Chapter 1529: The Cypress and the Fox (Part One)

Ollie barely registered the conversation between Ashlynn and the captain. His world had narrowed to the armored figure before him and the long, bright blade that kept finding the space between his weapons with a precision that Heila’s poison couldn’t fully blunt.

Franc thrust again. Ollie caught the blade on Frost Fang’s translucent edge, the horn-carved hilt absorbing the impact with a grinding shriek of metal on enchanted horn that sent vibrations up his arm and into his teeth. The deflection turned the longsword aside, but Franc recovered faster than the poison should have allowed, pivoting his hips and bringing the blade back in a tight arc aimed at Ollie’s neck.

Ollie ducked. The sword passed over his head close enough to shear a few strands of flame-red hair from his scalp, and before he could close the distance, Franc reset his stance and thrust again, the point seeking the hollow of Ollie’s throat above the mail’s collar.

This time, Ollie didn’t deflect. In the midst of his struggles to remember the man before him as the knight he once respected, he’d forgotten something important about himself. Or rather, he’d become too caught up in his memories of the knight he’d hoped to become that he’d forgotten about the witch he truly was.

As much as a part of his heart yearned to push back on the strength and fury that emanated from the power of the Blood Acorn so that he could fight a pure, knightly duel with Sir Franc, that wasn’t why he was here, and he needed to remember that. He was here for Lady Ashlynn, to protect her sister, Lady Jocelynn, and next to that, his honor and his pride as a knight didn’t matter at all.

So when Sir Franc thrust his longsword at Ollie’s throat, he stepped into the thrust.

The longsword’s point struck the mail at his collarbone, parted two links, punched through the gambeson’s padding, and pressed against the skin beneath, where the blade stopped hard against his collarbone, as if it had struck stone instead of flesh.

Ever since Ashlynn had infused Ollie’s body with the power of the Blood Acorn, he’d become something that was stronger and tougher than an ordinary man. The power wouldn’t last, but so long as he had it, he owed it to Ashlynn, to Virve, to Lady Nyrielle, and the Ancient Oak to use every advantage it gave him.

Franc felt the resistance through the hilt of his weapon. He pushed harder, putting his weight behind the thrust, and the blade dimpled Ollie’s skin but refused to break it.

"Impossible," Franc muttered, his eyes going wide in horror. For a brief moment, he wondered if he’d fallen into some kind of sick nightmare or if he was still drunk from the Stag Feast, but the sword in his hands was painfully real, as was the sight of the blood-splattered knight whose flesh couldn’t be cut by a sword.

Frost Fang returned to the sheath at Ollie’s hip in a flash as he gave up on the weapon whose power he couldn’t tap in the throws of the Blood Acorn’s fury. Instead, he grabbed the middle of Sir Franc’s sword with a mailed fist and wrenched it aside, stepping in close enough to look into the other knight’s panicked eyes through the slits in his visor.

Ollie raised the darksteel cleaver high above his head, but when he brought it down, he used the pommel of the weapon, slamming it into Sir Franc’s helm with enough force to bend metal.

The steel rang like a bell. Franc staggered backward, his grip on the longsword loosening just enough for Ollie to wrench the blade from his hands, and the darksteel cleaver swung in a vicious horizontal arc that caught the knight’s breastplate dead center.

The sound of tearing metal filled the air as the darksteel tore through Sir Franc’s breastplate the way a cook’s cleaver parted flesh. For a moment, the blade caught and bound in the armor as Franc tried to twist away from the weapon, and it took all of Ollie’s strength to wrench it free before he could raise it for another strike.

"You can’t win," Ollie said as he watched Sir Franc staggering backward while searching for the sword Ollie had flung aside. Ollie’s vision had gone red at the edges as the power of the Blood Acorn surged within his veins, but he forced back the foreign bloodlust to give the defeated man a chance to do the right thing.

"Yield, Sir Franc!" Ollie shouted. "Yield and let this end."

Franc’s heart thundered in his chest, beating harder and faster than it ever had before. In his veins, the lingering poison from last night’s dinner surged through his body, bringing a fresh wave of exhaustion, stiffness, and a blinding pain behind his eyes that left him momentarily breathless.

"AAAAAARRRRRGGGGG!" Franc shouted, baling his hands into fists as he fought back against the pain to stare at the knight, the kitchen boy, who stood over him as if he’d already won. But Franc was a knight, and even without a sword in his hands, he was still a dangerous warrior. He just had to teach this newly minted knight why a man in armor couldn’t be ignored, even if he’d been disarmed.

"I will not YIELD!" Franc shouted as he charged Ollie like a rushing bull. Solid plates of steel covered his fists, and he used them like hammers as he struck out at the lightly armored kitchen-knight, screaming with a fury of his own as he refused to let this end.

But Ollie had been trained by Sir Thane, a man who had been a knight since long before Sir Franc’s father, Sir Jac, had been a boy with a toy sword of his own. Ollie knew full well that a man wearing a full suit of armor could only be overcome up close and that a knight’s final weapons were often his armored limbs. He’d known that when he fought a duel against Sir Rain in the Vale of Mists, and he hadn’t forgotten those lessons now, even in the grip of the Blood Acorn’s rage.

Ollie used one arm to block Sir Franc’s blows while he brought the darksteel cleaver down on Sir Franc’s pauldron in a heavy blow that tore through steel, twisting metal until the edges of the ruined armor pressed painfully into the other knight’s joint.

"Yield, Sir Franc!" Ollie shouted.

"Never!" Franc responded as he swung wildly with his other fist.

Ollie met the attack with an attack of his own, swinging the cleaver at Franc’s arm, targeting the rerebrace that covered his upper arm and shearing through the plate, the mail beneath it, and the padded armor beneath the metal to bite into the muscle of his arm. Blood flowed, and the cleaver drank deeply, feeling light and nimble in Ollie’s hand even though it struck with the force of a headsman’s axe.

"Arrrrgggg!" Franc shouted in pain, stumbling back from Ollie and tripping over his own feet in the process. He fell to the ground in a clatter of steel on stone, but still, he refused to accept defeat. Not at the hands of a kitchen boy... And especially not when he’d fallen within reach of the sword he’d lost.