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Even as I watched, the two men squared off, facing each other, each holding a length of wood carved to vaguely resemble a samurai sword. Butters held his in a two-handed grip, high over his head. The little guy was wearing his sports goggles, a tank top, and close-fit exercise pants. He looked like the protagonists in the old Hong Kong Theater movies—blade thin, flexible, and wiry with lean muscle that was all about speed and reflexes.
Sanya, dressed in battered blue jeans and biker boots, whirled his practice sword in one hand through a couple of flourishes and settled into a fencing stance in front of Butters and just out of his own reach, his off hand held out behind him.
“You have gotten much smoother,” said Sanya, his voice a deep rumble inflected with a thick Russian accent on the vowels.
“Still not any faster,” Butters said. And then his practice sword blurred as it swept down toward Sanya. Santa intercepted with a deflection parry, though he had enough muscle and mass on Butters that he probably didn’t need to. His return thrust slithered down the haft of Butters’s practice sword so fast that I heard it hit Waldo’s thumb. He yelped and leapt back, shaking that hand for a moment—but he didn’t lose his practice weapon.
“Smooth almost always better than fast,” Sanya said, stepping back and lifting up a hand to signal a pause in the practice. “Smooth is technique. Grace. Smooth lets you think while you fight.”
“And that’s a big deal?” Butters asked.
“Is everything,” Sanya said. “Fighting is least civilized thing one can do. Intellect is not made for fighting. You have been there, da?”
“Yeah. It’s terrifying.”
“Da,” Sanya replied. “Hard to take test while some stinking thing shoving your face into stinking armpit.” He set the practice sword carefully against the wall of the Carpenters’ little workshop and then picked up an old, worn-looking cavalry saber with a wire-wrapped hilt in a battered leather scabbard. “Hard to get much thinking done in fight,” Sanya said. He jabbed a thumb at one of his own biceps. “Muscle can be useful tool—or deadweight,” Sanya said. He jabbed his thumb at his own forehead. “But this is most dangerous weapon.”
Butters eyed the much, much larger man for a moment. “Yeah, everyone has one of those.”
“Exactly true,” Sanya said. “Dangerous place, planet Earth. Dangerous animals, humans.” His grin became more wolfish. “Be more human than next guy. And pick up Sword.”
Butters arched an eyebrow. “Um. Are you sure you want to play with these? I mean, there’s like zero margin for error with that thing.”
“Always zero margin for error,” Sanya said calmly. He drew the old saber. Worn though the weapon might be, its blade shone nicked and bright and true in the sunlight. Esperacchius, the Sword of Hope, sang a bright, quiet song of power that I could feel against my face and chest like sunlight.
“Dude,” Butters said. He stepped to one side and reached into an old messenger bag lying on the ground nearby. “I’m not sure what this thing will do to Esperacchius.”
Sanya let out a rolling laugh. “Me, either. But have faith.”
Butters frowned. “But what if it … ?”
The Russian shook his head. “If there is a sword that mine cannot stand against, I must know.”
“What happened to having faith?” Butters asked.
Sanya gave Butters a nonplussed look before the smile resurged. “I suppose I have no objection to faith, in absence of knowledge,” he said. “But knowledge good, too, da?”
“Da,” I said, firmly.
Both men looked up at me, unsurprised at my presence. They’d just been busy. Butters bounced the hilt of Fidelacchius in his hand a couple of times, frowning. “You sure?”
“Worth knowing, isn’t it?” I asked. “There’s plenty of enchanted swords running around out there. They were the number one piece of military hardware for a very long time. The way I heard it, figuring out how to lay Power into that general mass of steel had been pretty much optimized. If what happened to the Sword of Faith represents a major escalation, a game-changer, that would be a good thing to know.”
“Well, I don’t want God yelling at me if I break His stuff.” Butters sighed.
“Assuming there is one,” Sanya said.
Butters gave Sanya a blank look and then said, “You are a very weird man.”
“Da,” Sanya agreed cheerfully. Then he lifted the Sword, all business again, and said, “En garde.”
Butters grimaced. But his feet settled into a fighting stance and he lifted Fidelacchius. He glanced around carefully at the neighboring houses to make sure no one was just out in their yard goggling and said, “But not for long. Okay?”
“Da, da,” Sanya said.
Butters nodded once, grimly, and there was a hum of power and a flicker of extra sunlight as the Sword of Faith’s shining blade sprang from its shattered hilt. The soft, wavering chord of ghostly choral music followed each motion of the blade as Butters raised it to an overhead guard position again.
“Always with the high guard,” Sanya commented.
“Everyone’s taller than me,” Butters pointed out.
Then he swept the Sword of Faith at Sanya’s arm.
Sanya moved smoothly, in a direct parry, pitting the strength of his Sword’s steel and his arm directly against that of his opponent.
There was a flash of light, like when the mirror of a passing car briefly shows you the image of the sun, and the ghostly choral music swelled in volume and intensified for a moment. Sparks flew up from the contact of the weapons, and at the point where they met there was a light so white and so pure that I felt as if perhaps its like had not been seen for several billion years, at least. Maybe not since Someone said, “Let there be light.”
Then the two men disengaged. Sanya held his blade out to one side and studied it, but its steel was shining, bright, and unchanged.
Butters frowned. Then he turned to an old stump in the yard that bore the remains of an old anvil fastened to it. About half of the anvil was gone, as if sliced away at an angle. Butters peered at the anvil for a second, took half a breath, and then swept the Sword of Faith at it. There was a howl from the sword, a cascade of sparks, and then a slice of the anvil about the thickness of a dinner plate fell away from it and onto the yard, where the sizzling-hot metal promptly started a small fire in the drying summer grass.
Butters yelped, seized a nearby water bottle, and put the fire out with a great deal of hissing, some stomping, and a small cloud of steam.
Sanya’s expression, meanwhile, lit up into an even brighter version of his usual smile, and when he turned his eyes back to Butters, they shone brightly.
Butters regarded the other man’s expression warily and then slowly smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
And without a word, the two Knights charged each other, Swords held high.
Once again, the swords clashed, only things were different now. Instead of Sanya dominating the fight, Butters had the edge. Esperacchius darted and whirled, liquid smooth, but as fast as Sanya was with his blade, the steel sword wasn’t weightless.
Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, was.
Butters pressed the attack with absolute ruthlessness, never giving the Russian a break once he had the big man back on his heels. Sanya began retreating in earnest, parrying and returning attacks wherever he could—which was seldom, in the face of Butters’s onslaught.
