The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “My God!” Bysshe said. “He’s calling the blackguard out!”

  Mary could only laugh. A duel, fought for an Austrian princess and Mary’s bleeding womb.

  The other asked for time to consider. George gave it.

  “This neatly solves our dilemma, don’t it?” he said after he returned. “If I beat Neipperg, the rest of those German puppies won’t have direction—they’d be on the road back to Austria. Her royal highness and I will be able to make our way to a friendly country. No magistrates, no awkward questions, and a long head start.” He smiled. “And all the ice in the world for Mistress Mary.”

  “And if you lose?” Bysshe asked.

  “It ain’t to be thought of. I’m a master of the sabre, I practice with Pásmány almost daily, and whatever Neipperg’s other virtues I doubt he can compare with me in the art of the sword. The only question,” he turned thoughtful, “is whether we can trust his offer. If there’s treachery…”

  “Or if he insists on pistols!” Mary found she couldn’t resist pointing this out. “You didn’t precisely cover yourself with glory the last time I saw you shoot.”

  George only seemed amused. “Neipperg only has one eye—I doubt he’s much of a shot, either. My second would have to insist on a sabre fight,” and here he smiled, “pour l’ honneur de la cavalerie.”

  Somehow Mary found this satisfying. “Go fight, George. I know you love your legend more than you ever loved that Austrian girl—and this will make a nice end to it.”

  George only chuckled again, while Bysshe looked shocked. “Truthful Mistress Mary,” George said. “Never without your sting.”

  “I see no point in politeness from this position.”

  “You would have made a good soldier, Mrs. Shelley.”

  Longing fell upon Mary. “I would have made a better mother,” she said, and felt tears sting her eyes.

  “God, Maie!” Bysshe cried. “What I would not give!” He bent over her and began to weep.

  It was, Mary considered, about time, and then reflected that death had made her satirical.

  George watched for a long moment, then withdrew. Mary could hear his boots pacing back and forth in the kitchen, and then a different, younger voice called from outside.

  The Feldmarschall-leutnant had agreed to the encounter. He, the new voice, was prepared to present himself as von Neipperg’s second.

  “A soldier all right,” George commented. “Civilian clothes, but he’s got that sprig of greenery that Austrian troops wear in their hats.” His voice lifted. “That’s far enough, laddie!” He switched to French and said that his second would be out shortly. Then his bootsteps returned to Mary’s rooms and put a hand on Bysshe’s shoulder.

  “Mr. Shelley,” he said, “I regret this intrusion, but I must ask—will you do me the honor of standing my second in this affaire?”

  “Bysshe!” Mary cried. “Of course not!”

  Bysshe blinked tear-dazzled eyes but managed to speak clearly enough. “I’m totally opposed to the practice. It’s vicious and wasteful and utterly without moral foundation. It reeks of death and the dark ages and ruling-class affectation.”

  George’s voice was gentle. “There are no other gentlemen here,” he said. “Pásmány is a servant, and I can’t see sending our worthy M. Fleury out to negotiate with those little noblemen. And—” He looked at Mary. “Your lady must have her ice and her surgeon.”

  Bysshe looked stricken. “I know nothing of how to manage these encounters,” he said. “I would not do well by you. If you were to fall as a result of my bungling, I should never forgive myself.”

  “I will tell you what to say, and if he doesn’t agree, then bring negotiations to a close.”

  “Bysshe,” Mary reminded, “you said you would have nothing to do with this.”

  Bysshe wiped tears from his eyes and looked thoughtful.

  “Don’t you see this is theater?” Mary demanded. “George is adding this scene to his legend—he doesn’t give a damn for anyone here!”

  George only seemed amused. “You are far from death, madam, I think, to show such spirit,” he said. “Come, Mr. Shelley! Despite what Mary thinks, a fight with Neipperg is the only way we can escape without risking the ladies.”

  “No,” Mary said.

  Bysshe looked thoroughly unhappy. “Very well,” he said. “For Mary’s sake, I’ll do as you ask, provided I do no violence myself. But I should say that I resent being placed in this … extraordinary position in the first place.”

  Mary settled for glaring at Bysshe.

  More negotiations were conducted through the window, and then Bysshe, after receiving a thorough briefing, straightened and brushed his jacket, brushed his knees, put on his hat, and said goodbye to Mary. He was very pale under his freckles.

  “Don’t forget to point out,” George said, “that if von Neipperg attempts treachery, he will be instantly shot dead by my men firing from this house.”

  “Quite.”

  He left Mary in her bed. George went with him, to pull away the furniture barricade at the front door.

  Mary realized she wasn’t about to lie in bed while Bysshe was outside risking his neck. She threw off the covers and went to the window. Unbarred the shutter, pushed it open slightly.

  Wet coursed down her legs.

  Bysshe was holding a conversation with a stiff young man in an overcoat. After a few moments, Bysshe returned and reported to George. Mary, feeling like a guilty child, returned to her bed.

  “Baron von Strickow—that’s Neipperg’s second—was taken with your notion of the swordfight pour la cavalerie, but insists the fight should be on horseback.” He frowned. “They know, of course, that you haven’t a horse with you.”

  “No doubt they’d offer me some nag or other.” George thought for a moment. “Very well. I find the notion of a fight on horseback too piquant quite to ignore—tell them that if they insist on such a fight, they must bring forward six saddled horses, and that I will pick mine first, and Neipperg second.”

  “Very well.”

  Bysshe returned to the negotiations, and reported back that all had been settled. “With ill grace, as regards your last condition. But he conceded it was fair.” Bysshe returned to Mary’s room, speaking to George over his shoulder. “Just as well you’re doing this on horseback. The yard is wet and slippery—poor footing for sword work.”

  “I’ll try not to do any quick turns on horseback, either.” George stepped into the room, gave Mary a glance, then looked at Bysshe. “Your appreciation of our opponents?”

  “The Baron was tired and mud-covered. He’s been riding hard. I don’t imagine the rest of them are any fresher.” Bysshe sat by Mary and took her hand. “He wouldn’t shake my hand until he found out my father was a baronet. And then I wouldn’t shake his.”

  “Good fellow!”

  Bysshe gave a self-congratulatory look. “I believe it put him out of countenance.”

  George was amused. “These kraut-eaters make me look positively democratic.” He left to give Pásmány his carbine and pistols—“the better to keep Neipperg honest.”

  “What of the princess?” Mary wondered. “Do you suppose he will bother to tell her of these efforts on her behalf?”

  Shortly thereafter came the sound of the kitchen trap being thrown open, and George’s bootheels descending to the cellar. Distant French tones, the sound of female protest, George’s calm insistence. Claire’s furious shrieks. George’s abrupt reply, and then his return to the kitchen.

  George appeared in the door, clanking in spurs and with a sword in his hand. Marie-Louise, looking pale, hovered behind him.

  Mary looked up at Bysshe. “You won’t have to participate in this any longer, will you?”

  George answered for him. “I’d be obliged if Mr. Shelley would help me select my horse. Then you can withdraw to the porch—but if there’s treachery, be prepared to barricade the door again.”

  Bysshe nodded. “Very well.” He rose
and looked out the window. “The horses are coming, along with the Baron and a one-eyed man.”

  George gave a cursory look out the window. “That’s the fellow. He lost the eye at Neerwinden—French sabre cut.” His voice turned inward. “I’ll try to attack from his blind side—perhaps he’ll be weaker there.”

  Bysshe was more interested in the animals. “There are three white horses. What are they?”

  “Lipizzaners of the royal stud,” George said. “The Roman Caesars rode ’em, or so the Austrians claim. Small horses by the standard of our English hunters, but strong and very sturdy. Bred and trained for war.” He flashed a smile. “They’ll do for me, I think.”

  He stripped off his coat and began to walk toward the door, but recollected, at the last second, the cause of the fight and returned to Marie-Louise. He put his arms around her, murmured something, and kissed her cheek. Then, with a smile, he walked into the other room. Bysshe, deeply unhappy, followed. And then Mary, ignoring the questioning eyes of the Austrian princess, worked her way out of bed and went to the window.

  From the window Mary watched as George took his time with the horses, examining each minutely, discoursing on their virtues with Bysshe, checking their shoes and eyes as if he were buying them. The Austrians looked stiff and disapproving. Neipperg was a tall, bull-chested man, handsome despite the eyepatch, with a well-tended halo of hair.

  Perhaps George dragged the business out in order to nettle his opponent.

  George mounted one of the white horses and trotted it round the yard for a brief while, then repeated the experiment with a second Lipizzaner. Then he went back to the first and declared himself satisfied.

  Neipperg, seeming even more rigid than before, took the second horse, the one George had rejected. Perhaps it was his own, Mary thought.

  Bysshe retreated to the front porch of the farmhouse, Strickow to the barn, and the two horsemen to opposite ends of the yard. Both handled their horses expertly. Bysshe asked each if he were ready, and received a curt nod.

  Mary’s legs trembled. She hoped she wouldn’t fall. She had to see it. “Un,” Strickow called out in a loud voice. “Deux. Trois!” Mary had expected the combatants to dash at each other, but they were too cautious, too professional—instead each goaded his beast into a slow trot and held his sabre with the hilt high, the blade dropping across the body, carefully on guard. Mary noticed that George was approaching on his opponent’s blind right side. As they came together there were sudden flashes of silver, too fast for the eye to follow, and the sound of ringing steel.

  Then they were past. But Neipperg, as he spurred on, delivered a vicious blind swipe at George’s back. Mary cried out, but there was another clang—George had dropped his point behind his back to guard against just that attack.

  “Foul blow!” Bysshe cried, from the porch, then clapped his hands. “Good work, George!”

  George turned with an intent smile on his face, as if he had the measure of his opponent. There was a cry from elsewhere in the farmhouse, and Claire came running, terror in her eyes. “Are they fighting?” she wailed, and pushed past Mary to get to the window.

  Mary tried to pull her back and failed. Her head swam. “You don’t want to watch this,” she said.

  Alba began to cry from the cellar. Claire pushed the shutters wide and thrust her head out.

  “Kill him, George!” she shouted. “Kill him!”

  George gave no sign of having heard—he and Neipperg were trotting at each other again, and George was crouched down over his horse’s neck, his attention wholly on his opponent.

  Mary watched over Claire’s shoulder as the two approached, as blades flashed and clanged—once, twice—and then George thrust to Neipperg’s throat and Mary gasped, not just at the pitilessness of it, but at its strange physical consummation, at the way horse and rider and arm and sword, the dart of the blade and momentum of the horse and rider, merged for an instant in an awesome moment of perfection …

  Neipperg rode on for a few seconds while blood poured like a tide down his white shirtfront, and then he slumped and fell off his animal like a sack. Mary shivered, knowing she’d just seen a man killed, killed with absolute forethought and deliberation. And George, that intent look still on his face as he watched Neipperg over his shoulder, lowered his scarlet-tipped sword, and gave a careless tug of the reins to turn his horse around …

  Too careless. The horse balked, then turned too suddenly. Its hind legs slid out from under it on the slick grass, George’s arms windmilled as he tried to regain his balance, and the horse, with an almost-human cry, fell heavily on George’s right leg.

  Claire and Mary cried out. The Lipizzaner’s legs flailed in the air as he rolled over on George. Bysshe launched himself off the porch in a run. George began to scream, a sound that raised the hair on Mary’s neck.

  And, while Adam von Neipperg twitched away his life on the grass, Marie-Louise of Austria, France, and Parma, hearing George’s cries of agony, bolted hysterically for the door and ran out onto the yard and into the arms of her countryman.

  * * *

  “No!” George insisted. “No surgeons!”

  Not a word, Mary noted, for the lost Marie-Louise. She watched from the doorway as his friends carried him in and laid him on the kitchen table. The impassive M. Fleury cut the boot away with a pair of shears and tore the leather away with a suddenness that made George gasp. Bysshe peeled away the bloody stocking, and bit his lip at the sight of protruding bone.

  “We must show this to the surgeon, George,” Bysshe said. “The foot and ankle are shattered.”

  “No!” Sweat beaded on George’s forehead. “I’ve seen surgeons at their work. My God—” There was horror in his eyes. “I’ll be a cripple!”

  M. Fleury said nothing, only looked down at the shattered ankle with his knowing veteran’s eyes. He hitched up his trousers, took a bucket from under the cutting board, and left to get ice for Mary.

  The Austrians were long gone, ridden off with their blonde trophy. Their fallen paladin was still in the yard—he’d only slow down their escape.

  George was pale and his skin was clammy. Claire choked back tears as she looked down at him. “Does it hurt very much?”

  “Yes,” George confessed, “it does. Perhaps Madame Fleury would oblige me with a glass of brandy.”

  Madame Fleury fetched the jug and some glasses. Pásmány stood in the corner exuding dark Hungarian gloom. George looked up at Mary, seemed surprised to find her out of bed.

  “I seem to be unlucky for your little family,” he said. “I hope you will forgive me.”

  “If I can,” said Mary.

  George smiled. “Truthful Miss Mary. How fine you are.” A spasm of pain took him and he gasped. Madame Fleury put some brandy in his hand and he gulped it.

  “Mary!” Bysshe rushed to her. “You should not be seeing this. Go back to your bed.”

  “What difference does it make?” Mary said, feeling the blood streaking her legs; but she allowed herself to be put to bed.

  Soon the tub of icewater was ready. It was too big to get through the door into Mary’s room, so she had to join George in the kitchen after all. She sat in the cold wet, and Bysshe propped her back with pillows, and they both watched as the water turned red.

  George was pale, gulping brandy from the bottle. He looked at Bysshe.

  “Perhaps you could take our mind off things,” he said. “Perhaps you could tell me one of your ghost stories.”

  Bysshe could not speak. Tears were running down his face. So to calm him, and to occupy her time when dying, Mary began to tell a story. It was about an empty man, a Swiss baron who was a genius but who lacked any quality of soul. His name, in English, meant the Franked Stone—the stone whose noble birth had paid its way, but which was still a stone, and being a stone unable to know love.

  And the baron had a wasting disease, one that caused his limbs to wither and die. And he knew he would soon be a cripple.

  Being a g
enius the baron thought he knew the answer. Out of protoplasm and electricity and parts stolen from the graveyard he built another man. He called this man a monster, and held him prisoner. And every time one of the baron’s limbs began to wither, he’d arrange for his assistants to cut off one of the monster’s limbs, and use it to replace the baron’s withered part. The monster’s own limb was replaced by one from the graveyard. And the monster went through enormous pain, one hideous surgical procedure after another, but the baron didn’t care, because he was whole again and the monster was only a monster, a thing he had created.

  But then the monster escaped. He educated himself and grew in understanding and apprehension and he spied on the baron and his family. In revenge the monster killed everyone the baron knew, and the baron was angered not because he loved his family but because the killings were an offense to his pride. So the baron swore revenge on the monster and began to pursue him.

  The pursuit took the baron all over the world, but it never ended. At the end the baron pursued the monster to the arctic, and disappeared forever into the ice and mist, into the heart of the white desert of the Pole.

  Mary meant the monster to be Soul, of course, and the baron Reason. Because unless the two could unite in sympathy, all was lost in ice and desolation.

  It took Mary a long time to tell her story, and she couldn’t tell whether George understood her meaning or not. By the time she finished the day was almost over, and her own bleeding had stopped. George had drunk himself nearly insensible, and a diffident notary had arrived from St. Prex to take everyone’s testimony.

  Mary went back to bed, clean sheets and warmth and the arms of her lover. She and her child would live.

  The surgeon came with them, took one look at George’s foot, and announced it had to come off.

  The surgery was performed on the kitchen table, and George’s screams rang for a long time in Mary’s dreams.