Oh, it was definitely awesome.
Somebody in the audience might have had the presence of mind to catch it on their everything, but it wasn’t me. I’m going to try to describe it as best I can while it’s still fresh in my mind. This will hopefully also satisfy the several people asking me who he fought and about what.
To understand this duel, you will need some background information.
First, Ereith finished red cleaning not long ago, and we integrated our ex-reds into all the other castes, blue included. One of them married the princess.
Second, the King of Ereith has not fought a duel in well over ten years. Definitely not since his son died; possibly not since the days of the last civil war. He was known for being very, very good when he was younger, but he’s old now - not much younger than forty - and if you’d asked me yesterday I would’ve doubted he was still capable of holding a sword.
I would’ve been wrong about that.
There was a state dinner this afternoon - I get invited to those once in a while, because of my work with the immigration project - and someone made a snide remark about the princess’s new husband. I didn’t actually hear it; you can assume it was the sort of thing somebody might say about an ex-red blue who married a princess. The King, however, was sitting a lot closer than I was. He asked the commenter to repeat herself, and got a loud, sneering “You heard me” that turned half the heads in the room.
“Are you sure you want to go there?“ asked the King. By this point things were quiet enough that I could hear the conversation clearly.
“Who’s going to stop me? You? Your granddaughter? Her new toilet?”
“Suit yourself, then,” said the King, and he stood up. Silence fell on the room like an axe. I heard a few distant whispers from people who couldn’t see him clearly, and then nothing, until he spoke again.
“My granddaughter’s husband is not without flaws, as anyone who’s heard him try to sing can attest. But he’s a clean blue Erethani, as good as you or I, and anyone who wants to dispute that can come here and say it to my sword.“
The other blue stood up. I didn’t recognize her, and I still don’t know her name, but she had a familiar bearing. I’ve known a few people who stood the same way at that age - five or six, old enough to have gotten used to winning, young enough to still feel invincible. They either grow out of it or they pick the wrong fight and die.
She drew her sword, and the King drew his, and they saluted. She was laughing; he wasn’t. She had a confident stance, moved like someone who does this every day, opened with an aggressive attack - he barely had the strength to knock her blade aside - I blinked and missed him putting his sword through her throat. I’ve never seen someone move that fast in my life. If someone did get it on video, we should teach it in advanced fencing classes.
He made a few more remarks which I was too stunned to catch, and then everyone had to leave so the dining hall could be decontaminated. It’s not even the first time I’ve seen a royal feast broken up by a duel to the death; it’s just the first time I’ve seen the King fight one.
Red cleaning in Ereith is a complex subject I don’t want to get into right now, but I suspect this is going to be the final word.
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