped. “Are those—your bracers.”

I nodded grimly. If I could not wear them in battle, then Onsgar would, and may the luck-hound protect him.

“I made those for you.”

“I thought I was not the girl you made them for?”

We held our breath as Gunni’s mighty downward blow made to cleave Onsgar’s head like a harvestide squash, but Onsgar slipped around, his own blade darting under Gunni’s arm. Gunni spun his blade back in time to knock it away, and they reset again.

I twitched to reach for Hadhnri’s hand, clenched tight at her side. I folded my arms across my chest instead.

Hadhnri gasped each time Onsgar’s blade came near to Gunni, and it echoed in me.

I hated myself for it. But how was I meant to forget wrestling with Gunni outside of the Aradoc roundhouse?

It was as clear to me as my memory of fighting Onsgar for the first time: of all of Clan Fein, Onsgar had accepted me first and most readily.

Sister, they both called me.

The end came swiftly. I leapt forward as Onsgar slammed into the ground. I heard the breath rush out of him. Hadhnri grabbed my arm, holding me back.

“Do you, Onsgar Second-Born Garadin Clan Fein, yield to me, Gunni First-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc?” Gunni’s voice was low and clear.

I held myself tense in Hadhnri’s grip, no longer fighting her but not easy in her embrace.

“Yield,” I begged Onsgar under my breath. Clan Fein had surrendered once to Clan Aradoc to bide its time; I was proof of that. “Yield.”

Hadhnri’s fingernails dug into the flesh of my naked forearms, and I sank into that pain.

Onsgar opened his mouth and I stopped breathing to hear his words.

We all did. And so, when he swept Gunni’s legs from beneath him, sending the bigger man down, the only sound was our great intake of air as our hearts began to beat again.

My brothers scrambled to their feet, reclaimed their weapons, and circled each other anew.

The energy was different now, the outcome no longer sure.

The wind itself seemed riled, cool against my sweating skin, buoying the mounting tension as we watched.

One exchange, another. Modin-father-sister paced behind my father, while Laudir-father-sister was so like a boulder she could have grown moss.

If only the fight would last long enough.

That was the only hope I had now, for both brothers to survive.

Hadhnri did not let go my arm.

I wished, then, that I had never been taken in the raid—not the first raid, from Clan Fein, but the second, from Clan Aradoc.

I wished that I was still Agnir Ward-Aradoc and that I had stayed at Hadhnri’s side.

That I had never gotten to know Onsgar or Garadin Clan Fein.

With my life, I had bought peace. And I had never felt so trapped as I did now.

“Agnir, you should know, my father—”

I hissed her quiet. I could not focus on a lecture.

Gunni thrust, and Onsgar parried. Onsgar’s counter, and Gunni’s cut. It was so simple to watch, even to me, even from this distance: testing blows to lure Onsgar into a mistake.

It was the wind. Jerking my braids, tugging my tunic, whipping a flurry of dust into the air. It caught Onsgar in the eye, and he winced, squinting against the debris. He didn’t even see the thrust that took him.

Onsgar slid off Gunni’s blade, clutching his middle.

“Brother!” I ran.

Onsgar stared up at me, doe-eyed, as I pressed together the wound in his middle. “Sister.” His hands fumbled to press mine. My bracers were bloody on his wrists.

Above me, Gunni sputtered. “Is he— I didn’t mean— I thought—”

Hadhnri knelt beside me and I shouldered her away. This was not for her. This was her fault.

“Onsgar.” I kept my voice calm and reassuring. “You’re all right. You’re all right.” Above him, I called frantically, “Father!”

Garadin Clan Fein was already at my side, cloth in his hands to stanch the blood, and he held his cheek against Onsgar’s, kissing his brow.

“Well done, my child. Well done, Onsgar Second-Born Garadin Clan Fein.”

A slight smile, dazed, cracked my brother’s frightened face.

“Well done, brother,” I echoed.

My father sobbed like a babe over the boy in his arms, and I buried my head into the crook of my father’s shoulder.

Eventually, my father stood, lifting Onsgar in his arms. I saw then how the circle lingered, closed in on us. Pedhri Clan Aradoc stood behind Gunni, whose freckles stood starkly against his bloodless wet cheeks. Gunni’s bloody sword hung heavy at his side. It dragged him down to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. To me, or to my father, I didn’t know.

Without a word to Clan Aradoc, my father carried my brother away and left me kneeling on the blood-slick grass.

I didn’t realize that Hadhnri still knelt beside me until Pedhri Clan Aradoc frowned down at her. She shook her head, stubborn as ever, and he led Gunni away.

“Agnir?” Hadhnri said softly, when we were alone in the bloody grass. As alone as we could be amid the onlookers of the other clans. “Agnir, I am sorry. Forgive me. Forgive Gunni.”

I said nothing.

“Please, Agnir. Look at me?” She tried to lean into my blurred vision, but I angled my head away. She would have had to crawl through Onsgar’s death stain to meet my eyes.

She did not, and I said nothing.

“Agnir, please. There will be war. Can we not stop it, if we speak to our fathers?”

There would be no stopping this war. A child of Clan Aradoc had slain a child of Clan Fein.

Our clans had fought for less. Right then, the burning in my heart called for vengeance, a wolf-howl of rage that dragged on and on within me, but I could not let it out.

Not here, in front of Hadhnri. Only a choked whimper escaped.

Hadhnri glanced over her shoulder to where Pedhri beckoned sharply.

“Please, Agnir. Meet me at the spring at the full moon. If we can find it again, I know we can stop this.” She took my bloody hand in hers. “I wanted to tell you, my father—”

“Why didn’t they protect him?” I whispered.

“I—I’m sorry. I only made them to protect you .”

I pulled myself out of her grip, but she clung to me.

“Agnir, will you not hear me? He’s going to send me away. To marry the Prince-Beyond-the-Fens.”

I faced her, then, stunned by this new blow.

Tears stained Hadhnri’s freckled cheeks, her eyes now hazel, now brown, glowing under sunlight and dimmed by the shadow of my body.

The hard shell she had made for herself cracked open, leaving her turtle-soft.

Here was the girl I’d made love to on Gunni’s wedding night. Still there, and perhaps, still mine.

I stood as my father did, and left her kneeling in my brother’s blood.