Black_March

Swordplay

The Knights

They were only pit fighters.
The fearsome collection of former fighting slaves made indifferent guards at best. Speed and
strength and ferocity they had, and some skill at arms as well, but blood games were poor training for
knights. In the pits their foes were announced with horns and drums, and after the battle was
done and won the victors could have their wounds bound up and quaff some milk of the poppy for the
pain, knowing that the threat was past and they were free to drink and feast and whore until the next
fight. But the battle was never truly done for a knight of the Kingsguard. Threats came from everywhere
and nowhere, at any time of day or night. No trumpets announced the foe: vassals, servants, friends,
brothers, sons, even wives, any of them might have knives concealed beneath their cloaks and murder
hidden in their hearts. For every hour of fighting, a Kingsguard knight spent ten thousand hours
watching, waiting, standing silent in the shadows. Pit fighters were already growing bored
and restive with their new duties, and bored men were lax, slow to react.

The Preperation

The water, when it came, was only lukewarm, but Selmy lingered in the bath until it had grown
cold and scrubbed his skin till it was raw. Clean as he had ever been, he rose, dried himself, and clad
himself in whites. Stockings, smallclothes, silken tunic, padded jerkin, all fresh-washed and bleached.
Over that he donned the armor that the queen had given him as a token of her esteem. The mail was
gilded, finely wrought, the links as supple as good leather, the plate enameled, hard as ice and bright as
new-fallen snow. His dagger went on one hip, his long-sword on the other, hung from a white leather
belt with golden buckles. Last of all he took down his long white cloak and fastened it about his
shoulders.
The helm he left upon its hook. The narrow eye slit limited his vision, and he needed to be able
to see for what was to come. The halls of the castle were dark at night, and foes could come at you
from either side. Besides, though the ornate dragon’s wings that adorned the helm were splendid to
look upon, they could too easily catch a sword or axe. He would leave them for his next tourney if the
Gods should grant him one.

Armed and armored, the old knight waited, sitting in the gloom of his small chamber adjoining
the queen’s apartments. The faces of all the kings that he had served and failed floated before him in
the darkness, and the faces of the brothers who had served beside him in the Kingsguard as well. He
wondered how many of them would have done what he was about to do. Some, surely. But not all.
Outside the pyramid, it began to rain. Ser Barristan sat along in the dark, listening. It sounds like tears,
he thought. It sounds like dead kings, weeping. Then it was time to go.

The Confrontation

It was still a good few moments before the King emerged yawning, knotting the sash that closed his robe.
The robe was green satin, richly worked with pearls and silver thread. Under it the king was quite naked.
That was good. Naked men felt vulnerable and were less inclined to acts of suicidal heroism.

...

“He is a killer but not a poisoner.” Ser Barristan moved closer to the king. “Are you the
Harpy?” This time he put his hand on the hilt of his longsword. “Tell me true, and I promise you shall
have a swift, clean death.”
“You presume too much, ser,” said Hizdahr. “I am done with these questions, and with you. You
are dismissed from my service. Leave Meereen at once and I will let you live.”
“If you are not the Harpy, give me his name.” Ser Barristan pulled his sword from the scabbard.
Its sharp edge caught the light from the brazier, became a line of orange fire.
Hizdahr broke. “Khrazz!” he shrieked, stumbling backwards toward his bedchamber. “Khrazz!
Khrazz!”


The fight

Ser Barristan heard a door open, somewhere to his left. He turned in time to see Khrazz emerge
from behind a tapestry. He moved slowly, still groggy from sleep, but his weapon of choice was in his
hand: a Dothraki arakh, long and curved. A slasher’s sword, made to deliver deep, slicing cuts from
horseback. A murderous blade against half-naked foes, in the pit or on the battlefield. But here at close
quarters, the arakh’s length would tell against it, and Barristan Selmy was clad in plate and mail.
“I am here for Hizdahr,” the knight said. “Throw down your steel and stand aside, and no harm
need come to you.”
Khrazz laughed. “Old man. I will eat your heart.” The two men were of a height, but Khrazz was
two stone heavier and forty years younger, with pale skin, dead eyes, and a crest of bristly red-black hair
that ran from his brow to the base of his neck.
“Then come,” said Barristan the Bold. Khrazz came.
For the first time all day, Selmy felt certain. This is what I was made for, he thought. The dance,
the sweet steel song, a sword in my hand and a foe before me.
The pit fighter was fast, blazing fast, as quick as any man Ser Barristan had ever fought. In those
big hands, the arakh became a whistling blur, a steel storm that seemed to come at the old knight from
three directions at once. Most of the cuts were aimed at his head. Khrazz was no fool. Without a helm,
Selmy was most vulnerable above the neck.
He blocked the blows calmly, his longsword meeting each slash and turning it aside. The blades
rang and rang again. Ser Barristan retreated. On the edge of his vision, he saw the cupbearers watching
with eyes as big and white as chicken eggs. Khrazz cursed and turned a high cut into a low one, slipping
past the old knight’s blade for once, only to have his blow scrape uselessly off a white steel greave.
Selmy’s answering slash found the pit fighter’s left shoulder, parting the fine linen to bite the flesh
beneath. His yellow tunic began to turn pink, then red.
“Only cowards dress in iron,” Khrazz declared, circling. No one wore armor in the fighting pits. It
was blood the crowds came for: death, dismemberment, and shrieks of agony, the music of the scarlet
sands.
Ser Barristan turned with him. “This coward is about to kill you, ser.” The man was no knight,
but his courage had earned him that much courtesy. Khrazz did not know how to fight a man in armor.
Ser Barristan could see it in his eyes: doubt, confusion, the beginnings of fear. The pit fighter came on
again, screaming this time, as if sound could slay his foe where steel could not. The arakh slashed low,
high, low again.
Selmy blocked the cuts at his head and let his armor stop the rest, whilst his own blade opened
the pit fighter’s cheek from ear to mouth, then traced a raw red gash across his chest. Blood welled from
Khrazz’s wounds. That only seemed to make him wilder. He seized the brazier with his off hand and
flipped it, scattering embers and hot coals at Selmy’s feet. Ser Barristan leapt over them. Khrazz slashed
at his arm and caught him, but the arakh could only chip the hard enamel before it met the steel below.

“In the pit that would have taken your arm off, old man.”
“We are not in the pit.”
“Take off that armor!”
“It is not too late to throw down your steel. Yield.”
“Die,” spat Khrazz … but as he lifted his arakh, its tip grazed one of the wall hangings and hung.
That was all the chance Ser Barristan required. He slashed open the pit fighter’s belly, parried the arakh
as it wrenched free, then finished Khrazz with a quick thrust to the heart as the pit fighter’s entrails
came sliding out like a nest of greasy eels.
Blood and viscera stained the king’s silk carpets. Selmy took a step back. The longsword in his
hand was red for half its length. Here and there the carpets had begun to smolder where some of the
scattered coals had fallen. He could hear poor Qezza sobbing. “Don’t be afraid,” the old knight said. “I
mean you no harm, child. I want only the king.”
He wiped his sword clean on a curtain and stalked into the bedchamber, where he found
Hizdahr zo Loraq, Fourteenth of His Noble Name, hiding behind a tapestry and whimpering. “Spare me,”
he begged. “I do not want to die.”
“Few do. Yet all men die, regardless.” Ser Barristan sheathed his sword and pulled Hizdahr to his
feet. “Come. I will escort you to a cell.” By now, the Brazen Beasts should have disarmed Steelskin. “You
will be kept a prisoner until the queen returns. If nothing can be proved against you, you will not come
to harm. You have my word as a knight.” He took the king’s arm and led him from the bedchamber,
feeling strangely light-headed, almost drunk. I was a Kingsguard. What am I now?