"If you break out into the open, dear Emeric, every gun on the field will bear down upon you."

  Her voice was acidic, tinged with a level of contempt and scorn he had only heard spewed from the dying lips of demonic beasts. Emeric watched her from within the thin slits of his helmet, shield raised until he could only track her shoulders and head. He twisted his warhammer in his right hand, tightened the leather straps of his shield with his left. He said nothing.

  "Come now, Sir Emeric, didn't you wonder–"

  She lunged. Emeric's shield snapped up, meeting the tip of her bde just before it would have plunged into his eye. He wrenched it to one side with all his might, trying to tear the weapon from her hands.

  To his shock, it worked.

  For a moment.

  The bde disappeared from his shield, and it was only his deep familiarity with such enchantments that afforded him the reflex to take a step back, hiding behind the wood as another blow bit deeply into the enchanted oak.

  He twisted his warhammer around to the armor-piercing tip, swinging for her gut. Hidden behind his shield, he couldn't see what happened, but it wasn't much. The swing was diverted to the side, ft edge bouncing off the side of her pte.

  Three blows now exchanged, Emeric disengaged with a shove, seeking the distance required to take in his surroundings. The Champion would be joining the fight, attacking from behind–

  Except she wasn't. The bck suit of armor was turned to the side, head bowed in conference with someone else. They were looking towards the cavalry, only occasionally gncing his way. The troops around them were more attentive to the wolf in their midsts than their leader, but not in the manner he would have expected. They were watching as spectators, not soldiers.

  He could spare no further thought for it. The rapier was lunging for him, her leg extended, one hand thrown high for bance.

  Emeric was forced to skirt back, deflecting with his shield again, earning another line scored through its painted facade. He couldn't trust it forever; the enchantments upon her bde were fine, if not exceptional, but the metalwork they were built upon was frankly remarkable. With a shield and shorter weapon, Emeric would normally have tried to exhaust his opponent, outsting them by virtue of his superior defenses until he could slip past their guard. Not in this fight. That damnable rapier would chew through his shield in short order, and he was under no illusions that his armor could protect him from the swordsmanship on dispy. Every blow she'd unched thus far would have struck through his visor, if not for his defensive counters.

  So it was a different kind of fight, then. She still couldn't pierce his steel, and that limited the angles of her attack to those solely targeting her head.

  Emeric tucked his neck low and took two quick steps forward, battering like a bull at her bde with his shield, warhammer tucked back over his shoulder, cocked and ready for the blow.

  Her reaction was strange. No sooner had his shield made contact with her sword than did she release it, flung into the grass by his blow, leaving her completely open. Years of instinct betrayed Emeric in that moment, and he unched his swing–

  Only to be intercepted by the rapier appearing once more in her hand, tip angled for the joint of his elbow.

  The warhammer crashed into the shoulder of her cuirasser's pte, but was stopped from digging into the flesh as a sharp nce of pain embedded itself in the crook of his arm.

  With another grunt of effort, Emeric shoved away from her, not trusting his arm for another swing immediately after such an impact. She accepted the shove, floating lightly backward until there was six feet between them.

  Emeric's arm buzzed from shoulder to wrist, as if the limb had been starved of blood for hours. Her rapier had slipped beneath his couter to the folding ptes within, and very nearly dug straight through the thin steel. He hadn't been bloodied, but having the full weight of a swing stopped by impact with a razor-tipped point was its own kind of deadening agony. He shook his arm out, trying to work feeling back into it, and immediately regretted it– the buzz became a deep, digging throb, every pulse of his pounding heartbeat sending a vice tightening around his elbow.

  She hadn't escaped the exchange unmarred, however. The left side of her cuirasser's pte had a deep dent, one that visibly caught on the muscles of her shoulders as she moved, digging deeper or shallower with each subtle shift of her stance. Not quite as dangerous a blow as the one Emeric had received, which very may well have cracked some bone within his arm, but still, a wound.

  Emeric heard orders being called out, the infantry he was surrounded by suddenly leaning forward and setting their halberds in the soil, bracing. His cavalry were charging once more, then. They shouldn't have, not against such a rge and well-prepared enemy, but he was in their midst, after all. A damned foolish risk he'd taken, but how was he to know that the Champion and her beast had relocated to such a distant fnk? Once again, they'd seemingly known exactly what he'd pnned to do, and pced themselves in his way.

  The coming cavalry charge changed the nature of the bizarre duel, however. The Champion gnced over, calling out.

  "Think you could take that to the rear, babe? I don't want a hole in our formation up near the front."

  In answer, the feline began taking slow, measured steps forward, pushing Emeric away from the direction of the front line. He didn't wish to be directed like cattle, but with the superior range of her weapon, he had no choice.

  If he could engage her for long enough, he was confident his cavalry would break through to him, even if he shuddered to imagine the toll it would extract. Already the firearms had begun to crack from the treeline, lead balls audibly whistling overhead with their unique shrieks.

  But he was not interested in merely surviving the duel. Here was one of very few actual threats to his Knights, foolishly engaging him in single combat. They'd had two exchanges, and while yes, they were both losses for him, ending with him barely breaking away before he could be skewered through, they were hardly decisive. To remove Lady Evie from the war was an opportunity he could not ignore.

  It would not be an easy task, however. He was familiar with a great many styles of combat, having seen combat in the snowy northern forests, the chaotic pins of the west, and even the now-abandoned fields of the Tulian Kingdom. He had fought against spears and halberds, longswords and spathas, shield and Knight and unarmored barbarians alike, and yes, a great many rapiers, too.

  But none of them fought like this woman. She did not fight as the Night's Eye did, with their emphasis on personal excellence and tactical maneuverability on the fields of battle, nor did she fight as a dandy Lord or Lady, with fgrant flourishes designed to dazzle an audience during a duel of honor. She did not even fight as a warrior, whose minimalist swings and stabs were built to st one through the exhausting hours of long battle.

  This woman? She loved the fight. She was not here for King and Country, or for honor, or for any reason greater than her next rush of adrenaline.

  Emeric could stall easily enough, he reasoned. If he fought defensively, it would be a simple matter to wait until his cavalry arrived, breaking away in the subsequent chaos.

  But that would leave this fight unfinished.

  With a roar, Emeric charged forward, shield braced, hammer held high.

  The beast smiled, eyes glittering with delight.

  His blow crashed down with all his might, whistling through the air. She braced her forearm against the ft of her bde to block it, deflecting the haft of his hammer at an angle, down and to the side, but even this transferred enough force that her leg nearly buckled, forced down by the blow.

  Emeric shoved forward with his shield, smming it into her chest, and pressed the assault.

  She was stumbled by the blow, but rather than allow herself to be forced away, she clutched at his arm and drew herself closer, taking them into a macabre embrace, so that he could not swing even his shorter weapon.

  In answer, Emeric slugged her across the face with his elbow. He felt something crack. Her leg then came around behind his knee, trying to take him to the ground. He kicked upward, disentangling himself, and together they stumbled across the grass in one another's arms, the blows slowly losing their subtlety, becoming nothing more than instinctive shoves and punches and grabs.

  With a snarl echoing in his ear, Emeric felt something sharp press against his spine. A dagger, slipped through the folds of his armor.

  Emeric shoved with all his strength, twisting to tear the dagger away from his skin. Its tip drew a hot line of pain across his back, but he didn't feel anything worse, and as she was thrown away from him, it fell to the ground behind him, only the tip bloodied.

  This time, Emeric didn't catch his breath. He stepped forward with another swing from his hammer, coming at her from the side this time, trying to crush through her ribcage.

  Her rapier appeared once more as she slipped backward, meeting his swing just in time to stop it from crashing into her. She seemed equally disinterested in awaiting the arrival of the cavalry, and so they fell into a series of increasingly rapid strikes, the ring of steel overpowering every sound and thought.

  It was as infuriating a fight as Emeric had ever known. She utilized the summoning enchantment of her rapier almost constantly, a style of combat which Emeric felt certain had to be her personal invention. He, in turn, was forced to use his shield more and more, until the surface of it was as battered and scored as castle walls after a month's siege. Chips of wood fell away in progressively rger chunks, until eventually Emeric discarded it entirely, just before the thing would have disintegrated with a firm shake of his arm.

  The feline, meanwhile, continued to weave through his swings. She was maddeningly elusive, harder to track than a falling feather. It seemed as if the mere act of swinging was enough to push her out of the way of his hammer, and every miss was followed up with a strike of her own. Emeric's armor was soon sporting a number of scratches across its surface, born of sparking blows that he just barely managed to take upon the thickest part of the steel.

  But as in their first exchange, she was not entirely invulnerable. Emeric struck her offhand with the ft of his hammer once, undoubtedly breaking several bones, but her only reaction to this was to tuck it more firmly behind her back. He also nded several more strikes upon her cuirass, but these were all gncing, the dents too thin to inhibit her movement.

  As was always the case in combat, though the exchange felt as if it sted hours, it was more accurately measured in seconds. Barely a minute had passed when Emeric began to feel the familiar rumble of cavalry reverberating through the soil, a brassy bugle signaling the oncoming charge.

  She looked away and behind him for a moment, the manic grin slipping down her face. It was repced by a grimmer expression, lips pressed thin. Time was running short.

  Emeric seized the moment with a vicious kick, taking her by surprise. His boot nded squarely in the soft flesh beneath her cuirass, throwing her to the dirt.

  He moved quickly forward, hammer raised for a definitive blow, but her foot smmed into his shin just before he would have swung. He stumbled forward, his haste giving him too much momentum to quickly arrest, and she used the moment to leap to her own feet, regaining her stance.

  Emeric swore profusely, turning around to swing yet again, but was this time interrupted by the roaring hoofbeats of a member of his cavalry shooting before him. The feline was forced to leap away or be trampled, and the cavalry rider, who Emeric couldn't immediately identify, pulled hard on the reins to wheel his horse around, pcing themselves between Emeric and his opponent.

  Lady Evie looked up at the rider, a derisive scowl on her face. There was a sudden fsh of smoke from her hip, and then the rider slumped backward in the saddle, their facepte a mess of metal and gore.

  As the feline dropped a smoking firearm to the ground and turned to face him once more, he realized that the leather pouches he'd noted before, all six of them, held firearms.

  A chill went through him.

  Emeric leapt for the horse, guilt surging through him as he ripped its previous rider out of the saddle. He tried to crack the reins, but there was a second fsh, and suddenly the left side of the animal's face was a bloody mess.

  Emeric was pitched forward as the horse took two awkward, wobbling steps forward, then colpsed. For a moment all he saw was grass and soil, and then he shoved himself up, flinging his warhammer wildly in the direction the feline had st been.

  When his vision focused, he found her standing eight feet away, smirking at him.

  "She doesn't want me to kill you, you know," the feline said.

  "You–"

  Her hand fshed. Emeric's knee exploded.

  He colpsed bonelessly to the ground, agony robbing him of any cohesive thought. It took all his strength to roll onto his side, staring into the evening sun. The feline approached until her shadow fell over him, another firearm held loosely in her no-longer-broken offhand. She shoved him all the way onto his back, and he groaned, trying to ignore the sensation of his lifeblood pumping out to wet the grass beneath his ruined knee.

  She crouched, taking his warhammer from his hands. He swung a fist at her, but she let the limp blow strike her cheek without flinching.

  "You're useful to her, Emeric. I wonder what that means for you, hm?" She gnced up, at something happening nearby. He was growing light-headed, and couldn't follow her gaze. "A good fight," she said, looking down to meet his eyes. "Had you a proper duelist's weapon, you certainly would have beat me. I look forward to your next attempt." She stood, summoning a white handkerchief, with which she calmly wiped blood off her hands. "But do so quickly, if you would. It won't be long before she's dragged me far beyond you."

  She faded away, out of his sight. The sound of hoofbeats grew louder and louder, and soon Emeric found himself being lifted up and away.