Chapter 36: Duels
Gala week had a tight schedule, with multiple events every day, all culminating in a ball and banquet on Saturday.
The first and second days had been all about the class exhibitions. Class 2-A’s play had been the most dramatic one, of course, but, walking around the festivities with Iris, Clara had quite enjoyed some of the others. Class 3-B had organized a full-service restaurant with foreign foods, where they ate delicious dumplings and paneer-stuffed naan from this world’s totally-not-Asia continent. There were also Class 1-D’s carnival games, including ring toss and a hammer-based strength test, in which Edward had amusingly bested Lochlann.
Today, the third day of activities, the schedule catered to the club exhibitions and the martial track students. The morning’s highlight, of course, was the Spellweaving Club’s performance. Professor Morris and Viscount Vainglory faced each other in the center of the practice field, with a large audience watching from makeshift bleachers on the side. Ciarán, Iris, and Conrad were in the front row, though the duke and duchess didn’t seem to be in attendance. Clara could just barely make out Warren’s wavy blond hair in one of the back rows.
Dame Rowena, the Second Prince’s personal knight who’d been dispatched from the capital to keep an eye on Ciarán for the week, was standing on the side, impossible to miss. The woman was enormous. Not just because she was tall—though she easily had a full head on everyone else there—but she was also burly in a way that made her look like a small fortress in herself.
Clara took her position behind the low earth wall that ringed the performance area. It was nothing like the jagged, lopsided barrier from their first practice; thanks to many days of work, Cecily and the effects team had refined both the incantation and the visualization, and the result was a smooth, waist-high perimeter that curved evenly around the field.
“Everyone remember the sequence?” Clara called out to the effects team, prompting several nods.
Morris raised his staff overhead. “Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests—welcome to the Spellweaving Club’s annual gala exhibition!”
Polite applause.
“What you are about to witness is a battle between animated earth constructs controlled by myself and our club’s captain, Viscount Vainglory. The rest of our club will provide special effects. Rest assured, this is only a simulation, and the audience is in no danger whatsoever.”
Morris slammed his staff into the ground. “Surgat terra!”
The earth rumbled, and his golem rose in sections, broader and steadier than its previous versions. The legs were thicker and the shoulders narrower, which should help prevent the nearly three-meter-tall behemoth from toppling.
At the opposite end, Reginald Vainglory smiled and raised his silver wand with panache. “Surgat terra. Formetur in imagine mea.”
His gladiator assembled faster than before, and there was an appreciative murmur from the audience as it did a taunting pose.
Clara raised her hand. “Haze.”
Cecily chanted, and her dark green hair swayed as the luminous mist rolled across the field, pooling around the constructs’ feet. But instead of a uniform blanket, Clara had asked her to visualize layers—a thicker ground fog with wisps curling like smoke,
“Lights,” Clara called next, and Jonathan’s team created twin glowing spheres where each construct would have had eyes.
Morris made the first move. The golem charged forward and swung its massive right arm in a wide arc. Reginald’s gladiator sidestepped, then retaliated with a sharp uppercut to the golem’s torso.
“Pyro team, spark shower on impact!” she shouted.
Two students raised their staffs in unison. “Scintillae cadant!” Golden sparks erupted from the point of contact and rained downward, an incantation that Clara had helped them refine so that the sparks mimicked the trajectory of the impact.
The golem staggered but recovered, throwing a counterpunch that sent the gladiator sliding backward, its earthen feet carving paths in the ground.
“Now, tremor pulse!” Clara signaled to the two students closer to the impact zone.
They chanted together, and the ground between the constructs rippled outward in an illusory shockwave, drawing a roar from the crowd.
The fierce exchanges continued, with each side unleashing its own attacks, powerful and elegant. Now that the professor didn’t have to focus on the effects, his golem was more than a match for the gladiator, and they exchanged blow after blow like evenly matched boxers, with sparks and trail lines on every impact.
When they inched closer to the choreographed ending, Clara nodded to Cecily.
“Mutetur nebula in rubrum!” The girl chanted, her eyes narrowed.
Clara’s fingerprints were on this incantation, too. What she’d learned from working with the Spellweaving Club was that the people of this world didn’t really understand Latin; they mostly just memorized some well-known words and phrases. She was by no means fluent, but compared to the denizens of this world, she might as well be Cicero.
The haze at the constructs’ feet deepened into a vivid, angry red, as if the arena itself were heating up from the battle. Ciarán was leaning so far forward in the bleachers that Iris had to pull him back by his collar.
For the finale, both constructs locked hands and pushed against each other. Clara counted the seconds in her head. Morris’s staff was shaking. Reginald’s jaw was clenched.
“Everyone, now!”
Every student on the effects team cast simultaneously. Fire and sparks erupted skyward. The ground trembled. The haze dispersed. And both constructs shattered at once, their earthen forms breaking apart in symmetrical explosions that sent fragments up into the air at the exact trajectory where they’d land within the ring but away from Morris and Reginald.
The crowd erupted. Morris and Reginald bowed, and the effects team cheered.
Afterwards, Morris walked over to Clara, drenched in sweat but grinning ear to ear.
“Miss Casewell, that was well done. The effects team improved tremendously under your guidance. I have to say that your ideas with the Sacred Tongue are quite creative, and you have a knack for coordinating the students.”
“I’m happy to have helped, Professor.”
“Far be it from me to peer uninvited into someone to whom I owe so much, yet should you ever decide to stop being so evasive about the extent of your knowledge of the Sacred Tongue, the door to my office is always open. Figuratively, of course.” He paused, then added with a wry smile, “A teaching and research assistant’s pay is better than a maid’s, I imagine.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” That wasn't a bad offer, actually, and she might have to give it some serious consideration later. For now, Clara was just glad that Morris—and Iris and Warren, for that matter—hadn’t insisted on asking her uncomfortable questions, despite how obviously insufficient her usual excuse of reading a lot was.
The swordfighting tournament was set to begin after lunch, in the same field as the Spellweaving Club’s exhibition, which had now been cleaned up and restored to a mostly tidy state, barring the usual scorch marks and such. It was the main event for the martial track students, and usually drew some of the biggest crowds of gala week. Clara settled into her seat beside Iris. In the same row were Ciarán, Conrad, and the von Rhenia couple.
“Is Dame Rowena really fighting?” asked Conrad, for the third time.
Ciarán smirked. “Yes. Surely you agree she will make a more suitable opponent for your Sir Ricardo than those fools at the garrison.”
Conrad turned away.
So Ricardo and Rowena are going to fight each other? Clara had never been one for athletics, but the prospect of a match between two seasoned knights was enough to stir even her interest.
“My lady, I thought this was a student tournament? Why are two knights fighting?” asked Clara.
“It’s tradition to have an exhibition match before the tournament. Watching professionals show their skills gives the students something to aspire to. It was originally supposed to be between Ricardo and the commander of Westwick’s garrison.”
“You’ll see. Ricardo will definitely beat Rowena this time,” said Conrad.
Ciarán shrugged. “Isn’t it more likely he’ll just lose again? In the capital tournament, he didn’t stand a chance.”
“That was three years ago. The major has improved much since then.” There was something fierce in Conrad’s unwavering eyes.
“And how would you know how much a swordsman’s improved?” Ciarán crossed his arms.
“By being one. You know, I won this tournament twice when I was at Claves. Both in my second and third years.”
Ciarán’s expression shifted to curiosity. “You won twice?”
Iris raised her chin. “I’ll have you know my brother is one of the most promising young duelists in the country.”
The Second Prince didn’t reply to that, pursing his lips in deep thought.
Down in the field, Major Ricardo stood near the center, speaking with one of the martial track instructors. He wore padded sparring armor over his uniform, reinforced at the joints and chest. A practice rapier hung at his hip, blunted and edgeless, like all the weapons in the tournament, but fitted with a pale blue gemstone in the guard.
On the opposite end, Dame Rowena was hard to miss, towering like a mountain. She had short blonde hair, and her weapon was a blunted longsword, which she carried as casually as a dinner knife. Set on its crossguard was a deep red gemstone.
“She’s quite something,” said Clara.
“Dame Rowena is the strongest knight in the Order of the Wolf,” Ciarán said proudly. “Winner of the last Grand Tournament.”
“That is true.” The deep voice from the side was Duke von Rhenia’s. “But I believe her match with Major Ricardo was closer than Your Highness seems to recall. I’m curious to see how today will turn out.”
The martial track instructor at the center of the field introduced the exhibition match and the contestants. There was some applause, but the real cheer came when Ricardo and Rowena walked to their positions and faced each other.
Rowena planted her longsword point-down in front of her and crossed her hands over the pommel, staring Ricardo down with deep, furrowed brows. That, combined with the scar that ran from her forehead across her left cheek, made the woman feel almost impossibly dangerous. Ricardo, by contrast, drew his practice rapier with a fluid motion and settled into a relaxed guard.
The instructor raised a white flag with crossed golden keys. “Salute.”
The fighters both lowered their heads, Ricardo more than Rowena. Then the instructor took out a pocket watch and glanced at it. “Since the clock is almost on the hour, we will begin when the bell strikes two.”
They waited, their eyes locked on each other. The murmurs of the crowd died down. Westwick’s town bell rang once in the distance, then twice, and both knights immediately moved their mouths, forming chants Clara couldn’t hear. Their gemstones flared in response. Rowena’s blazed like an ember, and a shimmer crawled up her arms and across her shoulders. Ricardo’s pulsed once, clean and bright, and his entire posture shifted into something lighter.
She moved first, with surprising agility for someone of her size. She closed the distance in two strides that cracked the earth under her boots, crossing ten paces in a heartbeat. Her longsword came down in a brute swing that split the air with an audible hiss, and Clara winced. Even with a practice blade, couldn’t a swing like that cleave someone in half?!
But Ricardo was already gone, sidestepping so fast Clara barely registered his movement. Still, Rowena didn’t stop, turning the missed cut into a rising swipe, then a horizontal sweep, each strike heavier than the last, the red gemstone flaring with every swing. Ricardo’s rapier caught each blow at an angle, redirecting it away from his body. The impacts of steel on steel sent shockwaves rippling through the ground and clangs echoing across the stands.
Ciarán was on his feet. “Get him, Rowena! Hit him hard!”
Iris sneered. “Of course a child like you would favor brutality over elegance.”
It’s honestly a bit amusing to see Iris call someone else a child.
“A true noble must appreciate swordsmanship as an art, and not just as a form of combat, Your Highness,” added Conrad.
The flurry continued, and Ricardo gave ground steadily with precise movements. Then, when they were about to reach the edge of the marked area for the duel, he stepped into Rowena’s downward cut, passing through her side and driving the rapier’s point into her exposed armpit. She roared, twisting away, but by then he was already on the other side, just out of reach.
The crowd cheered in approval, and Clara found herself clapping while leaning forward.
The knights circled each other, breathing hard. Their second exchange was longer and more ferocious. Rowena, with no pretense of finesse, pressed forward with seemingly endless swings, all with enough magically enhanced force to crater the ground when they missed—the field was beginning to look even more like a battlefield than it had in the morning. Twice she caught Ricardo’s blade in a bind and tried to wrench it aside, and twice he disengaged with a fluid rotation of his wrist that turned her monstrous strength against her.
The third bind held, and Rowena locked their swords together. The blades scraped against each other, each of the knights pouring everything into the clash. Her red gemstone blazed so fiercely Clara could almost feel a pressure from it. Ricardo’s back knee buckled, and Rowena’s face split into a grim smile.
Then Ricardo dropped his blade entirely. Conrad yelped.
But in one swift motion, Ricardo ducked under the suddenly unresisted longsword, scooped his rapier from where it had fallen, and came up behind Rowena with his blade resting against her neck.
He’s incredible. Clara had expected him to be good, but she wasn’t ready for how good.
The instructor’s flag came down. “The winner is Major Ricardo of the von Rhenia Knights!”
Ricardo bowed. Duke von Rhenia stood up and clapped methodically, and the spectators applauded enthusiastically. A few of the martial track students, watching from the side, had their mouths open in awe.
Clara glanced at Ciarán, who had slumped back into his seat and started to sulk.
“Your knight is very strong,” she offered.
“I didn’t think Rowena could lose.”
“She fought well,” said Conrad. “I can see that she’s also improved since the tournament—her control over her magic is still lacking, but it’s better than I remember. I would like to spar with her at some point.”
So he does have some grace to him, at least when it comes to the sword.
The instructor announced the start of the student tournament bracket, and Clara settled in to watch. Yet her eyes drifted to the edge of the field, where Rowena stood with a dark scowl on her scarred face.