The Last Duel

The Last Duel, Part One

Carla is sitting cross-legged exactly halfway across Hungerford Bridge. As I arrive she looks up at me.

'Now?' she asks.

I love the way the bridge looks this century - the bright lights, the concrete, the shining steel spires. The Thames beneath, of course, is as dark and ageless as the night we last fought.

'Now,' I tell her, offering her a hand up.

Carla ignores it. Smoothing her patchwork skirt she gets to her feet. Then she begins to change.

For this incarnation Carla has been living as a homeless person. Her clothes are musty, her cropped scalp is streaked with grime and she's the thinnest I've ever seen her - even skinnier than when she was a monk. But Carla's not as delicate as she looks.

Her ragged skirt is brightening, becoming a robe of gleaming white. Her fuzzy purple jumper is shrinking and shaping itself against her, becoming bright armour, breastplate and back. She lifts her right hand to her chest. From inside herself she draws her sword – ninety-two centimetres from pommel to tip, the long straight blade double-edged, three centimetres across. As the weapon I know so well leaves her body, Carla's whole being lights up: she is glowing, pulsing. Behind her, enclosing her but not fully manifested, her wings shimmer in the night air.

I look at her, drinking the sight of her in. Two thousand years is a long time to wait to see someone again. But before I can ruin everything by standing there gawping Carla takes a ready stance then opens her eyes again, waiting for me.

I smile. Playing up to my role, I adjust the cuffs of my impeccably expensive business suit. Then I start to reveal myself too.

With a soft liquid crackle the suit, my overcoat and my shoes all begin to change. Hard black plates form and grow around my shoulders. Ridges and spikes sprout down the outsides of my arms and shining mail swells from my knuckles. In my centre, at the core of me, my own sword is waiting: I close my newly-armoured fist around its hilt and pull it from my chest.

My broadsword measures a full metre and a half. It's too big to draw while keeping hold of the hilt so I grip it by the blade, pulling hand over hand until, at last, all of my sword has come out of me. When it's done I put the tip on the concrete between my feet and rest my hands on the pommel.

There's a leathery creak from my just-released wings behind me as I flex the muscles, stretch the skin, take the air. There's tingle in my soles as they almost but don't quite leave the ground. My eyes lock with Carla's. It's time to say the words. We speak them in unison, exactly the way we always do:

'One of us will die at the hand of the other. No mercy will be asked or given. There can be no quarter nor compromise, for we fight for the fate of the world.'

'So, Carla,' I say, taking a two handed grip of my sword and lifting, 'are you going to give a better show of yourself this time? Or will this be a pushover again?'

'Do whatever you're going to do, Vespasian,' says Carla softly. 'I'm ready.'

The expression in her face is hard to read. She's as solemn and self-possessed and steely as ever of course but there's something else: a kind of… sadness.

Well, I tell myself, it doesn't matter. I know how this fight is going to turn out. I've decided it already; I've planned it.

I run at Carla, concrete panels crunching beneath my feet. Then I strike the first blow.

It's a downstroke, a decent amount of my weight and power behind it. Carla sidesteps, counterattacks, her sword slicing a horizontal half-circle in the air, just like I wanted. I roll my wrists, lift my arms and meet the force of her blow with my real move, which is a full force upward blow of my own. Our blades strike each other with a ringing clash.

My sword is a brutal instrument, hard and solid; Carla's is pliable and delicate. The vibration of the impact travels up her blade, up her arm, into her body. Carla staggers, her soft wings quivering. Her bare feet leave the concrete; she drifts back a full ten metres before she floats back down.

Her eyes are wide with surprise, shock, hurt. Once again I can see she's forgotten what it's like to fight me, what a beast I can be. For a second I feel guilty - but then the thrill takes over. As I raise my sword for another attack the blood thumps and sparkles in my veins. I know that any effect my shock tactics have had is strictly temporary. I see Carla ready herself. Her determination comes alight in her eyes.

And now the fight really begins.

The space between us sizzles with flickering steel. What Carla lacks in physical force she more than makes up for in speed: she's like a whirlwind. I parry and answer, using the length of my broadsword to keep her at a distance as best I can, but it can't last. In her eyes, even before I've registered it myself, I see the moment I over-reach and leave myself vulnerable.

Carla dances inside my swing. Her shining sword chops at the flat of my black blade once, twice: CRACK, CRACK – and now my sword is in three pieces.

Carla rears back and pauses, her own sword upright behind her, blade still trembling. She's a marvel, the finest sword-fighter I've ever met. It's lucky for me that swordplay isn't all I rely on. Before the shards of my broadsword have hit the concrete my armour is shrinking around me. The black spikes and plates retreat like the tide, my business suit re-forming beneath. The moment I can, I reach for the holsters under my arms and produce a pair of Glocks.

The cheerful CHUNT CHUNT CHUNT as I open fire on Carla is something to be savoured: say what you like about the last two thousand years I've supposedly been ruling the humans, you can't argue the fact they're getting good at making guns. These Glocks don't even kick much: no skill required, just point and click.

A frown of puzzled impatience still forming on her face, Carla whips her sword forward. I watch the first bullet reach a spot about a metre from her nose before she cuts it in half. Behind her, her wings are beating, lifting her feet from the concrete, drifting her back again, giving her the necessary room to take care of the rest of the oncoming stream of bullets in much the same way as the first.

It's a pleasure to watch Carla operate, but if I'm to take advantage of my delaying tactic I'd better stick with the plan. I turn away, lead fragments buzzing and pinging around my ears. I drop the guns. I bound up onto the shiny chrome railings at the side of the bridge and - while Carla's still bisecting bullets - I dive off out into the air.

The dirty old Thames lunges up towards me, its surface twinkling from the lights. My black wings spread around me; the muscles in my back and ribs tauten; there's a WHUMPH as I beat the air – and I'm away.

Carla and I have faced each other in single combat every two thousand years since the beginning of time. In all those encounters neither of us has once backed down from a fight before it's over – until now. Yep: I'm escaping, fleeing, or that's what it's supposed to look like. Still accelerating, staying low to the water, air rushing past me, I curl my wings and flip until I'm flying on my back. I look back the way I came, back at the bridge, to watch how Carla reacts.

For a whole second she doesn't move. Perhaps she can't believe what she's seeing. For an ugly moment I'm not even certain she's going to chase me, but then I see her leap into the air. Her wings spread wide against the London night sky then fold, and now - yes! - she's diving after me.

I flip back to face ahead again - only just in time to avoid smacking into a pillar of Waterloo Bridge. Concrete scrapes my wingtip as I swerve; the contact is delicious. I'm grinning like a maniac.

There's no avoiding the truth now: the way I'm feeling at this moment only comes when I'm with Carla. What we represent, dualities battling for dominance over the human world – none of that matters any more.

Nothing matters for me but her.

Oh, sure, I used to believe. I fought Carla for "Freedom" – or that's what I told myself. But every time I defeated her I found I didn't feel free, I just felt sad. The millennia between our battles, while she regained the strength to take form and fight me again, were like miles of empty desert.

Not this time. Tonight is going to be different.