A Feast for Dragons

This time he put his hand on the hilt
of his longsword. “Tell me true, and I promise you shall have a swift, clean
death.”
    “You presume too much, ser,” said Hizdahr. “I am done with
these questions, and with you. You are dismissed from my service. Leave Meereen
at once and I will let you live.”
    “If you are not the Harpy, give me his name.” Ser Barristan
pulled his sword from the scabbard. Its sharp edge caught the light from the
brazier, became a line of orange fire.
    Hizdahr broke. “Khrazz!” he shrieked, stumbling backwards
toward his bedchamber. “Khrazz!
Khrazz!”
    Ser Barristan heard a door open, somewhere to his left. He
turned in time to see Khrazz emerge from behind a tapestry. He moved slowly,
still groggy from sleep, but his weapon of choice was in his hand: a Dothraki
arakh
,
long and curved. A slasher’s sword, made to deliver deep, slicing cuts from
horseback.
A murderous blade against half-naked foes, in the pit or on
the battlefield
. But here at close quarters, the
arakh’s
length would tell against it, and Barristan Selmy was clad in plate and mail.
    “I am here for Hizdahr,” the knight said. “Throw down your
steel and stand aside, and no harm need come to you.”
    Khrazz laughed. “Old man. I will eat your heart.” The two
men were of a height, but Khrazz was two stone heavier and forty years younger,
with pale skin, dead eyes, and a crest of bristly red-black hair that ran from
his brow to the base of his neck.
    “Then come,” said Barristan the Bold.
    Khrazz came.
    For the first time all day, Selmy felt certain.
This
is what I was made for
, he thought.
The dance, the sweet steel
song, a sword in my hand and a foe before me
.
    The pit fighter was fast, blazing fast, as quick as any man
Ser Barristan had ever fought. In those big hands, the
arakh
became a whistling blur, a steel storm that seemed to come at the old knight
from three directions at once. Most of the cuts were aimed at his head. Khrazz
was no fool. Without a helm, Selmy was most vulnerable above the neck.
    He blocked the blows calmly, his longsword meeting each
slash and turning it aside. The blades rang and rang again. Ser Barristan retreated.
On the edge of his vision, he saw the cupbearers watching with eyes as big and
white as chicken eggs. Khrazz cursed and turned a high cut into a low one,
slipping past the old knight’s blade for once, only to have his blow scrape
uselessly off a white steel greave. Selmy’s answering slash found the pit
fighter’s left shoulder, parting the fine linen to bite the flesh beneath. His
yellow tunic began to turn pink, then red.
    “Only cowards dress in iron,” Khrazz declared, circling. No
one wore armor in the fighting pits. It was blood the crowds came for: death,
dismemberment, and shrieks of agony, the music of the scarlet sands.
    Ser Barristan turned with him. “This coward is about to kill
you, ser.” The man was no knight, but his courage had earned him that much
courtesy. Khrazz did not know how to fight a man in armor. Ser Barristan could
see it in his eyes: doubt, confusion, the beginnings of fear. The pit fighter
came on again, screaming this time, as if sound could slay his foe where steel
could not. The
arakh
slashed low, high, low again.
    Selmy blocked the cuts at his head and let his armor stop
the rest, whilst his own blade opened the pit fighter’s cheek from ear to
mouth, then traced a raw red gash across his chest. Blood welled from Khrazz’s
wounds. That only seemed to make him wilder. He seized the brazier with his off
hand and flipped it, scattering embers and hot coals at Selmy’s feet. Ser
Barristan leapt over them. Khrazz slashed at his arm and caught him, but the
arakh
could only chip the hard enamel before it met the steel below.
    “In the pit that would have taken your arm off, old man.”
    “We are not in the pit.”
    “Take off that armor!”
    “It is not too late to throw down your steel. Yield.”
    “Die,” spat Khrazz … but as he lifted his
arakh
,
its tip grazed one of the wall hangings and hung. That was all the chance Ser
Barristan required. He slashed open the pit fighter’s belly, parried the
arakh
as it wrenched free, then finished Khrazz with a quick thrust to the heart as
the pit fighter’s entrails came sliding out like a nest of greasy eels.
    Blood and viscera stained the king’s silk carpets. Selmy
took a step back. The longsword in his hand was red for half its length. Here
and there the carpets