Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [91]
It went on for a long time. I feigned stumbles and offered false openings, recovering in the nick of time. I parried with the merest flick of the wrists I could manage, hoarding my strength. Step by step, I lead Eamonn mac Grainne on a dull, wearying dance back and forth across the greensward, and I watched his grin fade, replaced by exhausted frustration. He grew slow to raising his buckler, and I began to attack him once more.
How long it lasted, I could not say. It felt like hours.
Our audience jeered and made catcalls and eventually lost interest altogether, except perhaps for a few. Locked together in a private world, Eamonn and I continued to trade blows, sweat-drenched, moving as slowly as one does in a dream.
In the end, I got inside his guard, beating his sword aside; but once I had gotten there, I lacked the strength to regroup. Keeping his sword-arm pinned low and outside, I leaned against his shield, breathing hard. Both of us were swaying on our feet, nearly holding each other upright.
"Truce?" Eamonn said hoarsely.
"Truce," I agreed.
With a groan, he dropped onto the grass and sprawled on his back. I dropped beside him, staring at the blue sky, my chest heaving. I could not remember being more exhausted, not even after helping clear the new pasture in Montrève.
"Imri?" Alais' face appeared in my field of vision, disconcertingly inverted. "Is it a draw, then?"
Too weary to speak, I nodded.
"Oh, good!" Her upside-down face vanished, and I heard Drustan proclaim the match a draw to a fresh round of jeers. I was too tired to even consider rising.
Beside me, Eamonn began to chuckle. "Good bout," he said.
I turned my head toward him. "Not bad."
Lying on the grass, too weary to move, both of us laughed like idiots. Phèdre was right, it was a foolish and unnecessary thing we had done; but it was a glorious one, too. And somehow in the process, we had become friends.
* * *
Chapter Nineteen
What followed was one of the happiest times of my life. True friendship must be akin to romance, I think; only without all the anguish and anxiety. After our bout, Eamonn and I became inseparable.
At Court, we made an odd pair. The rumor went about that we were lovers, of course, though there was no truth to it, or at least not in the physical sense. Although it was common practice in Terre d'Ange, after Daršanga, I had seen too much of men's cruelty for the notion to appeal for me. As the Dowayne of Balm House had noted, I was unready to address that wound.
Eamonn thought it was funny. "You people do like your buggery!" he said, laughing.
"Oh, and the Dalriada don't?" I asked him. "Tell me truly."
"Only on long hunting trips." He grinned, unperturbed. "I'm game if you are! Dagda Mor, you're pretty enough for it, Imriel."
"True," I said. "But you're not." It only made him laugh harder.
My Court friends thought it strange. Eamonn was well-liked—it was hard to dislike him, good-natured as he was—but he had no head for the subtleties of the Court, and no great command of the tongue. He was simple, direct, and honest.
It made it easy to be in his company. But it was a mistake to underestimate his intelligence, as most of the gentry did. Most D'Angelines, I fear, are terrible snobs. I loved my country as much as anyone and perhaps more than most. I had cause, having been snatched from it, having witnessed the impossible heroism of which our people are capable at their finest. But I had witnessed acts of heartbreaking valor by people of other nations, too, and I was under no illusion that D'Angeline blood confers any superiority.
We are a pretty folk, as Eamonn said. It is a legacy of Elua and his Companions, whose blood runs in our veins. I had seen one of the One God's angels, and the beauty of Rahab in his true form was almost unbearable. But physical beauty was meaningless in and of itself. I should know, being my mother's son.