Chapter 010

  He rolled onto his other side, burying his face deep into the pillow, as if to hide from the encroaching dawn. The morning gloom was thinning lazily when suddenly the silence was torn by a sharp, piercing shriek of steel. A moment later came another—louder, carrying a sinister echo through the slumbering corridors.

  Belmond bolted upright, gasping for air like a drowning man thrown ashore. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs, still trapped in the embrace of the nightmare. A single, icy thought exploded in his head: The Dark Parade. They had come for them.

  He threw off the thin quilt and, barefoot and still in his nightclothes, dashed for the door. He had to find his parents. Before the vision of empty, blood-soaked clothes became reality.

  He bounded down the stairs so fast he nearly tripped. The cool air bit through the thin fabric flapping around his legs. Halfway down, he stopped dead, holding his breath. The house was drowning in an unnatural emptiness. Not a voice, not a movement. He swallowed hard.

  Then shouts reached him from the courtyard. Indistinct, muffled, yet chilling to the marrow. The skin crawled on the back of his neck. He threw himself toward the exit.

  He burst into the courtyard just as the first rays of the sun pierced the tree canopy, striking his eyes with a blinding glare. He braked sharply, swaying on the dew-slick flagstones. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, expecting a massacre. But when his vision adjusted to the harsh light, instead of the beasts from his fevered dreams, he saw her—his mother.

  On her face, instead of a cold mask of indifference, there was a smile. Aria was not fighting for her life. She was duelling.

  Her opponent was tall and clad in black. Both moved with lethal grace. Blinding cuts, precise parries. The steel sang a savage song. With every clash of blades, sheaves of sparks showered down, forming a luminous halo around the fighters. They breathed heavily, sweat beading on their brows, but the same fire burned in their eyes.

  Young Blackwood froze. The icy terror that had torn him from his bed slowly melted away, giving way to pure, electrifying fascination.

  The man paused for a moment, never lowering his guard. A fitted tunic hugged a massive chest. He radiated absolute confidence. With a smile, he wiped his sweat-dewed forehead and his short, cropped black hair—already dusted with the first threads of silver at the temples—with the back of a leather glove. A thick, few-days' growth of beard gave his face a look of wild, untamed severity.

  The warrior threw a short remark to Aria, but the words drowned in the distance separating him from Belmond. He turned his head slightly. Their gazes met. The youth felt his throat go dry. The man’s icy, dark-green eyes bored right through him. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but the boy had time to notice a thick, brutal scar dissecting his left eyebrow.

  The stranger moved toward his mother. Heavy leather boots thudded against the stone, echoing across the courtyard. A crimson sash wrapped around his hips fluttered behind him like a banner, and golden ornaments shaped like the scales of a great reptile glinted at the fabric's end. The whole ensemble was cinched by a brown belt with a broad, massive buckle.

  His blade crashed down upon Aria’s sword with a deafening ring. The man smiled faintly, with the unsettling certainty of someone who sees not chaos in the dance of death, but the highest form of art. And then Belmond understood.

  It was him. Darian Vesperon. The Raven’s Wing. His uncle.

  Throughout his childhood, he had listened to tales of the stern commander who, in the far north, in the shadow of the walls of Relthos, forged elite units. Now, the legend had just been made flesh.

  Brother crossed blades with sister without a shadow of hesitation. They conversed in the language of steel. A shiver of awe mingled with fear ran through Belmond. For the first time in his life, he saw someone who could not only match his mother, but perhaps even surpass her.

  He felt instinctively that this display of swordsmanship was merely a prelude to the true power Vesperon kept in reserve.

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  Aria moved like a cat, every step characterised by precision and fluidity. Her dark hair, usually impeccably pinned, had partially escaped its leather bindings, dancing in the air with every sweeping cut. Her short sword seemed to blur, drawing shimmering silver arcs around her.

  Vesperon watched his sister unblinking, a broad smile on his severe face. He waited patiently. Aria pressed the attack with a lightning-fast flurry of thrusts, forcing him on the defensive. They struck fountains of sparks with every clash of steel. For a moment, it seemed to the boy that his uncle could barely keep pace with the murderous tempo of the Raven’s Talon. Finally, one precise thrust found a gap in his guard—the tip of the blade grazed the gambeson on Darian’s shoulder, though it did not pierce the tough fabric.

  “Well, now you’ve truly angered me, little sister!” he roared with laughter, his carrying voice echoing off the stone walls of the courtyard. He shook his head with feigned indignation, then bared his teeth in a predatory grimace. “It’s been a long time since anyone forced me to exert myself so. You haven’t lost your old vigour, Aria. Indeed, you’ve even polished your style!”

  She answered him only with a confident smile and a sparse nod. And then Darian attacked.

  He charged forward with a battle roar, striking with a massive, almost inhuman momentum. His heavy sword carved a wide, deafeningly whistling arc, halting for a fraction of a second a hair’s breadth from Aria’s neck, solely to prove his superiority. The mere gust of air sent her locks dancing wildly about her face. Darian gave her no time to catch her breath, instantly renewing the assault. Aria began to retreat. Step by step. Her blade rang desperately as time and again she parried blows falling upon her with the force of a smith’s hammer.

  “Come on! Do I see grey hairs there? Are you not running out of breath?” Darian tossed out in a provoking, mocking tone, as after another avalanche of strikes Aria momentarily lost her balance, swaying on bent knees.

  “You babble like Father. Stop wagging your tongue and fight!” she snarled, deflecting the next cut with immense effort. Her eyes flashed with malice. “And have you looked in a mirror lately, dear brother? You should start worrying about your own grey hairs!”

  “You little...”

  Aria whirled around him like a storm, driving into his reach. Belmond could not tear his eyes from the flashes of steel. His mother’s short thrusts pierced the air like needles, one after another, always to the same rhythm: step, thrust, dodge. Darian answered differently. He did not chase her with his blade; rather, he closed the space with broad, heavy arcs, as if seeking to sweep her out of his path with the sheer mass of the sword. Yet beneath this difference lay something familiar: the same bladed stance of the torso, the same slight twist of the hips before the strike, the same sure-footedness. Belmond swallowed hard. Suddenly, he understood where their moniker came from. Two Vesperon ravens circling a single prey, each hunting in its own way.

  Steel hammered against steel, but this time the illusion of an evenly matched fight shattered. With every missed thrust, Aria’s features hardened, and anger burned in her gaze. She gritted her teeth, desperately trying to break through her brother’s flawless defence. Darian dismissed her every attack with grim composure, not even catching his breath, as if reading her thoughts before they were formed. Beads of sweat pearled ever thicker on her temples.

  “Is someone rusting like an old sword here? Perhaps you will finally yield?” Darian threw out, a note of triumph in his voice.

  “I am not finished with you yet!” Aria shot back through clenched teeth, launching herself straight at her brother with renewed momentum.

  Young Blackwood held his breath, awaiting the next clash of steel. Before their blades could cross again, a calm voice reached him from the side:

  “Come here, son. Sit with me.”

  The boy started. His father patted the stone step right beside him. Belmond had been so absorbed in the duel that only now did he notice his presence. Ethan sat unmoved on the right edge of the broad stairs leading to the manor, resembling a marble statue. In his hands, he held a steaming mug of his favourite herbal infusion. An aromatic mist rose in the crisp air, wreathing his thoughtful face, and the rays of the rising sun cast a golden halo around the scholar’s fair hair.

  Belmond sat beside his father. The chill of the granite instantly seeped through the thin fabric of his nightclothes. When the cold metal of the pendant touched his skin, he remembered the task entrusted to him. Instinctively, he reached beneath his shirt, but Ethan caught the gesture from the corner of his eye.

  “Leave it,” he spoke mildly. “You shall return it to me when we come back. Until then, you are simply to keep it safe.”

  A reassuring smile graced the scholar’s face, but Belmond felt an unpleasant prick in his chest. His parents were departing today. Fear clenched his stomach, though simultaneously, the prospect of spending the coming days with the legendary Uncle Darian roused a thrill of excitement. The boy shook his head, chasing away the sombre thoughts, and turned his gaze back to the courtyard.

  The siblings were still locked in their murderous dance. Their swords clashed with a deafening screech, striking sheaves of sparks in a mesmerising spectacle. Belmond noticed that the last vestige of the provoking smile had vanished from his mother’s lips, replaced by absolute focus in her eyes. Aria executed a violent pirouette, transferring the weapon to her left hand in the blink of an eye.

  This unexpected manoeuvre threw Darian off the scent for a brief moment. The blade whistled a hair’s breadth from his head. His uncle nimbly evaded the blow and instantly answered with a low, treacherous cut at his sister’s legs. Aria deflected it deftly and without hesitation attacked from above, at a sharp angle. Her fighting rhythm changed abruptly, becoming jagged and unpredictable. Darian barely had time to leap back, and she was already pressing on, nearly reaching his flank.

  “Time to stop them, Bel,” his father muttered, not taking his eyes off the fighters. “Or else they will batter each other like this until dusk.”

  The heavy air was cut by Ethan’s calm, rhythmic applause. The scholar rose from the granite steps, giving the siblings a clear signal that the duel had come to an end. He reached for the linen towels lying nearby and slowly descended the stairs. Still hypnotised by the skills of his mother and uncle, Belmond followed in his wake.