The Murder Stroke (Purgatory Wars Book 1) Read online

  The Murder Stroke

  Purgatory Wars: Book One

  Dragon Cobolt

  Uruk Press

  Uruk Press

  Great Britain

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  © Dragon Cobolt 2017

  All rights reserved.

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Cover by Remy Malara.

  Also from Dragon Cobolt

  Purgatory Wars

  The Murder Stroke

  Riposte (forthcoming)

  Other works

  A Fetch Job

  "The Last Mage" in Sex & Sorcery 3

  Also from Dragon Cobolt

  The Murder Stroke

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Uruk Novellas

  Uruk Press - Fantasy

  Uruk Press - Science Fiction

  Introducing Biggest Blade Books

  The Murder Stroke

  One

  Sun glinted off steel and sticky-sweet humidity choked the visor of Liam's helmet as he looked through sweat and thin metal bars at his enemy. The day had been a long, punishing one, and he carried bruises and aches from earlier clashes. The sword in his grasp felt heavier than it had any right to. He lifted the point up, then stood in a higher stance. The flat of the blade pressed to his shoulder and he watched and waited to see if his enemy shifted.

  He did.

  The other man stepped forward – hand on the middle of his longsword – and tried a quick jab at Liam's gut. Liam stepped to the side and turned to present a thinner target to the enemy. He brought his own sword swinging down – aiming for the joint of helmet and shoulder. The enemy lifted his sword, palm bracing it on hilt and at the halfway mark. The two swords clacked together. Liam put his whole weight into a forward step and shoulder check. The other guy went clattering to the dew-flecked grass. Liam – holding his blade two-handed – brought the tip down to press to the other man's throat.

  “Match!”

  The referee stepped out from the copse of trees that shadowed the people waiting for their next bout. The steel bleachers filled with cheers as Liam grabbed his plastic and metal helmet and tugged it off. What felt like a gallon of sweat dropped down his back as the other guy sat up and laughed.

  “That was fookin' great,” he said, his accent a thick English burr. He was one of the many actual Europeans who had flown across the big pond to come to the Atlanta chapter of the Historical European Martial Arts Society for their yearly competition. This year's prize had been something remarkable and part of the HEMA-S attempt to catch more attention in a year of skyrocketing prominence of social media: a popular YouTube show had handcrafted a historically accurate, battle-tested longsword.

  Yes, buying said sword would have cost only a tiny fraction more than the plane tickets and hotel bookings. But, as Liam had said to his mom, that wouldn't be very sportsmanlike, now would it?

  The referee helped the man Liam had knocked out up and the two of them retreated off the field as another pair of fighters stepped out. One of them had opted for a shield and an arming sword – the sword that most people thought of as a 'longsword'. The actual terminology was a bit confused by centuries of slowly shifting European naming conventions and decades of Dungeons & Dragons manuals written with more eagerness than factual research. Most people in HEMA didn't get too bent out of shape if a layperson called a longsword a two-handed sword or a claymore or whatever.

  No, Liam thought. We save that for people who try and tell us how great katanas are.

  When he got under the shade, the temperature dropped from ungodly to merely unpleasant and he was joined by his friend Greg. Greg had gotten into HEMA at the same time Liam had, but for far different reasons. A childhood spent struggling with a genetic predisposition to be overweight and a personality predisposed to overindulge had left Greg facing a point blank, double barreled ultimatum from his pediatrician: Lose weight or start buying insulin in bulk. Liam – blessed with the infuriating kind of metabolism that turned sugars and sweets into endless energy without a single gain in poundage – had been drawn to HEMA thanks to a half-remembered youth with a dead father. Before the fire, Dad had taken a wide eyed Liam into the garage built smithy. He had shown him the thundering pounding of the hydraulic hammers, the searing plasma-bright flare of the furnace. The sizzle of the computer-driven laser cutter.

  Born with a silver spoon in his ass, Dad had been able to play with toys like that and indulge in his fascination with the crafting of swords from the past – and from places that had never been. The entire school had been gobsmacked by Liam's Halloween outfit: Sora from Kingdom Hearts with an actual keyblade made of metal so heavy and sturdy that the Principal had called his parents up to ask them – politely but firmly – what the ever-loving-fuck was wrong with them.

  So, when the fire had consumed both his home and all future memories of his father, Liam had found solace in one thing: taking wooden boken and replica longswords and beating the ever loving shit out of an uncaring cosmos, one body bag and sparring partner at a time. With Greg to support him through the first grueling months and with Liam to support Greg through the horrifying third and fifth months where the training regimes had pushed them both to new and more painful plateaus of skill, the two teens had stuck to HEMA into college. Now, Greg would never be skinny, but he wore his weight well and grew his hair and his beard long enough to conceal the curves that his cheeks still had and Liam had gotten a pretty hefty string of girls who had, at the very least, gone out on at least one date.

  Too bad that the second date never seemed to come up.

  “You kicked his ass, dude,” Greg said, slapping Liam's shoulder.

  “Ah, he had kind of shitty fundamentals,” Liam said, rolling his shoulder under the slight ache that Greg had left him.

  The next bout was between two of the people from the NorCal HEMA-S chapter. The man with the shield and the arming sword faced off against a woman with the same kind of longsword that Liam preferred. These bouts were held in full practice armor, with the refs calling it as if it was unarmored. The reason was simple: unarmored combat with even blunted weapons was too dangerous to play as a sport, and judging who won in an armored bout by who keeled over first was considered too dull for the onlookers. There's also the fact that any bout that goes that long in this weather will kill us. By drowning if nothing else, Liam thought, holding up his hand as some of the sun broke through the willow strands to smack him in the face.

  The two fighters smashed together. Shield hit chest and the girl staggered backwards. She swung her blade – it clattered off the shield. But a shield could be a downside as well as an advantage – not often, but sometimes. Say, for instance, when someone uses their smaller size to shoulder into your guard and smash their pommel into your chest. It wasn't the most elegant take-down, but the ref rewarded the girl the win.

  “If she'd been slower,” Greg said, then made an exaggerated gurgling noise – drawing a gloved thumb across his throat.

  The girl tugged her helmet off as she walked back to the shade, panting. She was gorgeous – chocolate brown skin with freckles highlighting a pair of hazel eyes, which danced with the delight of victory. She grinned broadly as one of her friends tossed her a disposable water bottle, which she splashed over her face, then into her mouth.

  “Nicely done,” Liam said.

  “That sword is going over my mantlepiece, dude,” she said – her Californian drawl as thick as the syrupy accents of the people that Liam
had met in Georgia.

  “I was planning to stick it into a rock, myself,” Liam said. “Then see if anyone in my neighborhood can get it out. Figure it'd be a more sane way to pick a HOA community manager than the way we've got going in Beverly Hills.”

  “You're from Beverly Hills?” the girl asked.

  “That's us,” Greg said, pressing his thumb to his chest. “Water-sucking vampires.”

  “So-Cal for life,” Liam said, nodding.

  The girl frowned at the two boys. Then, reaching up, she grabbed onto the edge of the willow branch that was providing shade and tugged it aside. Greg just laughed, but Liam threw himself to the ground, hissing and clutching at his face. “Augh, no!”

  The girl grinned. “That's, like, for the drought, dude.”

  Liam laughed.

  ***

  The day ground its way forward as people were removed from the bouts. Liam fought twice more – once against the girl (Chelsea was her name). He beat her by remembering her aggressive style and playing defensive. A few minutes of batting her sword aside then bringing down a perfectly timed stroke and she was disqualified. She retreated to hang with Greg – who had been taken out earlier that day by a trip and throat stroke – and cheered Liam on. Liam tried to remain calm, but that got harder and harder as he climbed up the ranks until late in the afternoon.

  The sky was painted in the colors of autumn – orange and red and white streaks of cloud – and the sun had vanished behind the nearby trees and distant skyscrapers. The temperature had finally reached 'bearable' and the cicadas started to screech from the surrounding countryside. Lights were brought out by the HEMA-S teamsters and the YouTube webcameras and the local news stations started to set up for the final bout. Liam suddenly realized that what had started off as a lark was becoming far more serious.

  He hadn't really thought he'd get this far. But just by sticking with what he had learned, what he had drilled in since he had been thirteen, and by remembering what he saw in the other bouts, he had gotten here, to the last fight of the day.

  And things were shifted.

  “Our views are skyrocketing,” a nervous looking man named Steven Merkle said, adjusting the collar on his official HEMA-S tee with one finger. “And those guys from Armmaster are ecstatic. They've pulled down a few dozen extra commissions just from this. So, we were thinking of changing the bout up a bit.”

  Liam looked at his opponent. Samiya El-Amin was dressed in a white polo tee that had become streaked with sweat through the day. He was the kind of fantastically beautiful men that always left Liam – himself slightly too skinny and sharply featured to be considered classically attractive – feeling as if he shouldn't be jealous...but he was. I mean, Liam thought. I'm thin, I'm fit, I don't have a hairlip. I should feel fine. But then someone like Sami shows up and he reminds you that in a world of popstars, you're just college radio.

  But more than just being a fantastically beautiful Pakistani immigrant, Sami was also a stone cold badass. He pushed at the very edge of what was acceptable under HEMA – it was historical European martial arts, after all. Including styles and moves from, say, Kendo was frowned on – but when you reached the level that Sami (and, Liam supposed, himself) were at, you had to start inventing your own spins on the style.

  For Sami, it was embracing a broad, sweeping, cutting style that befitted sabers and cutlasses, as well as footwork that was distinctly different from what Liam was used too – he had seen trips and throws that seemed almost like eastern martial arts mixed in there. But he hadn't been quite sure. He wasn't versed in Akido or Ju Jitsu or whatever it was that Sami was using.

  “Well,” Sami said. “How do you want to change the bout?”

  God, even his accent is cooler than mine! Liam thought.

  “Simple. We want to judge this as if you were wearing the armor – you can pick what you want to wear. That means you don't go down until you decide to go down.”

  So, instead of losing because of points, I'll lose because he beat my brains out, Liam thought. He looked at Sami. Sami was looking at him – and those dark, perfect eyes looked as if they were trying to judge Liam. And Liam reacted, like all nineteen year old men do when they faced other nineteen year old men and the question hung in the air: Are you chicken?

  “I'm down,” he said, before thinking

  “Me too,” Sami said, at the same time.

  “All right then,” Merkle said.

  Liam nodded his head to Sami, then turned and walked over to the trailers that contained the extra armor and weapons for people who hadn't been able to bring their own gear. There, he met a boisterous and bubbly girl named Jenny, who showed him all the armor that they had brought purely for filming purposes – “Ya see, Ell, we're tryin' ta get us some ratin's, see?” she slapped a chain cuirass. “Looks great on ta cameras!”

  Liam, in the end, chose to not go full plate. The last thing he wanted to do was having Sami trip him, flip him, and stick a dagger in his hands. He stuck with gauntlets so he could half-sword if he wanted, a chain surcoat, and some guards for his shoulders and thighs. He picked up his trusty padded longsword and looked at Jenny – who gave him a huge thumbs up and a gap toothed smile.

  “Knock em dead, slugga!”

  By now, the night had fallen. The people who had been removed from the tournament no longer lounged in the copse of trees off the arena. Instead, they were sitting in the bleachers. Greg, Chelsea, the Scot (not English, he had furiously told Liam, not English at all) he had defeated earlier, all of them were sitting on the third row. Greg cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted loud enough that Liam could hear it over his pounding heartbeat.

  “Get him a body bag, Johnny! Yeahhhhh!”

  “Sweep the leg!” Chelsea shouted.

  “Fook 'im up, ya mad bastard!” The Scot chimed in – less pop culture references, but certainly a lot more language that was causing the news coverage teams to look pained. Liam hoped they had been on a five second delay. Bright light shone down from tall poles and cast the night surrounding the tournament area into even starker darkness, blotting out the stars. It was a shame – Liam loved the stars. He looked up to them, then closed his eyes.

  God, he thought. I know that the clashing of swords means very little to you. I mean, shit, I doubt you're even going to glance up from your job. But please, grant me the grace to not be a sore ass loser. I really want to accept this with grace. Like, a lot.

  He touched his throat – his armor covered his crucifix. It wasn't just a symbol of Jesus and his sacrifice.

  It was a reminder of Dad.

  It had been the last thing he had sculpted – with tungsten and lasers. There was something delightful about that melange of things. Materials that literally couldn't have been imagined centuries ago, tools that had been pure science fiction years ago, all to create a symbol of a device that had transcended its original use as Iron Age execution tool to become an icon of hope and salvation and goodness to more than a billion people.

  If that didn't represent the world as it should be, then Liam didn't know what would.

  Well, a schematic for perfect cold fusion? A time machine pre-loaded with the coordinates of Hitler's house when he was a little kid complete with child psychologist? A functioning Galaxy class starship captained by Geordi LaForge? Liam's brain suggested the beats off – nervously, jittery. Like his knees, it quivered as Sami emerged from his trailer. The other warrior had also gone for chain.

  And in the end, that turned out to make the entire combat infinitely duller than anyone had any right to hope.

  Sami fought hard and well – but he had made the mistake the instant he had chosen his style of slashing sword. It was highly effective in bouts that were judged by points – by the blows landed and their effectiveness against an imaginary unarmored or lightly armored enemy. In fact, the curved cavalry saber had been the standard for centuries because the armies of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries had worn progressively less and less armor as a
rmor technology lagged ever farther behind the technologies of cannon and gunpowder.

  When your foe didn't wear armor, you wanted huge, cutting wounds.

  When your foe did wear armor, you wanted something that could actually be felt beneath the chain. Liam and Sami exchanged a few blows – then both realized the same thing at the same time. Their chain stopped cutting blows dead.

  So, Liam casually switched his longsword to a reverse grip and beat Sami senseless with the cross guard.

  ***

  “To the longsword!” Greg said, lifting up a glass of rootbeer.

  “To the longsword!” Everyone else at the table – a bruised, battered, but all around happy-to-be there Sami, Chelsea, Jenny and the Scott – lifted their drinks and Liam ducked his head forward. His cheeks felt incandescent, but he was having a hard time containing his huge smile. The longsword was cradled in his lap, sheathed in a scabbard of hard leather with a beautiful dragon detail that coiled around the edges and added a wonderful golden decoration to the black body. It felt lighter than Liam's practice or dueling sword, which didn't make sense – but Liam figured that the day was allowed to not make sense. He had won an international HEMA-S championship.

  Him.

  Like, he wasn't that good of a swordsman, it still felt like any moment now, the walls would fall away and he'd be standing naked before his math class with Professor Martinez snidely telling him that if he wanted to show off, he might as well have the good graces to be hung like Ron Jeremy. Life persisted in not being a dream as the celebratory meal was laid out – everyone had agreed to split the check as the wait staff of the restaurant acted like they weren't entirely sure how they should handle several heavily armed and armored people.

  Yes, the weapons were out of date – and fake – but still, they had swords.