The mace had a good weight to it, which in itself was already strange under the circumstances. Hrafn swung it a few times through the air, turning it between his fingers, testing the inertia, feeling the metal's brief delay before it obeyed the hand. It was good, more than good, it was comfortable.
Not that he meant to use it, this was only a training bout, a friendly spar, and there was a limit to how much it was worth looking unhinged on the first day. So he set the mace aside and chose a simpler wooden staff, something closer to the kind of thing a man might pick up to strike another in an alley without needing to think much about it.
Normally he would not provoke someone so openly like that, not for sport or at least he liked to think he would not. But the brute seemed a good test, and since the giant had settled the matter of the weapon so easily, little remained to do besides annoy Edvard, test the blessing, and discover how far his new miracle intended to sabotage him.
The blessing was volatile, at times it was hard to tell how much of it was awake and when it merely lay there beneath the skin, like a numbed limb that was still his, yet did not always answer as it should. Most of the time it remained muffled, compressed at the bottom of his senses. Sometimes it changed with nothing more than a thought, in some moments all it took was remembering it, and it would come at once, sensitive and unpleasant, as if it had a will of its own. He would need to learn how to live with it before the time came to use it in earnest.
"Ready?" asked the big man. He was a large man, too large for Hrafn to think it sensible to face him under ordinary conditions. But he would have to deal with worse things from now on. He still remembered the fallen that had attacked the camp that night. Even the one he had faced, one of the smaller ones, had already been larger than any man.
The fallen came in many forms, many sizes, many humors. What stood before him now was only a broad-shouldered man with a bad temper. "Hey, spoiled boy," the other insisted.
The idiot was as stupid as a door, of that he was already nearly certain. Who in a sound mind, would mistake him for a spoiled boy just because he had bathed and accepted wearing clothes Edvard had all but forced upon him by moral violence? Hrafn began to suspect there was some relation between this kind of stupidity and names beginning with B. The thought drew a smile from him as he remembered another idiot, smaller, but equally gifted at being stupid.
"Ready," he answered. Then he gave himself over to it completely.
The blessing swept through him from head to foot. The training yard was not exactly full of life, but there was enough, plants, grass, and trees made up a decorative flora, and there were the smaller things as well, moss and fungus tucked into places where not even the most dedicated servant could tear them out.
Also when he surrendered himself to it like that, the blessing went downward. The amount of life beneath the earth was greater, stretching to the limit of his perception and probably beyond. His mind caught in an instant the body could not follow, as though thought had shot ahead and the rest of him had to be dragged after it.
He tried to lessen it, tried to force it back and he managed, but he managed it all at once.
The step he meant to take forward came out wrong, too direct, like a man pulling too hard on a rope only to be thrown backward when it snaps. He nearly stumbled but went on anyway, advancing on the man in an attack that must have looked more stubborn than trained. The brute did not seem frightened, if there was any emotion there, it looked like annoyance, with a hint of suspicion. When Hrafn came close enough to see the displeasure more clearly on his face, he plunged into the blessing again, and the world sank into slowness.
Everything changed without moving. He saw that the big man was not truly in guard, he had probably assumed Hrafn's stumble had already said enough about the level of the fight. Hrafn drew the blessing back with care, taking advantage of the openings, letting the world accelerate little by little, pleased to feel that this time he might actually be able to use it. The staff came down toward the idiot's neck.
Bjorn began to raise the wooden sword to parry too late. Hrafn saw the flaws, he saw a clean path between them, narrow and almost inevitable, provided he executed everything correctly.
The blessing vanished suddenly again.
Control slipped from his hands like water, the abrupt shift in perception confused him enough that the blow passed well clear of the target and, an instant later, a wooden sword drove brutally into the side of his stomach.
The pain hurled him back, and that was the worst part. It did not come and pass but stretched, dragged itself through him, long and alive, as if it had all the time in the world to happen. Bjorn's eyes were fixed on him with growing confusion, and Hrafn could feel Edvard beside him, already one step into what would in another moment become an elegant run to help him.
The agony lasted a very long time, or a very short one, with the blessing ruining everything, it was hard to tell. He brought his head back into focus by degrees, filtering the excess, reducing what could be reduced. He did not need to shut everything down, only enough to bear it. He managed a mediocre success, The world remained unbearably slow, the pain remained entire, but now there was difference within it. Now he could notice that the sword was, in fact, pushing his flesh inward, deforming the body before drawing away.
He held to that and went on.
He pushed things forward, a little faster each time, feeling his head throb in increasingly violent pulses, the megin twisted by the effort of being pulled, compressed and released in measures it quite clearly hated. When he judged he had enough control to think of something else, he looked for a way to counterattack. He noticed that his feet were still planted well, also noticed that the sword had struck him from the side, not the center, who left him a line.
He had an idea, probably a stupid idea, but stupid was better than nothing. He planned it all first, the right foot would drive his body out of the blade's line, the left would hold the base, and the rest would be weight, forehead, and bad intentions.
Then he loosed the megin far faster than before, the right foot tore him out of the sword's path, his left set him firm against the ground and Hrafn went forward with his head. It was a surprisingly good headbutt for someone with so little knowledge of serious fighting.
After that everything ran too fast, which in truth meant only that the world had returned to normal and his perception had been wrong the whole time. He felt an instant heat in his forehead, heard the wet crack of something breaking, and Bjorn toppled backward with a low groan, his hands going too late to his face. Hrafn went down with him, without enough balance left to strike a pose after the blow, and the two of them ended up sprawled on the ground, breathing hard like bad dogs after an even worse fight.
"You're not a noble, are you?" Bjorn asked at last, his voice thick and nasal with blood.
Hrafn turned his face to look at him, had to give the man credit, he had taken a broken nose without the slightest whimper. "What do you think?" he answered.
"Well," said Bjorn, sniffling blood and pride at the same time. "I've never seen a noble fight like a vagabond…"
Hrafn let out a short laugh. "Well now," he mocked. "How brilliant."