Hanno had died twenty-one times since morning.

He’d used his aspect in a similar manner before, but those had been shallow readings. The seeking of similarity so he could draw on the experience of his predecessors to make up for his own shortcomings. Never before had he sought lives and memories purely to learn how to kill a man. His enemy had made it difficult, nonetheless. Heroes rarely survived their first encounter with the Black Knight, and those that did were usually engaged by other Calamities on the second meeting. He’d found a single instance, the Rebel Knight, who’d bared her sword at the man twice. Three years after the Conquest, a hidden bastard child of a branch line of House Fairfax who’d inherited the same Name as Eleanor Fairfax herself. Flight after the first engagement had bought her an hour before the Black Knight caught up and slew her in her wounded exhaustion. Some other lives had taught him near nothing of use, like the Merry Brawler – the knife through the back of the neck that’d killed him only served as a reminder that the Carrion Lord preferred to kill without any struggle if he could. The Unconquered Champion had yielded the greatest amount of information. The Levantine hero had trapped his foe in his domain and teased out more tricks than any other before or after him, in large part because five mortal wounds had been needed before the man died.

Memory by memory, death by death, Hanno had woven together a whole. Sitting with his eyes closed in a tent muted from all noise by Antigone, his sword in his lap, he had studied the many murders of the Black Knight. The man had limitations. Hanno had almost thought otherwise, after their duel in Nicae, but he now saw his mistake. When recalling the skills of his predecessors his plunge had been too shallow. Mere versatility was not sufficient to kill the Carrion Lord, not when he only brought to the fore part of the skills called on. That was, the White Knight now understood, playing the villain’s own preferred game. The Black Knight was himself a jack-of-all-trades, facing him with a similar approach would only lead to the victory of the older man’s greater experience. The method had been incorrect, and so he had adjusted. Studied the swordsmanship the villain had learned from the Lady of the Lake, the weaknesses of that tutelage. And, upon finding them, Hanno had spent hours seeking the right combination of lives that would allow him to capitalize on those weaknesses. Three would be required: the Flawless Fencer, the Lance of Light and the Barehanded Pugilist.

The sequence was adaptable to the villain’s own approach, but the result would ultimately be the same. He’d sought a handful of other lives to draw on as contingencies, should tactics he’d seen employed through other eyes be employed again, and another pair as escape and disengaging sets. Night had fallen, when he emerged from the trance, and he remained seated. Tired down to his bones and struggling to master the lingering echoes of the lives he’d dug so deep into. He would need rest before he was ready to fight.

- Book 4, Interlude: Red the Flowers