by Dan Abnett
He looked across at Gull.
"I have no main gauche, seńor," he said.
Gull frowned and looked down at his companion dagger for a moment. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent it away. It thumped into the wall panelling, and reverberated like a recently vacated diving board.
"We are even," said Gull.
"I salute your fair play," smiled de la Vega.
Gull nodded, a quick, perfunctory movement, and raised his sword so that he looked through the looped guard at his opponent.
"Vivat Regina," he saluted.
De la Vega chopped at the air in front of his own nose twice.
"God damn the Queen," he said. "En garde."
Gull flčched immediately, a short, stamping run and thrust that de la Vega volted and parried.
They broke and circled. De la Vega swung in with a return thrust that Gull met with a deft parade. De la Vega's blade slid off this defence, but he brought it in again with a remise that struck twice against the forte of Gull's blade. Slightly off balance, Gull sliced around, over de la Vega's ducking head, and executed a balestra that made them clash together and lock blades at the coquille.
They pushed away and broke again. De la Vega chuckled. "Now we have the measure of each other, Seńor Gull. Now we can begin properly," he said.
They exploded at each other, their blades moving faster than the eye could see: clashing, singing, sparking.
It is safe to assume that only twice before in History had two such gifted swordsmen duelled. Neither of the other bouts matched this in splendour.
One had been between Jovan Knekt of Dusseldorf, who had trained on the system of L'Épee under Girard Thibault for twenty years, and Clovis Pappenheim, who had been schooled in the Naples Method for seventeen summers. They were both recognised as the very greatest swordsmen of their age, and had each defeated at least two hundred experts in the run-up to the grand final of the Antwerp Fencing Tourney. This took place in 1843, and the final was over in three seconds, or twenty-nine strokes, whichever you care to measure it by. Both scored a perfect impale at the same moment. The fight is well documented, and ended with the cries of the Antwerp Judges, who exclaimed, "Fluke! Pure fluke!" as Knekt and Pappenheim hit the mat of the piste, simultaneously.
The other had been between the samurai Go San Do and the ronin Chee Fu, in Feudal Japan, around about 1230. The fight lasted three days, and the carefully recorded steps of the grand masters now form a fundamental part of the weeklong Ceremony of the Clashing Swords in Otinawa. They both managed a perfect disembowelment and decapitation at the same moment. Documents show the reactions of the Shogun of Okinawa, who shouted, "Jo gon jo hona aky hu!", which literally translates as, "Fluke! Pure fluke!"
We can assume, gentle reader, that the duration of this fight will be somewhere between those two, lauded extremes. It has already lasted longer than the three seconds of the Knekt/Pappenheim clash, and it had better not outdo the Do/Fu battle, otherwise the civilised world may well be a profoundly different place by the time they have finished.
Just forty seconds into the blistering duel, and Gull found himself consistently and energetically volting to avoid the extra, stabbing length of de la Vega's bilbo.
De la Vega's onslaught was unstinting. There was no time to break cleanly and reprise. With his longer reach, the Spaniard had Gull on a permanent defensive.
Fair play, thought Callum Gull sourly as he parried vigorously. I ditched my main gauche at your suggestion. Would you have snapped six inches off your foible if I'd brought it to your attention?
De la Vega feinted with a stamping appel, and hooked a thrust in under Gull's guard. The bilbo's blade bit into the flesh of Gull's right underarm. He cursed and leapt back.
De la Vega broke off and circled, grinning.
"Touché," he remarked.
Gull could feel the blood dribbling down inside his doublet. If nothing else, the wound was going to hinder his sword work. It had been a calculated and cruel blow, unsporting. That made him cross, very cross indeed. Only one thing, one man, made him crosser.
For a moment, Gull thought about the man who made him crosser than anyone else.
Huge, seething anger flooded his mind, but he harnessed it and set it to work for him, cancelling the pain and spurring his muscles on.
He went for de la Vega like a tiger, a tiger that had been given a rapier and schooled to perfection by Thibault of Antwerp.
He drove the Regent back across the ante-room until he crashed into the drinks stand, overturning it, and shattering its crystal contents. The strong smell of liberated brandy filled the room. De la Vega barked an eager curse, and tried to parade and sidestep, but Gull would not loosen his grip on the offensive. He turned aside de la Vega's inquisitive, urgent blade, and thrust in hard. The entire foible of his rapier ran through de la Vega's left bicep.
Pain rattled up out of de la Vega's throat, and he pulled himself off the Scotsman's sword with a twist of his upper body and two rapid, backward steps, hacking with his weapon to prevent a remise.
Gull kept the space between them to a sword's length, prowling forward across the broken crystal on the mats. De la Vega backed away until he felt the cold marble of the fireplace press into his shoulders. He flexed his left arm, wincing.
"Touché," said Gull, returning to the en garde position casually.
"You fight with vigour and determination, seńor. Me sorprende I have heard many tales of your ability with the rapier, but I believed few of them. Tell me, is it really patriotism that fires your passions so?"
"A man can be inspired by a love of his country. Isn't that what spurs you on, Regent?"
De la Vega shook his head. "This country?" he asked. "No me interesa. My beloved Castile, however Oh yes."
"Is that what this is all about? This treason that you're clearly part of. Is it the age-old complaint of underling Spain, out to spill blood to right itself at Court?"
De la Vega licked his lips and gestured ambivalently. "Nothing so simple, or so singular," he said. "Tonight, there is afoot such business as will make the stars in heaven shake."
"Business set in hand by you and Jaspers, I'd wager," said Gull, "though not alone. There must be others, but I have no doubt that Jaspers is crucial to your treason, or you wouldn't have risked exposure by coming here to silence my suspicions."
De la Vega returned his gaze, but said nothing.
"So, will you put up your sword while I summon the guard?" asked Gull.
De la Vega took a deep breath and straightened up. "Todavía no he terminado. The fight is in its infancy," he said.
"But, you're bleeding," said Gull.
"So are you. A mi no molesta en absoluto."
"If that's the way you want it," said Gull. "En garde!"
* * *
The fifth fight underway in the minutes after ten that evening was taking place in the dark, smelly arena of the Palace undercroft, and, in its way, it was every bit as fundamental to the future of the Unity as the dazzling swordplay in progress in the processional ante-room.
Drew Bluett just had time to draw his heavy-bladed Venetian storta and bellow, "Get behind me!" to Uptil and Agnew before O'Bow was on him. The first sweep of O'Bow's huge hand-and-a-halfer slid the entire length of the storta's blade as Drew deflected it, and only the finger-ring and knucklebow prevented it from shearing the digits of Drew's sword hand.
Drew was stronger than the average man, and his bulk counted well against most ordinary opponents, but there was nothing ordinary or average about Tantamount O'Bow. He was no great swordsman, but he swung the huge blade as easily as if it had been a smallsword or a light estoc. Drew was a reasonably accomplished swordsman, if a little out of practice. However, even a swordmaster like Roustam de la Vega would have thought twice about trying his luck with O'Bow. With the sword whirring around his head, he was about as easy to attack as a sharpened windmill in a force nine gale.
"Who are you? You're not Palace Guard!" yelled Drew a
s he fended away the rain of metal. "Why are you doing this?"
"Needs musk when the devil dives!" O'Bow answered, rather mysteriously. "I am on a mission of grating portents, and must mortally slay any who hinder me, what-so-whomever."
"I wasn't hindering you!" cried Drew, backing away across the dirty undercroft.
"I'll be the jug of that!" exploded O'Bow, and fetched Drew a massive crack across the side of the head with his sword. Drew cartwheeled back through the damp air, demolished a small stack of very rotten barrels, and lay still in the debris.
O'Bow crossed over to him and knelt down, laying the point of his sword at Drew's throat.
"Become informatory, and I'll let you live," he said. "I seek a Frenchie looter, named Looey Cedarn. Name his whereabouts."
There was silence. Drew Bluett was profoundly unconscious with a deep, bloody gash across his scalp, and he wasn't about to name anything.
"O'Bow," said a voice behind him. The giant turned and stood up to find Agnew facing him. Uptil was paused undecidedly in the shadows behind the manservant.
"You know me?" asked Tantamount O'Bow.
"I know of you, sir. My master, Rupert Triumff, has told me of you on several occasions."
"I see my repudiation proceeds me."
"It does. Now it seems to me you mean to kill us, but you also seek a man named Cedarn. Might it not change your attitude to us if I told you we too were seeking the knave?"
O'Bow nodded slowly. In the dim light, his terrible scars looked like pleated pink silk.
"And why-for would you be of finding the fellow?" he asked.
Agnew stared into O'Bow's blue eyes without a flicker. "To kill him," he said.
Uptil stiffened, and tapped at Agnew's elbow. Agnew ignored him.
"You too, eh?" asked O'Bow, lowering his sword. "And what's your despot with him?"
"He's a Frenchie looter, as you say," said Agnew. He's caused us many problems. We've been hunting for him for several days."
O'Bow cracked his knuckles, and crossed to the door of the undercroft.
"It seems we have adjoining courses," he said. "Best we should belabour together til we smoke him out." He looked across at Drew's crumpled form. "My apology for dinting your companion. My attack on him, it now seems, was most prehensile."
Agnew and Uptil crossed to Drew's side.
"See what you can do with the door," said Agnew. "It's stuck fast. We'll tend to our friend."
"What are you doing?" asked Uptil in a tight whisper as they crouched together next to Bluett.
"Do you have a better idea?" asked Agnew. "He's laid poor Bluett out. Unless we can divorce him from his sword, we don't begin to stand a chance against him. I had to do something to stop him killing all of us."
Uptil sighed and looked down at Drew.
"Nasty head wound," he said. "We need to get a surgeon to him as soon as possible."
"First chance we get," Agnew concurred. "I'd love to know what this monster has got against Sir Rupert. Just how many people has he managed to offend since we last saw him?"
Drew stirred and groaned. He looked up at Agnew.
"Mr Bluett. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Drew nodded, blinking.
"We have managed to converse with Mr O'Bow, the gentleman that struck you," said Agnew. "He has agreed to join forces with us, as he too wants to eliminate the Frenchie looter Cedarn. Is that clear?"
Drew nodded again. Dazed and in pain though he was, his years of espial training helped him to sift out the pertinent truth behind Agnew's bald statement.
"Help me up," he said. He was unsteady, but his eyes burned fiercely. Agnew tore a strip from his coat and made a makeshift bandage for his head.
"Upon your feet again, I see," said O'Bow from the doorway. "It gladdens my heart. I must extrude great hominids of apologism to you for my crudities."
"Your hominids are gratefully accepted, Mr O'Bow," said Drew, leaning on Agnew for support. "That door's locked, is it not?"
There was a deafening crash, and O'Bow removed the entire door from its frame. He held it up in front of them and tried the handle.
"It is indeed," he agreed.
The ill-assorted quartet entered the next chamber, a huge, echo-booming, dark kitchen. The space was cold and empty. Bizarre, haunting sounds murmured into the room. They were coming from outside, noises from the huge party, filtering down through the enormous chimney places above the dead grate.
"They must be using the kitchens in the west wing to provide for the Masque. How's the door?" asked Agnew.
The door out of the kitchen was an even heavier oak section than the one in from the undercroft. O'Bow stepped away from it, shaking his head.
"Locked too," he noted. He cracked his knuckles again, and flexed the muscles of his shoulders with a Hercynian shrug.
"Wait! We can't go through the Palace tearing every door we come to off its hinges," said Drew.
"Do you have an alternating presumption?" O'Bow asked him.
"I do," said Uptil. He gestured towards the huge fireplace. "We could climb."
O'Bow showed far too many teeth. Uptil thought for a moment that he was going to bite him.
"A very fine presumption indeed!" he exclaimed.
"Let's go," said Drew.
They climbed onto the hearth block, and looked up into the flues. Blackness stared back.
"Tell me, Mr O'Bow," said Agnew, matter-of-factly, "what is the nature of your dispute with Cedarn? Is it personal?"
"It is now," said O'Bow. "At the original, I was hired to do him away, but he was deviate, and gave me a slip. That made it a matter of distinctive personality."
"Hired, indeed?" put in Drew, testing the bricks of the flue wall. "By whom?"
"That mister Dung Tongueford. Bournevile Dung Tongueford. He has me for errands, some off times." O'Bow said, reaching into the flue and pulling himself up out of sight. Loose bricks, mortar and soot trickled down.
"What's the matter?" asked Uptil quietly, noticing the look on Drew's face.
"I knew a man, a Bonville de Tongfort, back in the old days of the Circus, when Milord Effingham was running Intelligence," said Drew. "He was a rat of a man. I thought he might have perished in the Purge. I might have hoped he had. He crossed me more than once."
"This is the same man?" asked Uptil.
"I've no way of telling," Drew replied, "but the de Tongfort I knew was in the dirtiest of Dirty Tricks. You could always trust him to procure the lowest jakes-scum for a sleazy mission. O'Bow's just the sort of element de Tongfort cultivated. Oh, but this affair stinks more and more as we go along. If it is the de Tongfort I know, I'll be happy to have a reckoning with him."
"Are you going to attend on my behind?" O'Bow called back down the flue to them.
"Let's follow him," said Drew. He caught Uptil's arm, and said, "If I can get his sword away from him, do you fancy your chances, mano-a-mano?"
Uptil nodded. He knew that of the three of them, he had the best hope of laying the huge thug out. Uptil was a cultured, refined soul, who disliked physical violence, but he kept himself fit, and his musculature testified to his strength. Besides, he had more than enough reasons to bury his knuckles in O'Bow's twisted face.
