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There’s little to do in Ash anymore, save for passing the time until the end. Barnabas makes for grim company more often than not and Harbard rarely is sent away from his side, only for the most important of things. And so entertainment must be…creatively implemented.
It is for Barnabas’s benefit that Harbard offers sparring.
And it is for Harbard’s benefit that his king agrees.
It wasn’t so rare in the past for Barnabas to join Harbard when he suggests they practice swords. Today, Barnabas surprises Harbard when he looks at him from the shadows in the bedroom in response to the question he poses: Join me for a fight, Your Majesty? To have his liege lord’s full attention on him is a treat indeed – so Harbard cocks a brow from his place against the nearby wall.
“It has been a while, my lord,” Harbard says smoothly. “Won’t you sharpen your sword edge on me?”
Barnabas does not say that Harbard is insane for asking such a thing of Odin. There is a suspended time where Harbard is left wondering at the roil of pensive interest that Barnabas expresses – only for Harbard to watch as Barnabas stands and walks out of the room, and in the direction of his armory.
Harbard smiles as he feels the tug of direction, and the order underlying it: Come then.
They take their places across from one another in the empty courtyard of Waloed’s castle. Not a sound can be heard in the keep, nor anywhere else nearby. The air itself seems to await what will come next. Harbard’s lips are upturned. Barnabas has a pinch to his brow.
“You must be bored,” Barnabas says, his voice low but carrying across the open space. “To ask me to play with you.”
“My lord,” returns Harbard. “Your machinations could not bore me.”
Barnabas draws his sword – a sword like any other, a rapier slim and clean and dark. Harbard sighs at it, ever so soft. “What a simple thing you face me with,” Harbard murmurs.
Barnabas’s brows gentle, his dark eyes remaining on Harbard. At this distance, he should not hear such quiet words. But of course he can hear Harbard. “Do you wish for annihilation today, Lord Commander?”
Harbard’s smile grows. “I would not dare and ask my king to be so generous.”
He readies own sword, a matching rapier of lighter shades of folded silver and steel. Barnabas shifts his weight, the stance of one more accustomed to wielding weapons than anything else in the world, and Harbard moves as if following a ripple of water.
They leap at one another, and the dance of mirrors begins.
Harbard is not equal to Barnabas; this he knows the way he knows to his very bones who and what his destiny is. There is no freedom in his choices. He wears reins that lay in Barnabas’s hands above all. What he wants is what His Majesty wants – and what His Majesty wants is blood.
Harbard strikes, puppeted by a will beyond his own, but a will that he loves. And though he strikes, it does not land – Barnabas leans sinuously to the side in an expert shift of weight. It is a perfect maneuver. Harbard withdraws a step to gather himself.
“So, it’s like that,” he breathes, and though he’s pulled to be the aggressor, his king wants a surprise. So it will be a surprise that he gives to him.
Another strike out, a thrust forward that catches only the very edge of Barnabas’s silken sleeve. Instead of pulling back this time, Harbard drags his sword left to try and catch Barnabas. Yet his lord is faster; no sooner has Harbard moved than Barnabas’s rapier edge met his own.
The metal sings as the swords drag against each other, and Harbard’s blood with them. His arm doesn’t shake as Barnabas exerts more force.
Harbard sees what will come next as if he has already lived it: Barnabas tilts his wrist just so, cuts the edge of his blade into Harbard’s hand, then through his fingers to disarm him. His rapier falls to the ground between them, and Barnabas’s steel slips across his neck as easily as a necklace. The blood begins to fall before Harbard has even gasped. He falls to his knees. He is remade.
Not today.
Today, his king wants a fight. It’s why Harbard asked him for this, after all.
Harbard goes for the disarm first. Barnabas drops the rapier without trying, and Harbard’s left slashing at air before –
A red flash slices through the air between them, and gravity itself seems to deepen a moment along with it. From nowhere, as if a void itself, Barnabas hefts a spear sharper than any other in Valisthea. Like seeing an old friend, Harbard’s eyes light.
“Gungnir,” Harbard murmurs. “My king is feeling generous.”
“It has been a long time,” says Barnabas. “I thought this would be a good occasion to brush off the dust from it.”
Harbard mimes a bow. “It would be my pleasure.”
Their dance continues. Their footwork matches at every turn, Barnabas leading and Harbard following. Gungnir may as well be made of clouds for how easily Barnabas wields it, the spear joining their dance perfectly. A perfect third – and one that does not forgive missteps. It is good then that Harbard is a flawless dance partner.
He is under no illusions to how this will go, but the method is always subject to change. It makes it all the sweeter when his lord is so kind as to not hint at the ending.
That makes it a gift when Barnabas swings Gungnir behind Harbard. He makes to move, but feints wrongly; Barnabas was not going for his middle, but his legs. The heavy metal throws Harbard’s feet out from under him, and in the space made from that maneuver, Gungnir cuts cleanly through the leather of his boot and draws red from his ankle. Harbard only has a moment to catch himself and stumble back, but his balance fails him. Whatever Gungnir has sliced through was necessary, it seems, to stand.
With effort, Harbard drops to a knee and comes face to face with Gungnir’s pointed tip. Barnabas holds the spear even better than the Prince of Dragoons might.
Barnabas’s eyes still are impossibly dark, peering down at Harbard, kneeling there and bleeding on the ground.
To Harbard, the pain does not even register as pain. He simply presses forward that little bit extra to nudge his cheek against the edge of Gungnir’s bladed end. He nuzzles at it, until he feels his cheek split and the blood begin to drip.
If Harbard were whole, he might wonder what made him this way. To be willing to be broken so. To laugh as metal gathers in his mouth. To crave it especially from his king, these cuts and gushing wounds that drive his lungs to rattle and his throat to shake, that set his fingers trembling.
But Barnabas has molded him from the very id that sits in the inner guts of his heart, and Harbard has formed as if halfway complete as this wanting thing, wrought from his lord’s rib as he is.
The stormy expression on Barnabas’s face smooths slowly out the more that Harbard smears his blood into Gungnir’s edge. And in turn, Harbard’s smile blooms.
“My king,” he whispers, upturning his face, beginning to speak –
But Barnabas pushes Gungnir towards him expectantly. The action, silent with intent, quiets Harbard’s words to a purr, until he simply licks against the cool metal, tongue coming away red with his own blood. Only then does Barnabas lay the weight of his spear against Harbard’s shoulder, letting Gungnir lay there. The hungry edge of the blade digs into Harbard, as if eager to eat through the cloth of his shirt, to devour the meat of his flesh.
“Sleipnir,” Barnabas says, his voice low. “Are you satisfied?”
The answer is always no. Sleipnir is as starving as Zantetsuken, with as deep of an appetite as even Gungnir’s. Maybe worse.
As he wets his tongue against his lips, he thinks: yes, worse.
“Aren’t you?” he levels at Barnabas, and delights in the brief steel he sees in those shadowed eyes.
Even when his king plunges Gungnir through Harbard’s stomach, he knows it won’t sate him.