The Spirit Rebellion(129)

For a moment Sted just stood there, staring, and then he started to raise his sword to defend. But this time he was too slow. Josef was already on top of him, swinging the Heart with all his rage. The black blade hit Sted in the side with the weight of a mountain. There was a great iron gong, and Sted flew backward, slamming into the front wall of the warehouse with a crash that cracked the wooden supports.

Panting from the force of the blow and keeping one eye on Sted’s slumped body, Josef limped over to Nico. He’d seen plenty of violence in his time, but she was still hard to look at. An enormous wound ran down her chest, as though Sted had been trying to gut her. Still, he told himself, this was Nico. She was about as killable as a rock wall.

Josef knelt down to check her breathing. Sure enough, he could feel it, a faint breeze on his fingers, and he let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. She was alive. He let himself savor the realization before forcing it down again, turning to face Sted’s twitching body. She was alive, and it was his job now to make sure she stayed that way.

Across the warehouse, Sted groaned and retched, coughing up a streak of bright blood. He stared at it in shock before turning his hateful glare on Josef. Keeping a hand to his side, he stood slowly, pushing himself up by painful inches.

“I’m impressed,” he gasped, spitting out another mouthful of blood as he got to his feet at last. “You broke a rib. How long has it been since someone did that? Not for years now.” He bared his bloody teeth at Josef. “You’ll pay for that.”

“If we’re paying blood for blood,” Josef said, “I think you owe us far more.”

Sted grabbed his sword again. “What does it take to kill you?” he grumbled. “This time I’ll cut off your cursed head!”

His threat turned into a scream as he began to charge. Instinctively, Josef turned to jump out of the way, but the Heart would not move. For one panicked moment, he stared at the blade. Then he quieted, and understood. Josef planted his feet firmly, in the position shield troops call Bracing the Mountain, and held the Heart in front of him, broad side out, like a shield. There, firm as bedrock, he met Sted’s charge.

The swords clashed in a scream of twisting metal and flashing sparks. Sted was snarling, his sword red as fresh blood, pushing with all his strength. The blood rage crashed into Josef, but the swordsman did not break his stance, and he did not move an inch.

Realizing his assault was useless, Sted began to swing wildly, using his superior height and reach to try and get around Josef’s iron guard. But everywhere Sted swung, the Heart was there. The great black sword and the man carrying it moved together, flicking from one position to the next with a speed unlike anything they’d shown earlier. Sted struck harder and harder, faster and faster, but Josef and the Heart met him blow for blow, each block flowing seamlessly into the next, and try as he might, Sted could not break the sword’s wall.

Finally, desperately, Sted lashed out with his entire body, throwing all his weight into his attack. This time, when the jagged sword met the Heart’s dented surface, the glowing blade snapped. It broke with a squeal of metal that made Josef’s ears ache, and Sted stumbled back. He held up his sword, now just a foot of toothy metal above the absurdly large hilt, and stared at it like a bewildered child. Then, with a cry of despair, hatred, and utter, devouring rage, he threw himself at Josef.

It was a wild charge. Sted thundered toward him, flailing with the broken sword as though it were still whole, running with his whole body to crush Josef beneath his weight.

It was then, in the madness, that Josef struck. He turned the Heart deftly in his hand, sliding the enormous blade around to meet Sted’s flailing arm. He didn’t look at the man’s bared teeth or his twitching muscles. He didn’t look at his own footwork, or how Sted was poised to crush him without the Heart as a barrier. Instead, he focused on the image the Heart had shown him, of the mountain’s peak cutting the clouds. He held it in his mind until the picture was burned into his vision, until the need to cut, the way of cutting, not as a sword cuts, but as a mountain cuts, was all he could feel. Only then did he swing his sword, his sword truly, for the first time, catching Sted in the left arm, just above his elbow.

The black, blunt blade of the Heart met Sted’s impenetrable skin, met and sliced it clean. The Heart cut straight through the flesh, through the bone, with no more resistance than a razor through spider webs. Then it met the air again, and Sted was falling, his arm cut clean off.

The enormous man collapsed on the floor, clutching the space where his arm had been. Josef spun around, taking up his guard again, but he didn’t need to. Sted was curled in a fetal position, clutching his broken sword with the only arm he had left while blood poured out of his wound onto the floor. Josef lowered his guard, resting the Heart’s tip on the floor, and Sted’s head whipped around to face him, his eyes burning with pure, horrible hatred.