It happened so fast that Altansarnai wasn't entirely sure he had seen it—one moment they were charging, the next they were on the floor, and Ragnar Valthorne was still walking forward, the sword in his hand barely seeming to move.
"I heard," Ragnar continued, as if he hadn't just killed four men in the space of a breath."You have put hands on what does not belong to you."His eyes found Altansarnai's."So you have chosen Ukhel's embrace."
Altansarnai's mind raced, trying to process, trying to find an angle, a weapon, anything.His hand tightened on his sword.The wound in his side burned, but it wasn't fatal—not yet.If he could buy time, if he could reach the door, if he could—
"You're thinking about running," Ragnar observed."Don't."
He attacked.
Altansarnai was no novice.He had fought in a dozen campaigns, killed more men than he could count, and earned his reputation through blood and iron.When Ragnar's blade came at him, he parried—a good parry—but not good enough.
Ragnar's sword cut through it.
Altansarnai threw himself backwards, felt the wind of the blade past his face, and felt the sting as it opened a line across his cheek.He came up in a crouch, sword ready, and for the first time in years, he felt something he had forgotten he could feel.
Fear.
Ragnar didn't press the advantage.He waited, sword low, watching Altansarnai.
"You touched her," he said quietly.
Altansarnai's lips peeled back from his teeth."You can't possibly be upset over a mere woman!?"The thought of a warlord finding a woman to attach himself to bewildered him.He was giving the world a weakness to exploit.
"She's my Khatun."
Ragnar lunged.
Altansarnai met him, and for a few heartbeats, the throne room rang with the sound of steel on steel.Altansarnai was fast—faster than he had any right to be with a wound in his side.His style was brutal, efficient, honed by years of Steppe warfare where a single mistake meant death.He drove Ragnar back two steps, then three, his blade finding openings that should have been fatal.
Ragnar absorbed every blow.Parried.Sidestepped.Turned each attack aside with a motion that looked almost lazy.
Then he stopped retreating.
Altansarnai saw it coming but couldn't react fast enough.Ragnar's blade slipped past his guard and opened a line across his sword arm.He grunted, shifted grip, kept fighting.
Another cut.Across his thigh this time, shallow but bleeding.
Another.His ribs, opposite side from the stab wound.
Altansarnai was being carved.
He could feel it happening—each cut meant to debilitate rather than kill.Ragnar Valthorne was not fighting to end this quickly.He was fighting to make it last.
"You're slow," Ragnar observed."The wine, probably.Or overconfidence.You believed your own victory before it happened."
Altansarnai lunged, desperate.Ragnar sidestepped, caught his wrist, and for the second time that night, a sword clattered to the stone floor.Ragnar kicked his chest viciously, the man fell heavily.
For a moment, Ragnar stood over the body and said nothing.
Then he crouched.
His men, veterans of a dozen campaigns, men who had seen Ragnar Valthorne walk through fire and come out the other side without flinching, found reasons to look elsewhere.At the floor.At the doors.At the bodies of the fallen.Anywhere but at their Khan, kneeling over the man who had touched his wife.
"You said she fought," Ragnar said.
Altansarnai's breath rattled in his chest.He was alive still —barely, the wound in his side doing its slow work.He turned his head, and the movement cost him.
"I liked that," Ragnar continued, his voice almost gentle."You liked that too.Didn't you?"
