Free Within the Hollow Crown by Daniel Antoniazzi

have to be such a brave fool? Any other Count or Duke in the Kingdom would have fled in terror. But of course Michael wasn’t that kind of leader. There he was, shielding Lady Sarah behind him. And, of course, that’s why Vye respected him.
    Still, although Vye considered Michael a competent swordsman, she didn’t feel comfortable leaving him up there on his own. Especially not with a Turin warrior who could appear out of a wisp of smoke, leap over walls, and stun a courtyard full of people.
    But whereas the rest of the crowd kept reeling and stumb ling, Vye found her hearing coming back to her. The sense of balance returned to her feet. She shook it off. Plenty of time to be dizzy later. She had to take action now.
    Michael and Halmir were dueling it out on the balcony. Vye grabbed Rutherford’s sword, and ran to the nearest entrance. Two turns, one flight of steps, and one intervening curtain later, and she burst out onto the balcony--
    --Just in time to see Michael fall to his knees. He had been impaled just under the left shoulder, somewhere very close to where Vye imagined his heart was.
    Vye raised her sword and engaged Halmir. And finally she met her match.
    It had been years since her training with Tallatos. She had returned with a sense of humility. Always training hard. Always prepared to lose. But after defeating Sheldon and every other combatant she had faced, she had grown confident. Not cocky, mind you. She had no concept of swagger. But she appreciated the fact that she was good.
    So was Halmir. It only took Vye three swings and four seconds to figure out that he wasn’t just another arrogant swordsman. What was worse, he didn’t seem to care she was a woman. In the past, Vye always gained a little extra advantage. Fair or not, men always assumed she couldn’t fight, or didn’t want to hurt her. Halmir had no such reservations. He was fighting to kill.
    Halmir figured out the same thing at about the same time. The Turin-Sen, as a group, were arrogant. They had trained so much longer, and so much more intensely, that they expected to win outright. There shouldn’t have been anyone in Rone capable of holding his own against a Turin-Sen Warrior . But Halmir hadn’t belonged to the group for that long. He hadn’t drunk quite enough Kool-Aid to believe he was invincible.
    They were matching stroke for stroke, block for block. Immediately recognizing patterns and counter-striking. Adjusting. Footwork, stance, technique all changing in a blur that only these two could have understood. Tallatos himself would have asked them to slow down so he could figure out what was going on.
    But Halmir knew the stalemate favored Vye. The crowd hadn’t recovered as quickly as her, but they would recover. And who knows what other guards and soldiers were on their way. They could have parried each other all day, until the winner was finally decided by some minor advantage pressed at precisely the right time. But that would take too long. Halmir had to cheat.
    He swung his free arm around, like he was swatting a very slow fly. And Vye went airborne, sailing backwards, and smashing into the wall. She managed to land on one foot and one knee, and keep her sword in front of her, but it was all for show. If Halmir had taken three seconds, he could have charged in, disarmed her, and killed her.
    But Halmir was in a rush, and Vye wasn’t part of his agenda. He fled through the curtains and into the halls of the castle.
    Vye coughed up a little blood, pressing her clammy hands against the cold stone walls, hefting herself to her feet. That was a hard hit. But as long as she still had breath, she was not giving up the fight.
    She charged through the curtains, following the sounds of clashing steel to the base of the stairs. Vye figured the Royal Guard would try to get the Prince to the third floor. Because Hartstone was built on a hill, the third floor was also a ground floor. They could use the sally port to get to the reserve