Life does not get better. You get better.
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Telemachon closed his eyes, breathing in her breath, drinking her every exhalation. Being near her was rapture.‘Let me touch you,’ he said, shuddering. ‘Just let me touch you once.’‘You would like that, wouldn’t you?’ She made to stroke her crystal-clawed fingertip down the side of his face, but no contact came. The glassy talon tip hovered a centimetre above the prisoner’s tormented flesh. He strained against his bindings, aching to lean forwards so Nefertari might lacerate his face.‘I can smell your soul, eldar.’ He was trembling now. ‘The Youngest God shrieks for it, crying from behind the veil.’She leaned even closer, close enough that I could barely hear her whisper. ‘Then let the Goddess shriek. I am not ready to die.’‘You live in defiance of his hunger, lovely angel... Let me taste you. Let me bleed you. Let me kill you. Please. Please. Please.’
I have already said that Telemachon’s voice was beautiful – my words cannot do it justice, the low, strong, honey-throated resonance of it – but it is nothing compared to how he fought that day. That was true beauty.Poets will often speak of a ‘warrior’s grace’, and the ‘dance’ of a skilled fighter’s footwork. In all my years of warfare, I had never seen the reality of it until I saw him duelling the Ragged Knight.Remember that this is a man I despise. We have tried to end each other’s life a hundred times and more across the span of millennia. It grieves me to praise him at all.He matched the daemon’s height by standing upon the triclinium’s long tables, deflecting the Ragged Knight’s blows with a sword in each hand. He was beyond a blur, into something liquid and unreal. Both of his blades moved in absolute harmony with one another – he parried, disengaged, blocked and riposted with his swords in mathematically perfect unity. His helm’s faceplate is what elevated the moment past the miraculous and into the insane. The handsome silver visage, a young man’s flawless features, looked utterly at peace. Serene. Perhaps even bored.It isn’t easy to fight with paired swords, and even more difficult to fight well. Many fighters deceive themselves that it offers any true benefit at all over a blade and pistol, a sword and shield, or a stronger, longer single blade. Duelling with twinned weapons is a common recourse for those who relish posturing over skill, and enjoy the element of intimidation. Few soldiers ever master it even among the Legions, and the sight of a warrior with two blades is almost always the first sign of an overconfident fool.But Telemachon made posturing into an art that blended perfectly with his immense skill. He lifted his blades against the overwhelming blows, forced to give ground when anyone else would already be dead. The Ragged Knight had the advantages of strength, of reach, of height, and the swordsman’s only counter was to put everything of himself into every deflection. For several breath-stealing seconds I watched him retreat with savage, furious grace, the blades sparking as they parried the daemon’s swings. He wasn’t just blocking, which would have surely broken his blades. He caught each incoming blow at exactly the right angle, allowing him to crash them aside rather than take the weight of their momentum.
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