The Bastard 2

by Jack Porter

  “But you look… different.” She shook her head. “Is it really you?”

  I nodded. “Isn’t Sir George enough to tell you that?”

  The swordswoman was starting to relax. But she still shook her head. “You have a different face. How?” she asked.

  “Let’s just say I know someone who can work magic,” I said.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked.

  I understood she had probably already figured out why, but I told her anyway. “To protect the people I care about,” I said.

  She nodded. “Can’t say I like it as much,” Elaine said. She considered me for a moment. “Perhaps it will grow on me.”

  “It isn’t permanent,” I said. “Or maybe it is. But it’s reversible.”

  Elaine nodded. “Good.”

  There was much that I needed to say, and knew that a public place like the edge of the market might not be the best place to say it. There was something I needed to ask Elaine to do, and after that, things would likely become serious.

  All of a sudden, as Elaine finally moved to put her sword away, I decided that ‘serious’ could wait, at least for a little while.

  “Don’t put it away,” I said.

  Elaine looked at me, uncertain of my intent. Still grinning, I drew my own weapon. “If you have the time, why don’t we see which one of us really is Lady Emmeline’s star pupil?

  It was Elaine’s turn to grin. It was an expression she didn’t use often, and it gave her a dangerous aspect. She quietly resumed the stance she had taken before and nodded her head.

  “I’ll try not to hurt you too much,” she said.

  I barked out a laugh. I had always been good at understanding people. I knew without having to ask that Elaine had a competitive streak a mile wide.

  “I’ll try not to let you hurt me too much,” I said.

  “To first blood,” she said. And that was enough.

  26

  Elaine followed the words with a lunge that was almost as quick as Lady Emmeline’s would have been, and if I hadn’t been paying attention, the match would have been over. And not just with first blood. Elaine may well have skewered me right through the chest.

  But I danced to the side, guiding her blade away with my own, and Sir George decided enough was enough. He launched himself from my shoulder but didn’t fly very far. Instead, he came to rest on the head of one of the carved dragons of the fountain.

  Elaine moved with the grace of a dancer, or perhaps an acrobat. While not quite as smooth as Lady Emmeline herself, I quickly revised my estimates of my own abilities, and for the first few moments, it was all I could do to keep the beautiful woman’s sword away from my chest, my face, even my hands and my feet. I drew upon everything I had been taught, blocking, avoiding, slipping her attacks to the side, and doing my best to stay away from her steel.

  It was like trying to fight against a whirlwind made of sharp spikes, and I learned two things about Elaine very quickly.

  The first was that she was very, very good with her sword. Faster than me, and just as well trained, but perhaps not quite as strong.

  And the second was that she took such competitions very seriously indeed.

  She was a sword demon come to life. The embodiment of martial prowess with a blade, and I knew it was just a matter of time before she could out duel Lady Emmeline herself. I knew without a moment of doubt that if she had been the one to face Rolf in the dungeons beneath the castle, she would have bested him easily.

  I still had to force myself to fight to win with every breath that I took. But Elaine had no such reservations. She had an inbuilt killer instinct that nearly ended our match half a dozen times in as many heartbeats.

  I thought for sure that I had bitten off far more than I could chew. It was all I could do to defend, and didn’t even get close to offering any form of attack.

  But after she had worked her sword toward me a dozen, two dozen, three dozen times, the weapon coming my way from every direction and then some, she suddenly broke a little away and breathed deeply.

  The look on her face was one of approval combined with a measure of chagrin, and I knew all at once what she had done. This was an attack she had built up over weeks, months, years of practice. She had strung together a sequence of moves designed to better any attack, and I had been more than lucky to survive it. But now, she had reached the end of that sequence. Perhaps she would take a moment to recover her breath and launch into it once again, or perhaps she would acknowledge that if I could stand up to it, her attack would leave her exhausted and open to a response.

  I had lost my smile within the first moment of the exchange, but now I felt it return.

  “Very good,” I said. “But not quite good enough. What else have you got?”

  My teasing remark seemed to annoy her and amuse her both at once. But she chose not to waste any energy looking for a response. Instead, she glanced to the side, fixated for a moment on the wide seating area of the fountain, and before I could guess what she planned to do, leapt up onto it.

  Now she had an advantage of height, and she used it mercilessly, raining down blow after blow, hammering at my sword with her own as if it was an axe.

  Yet she had lost none of her finesse even with this change of attack style. Even within her repeated strikes, there were hints of feints and subtle changes designed to test me, to seek out any weakness I might have.

  I blocked half a dozen strikes in a row, slipped a couple of others to one side, and then the other, and knew that from her new vantage point, Elaine had the advantage.

  So I did the only thing that I could. I stepped back out of her range, and waited until she realized I wasn’t going to return to my place.

  She hesitated. “Are you giving up?” she asked.

  “You said first blood. I am not yet bleeding.”

  I was puffing, my heart beating loudly in my ears, and the sweat had already started to build on my forehead and the back of my neck. But I was also having a great deal of fun.

  Nor was I the only one. Even though Elaine seemed to take our match more seriously than I did, I could tell she was enjoying herself as well. And there were others, random watchers starting to gather, as if we were putting on some sort of a show.

  I waited, sword at the ready, and Elaine had no choice but to acknowledge the point. If she wanted to continue, she had to give up the high ground, and face me on the flat.

  She did so, leaping down effortlessly, gracefully, as if she was some sort of wild creature given human form. Yet even though she retained her immaculate balance, and never for a moment seemed weary, as soon as she stepped from the ledge, I stepped forward, launching the first attack of my own.

  I put everything into it. Speed, power, all the technique Lady Emmeline had shown me, coming at Elaine from an odd angle three times before she touched the ground, doing my level best to get through her guard, and score the first touch on her skin.

  She shouldn’t have been able to defend against it. I wouldn’t have been able to. Yet she did, the sound of steel clashing against steel once, twice, and again, my blade flicking past the skin of her wrist by the barest of margins, leaving no mark. And then she was on the attack once more, seamlessly using my own lunge against me, and driving me back.

  The move gained at least part of our growing audience’s approval. They gave a gasp of surprise, some of them starting to call out advice and offering a smattering of applause.

  I broke away, puffing audibly, and did my best to catch my breath.

  As if sensing weakness, Elaine didn’t let me get far, instead stalking me like a panther. “You’re fast,” the beautiful swordswoman acknowledged. “There’s strength in you as well, although I already knew that, despite your wiry build. Your techniques, while not perfect, are good enough. I admit it. I could not have done as well as you in so short a time of training. But you are already puffing,” she said. “Out of breath. And I can do this all day.”

  As if to prove her words, El
aine launched herself at me again, a variation of her first attack. And while she didn’t seem to be breathing as hard as I was, I knew something that she did not.

  I was faking my early exhaustion, at least to a degree. And I had seen a flaw in her movements. It wasn’t much. Just a slight overextension when she went for the kill. It was something Lady Emmeline had been particularly hard on the first time I had made the same mistake, and now, I thought, I understood why.

  The elderly swordsmistress had another star pupil who from time to time was a bit overeager, and she didn’t want to see me make the same mistake.

  So I defended as best as I could, trying to make it look a little less certain than it actually was without making some fatal mistake myself, and waited.

  True to her word, Elaine kept up the attack, beating at my blade again and again with unflagging strength and enthusiasm. She didn’t overextend all her attacks, but just a particular one, and she had so much variety about her that I had to wait before she used it again.

  But eventually, she did. She lunged with the tip of her sword aiming right for my face, and I couldn’t help but wonder how she might have held it back if I was slow to react. With her weight just a fraction too far forward on her leading foot, and her whole body extended, the classic response was to fend with my own sword, guiding the tip of her weapon away. Instead, I used a variation, fending as usual, but also, guiding her blade away but stepping and turning at the same time, catching her sword arm by the wrist.

  I held firm, and she was defenseless, and for my reward, I stepped forward and kissed her on the lips.

  She seemed shocked by the move, taken aback. And didn’t seem to like it at all when I said, “I win.”

  At my kiss, her feral grin had slipped, replaced by a look of consternation. But now, that grin was back, and I felt a sharp pinprick in my side. I stared at her in surprise, and she said, “Are you sure about that?”

  I couldn’t understand it. I still held her sword arm in my free hand. But while I hadn’t followed through and drawn a bead of blood from her, she had drawn a slim dagger and held it to my side, just beneath my ribs.

  If she had wanted to, she could have killed me, and I knew it.

  I couldn’t help but let out a groan of disappointment, and stepped away.

  “Dammit,” I muttered under my breath. I had forgotten rule number four, the one about fighting to win, and using everything I had to do so.

  I bowed my head. And nodded. “You win,” I said.

  Elaine’s expression didn’t change, yet somehow she managed to look triumphant. “The loser doesn’t have to tell the winner they have won,” she said. “The winner always knows.”

  As Elaine and I both put our weapons away, the onlookers around us burst into spontaneous applause, more than satisfied with the entertainment we had provided.

  As the crowd started to dissipate, Elaine resumed her place on the edge of the fountain wall, and I sat beside her. Even though I had lost, I felt a residual pleasure at our match. Elaine and I, it seemed, were very well suited.

  As soon as we were alone, the swordswoman’s expression grew serious.

  “So,” she began. “You have changed your face. Which means you have something in mind to do, and you need to be able to wander the streets of Camelot freely to do it.”

  The way she said it, it was a statement, not a question.

  I nodded.

  “And your first step was to see me.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you need?” Elaine said. “How can I help?”

  I found myself grinning again. Beautiful, a demon with the sword, willing and experimental in bed, and clever as well. Elaine very much was the perfect woman.

  I didn’t hesitate. She had asked a straight question, and so I gave her a straight answer.

  “I need you to take me to see your father.”

  Much to my surprise, Elaine didn’t ask anything else. She simply accepted that I had my reasons, and acted accordingly. She gave a sharp nod and stood. “I will take you to him,” she said. She breathed an audible sigh. “It’s probably about time I spoke with him anyway. Our last conversation didn’t go very well.”

  She told me what had happened. She had been angry at Sir Galahad for spreading my name throughout the city and had stormed out in a fit of rage.

  It surprised me that she hadn’t been back to talk to him since, and I wondered where she had stayed over the past couple of nights.

  Then I dismissed the thought from my mind and called to Sir George. In just a few moments, the rat dragon resumed his usual spot on my shoulder, and the three of us left the market behind us.

  27

  I didn’t know where Elaine was leading me. I didn’t know where Galahad lived, or where he spent his time. For all I knew, he could have set himself up in one of the elegant manors close to the palace, or he could have been living in a hole under one of the bridges that crossed the main river. Although, given what Elaine had told me of the man’s history with King Arthur, I knew that he would have spent the past few decades in hiding. So it was more likely that we would find him in a hole than in a manor.

  So I wasn’t completely surprised when Elaine brought me to a most unlikely place. A ruined building just outside the inner city wall.

  As we approached, Elaine grew increasingly cautious, keeping an eye out to make sure we weren’t being observed. “This used to be a place of worship,” she said, gesturing to the ruins. “A church. The stories say that King Arthur himself used to come here to pray, before Merlin appeared on the scene. The stories suggest that it was the wizard who turned Arthur from trying to be a just King into the tyrant he is. But my father tells it another way. He believes the tyrant was already there, looking for a way to express himself. Merlin was no more than the catalyst for that.”

  The ruined church boasted charred remains of wooden beams, and even the stone walls hadn’t been able to withstand whatever had happened. While there were far fewer stones than there should have been for a structure that size, those that remained carried echoes of a fire. They were blackened and split, and some of them looked to have started to melt, the edges turning to glass.

  “What happened here?” I asked. Even though I had lived my whole life in the city, Camelot was big enough to hold many secrets. If I had wandered this way in the past, I didn’t remember having done so.

  “It depends on which story you want to believe. Some say God in the heavens above took exception to King Arthur’s behavior, and in particular the slaughter of his bastard children. They say, on a night not long after, lightning struck down from above, again and again, to voice evidence of God’s displeasure. But there are others who claim it was Merlin’s doing. They say the sorcerer didn’t like the idea of Arthur being so pious. That his faith was holding him back from Merlin’s most foul machinations. They say he cast a huge fireball, and this is the result.”

  The swordswoman shrugged. “Either way, there is one thing that is not under dispute. There was a fire that burned the place down, even though the rain was as heavy on that night as ever it had been. And none of the surrounding buildings were touched.”

  Elaine didn’t hesitate at the edge of the ruins, but instead began picking her way between the rocks and the charred remains. “Either way, the destruction was seen as a poor omen, and with King Arthur showing no interest in continuing to worship there, the clergy decided to cut their losses. It was abandoned, and the townsfolk have, over time, carted many of the more usable stones away, to do what they wished.” I followed along behind Galahad’s daughter as well as I could, picking my way through the ruins with Sir George riding my shoulder with his wings out for balance.

  In amongst the ruins, there was a wooden door that might once have led to the church basement.

  “As far as we could tell, nobody realized the basement was still intact,” Elaine continued. “Father and I have stayed here, as well as in other hidden places, for most of my life.”

  With t
hat, Elaine rapped her knuckles twice against the wood and leaned close to the door. “Father, it’s me. And I have brought a guest.”

  Elaine and I waited in the ruins for just long enough that I began to wonder if perhaps the old spymaster wasn’t there after all. But then, before my doubts could grow to the point where I voiced them, I heard the sound of a bolt being thrown from the other side, and the door opened wide.

  Elaine turned to me briefly. “Come in,” she said, and led me inside.

  The church basement proved to be a comfortable-looking space filled with shelves containing hundreds of scrolls and a collection of eclectic, elegant furnishings and surprisingly rich carpets, all lit by a couple of lanterns rather than the more usual candles. There was even a small fireplace, complete with pots and metal stands for cooking.

  At any other time, I might have paused to admire it. It was a surprising oasis of comparative luxury, set in an unexpected location, and it wasn’t at all what I would have expected from a hideout. But instead, I found myself staring at Elaine’s father. Galahad, one of King Arthur’s famed knights.

  Rolf’s spymaster.

  The man who had outed my existence as a living King’s Bastard to the whole city.

  The aging spymaster stared at me with a look of confusion on his face. “Who is this?” he demanded of his daughter.

  I didn’t intend to do it. Hadn’t planned it at all. But the sight of his confused expression was more than I could bear. All the anger I found for what he had done rose from the pit of my stomach, and my hands turned into fists.

  Before I could think about what I was doing, before I could so much as pause, I took two quick strides toward Sir Galahad and punched him in the jaw.

  28

  “Mordie!” Elaine shouted at me, and even before I turned toward her, I knew that her eyes would be flashing with fire.

  But what caught me by surprise was that as well as the look in her eyes, the swordswoman had drawn her weapon again, this time with far more deadly intent.