To The Victors Go The Spoils
Victor Augustine sat on his lavish couch and sharpened his katana blade. There was no noise save that of the whetstone dragging down the steel's edge. Victor was focused now, more focused than he had ever been, and that was saying something. After all, Victor had been alive since prehistoric times.
The love of his life was dead, and another Immortal had killed her. That was what angered Victor the most. Someone else had a hold on her life's memories, knowledge, and power. His eyes narrowed to dark slits at the thought. His beloved Christine was with someone else now. Someone evil. Someone who would kill for the sake of killing. Emile Wagner had her now. Victor began sliding the whetstone again.
His katana was old. Not just because it had been around since the 1100s, but because Victor had laid it down a century and a half ago. When he had finally wed Christine, they had both abandoned the Game, interested more in being with each other than they had been in the Prize. It hadn't been easy. Victor had been a warrior, a survivor, and a fighter all his millennia-long life. And he would be so again.
A knock at the door shook him from his violent thoughts concerning what he would do to Wagner. He set the sword down on the table in front of him with a barely audible clack and strode to the door. When he opened it, he found his old friend Anthony Fiorello looking back at him.
"Anthony," Victor mumbled. "I didn't even feel you approach." Anthony smirked. "Getting careless in your old age, are you?" he said. "No," Victor answered. "I've just…I've had my mind on…other things lately." Anthony's smirk disappeared. "Wagner," he said. Victor nodded. He returned to the couch and took up sharpening his blade again. Anthony sat down in a nearby armchair and watched.
"So you really are getting back into the Game?" Anthony asked. "Yes," Victor replied. "Though not by choice." "Really?" Anthony said. "Because it seems to me you're making a very conscious choice to sharpen that sword, and I know you've gone to great lengths to find Wagner. But I suppose he forced you to it, is that it?"
"Dammit, Anthony," Victor snapped. "He killed her. He took her head on Holy Ground when she was unarmed. And you expect me to leave the man alive and free?"
"On the contrary," said Anthony. "I would expect nothing less from you. But Christine would want you to go on living." Victor set the sword and stone back on the table.
"And what kind of life would that be, without her?" he asked venomously. "She was the one woman I could have loved until the end of time. Anyone I have after her will be just a pale imitation." "Killing Wagner won't bring her back, Victor," Anthony said. "But it will, Anthony," Victor countered. "By taking Wagner's head, I will receive not just his power and knowledge, but all that he has gathered over the centuries. Including Christine's. I will have her with me again."
Anthony shook his head in frustration. "You've been out of the Game for over a century, Victor. In that time, Wagner has been taking heads and working his way towards the Prize. He will be sharper, more limber, and more practiced than you." Victor looked at Anthony in surprise.
"Are you suggesting, Anthony, that I have a rusty sword-arm?"
Anthony looked around the room for a moment. "It's possible isn't it?" he finally answered. Victor chuckled for a while. "Anthony, I devoted myself to the Game for six thousand years. I've taken more heads in my life than Wagner could count. I'm what some would call the seasoned, cagey veteran. Others might simply call me the odds-on favorite."
Anthony's face and tone darkened. "He is willing to break the rules, Victor," he said. "You know he is. But whatever Christine may have meant to you, you will not break them. If you go after Wagner, there is nowhere he won't hunt you, no strategy he won't employ to take your head."
Victor picked up the sword again, and tested the edge with his thumb. He had barely put any pressure on it, and he had cut himself to the bone. The energy of the Quickening flashed across the gash, and it closed. Victor wiped the blood off his thumb and the blade. "What makes you think he will have to hunt me after he finds me, Anthony?" Victor asked. "What makes you think I will need more than one encounter to take his head?"
Anthony sighed and clasped his hands together. "Victor," he said. "Wagner has taken five heads in two days. He is a swordsman of the highest caliber. I just don't think someone who hasn't lifted a sword for a hundred and fifty years will be in any shape to survive a duel with him."
Victor pointed to the wall behind Anthony. "Look over your shoulder, Anthony." Anthony turned his head and looked upon several curio cabinets that all contained various weapons. "Every weapon you see in those cabinets represents a head I've taken," Victor informed him. "I assure you, I have learned too much of war and bloodshed to forget how to accomplish it. After about forty or fifty years, it becomes like riding a bike. You never really forget. All it takes is to grasp the handle, and it all comes flooding back to you, from first to last."
And it had. When Victor had first taken the katana out of its lacquered ebony case earlier that evening, his mind filled with all the sights and sounds of the past world. He remembered his first Immortal kill, with a stone axe. He remembered killing a Spartan warrior with a bronze short sword. A Roman senator with an iron gladius. A French knight with a broadsword, a British sailor with a cutlass, the Spanish pirate with a rapier, the Austrian soldier with a saber, and many others. He remembered every head he had ever taken, and he remembered the battles that had preceded them all.
Anthony's voice woke him from his reverie. "Victor, I beg you," he said. "Leave Emile to someone who has been in practice. You will live, and you will live long enough to find another like Christine."
Victor got up and returned the whetstone to its place. "It took me millennia to find Christine," he said. "It took me a century to woo her. And after only a century and a half with her, I can't go on any longer without her."
Anthony rose from his seat. "And if Wagner takes your head? What then?" he asked forcefully. "We would have a merciless, unscrupulous madman on our hands with the power of an Ancient, and you will be no closer to Christine." Victor looked sidelong at Anthony. "Oh, but I will," he said. "Should Wagner manage to take my head, I will be with Christine after the Quickening transfers my essence. Win or lose, I will be reunited with her. I've thought this through, Anthony. Nothing you say or do can stop me."
Anthony was shocked. "You would risk creating a monster just for a guaranteed way to be with your Immortal wife?"
"I would risk anything," Victor answered. He walked back to the table and picked up the katana. "I am off to my fate now, Anthony," he said. "If I don't come back, all I have has been left to you. Goodbye, old friend." Victor slid the katana into his trench coat and left the room.
Anthony followed him out into the marble-floored and columned foyer. "Victor!" he shouted. Victor turned to find Anthony had drawn his longsword. "If you can prove to me that you're as ready as you say you are, I will let you go."
Victor drew his katana and began to circle Anthony. Anthony's eyes followed Victor's blade as it twirled and swung through the air before Victor made his strike. Anthony knocked the thrust aside and countered with a cut at Victor's left shoulder, which Victor blocked. Victor then aimed a slash at Anthony's midsection, which was parried and answered with a low sweep. Victor jumped over it and brought his blade down at the top of Anthony's skull. Anthony stepped aside and parried the cut that followed him.
Victor backed off a few steps. "Does that satisfy you?" he asked. "Those kid games?" answered Anthony. "Hardly. Bring out the good stuff."
Victor smiled. "If you insist."
Anthony slashed at Victor's head, once left and once right, but Victor wove his body underneath the attacks and went for another thrust, which was again parried away. Anthony tried for a feint, but Victor never took the bait, and easily stepped away from the real cut. Anthony began to rain strikes at Victor with ferocious rapidity. But Victor calmly blocked, parried, dodged, and riposted where he could. Anthony kept up the pressure, forcing Victor back with every maneuver, until Victor harshly spun his wrist in mid-block. The reverberation caused a moment's hesitation in Anthony's assault, and Victor began to move quickly and erratically, so much so that Anthony seemed to have to block strikes from two places at once.
And then it happened. Victor's katana came in under Anthony's guard and begun spinning his blade in wide, asymmetrical patterns, and Anthony scrambled to keep up. He never really connected with Victor's blade, but that was not the intent. Anthony eventually loosened his grip to affect more swift and maneuverable blade work. Just after his grip relaxed, Victor brought the flat of his blade down on Anthony's cross-hilt, and the longsword clattered to the floor. Victor kicked it away. "Convinced?" he asked. Anthony sighed and nodded. "I told you, Anthony," Victor said. "Like riding a bike. But I still don't trust you not to follow me. At the same time, I have no desire for your head. So." He thrust the katana into Anthony's abdomen, twisted it, and cut back outward. Anthony's eyes widened as he gagged and coughed.
Victor turned and left as Anthony crumpled to the floor.
One hour later, Victor pulled his car to a stop in a long, looping, gravel drive in front of Emile Wagner's residence. He stepped out of the car and paused for a moment before he shut the door and made his way to the front doors.
As he raised his hand to ring the doorbell, the double doors opened, and gunfire from submachine guns ripped out from beyond them. Victor convulsed with multiple bullet impacts. His body fell down the limestone steps and landed on the gravel with a crunch.
Emile Wagner stepped out of the doorway, with a swept-hilt broadsword in hand, and stood over Victor's body. "There can be only one," he said coldly.
As his sword came down, Victor rolled under the arc, slid his katana out, and slashed Emile's hamstrings. Emile dropped to his knees with an agonized cry, and Victor flung himself headlong at the gunmen.
He dispatched them both with a pair of quick, brutal slashes across their abdomens. As their entrails coiled out, Victor turned his attention back to Emile, who was watching, shocked.
"No one comes back that quickly," he spluttered. "True," Victor said, opening his coat to reveal a chewed up flak jacket. "But then again, I never left." Emile cracked a slight smile. "You have prepared well, Augustine," he said. Victor smiled back. "I have always done my homework on my opponents," he answered. "But don't think that because I have come prepared means that I have anything less than contempt for you and your tactics, Wagner." He unfastened the vest and flung it away.
Wagner rose to his feet, his hamstrings healed, and gave his sword a twirl. "You will regret lecturing me, Augustine," he warned. "You should have set aside your emotions and your sportsmanship and taken my head while you had the chance. You won't get another."
Victor shrugged. "Perhaps," he said. "But then again, I have been around for so much longer than you."
Emile laughed. "Yes," he scoffed. "You've also been out of the game for a hundred and fifty years. You'll be rusty." He bared his teeth in a predatory smile. "Just like that wife of yours," he said. "Do you know, she tried to fight me? She only lasted a few minutes, and that was because I was toying with her."
Victor began to circle Emile. "You can't win that way, Wagner," he said. "I was commanding armies before your ancestors were even conceived. I can set my emotions aside for a battle, despite what you think."
He swung his katana in a wide, horizontal arc, aiming for Emile's neck. Emile ducked it, and thrusted his blade while he did so, but Victor sidestepped it and landed a small cut on Emile's free arm. Emile recoiled in pain, but quickly recovered with a lunging slash, which Victor spun away from.
And so the duel went, Emile utilizing his favored quick and flamboyant fencing style, and Victor holding his ground with solid, surgical power strikes and effortless dodges.
Victor blocked a slash at his back as he spun away from another thrust, and kept right on spinning into a quick thrust of his own, which he withdrew before Emile's blade could meet it. Victor took this opportunity to score a quick, dragged cut on Emile's trapezius area. Emile stumbled back, quickly clasping a hand to the cut.
"Not bad," he admitted. "But you're still not all the stories say you are, I can tell that much." He came back towards Victor with a zig-zagging strike. Victor parried it coming and going, and aggressively took another offensive.
He cut and parried, slashed and dodged, and then began to shower hammer-blows down on Emile's guard. Each strike allowed Emile no room or time to attack, and while he focused on keeping his blade up, Victor suddenly dropped and thrust both of his booted feet viciously into Emile's kneecap.
There was a loud pop, and Emile dropped to one knee, but he connected with a thrust as Victor rose from his strike. Both Immortals howled in pain at their injuries, and Emile gathered himself enough to twist his blade. Victor screamed again, louder this time, and dropped his katana. Emile pulled his blade from Victor's abdomen and drew it back for a killing stroke.
As the blade came forward, Victor summoned all his fortitude to jump up and over the strike, before it came too close. Gravity did the rest. Victor came down, his left foot crushing Emile's right wrist, causing him to spasm in pain and drop his sword. Victor's right foot kicked the left half of Emile's chest. Emile's right shoulder came completely away from the socket with a hideous crack. He emitted a shuddered scream of agony and fell face-first to the gravel. Victor snatched up Emile's discarded blade and dragged him back to his knees.
"Know this, Wagner," he whispered into Emile's ear. "This death is more than you deserve. But there can be only one." Victor swung the sword in a two-handed grip, and Emile's head went spinning away from his neck, rolling away down the gravel driveway.
His headless body began to crackle with lightning, levitated about a foot off the ground, and, the night sky darkened to pitch black as dark clouds obscured the moon and stars. The breeze whipped itself into a gale, swaying trees and scattering gravel.
Victor raised the broadsword over his head, and lightning coursed down the blade, through the hilt, and into him. The Quickening was upon him. Emile's life energy and that of his victims rushed into Victor, and he saw memories from hundreds of lives that lasted for centuries. He collapsed to the ground as all the front windows of Emile's mansion shattered.
He pulled himself up and recovered his katana. As he walked back to his car, he passed Emile's body. Victor hefted the broadsword in his hand and looked at his fallen opponent's remains. "I'll be adding this to my collection, you bastard," he said with a bitter smile.
He found Anthony waiting for him in the foyer when he returned. Anthony breathed a huge sigh of relief. But his face darkened almost immediately.
"You know, Victor, you didn't have to kill me," he said. "I wouldn't have followed you."
Victor smiled at him. "One can never be too careful," he said. "Besides, you don't look any worse for the wear. Except for the ripped, bloody shirt."
Anthony followed Victor back into the trophy room. "What will you do now?" he asked. Victor turned from putting Emile's sword into an empty spot in a cabinet. He looked at Anthony and then out the window.
"I guess I'll do the only thing I can do, old friend," he said. "I will move on. Christine has been avenged, and I have been reunited with her. But I have spent a century and a half in this place. While it was amazing, I think it's time I got back out into the world. Saw the sights. Met the people. Maybe even played the Game again."
"When do we leave?" Anthony asked.