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And you do not stop to reflect on the drawing of blood in
anger. All the preparation in swordsmanship, in tactical
combat and even in the vows of bravery and steadfastness
adds up to nothing like the Measure tells you, none of these
fanciful promises to live your life so that the death of your
enemy is made worthy by your living, for who knew how
long the living would last after your enemy - or even the
last of the enemies - had fallen. But the preparing led only
to the surprisingly heavy lunge of the sword and the small
resistance of armor and skin and gristle and finally bone
against it, when the training tells you, I SUPPOSE THIS
ONE IS DEAD AND WHERE IS THE NEXT ONE
NEAREST, and as though in a corridor of dreams the voice
of the dwarf beside you echoing, DRAW FORTH YOUR
SWORD, SON, BEFORE HE HARDENS INTO STONE, and
another before you all green scales and arms, who is falling
then over the parapet, head and metallic jaw collapsed
beneath the swift rising hammer of the dwarf, and the
thought clears for a moment again to discover three more of
them crouched in a file on the battlements, small red eyes
flickering behind the bristle of curved weapons like some
horrible boars in a thicket you are supposed to remember
but cannot, so you let the thought alone and try the sword
again, one of them falling and two of them trampled in a
flood of knights which in turn is bearing you like baggage
or a fallen comrade down the steps from the battlements so
quickly that for a moment you feel you are falling, assuring
yourself that this cannot be, for a fall would take place
much more slowly, but then in the final fall who was to say
how time would collapse or how the mind would suspend
the fragment of years, trying to remember everything, but
then, on your feet and buoyed by your own heavy running,
you see the doors of the tower and within them the elf
maiden shining, and you think, So THIS IS DEATH WHICH
IS MORE THAN I EXPECTED BUT EVERYTHING I
IMAGINED, but then you are inside the tower with the last
of them, the heavy doors closing behind you and the sound
of bolt upon bolt upon bolt staying them fast
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