The Magician King_ A Novel - Lev Grossman [120]
He staggered and caught himself with his good right hand on the cold turf. There was a man behind him, a large young man with a round pale face and a goatee. The two of them were stuck together somehow. They were connected by a short broad-bladed sword that was stuck in Quentin’s collarbone, and the man was trying to wrench it out.
What had saved him was this: half of Quentin’s collarbone was made of hardwood, put there by the centaurs to replace what Martin Chatwin had bitten out of him. The man with the sword, not knowing this, had unluckily chosen that side when he attempted to cut Quentin in half from behind.
“Son of a bitch!” Quentin said. He didn’t mean the man specifically; he didn’t know who, or Who, he meant.
If he’d been thinking clearly Quentin might have actually tried to win the tug-of-war over the sword, but in the moment he just wanted it out of him, badly. They both did—their interests were temporarily aligned. In a state of almost disembodied fear Quentin reached up and gripped it with the opposite-side hand. It cut his palm. The man planted a booted foot on Quentin’s back and yanked the sword out with a grunt.
They faced each other, both panting. The quietness of it was weird: real fights happened without a sound track. The man was lightly armored, wearing some kind of blue livery, and not even as old as Quentin. It felt strangely personal—there, alone in a clearing on a silent island, in low-angle morning (evening) light, Quentin felt the youness of the man intensely. For an endless second they stared at each other while Quentin, like everyone else who has ever faced a blade unarmed, made little feinting motions in either direction, as if he were a defender and the man with the sword was going to try to cut past him to the basket. Just in case he lost that matchup, Quentin whispered the opening words to a spell, a Persian fainting charm, he could do it with one hand, which was lucky because he still couldn’t feel his left—
Rudely, the man didn’t wait for him to finish. He advanced, cutting off Quentin’s angles, then lunged appallingly fast, stabbing this time rather than chopping. Quentin twisted desperately to his right and away, but not quite far enough because the sword cut into him. It was incredible that he hadn’t made it, in his mind he was so absolutely sure he would make it, but instead the metal went right into his right side, through his clothes and into his body.
He’d twisted so far around that it went in from behind. At first the sensation was just strange, this hard, awkward presence taking up space where usually his body was, grinding against his ribs. Then it felt warm, almost pleasantly warm, then almost immediately hot, searing hot, as if the sword wasn’t just sharp but glowing white from a forge.
“Ahhhh . . .” Quentin said under his breath, and he sucked air through his clenched teeth, exactly as if he’d cut himself chopping an onion.
The man was obviously a soldier, but Quentin had never really thought about what that meant. He was a professional killer, efficient and businesslike. He had none of Bingle’s elegance. He was like a baker, except instead of making bread he made corpses, and he wanted to make Quentin into one. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He jerked the sword out so he could go in again, right away, this time aiming for something more vital. Time to make the donuts. Quentin couldn’t think.
“ışık!” he shouted. He snapped his fingers.
It was just what came to him; it had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since the safe house. He’d gotten it right this time: light flared between them in the clearing. Startled, the man fell back a step. He must have thought Quentin had hurt him somehow. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he was all right, but it didn’t take Quentin long to blurt out the Persian fainting charm either.
The man dropped his sword and fell forward onto the thin grass. Quentin stood there panting and holding his side. Blood soaked his shirt. That was too close. Too close. He almost died. The pain was amazing, like a pulsing flare