Drannic sprang. The confinement of his golden helm muffled his battle cry. His right-hand sword hacked at Viktor’s head. Viktor checked the blow with a banshee screech of scraping steel. Even as his right was struck wide, Drannic’s left sword speared for Viktor’s belly.

Viktor pivoted on his heel. The disembowelling blow tore his surcoat’s rich cloth and glanced off his breastplate.

For a heartbeat, he was off-balance. A heartbeat was a lifetime to someone like Drannic. The champion’s blades, always in motion, wove a gleaming web of steel. Viktor parried the first blow and evaded the second. The third slipped past his guard. It cheated the join between the upper and lower plates about Viktor’s forearm.

Flame coursed through Viktor’s arm. Bright blood welled up between armour plates. His shadow hissed, pulling free as pain sundered his concentration. Flame flickered and died beneath a torrent of cold. Viktor’s breath steamed in the balmy air.

He stumbled back, his attention divided between the darting blades and the shadow’s bid for freedom. He parried one blow mere inches from his brow. He ducked another. A ragged cheer broke out from the Hadari ranks at the prospect of their champion’s victory.

All the while, the shadow fought Viktor’s grasp. He wrestled the overwhelming temptation to set it free – to end the duel in an eye-blink. But he knew the folly of that course. He squeezed the shadow tight and forced it down.

The cold faded. The pain in his arm returned. Viktor welcomed it. He embraced his rising anger at the Hadari cheer. At himself for presenting weakness for Drannic to exploit. The claymore clove the air, driven on by a roar.

Drannic’s swords came up to block, blades crossed to trap the claymore. The left buckled. The right shattered with a dull crack, its upper portion falling into the dirt.

For the first time, he backed away.

Viktor pursued. The claymore battered Drannic’s remaining sword aside. Armour turned aside the stump of the other. Not so Drannic’s golden scales and Viktor’s claymore.

The blade’s point took the Hadari champion in the chest. Driven home by anger as much as momentum, it pierced the armoured scales. Drannic froze, transfixed by the colossal sword that was now his only support. A choked, bubbling gasp issued from beneath the helm. Swords fell from twitching hands.

The Hadari cheer died. Away to Viktor’s left, another rose to take its place – wild, almost disbelieving. A disbelief Viktor shared. Not because he’d won the duel, but because the people of the Southshires – wolf’s-heads, malcontents and rebels all – cheered him. The Phoenix-Slayer.

Blood dribbling from his forearm, Viktor twisted the blade. Drannic’s body slipped free. Using the claymore as a crutch, Viktor stooped beside the corpse.

“May you find whatever reward you deserve,” he muttered.