Chapter 419 — A Day in the Capital II

Chapter 419: Chapter 419 — A Day in the Capital II

She saw him coming before he got there.

He was maybe twenty metres off when her head turned. She did not attack. She stepped back a pace, to give herself room, and looked at him.

It was the same look she had given the Irish position from the end of the bridge. She took in his kit, his sword and how he was moving. She was measuring him and deciding whether he was worth turning away from the soldiers behind the skip.

James did not give her time to finish deciding.

He came the last ten metres flat out and swung Durendal across at her body, aiming to drive her back off the skip and away from the men behind it.

She met it.

The blades came together with a sound like a bell being hit with a hammer, and James felt it all the way up into his shoulders. She took the whole of it on her sword and did not move her feet. Then, before he had finished the swing, she was coming in from the other side. It was a cut low and across, aimed at his leg.

He got Durendal down in time. Just.

She followed it with a second cut, high, while he was still bringing his blade back from the low block. He turned it, but his feet were wrong and he knew it.

He stepped back to fix them, and she came after him.

---

She did not fight like anything in the Tower.

Things in the Tower were built to kill you. They were big and fast and hit hard, and they had patterns, because the Tower had made them with patterns. Learn the pattern and you could take them apart.

She did not seem to have a pattern.

Every movement she made was exactly as large as it needed to be and not a centimetre larger. She did not wind up and did not follow through. She changed her angle every time he set his feet for something heavier. He would plant himself for a big swing, and she would already be a step to the side, and the swing would have nothing to hit.

He tested her. He tried a straight cut at the body, and she turned it. He went at the head, and she slid under it. He tried changing his line halfway through, low and then high. She caught the high one on the flat of her blade and went with it, so it slid off her and past.

But when Durendal met her sword square, something happened that she did not expect.

He saw it on her face. It was not much, just a slight narrowing round the eyes.

He was stronger than her.

Not by a little. Every time she had to take Durendal straight on, she had to give ground, a step or half a step, or else let the force go through her. She had started fighting him the way she would fight a man her own weight, and he was not.

He pushed.

He went forward, swinging, driving her back toward the bridge parapet. She gave ground, then gave more. Then, at the edge of the road, she shifted her weight to her left foot and went sideways instead of back.

He turned to follow her, and as he turned she came in at his ribs, at the side his weight had just moved off.

He saw it at the last possible instant. He brought Durendal across his body and her point skidded off the flat of it a hand’s width from his side.

They both stepped back.

There were three metres of road between them. Behind the skip, the three Irish soldiers had used the gap to get out and were running for the yard.

The woman glanced at them, and then back at him.

"You’re Ganner," she said.

She had a clipped, educated English voice. It was not loud. She was not out of breath.

"The necromancer," she said. "Floor 40."

"That’s me," said James. "Have you got a name?"

"Eleanor Harcourt."

That was all she said. She did not add that she had watched his streams, or that he was overrated, or anything at all. She said her name the way someone gives their name at a reception desk, and adjusted her grip on her sword.

"Do you actually want this?" said James. "Helping him take Ireland. Is that actually what you want?"

"I’m serving my country," said Eleanor Harcourt. "I’m not going to debate the war with you in the middle of it."

She came at him again.

---

He realised halfway through the first exchange that she had been using the conversation.

She had watched how he stood while he talked, which foot his weight was on, and where his eyes went when the soldiers ran. She came in now with all of it, and much harder.

She did not try to beat Durendal any more. She stopped meeting it. Every time he swung, she was half a step out of the way of the full force of it, close enough that he could not get room for anything heavier, then in again. She forced him to defend from bad angles, with his weight back and his sword too high or too low. Each time he tried to counter, she withdrew just far enough, and then came forward again before he could set himself.

He was chasing her blade.

He saw it after the fourth exchange, and it went through him cold.

She was not trying to out-hit him. She was moving him. Every time he answered her, she decided where he went next. Back toward the parapet, off to the left, back again. She was walking him round the end of the bridge like a dog on a lead.

So he stopped answering.

The next time she came in, he did not go to meet her. He let her come all the way. Then, at the last moment, he took one short step across her line, bringing Durendal across his body into the space she was about to put her sword into.

She had to stop her own cut to keep from running straight onto his.

For a fraction of a second she was standing still.

James put his left hand out.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 3,040 / 3,100]`

Black force went out of his palm and took her across the chest and the shoulder before she had finished pulling back. It did not knock her down. But it drove her two full steps backward across the road, and she stumbled, and her next movement came too late.

James took the distance back.

She recovered fast, faster than almost anything James had ever hit with that, and her sword was up again before he got there. But he had the middle of the road now, and she was the one with her back to the parapet.

She looked down, briefly, at her own kit.

Where the Necro Blast had hit her, the dark fabric over her shoulder had gone grey and brittle. The armour panel under it had dulled, as if the colour had been leached out of it.

She looked back up at him, and James saw something change in her face.

She was not angry. She did not look worried either. She looked as if she were revising a figure she had already written down. He was no longer something in the way. He was a problem she had to solve.

---

It got harder after that, for both of them.

James went at her with everything he had in a straight fight. He used Durendal and his strength, the weight of a build made for taking hits and giving them back, and once more the black in his palm when she came too close.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,980 / 3,100]`

She saw that one coming and rolled under it, and it took a chunk out of the road behind her.

She was better than him at this. He knew it within a minute. Not stronger, and not faster, but better. She had done this more than he had. She had fought people, not monsters. She knew where his eyes would go and when. Every time something happened elsewhere, a shout from the yard or a burst of fire from the left, she felt his attention flicker. She came in through the flicker, and he had to drag it back to her.

Twice she nearly had him. Once she opened a cut across the back of his left hand. Once her point went through his coat at the hip and grazed the skin underneath, and he felt the heat of it.

Twice he nearly had her. Once Durendal took the end off the guard of her sword. Once he caught her on the arm with the flat of the blade and heard her breath go out of her.

Neither of them could finish it.

---

In the gaps, when he could look, he saw the rest of the fight.

Over on the left, at the tyre centre, Finn was with the soldiers. He was not out in front of them. He was right there in the line, a body’s width from the nearest rifle. A British Challenger had been pushing that side all morning. Every time he came round the corner of the building, Finn was there to meet him with both axes, held him, and pushed him back. The soldiers behind Finn fired past him. They had worked out where he would be, and he had worked out where they would shoot. He was holding the corner like a wall holds a corner.

Further along, Eamon had a group of the volunteers, four or five of them, younger. As James looked, one of them, a lad with expensive plate armour, came out from behind the shutter of the tyre centre after a British Challenger who had fallen back. He went three metres, then five, out into the open on his own, with nobody behind him.

Eamon was on him in a second.

He got a hand in the back of the lad’s collar and hauled him straight back behind the shutter. The lad nearly went over.

"*I nearly had him!*"

"Nearly having him is no use to anyone," said Eamon. His voice was not loud, but James heard it across the road. "You go out there on your own, then every one of those lads behind you’s got nobody covering their left. Get back where you were put."

The lad went back.

Eamon did not say anything else. He turned straight away to the corner of the building and put a ward up across the gap, a pale shimmer, as a British rifle opened up on it.

---

Further back, Farrell had a different problem.

The jeep had been hit. It was not much, but a round through the engine block meant it was not going anywhere. There were still four wounded on the near side of the road waiting to go, and only one ambulance, and it was full.

James heard it on the radio clipped to the nearest soldier as he backed off Eleanor for a second.

"*How many still to go?*" That was Farrell.

"*Four, ma’am. And the medics say twenty minutes to load them right, with one vehicle.*"

"*Can you hold the yard for twenty minutes?*"

There was a pause.

"*Not the far end, ma’am. Not with what’s coming over that bridge.*"

Another pause.

"*Then give up the far end,*" said Farrell. "*Pull back to the blocks. Leave the skip, leave the gate, leave what you can’t carry. I want every one of those four on a vehicle. All call signs, we’re giving them the far end of the yard. Hold the blocks, hold the tyre centre, cover the loading. Acknowledge.*"

There was a ripple of acknowledgements.

It would cost them. The British would have the bridge end of the yard, and the gate, and a section of road they had been trying to take all morning. Farrell knew it, and she had chosen it, and she had said so out loud so everybody knew exactly why.

James heard it, and understood.

He could not just turn round and go. Eleanor was still in front of him.

He tried to drive her back toward the bridge, hard, three heavy cuts one after another, to get her clear of the road so he could turn. She saw what he was doing on the first one. On the second she did not give ground at all, and on the third she nearly took his wrist. She was not going to give him a clean way out.

Over her shoulder, he saw the next thing.

Four Irish soldiers were struggling to carry a man on a stretcher back from the far end of the yard to the blocks. One had hold of each corner, and they were going slowly, because the ground was all broken blocks and sand. And another British Challenger had come round the side of the tyre centre, a heavy one, and was going straight for them across the open ground.

Eamon had seen it and was moving to cut him off. But two of the British soldiers had come round with the heavy one, and they were firing at Eamon, and Eamon had to stop and put his ward up.

The stretcher was in the open, the heavy Challenger was closing, and the ward was ten metres the wrong side of it.

James had perhaps a second to think about it.

Eleanor Harcourt was the most dangerous person on this field. If he turned his back on her now, she was going to be alive tomorrow, and the day after, and she was going to be a problem for every Irish soldier she met on this front. He could feel how close he was. Another minute and he might have her.

But Farrell had not told him to kill her. Farrell had told him to stop her reaching the wounded.

And the wounded were on that stretcher.

He made up his mind.

---

He went at her once more, with everything.

He drove Durendal at her in one long, heavy cut. She did not try to stop it. She gave ground, a full step, then another. While she was still moving back, he put his hand out.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,920 / 3,100]`

She saw it, of course. She twisted half out of the way. It caught her on the edge of the arm and spun her, and she went down on one knee in the road.

She was not hurt badly. But she was on one knee, and she had to choose between coming up after him and defending herself.

She defended herself.

James turned his back on her and ran.

He did not blink. There was nothing to blink to, no bones, no anchor anywhere he could use, and he would not have trusted it with her at his back anyway. He just ran, across the yard, flat out, over the broken blocks toward the stretcher.

Behind him he felt Eleanor Harcourt get to her feet.

She did not follow.

He looked back once, still running. She was standing in the road where he had left her, with her sword low, watching him go. Behind her, the British soldiers at the bridge were reorganising, pulling back into a new line along the parapet and spreading out. Somebody was shouting orders. Her objective was over there, with them, not with him.

She turned and went back to the bridge.

Neither of them had won.

---

He hit the heavy Challenger from the side, two metres from the stretcher.

It was a big man, broad as a door, with armour that made him look bigger. He had his arm up to swing something heavy at the soldiers on the stretcher, and he did not see James until James was already into him. Durendal hit him in the armour over the ribs and turned him, so that the swing went wide and into the ground.

Eamon saw it.

Eamon dropped his ward and came across, and the two of them had the heavy Challenger between them.

The man swung at James, and James took it on Durendal and let it push him back a step. As it did, Eamon put a short ward up flat against the man’s knee, not to protect anyone, but to stop it moving. The man’s leg locked. He nearly went over. James cut him across the arm.

He was facing two experienced Challengers now, with no room. And behind James the stretcher had already gone, the four soldiers stumbling over the blocks with it.

The heavy Challenger looked from one of them to the other, and backed away.