The Plague of Swords by Miles Cameron

Author:Miles Cameron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Fantasy / Historical, Fiction / Fantasy / Epic
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2016-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

For more than an hour, he walked about the sheepfolds and the cattle fences as the summer sun plunged. And, naturally, he found thirty Hillmen in a small camp: close enough to the inn to get beer, far enough that they didn’t need to mix with all the difficult foreigners.

Bad Tom was standing, naked to the waist. Donald Dhu was standing opposite him. Neither man had a weapon.

Both were bleeding.

David the Cow made room for Gabriel in the ring. “Cheers,” he muttered, without taking his eyes off the two giants.

Gabriel was handed a mug of dark ale, which he drank off as he watched.

The two men circled carefully, arms out, weight forward.

Twice, they started to close—arms reaching—then did not, for whatever reason, slipping away from the decisive moment.

“Donald is down one throw,” David said. “He’s still fuckin’ lit about his son. He thinks Tom’s gone soft.”

Gabriel nodded. He drank more.

He saw Tom’s intention clearly, because he’d faced Tom enough times. The big man swayed once, and then another time. It wasn’t much of a feint, because Gabriel knew he didn’t need a feint. He just wanted Donald Dhu to come in range.

And Dhu did. Suddenly he powered forward, arms out. By chance, or intent, the two men’s fingers meshed instead of sliding down one another’s arms, and Tom kicked Dhu in the knee and thrust his right arm, almost as if he were punching the red-haired man, except that their fingers were intertwined and so he pulled Dhu’s left arm across his body—the other man leaned to favour the knee injured by the kick, and Tom threw him suddenly over his own out-thrust shin, a casual throw, except that Tom followed him down, kneeling viciously with a knee between the other man’s legs and slamming his one hand into the back of the other man’s head, breaking his nose.

“Yield,” Tom said.

Dhu rolled instead. Or rather, he tried, and it was a good try, and despite the pain, or because of it, he feinted, used his hips, and he moved Bad Tom, but he didn’t roll him off.

Bad Tom broke his arm. It wasn’t a long, drawn-out process. The big Drover simply used his purchase and broke the other man’s arm and probably dislocated his shoulder, too.

Hill men were tough and had extravagant notions of how tough they ought to be, but most of the men in the circle flinched or looked away.

Tom got up. “I tol’ ye to yield, and ye dinna.” He shrugged. “Take yer tail and go awa’ home. I’m done wi’ ye. When yer shoulder heals, come back and say yer sorry, or come back and fight me to the death.” He nodded to the men in the circle, and then he walked to the stone wall and took his shirt, a huge thing of bright yellow linen.

He saw Gabriel and nodded. Men were staying away from him, and Gabriel had the terrible feeling that he’d arrived at exactly the wrong time—the sort of outside interference that the Hillmen resented.

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