“No,” he said immediately. “There’s nothing more important than this. Nothing can happen, nothing can be decided, until we decide who’s in charge. I noticed you haven’t put on your armour, Eddie. What’s the matter? Haven’t you got the balls for a fair fight?”

“A duel?” I said. “In the middle of all this, you want to fight a duel?”

“It is the traditional way,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms, smiling just a little bit.

“Just another reason why I never got along with the traditional ways,” I said. “But if it’ll make you happy, Harry . . .”

I subvocalised the activating Words, and the armour poured out of my torc to encase me. I immediately felt stronger, sharper, more confident. A quick glance down showed me my armour was now as golden as his. I flexed my golden fists slowly, and then started towards Harry. He came to me, and we circled each other cautiously. Everyone else fell back, to give us plenty of room. I saw Molly holding Giles by the arm and murmuring urgently in his ear, making it clear he mustn’t interfere. He nodded. He looked like he understood all about duels.

The Sarjeant-at-Arms took a step forward, perhaps to say something in support of Harry, or perhaps just to try to distract me, and Giles swept forward impossibly quickly, crossing the width of the hall in a moment. His long sword leapt into his hand as he slammed the Sarjeant up against the wall, and then he set the edge of the long blade against the Sarjeant’s throat. It all happened so quickly the Sarjeant didn’t have a chance to call up his armour. He looked into Giles’s cold eyes, so close to his own, and stood very still, saying nothing. A slow trickle of blood ran down his throat from where the razor edge of the sword just parted the skin over his Adam’s apple.

“Don’t,” said Giles.

Harry seized the moment while my attention was elsewhere, and threw himself at me. We went head to head, both of us too angry to think of subtlety. We traded blows that would have killed ordinary men, but neither of us felt them. We grappled with each other, swaying back and forth as we wrestled, but we both knew all the tricks. We slammed together again and again, our superhuman strength and speed equally matched. I pushed him away from me and extruded long golden blades from my hands. Harry grew blades from his hands too, and we cut viciously at each other, thrusting and hacking and swirling around each other too quickly for the human eye to follow. We were in the grip of the armour now, our passion and hate transformed into superhuman action.