Chapter 8: Duel in Antiva
The Antivan city square glowed under a web of lanterns strung between crumbling stone arches. The scent of roasted chestnuts and cheap ale lingered in the crisp evening air, mixing with the sharper smell of wet stone and crowded humanity. Cobblestones, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps, gleamed under the flickering light. A fountain murmured in the center, its water dark.
Kerr stood near it, a monument of Highever grey and silver amidst the Antivan vibrancy. He wore fine silks, a concession to local custom, but they hung on his frame like banners on a siege tower. His hair, meticulously tied back by Oriana’s own hands, was a dark, severe knot against his scalp. At his belt, the rapier and dagger looked like toys. He was preternaturally still, his eyes tracking the assembling crowd without focus, breathing slow. A man waiting for a chore to be done.
Across the square, under a tapestry hung from a balcony, stood Don Alejandro de Leon y Valdez. He was a greyhound of a man, thin and impeccably dressed, his expression one of mild, disdainful curiosity. Beside him, preening as he tested the flex of his blade, was his champion. The duelist was all coiled elegance in burgundy velvet, his moustache waxed to fine points, his movements a performance of lethal vanity.
The herald’s voice cut through the murmur. “The accusation is laid! The lady’s hand, pledged and forsaken. What says the challenged?”
All eyes turned to Oriana.
She stepped forward, and the square hushed. She was the picture of Antivan grace and elegance, her borrowed gown a cascade of emerald green, her posture erect yet fluid. The tear-stained woman from the solar was gone, erased by a deeper, colder steel. She did not look at the Don. She looked at the herald, her voice clear and carrying, without a single tremor.
“The challenged, my lord husband Fergus Cousland, is on the borders of Ferelden, defending these very lands that grant you the safety to posture here.” A slight, pointed pause. “I name his brother, Kerr of House Cousland, as his champion and mine.”
A ripple went through the crowd. Then a chuckle, a few muttered jokes in Antivan about northern barbarians and their broadswords. The duelist smiled, a thin, contemptuous thing.
Kerr did not move. He was a statue. Only the slight squeeze of his hand answered the small, warm one tucked within it. Oren stood beside him, holding onto his uncle’s massive fingers, his little face solemn and pale. Kerr looked down, met the boy’s wide eyes, and gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. He gently motioned for Oren to go to his mother. The boy scurried back, clutching Oriana’s skirts.
Then Kerr walked to the center of the square. The cobblestones seemed to settle under his weight. He drew the rapier and dagger. The blades caught the lantern light.
The duelist sauntered forward, making a show of his own fluid draw. He stopped a polite ten paces away, executing a flawless, mocking salute. He spoke in Antivan, his voice pitched for the crowd’s benefit.
“Let us be clear, serah. This is no barbarian tourney decided by brute strength. This requires grace, precision, a certain… civilised understanding of the art. I would hate for you to be embarrassed by its complexity.”
Kerr watched him, his face a placid mask. Then he replied. His Antivan was not just fluent; it was native, flowing from him with the easy, vowel-rich cadence of Antiva City’s markets, untouched by a foreign accent.
“You can shove your boasts up your hairy Antivan ass.”
The crowd gasped. The duelist’s smile froze.
Kerr continued, his tone conversational, deadly. “You are too arrogant for one of so few accomplishments. I counted three pathetic medals on your chest. They give those to children for finishing their lessons here, no?”
The duelist’s eyes flickered, for the first time, to Kerr’s silks. Pinned there, almost casually, were Kerr’s own decorations. The Champion’s Laurel from the Grand Tourney of Denerim. The Iron Shield of Amaranthine, for holding the bridge at seventeen. Half a dozen others, each a story of brutal, unequivocal victory. They gleamed dully in the light, a silent, overwhelming testament.
The duelist’s face hardened. The play was over. The herald dropped his scarf.
The burgundy-clad man moved like a striking serpent, a line of silver aimed for Kerr’s heart. It was a beautiful, killing lunge.
And it met nothing but air.
Kerr was not where he was. The duelist’s brain, trained for a lifetime of elegant exchanges, stuttered. The massive northerner had simply flowed aside, his movement a blur of disconcerting speed for a man of his size. The rapier in Kerr’s hand wasn’t held like a foreign object; it was an extension of his arm, its tip already flicking out to slash a red line across the duelist’s advancing wrist.
The duelist hissed, recoiled, tried a flurry of thrusts—high, low, feinting to the side. Kerr’s blade met each one, not with a brutish parry, but with a subtle, precise click of steel. Parry. Bind. Slash. A cut opened on the duelist’s cheek. Riposte. Poke. The point dimpled the velvet over his ribs, drawing a pearl of blood.
It was flawless. It was effortless. It was an annihilation disguised as a duel. Kerr wasn’t fighting with barbaric strength; he was dissecting with a surgeon’s calm, his technique so refined it rendered the Antivan’s lifetime of training quaint. Every exchange ended with the whisper of Kerr’s blade kissing the man’s skin.
Panic, raw and humiliating, began to dawn in the duelist’s eyes. He overextended, a desperate, powerful thrust aimed to drive Kerr back.
Kerr didn’t retreat. He spun.
His body, a whirl of grey silk and controlled power, flowed around the extended blade. He was inside the man’s guard, his back momentarily to the duelist’s chest. The dagger in his left hand became a piston.
Thud-thud-thud.
Three impacts, delivered in less than half a heartbeat. Deep, visceral punches of sharpened steel into the lower back. The duelist arched, a wet, guttural sound escaping him as the blades found kidney, spleen, liver. Kerr spun back out, the pommel of his rapier cracking against the man’s temple with a sound like a splitting nut.
The duelist staggered, eyes unseeing, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. He wavered.
Kerr completed the circle, his final spin bringing him face-to-face with the dying man. He leveled the rapier, one smooth, final extension. The point entered the base of the neck and slid upward, silencing the awful gurgle forever.
The body crumpled to the shiny cobblestones with a heavy, final thud.
The crowd was utterly silent. No cheers, no boos. Just the murmur of the fountain and the sputter of a lantern.
Kerr turned. He flicked his wrists, cleaning the blades with sharp snaps before sheathing them. He did not look at the corpse. His eyes found Don Alejandro. The noble’s face was the colour of old parchment, his disdain replaced by shock that bordered on terror.
Kerr’s voice, again in that perfectly fluent, chilling Antivan, cut the silence like his rapier had cut the air.
“The challenge is finished. The lady returns to Highever.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He walked back to where Oriana stood, Oren clinging to her. She looked at him, her elegant composure intact, but her eyes held a universe of relief and a terrible, grim understanding. Kerr placed a hand on Oren’s head, a silent promise. Then he offered his arm to Oriana.
Without a backward glance at the silent square, at the defeated Don, or at the pool of dark blood spreading around the man in the burgundy velvet, they walked away. Their footsteps echoed, the only sound in the stunned night.