Interlude: Proven By The Sword
Lightning flickered over distant waves as the two warriors faced each other. The storm lay too far out for the blast of thunder to be heard, and their meeting was preceded only by the stirring of a restless wind.
Only ten long strides of trampled coastal gravel separated the two. It crunched softly beneath a steel sabaton as one knight shifted his step ever so slightly to the left. He adjusted his grip on the ornamented handle of his maul, a long pole studded with tiny jewels upon which a two-faced hammer had been grafted. The loose rocks beneath him shivered as the head of the weapon glided over them.
His opponent stood still and serene as an aged tree, the green scales of his armor turned to brass by the scattered blades of sunlight breaking through the gray sky. His plumed helmet, crowned in metal antlers, shadowed all but the calm glint of focus in his eyes. This second knight held a long, slender sword in his right hand and a tower shield shaped like an oak leaf in his left.
A second breeze stirred both warriors’ decorative surcoats, made the little bells and fetishes on their armor rattle. The sun beams set their steel to shining and reflected bright on the medals they wore around shoulder and waist, each the mark of an honor gained or a land visited, each trapping precious memories and nostalgic scents inside.
The warrior with the maul wore dark gray iron inlayed with images of snarling hounds and wizened trolls. He was from a mountain realm, stocky and strong, his weapon as good for cracking the stone skin of feral dwarf giants and the vaults they guarded as for laying low other men. His helm covered his entire head and face, leaving only a thin slit for the eyes and a scattering of breathing holes like freckles beneath.
His opponent was tall and festooned in autumnal colors, like some hunter lord out of an old fable. He held an elegant sword entwined with living vines from pommel to hilt. Ashen brown hair spilled from his bright helm.
They were not alone on the field, but they were the last to bare fangs at one another. The wounded and surrendered sat, crouched, or lay limp on the gritty terrain around them, forced to wait for the conclusion of their melee to play out before they could rest or tend to their injuries.
A young man with a warrior’s braid and garments of white and blue robe beneath his half-plate sat on a cracked boulder nearby, a heavy swordspear propped against his seat. He leaned forward, his youthful face intent on the duel. He had not yet cleaned the blood from his weapon, and spared not a glance for the still body sprawled nearby.
Over the disquiet sea, more lightning flashed. This time, the muted rumble of distant thunder did reach the fighters.
The hammer wielder moved first. The enchantment woven into his helm made his furious shout a brassy growl, and in a storm of scattering rock and wind he brought his weapon down on the field. Hard packed sand and solid rock erupted in a splintering line near thirty feet long, shredding its way toward his opponent. Along that line, jagged stone teeth punched upward like falling dominoes in reverse.
A two-pronged attack. The initial shudder of disrupted earth made the scaled knight stumble, leaving him off guard for the ensuing phalanx of emerging rock.