Chapter 208: The Deferred Strike

Encrid drew his sword.

It came out of its sheath with a long, clean sound, like a bell ringing somewhere far away.

He looked at it.

He had looked at this blade every day for a year and a half. He had cleaned it and oiled it and practiced with it in the dark. It was a plain sword. A good sword, the family smith’s work, straight and well balanced. Corvan had handed it to him on the morning he left, and he had never once thought of it as anything special.

A window opened.

[ Name: Winter Oath (Longsword) ]

[ Grade: B ]

[ Maker: House Gannon Smithy ]

[ Condition: 100% ]

[ Description: A finely crafted longsword forged by the master smiths of House Gannon and presented as a weapon worthy of the Gannon name. Unlike ceremonial weapons made to display wealth or status, this sword was forged for actual battle.

Its blade follows the traditional Gannon Family Style, balancing strength, reach, and precision without sacrificing reliability. Every part of the weapon, from the weight of the blade to the shape of the guard, was made according to the techniques preserved by House Gannon for generations.

A gift from House Gannon to one of its sons. ]

He closed the window and held the sword out in front of him.

He had never met the smith who made it. He did not even know the man’s name. Somewhere on the Gannon estate, an old craftsman had hammered this blade out for a son of the house, without knowing which son, or when, or for what.

It had hung in an armory for years.

Then it had been handed to a fat, frightened fourth son on the worst morning of his life.

It had waited a long time.

The Star’s energy went into it.

He did not push it. He did not have to. The energy simply went where he wanted it to go, the way water goes downhill. It ran down his arm and into the hilt, and along the blade, and the plain steel turned white with frost from the crossguard to the point.

Forty-eight seconds.

There was one more thing.

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The Pillow of the Sleeping God sat on his back.

He had carried it every day since he took it from the Vault. It was strapped beneath his coat, flat and ordinary, a small grey cushion no bigger than a book. No one had ever asked him about it. No one had ever noticed it.

And inside it, for almost a year, there had been a single blow.

Ysolde Marr’s full-power strike, on the seventh-mile drill yard. The red crescent of light that should have cut him in half.

The Pillow had taken it. The Pillow had deferred it. And it had waited ever since, holding the strike inside itself like a held breath, until the day Encrid chose to let it out.

A consequence could be delayed.

It could not be escaped.

He had always known he would have to face it one day. He had assumed it would be on some quiet night, in some safe place, where he could lie down afterward and let the healers put him back together.

He had not imagined this.

He had not imagined he would ever be strong enough to do anything with it but survive.

Encrid reached back with his mind and touched the Pillow.

And let it go.

The strike came out of the Pillow the way it had gone in.

All at once.

It hit him in the back like a mountain falling on him.

For one terrible instant, it was exactly what it had been on the drill yard. The full weight of a peak Grandmaster’s strike. The red crescent of Ysolde Marr’s Star, the air thinning along its edge, the force that had been meant to cut a man in two.

Even now, it hurt.

It hurt so much that Encrid’s vision went white. A sharp, deep pang went through his whole body, from his back to his chest to the ends of his fingers. His knees bent. For a moment, he thought his spine had broken.

It had not.

He was Absolute.

And an Absolute body did not break.

It bent. It flowed. It let the force pass through it the way the Azure Star had let the bloodlust pass through it in the Council chamber. Around. Through. Not resisting.

Flow and adaptation.

Encrid let the strike flow down his spine and along his arm. Into his hand. Into the hilt. Into the frost-white blade.

The sword turned red.

Not all of it. A thin line of red light ran along its edge, over the white frost. Ysolde’s red. The same color that had run along her sword on the eighth mile, and on the Wall, and on the sparring yard.

Encrid stood there with the sword in his hand and the pain still ringing in his bones, and he understood something he had not understood before.

Even as an Absolute, he had felt that.

Even with the whole of the world’s energy at his command, a strike from Ysolde Marr, delayed for almost a year, had nearly driven him to his knees. Maybe it was because he was not an Absolute in the true sense. Maybe it was because his body had never been hammered and strengthened in the way it needed to be before reaching that realm.

Whatever the reason, it only made Ysolde’s strength more impressive.

Encrid thought of her standing on the Wall, running from one section to another for nine days, holding the entire northern face together with her own two hands.

He had always known she was strong.

He simply had not realized she was this strong.

"She is scary indeed," Encrid said quietly, to no one in particular.

Then he raised his head and looked at the horde.

It was on the Span now. The Reevers and Grinners and Talljacks, climbing over the frozen bodies of the first wave, flooding onto the flat stone of the northern end. Behind them, the Lopers. Behind them, more.

Behind them all, the Elder.

It had pulled its blind head away from the place where the barrier had been. Now it was walking toward the Span. Slowly. Steadily. The ground shaking with every step.

Straight toward him.

Encrid could feel the thin cold thread running into its body from somewhere far back in the horde.

He held the sword in both hands. White frost. Red edge.

He set his feet the way he had set them twenty thousand times in the dark behind the granary. Wide. Low. The stance that did not move.

And for the first time, he did it right.

Forty-four seconds.

Encrid stepped into the horde.

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