'Begin!'
The fourth touch began precisely as the third had ended. With Luthar taking a hammering. Glokta could see it, the man was out of ideas.
His left arm was moving slowly, painfully, his feet looked heavy. Another numbing blow crashed against his long steel, making him stumble back towards the edge of the circle, off-balance and gasping.
Gorst needed only to press his attack a little further. And something tells me he is not the man to let up when he's ahead.
Glokta grabbed his cane, pushed himself to his feet. Anyone could see it was all over, and he had no wish to be caught in the crush as the disappointed crowds tried to leave at once.
Gorst's heavy long steel flashed down through the air. The final blow, surely. Luthar's only choice was to try and block it and be knocked clean out of the circle.
Or it might just split his fat head. We can hope for that. Glokta smiled, half turned to leave.
But out of the corner of his eye, somehow, he saw the cut miss.
Gorst blinked as his heavy long steel thudded into the turf, then grunted as Luthar caught him across the leg with a left-handed cut.
It was the most emotion he had shown all day.
'One to Luthar!' shouted the referee after a brief pause, unable to entirely keep the amazement out of his voice.
'No,' muttered Glokta to himself, as the crowd around him erupted into riotous applause. No.
He had fought hundreds of touches in his youth, and watched thousands more, but he had never seen anything quite like that, never seen anyone move so quickly.
Luthar was a good swordsman, he knew it. But no one is that good. He frowned as he watched the two finalists come out from their second break and take their marks.
'Begin!'
Luthar was transformed. He harried Gorst with furious, lightning jabs, giving him no time to get started.
It was the big man now who seemed stretched to the limit: blocking, dodging, trying to stay out of reach.
It was as though they had sneaked the old Luthar away in the break and replaced him with a different man altogether: a stronger, faster, far more confident twin brother.
[...]
'Say one thing for the First of the Magi, say he's a cheating bastard,' growled Logen.
Bayaz had a little smile at the corner of his mouthas he mopped the sweat from his forehead. 'Who ever said he wasn't?'
Luthar was in trouble again. Bad trouble. Each time he blocked one of those heavy sweeps, his swords snapped back further, his grop seemed slacker.
Each time he dodged, he ended up a little further back towards the edge of the yellow circle.
Then, when the end seemed certain, out of the corner of his eye, Logen saw the air above Bayaz' shoulders shimmer, as it had on the road south whem the trees burned, and he felt that strange tugging at his guts.
Luthar seemed suddenly to find new vigour. He caught the next great blow on the grip of his short sword.
A moment before, it might easily have sent the thing flying from his hand.
Now he held it there for an instant, then flung it away with a cry, pushing his opponent off balance and jumping forward, suddenly on the attack.
[...]
Luthar struck furiously, again and again, his swords a flashing blur. Gorst grunted and growled as he turned the blows away, but Luthar was too quick for him now, and too strong.
He drove him mercilessly across the circle like a crazy dog might drive a cow.
'Fucking cheating,' growled Logen again, as Luthar's blade flashed and left a bright red line across Gorst's cheek.
A few drops of blood spattered across into the crowd on Logen's left, and they exploded into riotous cheering. That, just for a moment, was a shadow of his own duels.
- The Blade Itself, Part II, Never Bet Against a Magus