To Step

The blood rained around him to match the rain, staying on the sword a moment before sliding off with the weather.  To watch him was to see death as incidental to his dance, the sharp footwork married with the graceful swaying of his torso.  All of it was centered around the sword, his partner who never left his hand as he whirled her around the clearing.  Even as the bodies built up he found his way around on the damp ground.  He had proposed the dance and his sword had accepted, following his lead from one move to the next.  After it was over the percussion wouldn't stop, pounding as it did into the red puddles that grouped under silvery chainmail and laquered leather.  A final move and she was sheathed.  He may have chosen the way of the sword, but the sword had just as much part in accepting him.  Letting him possess her.

He was tall, gaunt even, with black, shoulder-length hair and a bored expression that warmed to almost a smile when he danced.  She was long and thin, bright and shining, keen despite much use.  He wore her on his him in a brown leather scabbard that hid out of view under his thick white cloak.  As they walked away those few witnesses from the treeline couldn't see a spot of red on the cloak, on any of him.

It was still in the clearing.  Clean of life, clean of sound, clean of movement.  Dirty though.  To walk through it looking at the bodies or rooting around in pockets or pry wet steel from dead hands left red and brown stains everywhere, blood and dirt and bloody dirt mixing in the rainwater in a sickening paint that stuck to everything.  It would sell for a good profit, the low-people would thank the dancer for that.  

He would face worse, and they would be there too, waiting and watching.  These were a few tempermental guardsmen who took none too kindly to his words over drinks.  They had brothers, uncles, fathers, and sons.  They had friends and lovers and employers.  There would be more to take their place, but the memories wouldn't rest until the dancer rested with a stone above his head.  No stone if some had their way.  The dozen that lay in the clearing would be doubled the next time.  If a time after, there would be double that.  The low-people would see the eventuality.  Even if the dancer never missed a step of the dance, a poisoned cup or a swift knife at midnight would find him where a flashing blade would not.

He never was seen after that cloudy night, no pure white cloak walking through the city in the rain.  It could have been any end to him, they supposed.  Someone might know, would have to know, but it didn't do anyone any good to make sure of it, so they didn't.  A few thought that he might have been wise enough to just leave, but either fear of being wrong or prudence of their own made them keep it as their own drunken rumor.

It didn't take long for the story to pass into the city mythos, latching onto the storytellers and filling out into a fanciful pattern.  Each old man or wagging tongue that sat near a barroom fire took to calling any young man in a cloak a dancer, and the chunkier ones were called clumsy dancers.  The average folk started watching and waiting, not actively, but keeping an eye out.  When the sky starts its music some yearn to see a dance, hope that the skulking patron in the shadowy corner is the dancer, returned to his stage.  There hasn't been a true dance in the city in decades, but they hope.