Tyrant's Throne

by de Castell, Sebastien

  ‘Nicely done,’ I grunted. He hadn’t actually cut into me, but the pain from yesterday’s wound was intense. A few seconds later, spots of red started to seep through the bandage.

  ‘Yield, Falcio,’ Kest advised.

  ‘Here’s a thought: how about you yield instead?’

  He shook his head. ‘If you’re hoping I’ll concede just to avoid hurting you, then you’ve miscalculated. The next Lord’s champion we face in trial by combat isn’t going take pity on you, and neither can I.’

  I went to grab my other fallen rapier, took up a double high guard and smiled through the pain. ‘I haven’t miscalculated at all.’

  ‘One more touch and the match is over,’ the King said, winking at me.

  For a moment I wondered if he had discerned my plan, then I dismissed that idea. King Paelis was clever, but even he couldn’t possibly have worked it out.

  ‘I’ll try to make it quick,’ Kest said, noting that more blood was seeping through my bandages.

  We were at four to one in the match (I’d tripped, which was how I’d ended up with my single point). All Kest needed to win was one touch, anywhere on the body – hells, if he tapped my arm with the blade of his sword, I’d lose. For me to win, I’d either need four points in a row – an impossible task, given how tired I was – or to score what’s called a ‘master’s stroke’. I don’t know why it’s called a ‘stroke’ when it’s actually a thrust. To be First Cantor, I’d have to place my point perfectly at his throat, forcing him to concede. The odds of anyone doing that to Kest? Only one Greatcoat had wagered their coin today on that bet.

  ‘Vata!’ the King shouted enthusiastically.

  ‘Vata’ is archaic Tristian for ‘I’m a pompous arse of a monarch and don’t want to just say “go” like a normal referee’.

  I had both my rapiers whirling in a swift figure-of-eight pattern before the King had even finished uttering the second syllable. I knew Kest would want to end this quickly and I couldn’t take the risk of trying to parry an attack that I probably wouldn’t even see coming. In case you’re ever in this situation, you should know that real fencers will mock you unmercifully for spinning your blades ‘like a child with a skipping rope’ – but ignore the insults; sometimes this is the only way to delay your opponent’s attack. No matter how fast they are, they still need to get into the right position to get past your defence.

  There’s a problem, though, because you can’t really attack like that, and the moment you try, your opponent will see it coming. That’s why I didn’t thrust or cut but instead threw my left rapier at him. Technically, if it hit, I could count it as a point, but that wouldn’t do me much good since he’d counter-strike me within the measure and his point would count too. So as he beat aside my tossed sword, I dropped down low and swung my right rapier in a wide arc at his ankles. Kest leaped neatly over it, bringing his own sword up high in preparation for a downward cut, but instead of parrying, I came in close and punched him in the stomach with my left fist. His blade overshot, though I got a pommel in the back for my troubles. As he stepped back to regain the distance, I repeated a move from yesterday, diving into a shoulder roll on the ground to come up on his right flank, rising up so fast my head was swimming as I readied my rapier to cut at his unprotected side. I’d done it faster this time than ever before.

  Not fast enough, of course.

  Kest, annoyed that I’d punched him in the middle of a match, already had his war sword in line. His reflexes took over and he began his thrust even before he noticed that the buttons of my greatcoat had come undone and he was about to stab me through the belly from far too close. I think even he surprised himself when he managed to stop the thrust in time to not kill me. ‘Saints, Falcio! That stupid move of yours doesn’t work!’

  I smiled at him. Kest rarely gets angry, and a man has to be pretty pissed off to not notice the tip of a rapier sitting a hair’s breadth from the ball of his throat.

  ‘Touché dei Maestre!’ the King shouted. That’s the pretentious way of saying I’d landed the master’s stroke.

  Kest was now looking down at the blade of my rapier, eyes wide with disbelief. ‘How did you—?’

  ‘The problem with you, Kest,’ I said, carefully pulling my weapon back and dropping it on the floor so that I could devote both my hands into pressing against the now sopping wet bandage around my belly, ‘is that you’re almost as damned fast as you think you are.’

  That part was a lie. Kest was every bit as fast as he believed. What he hadn’t yet figured out was that yesterday I hadn’t been trying different styles on him, nor figuring out which moves he was slower at defending, nor even trying to discern some broader weakness in his own style. I had been training him! I had spent the whole day schooling his reflexes – those same reflexes that let him master new moves so quickly – to stop short when he was about to thrust at my belly.

  There was no way in any hell I would be able to defeat Kest on the day of the competition. So I’d defeated him the day before.

  The King came into the circle, separating us. There was a good deal of cheering and yelling as my fellow Greatcoats tried to settle up bets or, more likely, dispute them (we may be judges, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to get out of paying our wagers just like everyone else).

  ‘You know,’ Paelis said, quietly enough that no one else would hear us over the racket, ‘if Kest weren’t, in fact, the best damned swordsman in the entire country, he would have ended up stabbing you right through the stomach, and you’d have wound up dead and bleeding all over my nice new duelling court.’

  I smiled. ‘Then I suppose it’s a very good thing that he is the best swordsman in the country, your Majesty.’

  The King chuckled. ‘He’s going to be pretty pissed off when he figures out how you won.’

  ‘He’ll never figure it out,’ I said. ‘His mind doesn’t work that way. He’ll assume I got my point at his throat first – that it was some weakness in his style or some superior timing on my part. He’ll spend the rest of his life imagining different ways I could have won before he ever figures out that he actually had me first but his own reflexes stopped him.’

  The King locked eyes with me. ‘You beat him using a strategy that will only ever work on him. What happens when you’re in the ring with the next swordsman who’s better than you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll figure out a different way to beat that guy.’

  ‘So damned cocky, aren’t you? I have half a mind to void the bout. What do you think about that?’

  I grinned. ‘To be honest, your Majesty, I’ve always suspected you had only half a mind. It speaks highly of you that you can admit to it.’

  He didn’t laugh at the joke, but he did grab my hand and raise it high overhead. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, duellists and magistrates one and all, I give you Falcio val Mond, an arrogant bastard and the First Cantor of the Greatcoats!’

  While the other Greatcoats shouted my name – and Kest loudest of all – the King whispered to me, ‘Be careful, Falcio. The higher you rise, the greater the fall.’

  *

  I wasn’t thinking about King Paelis’ words as I circled the Magdan in the snow. I was thinking about the cold; it was a danger, but once we got moving I’d warm up quickly enough. I was also keeping track of the snow, which wasn’t especially deep, but would still be enough to throw me off-balance if I wasn’t careful. Finally, I was paying close attention to the Magdan himself.

  In the old days, Morn had been a skilled fighter, if a little reckless and rough around the edges, but he was better now. Much better. He’d long since mastered the southern styles of pole-arm fighting, and he’d clearly been training in the Avarean way, which was vastly more elegant. Within a few exchanges I knew him to be twice the duellist he’d been before.

  So was he better than me? He was probably a little faster, and quite a bit stronger – but
my technique was still better, and more important than technique, my style was more effective. Whatever I might have lost by the years of rough living and being knocked around, beaten up, tortured and poisoned with alarming regularity, I’d made up for in experience and tactics.

  The two of us were almost perfectly evenly matched, even factoring in the cold and the snow, which he was used to and I wasn’t.

  Through blow after blow, attack, counter-attack, thrust, cut and parry, our eyes kept meeting, over and over, and that’s how I knew that the Magdan was fully aware of our relative strengths. I also began to realise that none of that mattered; there was no way he could beat me that day. That’s why he’d beaten me the day before.

  ‘Be careful, Falcio,’ the King had said that day, unaware how prophetic his words were. ‘The higher you rise, the greater the fall.’

  The only reason I’d remembered the King’s warning was because I was starting to pass out, and I tend to get nostalgic when I’m about to fall unconscious. You see, the problem wasn’t the Magdan’s skill or strength, nor the cold or the snow.

  It was the fucking altitude.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Unfair Duel

  ‘It’s nasty, isn’t it?’ Morn – the Magdan – asked, bringing his glaive back into a high guard, ready to attack with a diagonal slash that would be challenging to avoid while I was struggling just to stay on my feet. ‘The dizziness, the sudden fatigue . . .’

  As I’d expected, his blade came crashing down towards my right shoulder and I tried to get my sword up deflect it, but I was moving too slowly and had to settle for falling back out of the way, losing my balance in the process. Trying to get as much distance between us as possible made me stumble, and I landed painfully on my back. ‘You forgot . . . the nausea,’ I panted, which was probably a bad idea. My pulse was far too fast and I was breathing too quickly.

  ‘Oh, Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears,’ he swore, laughing, ‘the nausea. I did, I almost forgot about that. First time I came to this place I couldn’t keep my food down for a week.’ He began walking towards me, the blade of his glaive resting lightly on his shoulder. ‘The good news is that it does pass, eventually. You become acclimatised to the mountains.’ He took in a deep breath, then puffed it out all at once. ‘Actually, I’ve come to enjoy it up here.’

  He was almost within striking distance of me. Get up, I told myself. The problem wasn’t just that I was having trouble thinking straight, but that I knew he wasn’t planning to kill me. No Greatcoat had ever killed another. However confident the Magdan was in his ­support from the others, he wouldn’t risk going too far – so my body apparently considered this an excellent reason to lie down for a nap.

  With a huge effort, I forced myself back to my feet and held my rapier at full extension. The Magdan took a swipe at it with his glaive, but I’d been expecting that and brought my tip under in a semi-circular disengage, allowing the bladed end of his weapon to pass mine by while I kept my point on him. Foolish hopefulness led me to put everything into my lunge, hoping I might get lucky.

  I’m not sure why, after all these years, I still kid myself that luck will suddenly come to me.

  My lunge was not just slow, but clumsy. The Magdan barely bothered to sidestep out of the way. Then he laughed as I lost my balance and fell flat on my face.

  ‘You could stay down, you know,’ he said, standing over me. Struggling to lift my head, I snorted snow out of my nose. ‘Just lie there. It’s cold at first, but soon you’ll feel a wonderful warmth spread across your limbs.’ His voice sounded far away, muffled. ‘There are those who say that drowning is the most peaceful way to pass out of this world but they have never tried falling asleep in the snow.’

  ‘I think once you’re dead it’s hard to compare it to something else,’ I said. Only I hadn’t said it; I’d thought about saying it – but I’d forgotten to make my mouth move. I’d fallen unconscious for a brief second.

  Get up, you idiot.

  I kept expecting King Paelis to appear before me with some acerbic remark about getting my lazy arse off the ground, or my dead wife Aline to remind me that it was time to beat up the bad man, but neither of them showed up.

  That was somehow fitting: all my illusions were being shattered now.

  Suddenly I rose up, almost effortlessly – but no, it was entirely effortlessly, because the Magdan had grabbed me by the collar and hauled me to my feet. ‘Wake up now, Falcio. Let’s do this properly, shall we?’

  He gave me a push and I stumbled around, trying to find my balance like a drunk whose eyes weren’t focusing in the harsh light of morning. I got myself into a half-decent forward guard, both rapiers extended, although for some reason, I couldn’t see the blades. That was because my hands were empty. I’d dropped my weapons somewhere in the snow.

  ‘You’re really not doing well, are you, First Cantor?’ the Magdan said.

  ‘Enough,’ Kest said. ‘There’s no fair match to be had here.’

  ‘Fair?’ the Magdan asked. ‘Since when is the law fair?’

  I knelt down to pick up my rapiers; for once I’d leave the philosophical debate to the others. My hands tried to grasp the hilts, but for some reason I kept missing them. Your vision is failing you, some more astute part of my mind informed me.

  ‘For Saints’ sake,’ Brasti cried out, ‘he can barely stand!’

  ‘Really?’ the Magdan asked. He came into view as he walked around me, apparently inspecting me. ‘He’s standing just fine, as far as I can see.’

  I gave up on the rapiers and took a swing at him. I swear I saw my fist go right through his face as if he were nothing more than an apparition.

  ‘See?’ he asked. ‘He’s just getting his second wind.’

  Suddenly he swung the bladed end of his glaive right at my stomach, turning it at the last minute so he hit me with the flat. My stomach muscles were too slow to clench, so he knocked all the air out of me, leaving me gasping for breath. I sounded like an old man wheezing in his last moments of life.

  ‘Whoops – I suppose I should have said his third wind.’

  ‘Enough, damn you!’ Kest shouted.

  The Magdan leaned forward to peer at me. ‘What do you say, Falcio? Is it enough?’

  I started to say something very clever, but he struck out with his free hand, catching me in the throat – reflexively, I tried to catch my breath, but I failed: my throat wouldn’t open.

  The Magdan stood back and shrugged. ‘I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of him.’

  For several harrowing seconds I stood there choking, until finally something unclenched and I sucked in a desperate gasp of air.

  I heard the sound of a bow being bent. ‘Touch him again and it’ll be the last thing you do,’ Brasti said.

  Even dazed as I was, I saw two clear rows of white teeth as the Magdan smiled. ‘Interfering in a lawful duel, Brasti? Is there truly nothing sacred to the three of you any more?’

  All of a sudden, the other Greatcoats had surrounded the Magdan and me. The duelling circle looked as if it were made up entirely of leather-clad columns. I’m pretty sure they had their weapons out, so it was clear that if Brasti or Kest tried to interfere with what was happening, the pair of them would go down as well.

  ‘How about this?’ the Magdan began. ‘As long as Falcio remains standing, the match continues. If he falls, we’ll call it a day.’

  Excellent suggestion, I thought, letting myself start to collapse – but without warning, the blade of his glaive was inches from my neck and I was about to fall right onto it. I forced myself back upright.

  ‘See? There’s still some fight left in him,’ the Magdan said. Then he smacked me across the face with the back of his fist.

  I spun around, too fast to keep my balance, but as I started to go backwards, he flipped his weapon around and smashed the shaft into th
e small of my back. The force stopped my descent, pitching me back forward, and I felt the cold blade at the back of my neck, catching the inside of my collar and pulling me back again, choking me, but keeping me upright.

  ‘What a remarkable dancer you are, Falcio,’ the Magdan said. ‘How long can you keep this up, I wonder?’

  He kept striking me, first on one side, then as I started falling, on the other, moving me as easily as if I were a puppet.

  ‘Stop it, damn you!’ Kest screamed.

  I realised I was dribbling vomit from my mouth – I think that was the result of the butt-end of his glaive driving into my stomach. Then my back seized up as he slammed the shaft across my spine, so hard that for a moment I couldn’t feel my legs at all. That was a bit of a relief, but he kept hitting me, over and over, and the pain quickly came sweeping back in as he kept me upright like a child’s spinning top.

  ‘Please,’ Kest begged.

  ‘“Please”?’ The beating paused for a moment, and I felt the ­Magdan’s hand on my chest, holding me upright. ‘Is that what you say to the Dukes when they take more and more power for themselves? “Please, sir, may we have just a little bit for us?” Or do you suppose that’s what the common folk say as they slowly watch their children starve to death? “Please, all you Gods and Saints, give us a little food today.” Or maybe what they really plead for is a quick death?

  ‘Honestly, what good has all this pleading ever done for Tristia? Day after day, year after year, the country loses more and more of itself. It’s drying up like fruit left too long in the sun.’ He brought his hand up to my throat. ‘Is this how you bring justice back to Tristia, Falcio? By begging for it?’