Roderick Macallister watched the exchange silently from beneath his rancher hat.
Cormik’s blood went up, but, educated in courtly etiquette, his manner did not betray him, save for a faint flush high on his cheeks. He affected a lazy smile at the crowd and said, “Drat! Who knew the bruiser could move so fast!” His jibe earned some few chuckles, but his father, who peered at him with eyes as cold as blue granite, was not amused.
The second round went quite differently than the first. Although bubbling with fury, Cormik reined in his ardor and fought by the book. He opened the round with a deft lunge followed by a deceptive backhand slash at Elias’s midriff. Elias barely brushed the cut aside, and with a flick of his wrist countered with a low thrust. The rancher twisted to avoid the stab, and both men scrambled back a step to recover their equilibrium.
So went the lengthy second round, with each man alternately launching adroit thrusts, slashes, and feints, while the other riposted, parried, and dodged. Cormik fought like a demon, never relinquishing the offensive. Elias fielded the relentless Cormik and found openings where he could, but his foil was not designed to block blows from the rancher’s heavy rapier and his arm tired beneath the constant barrage.
Ultimately, the second round went to Cormik. Elias’s arms and legs grew leaden, and he felt as if he had been fighting for hours. Cormik tired as well, but when both men delivered desperate, simultaneous thrusts, his longer blade proved the victor, taking Elias in the hollow between his belly and chest.
Elias felt like he had just been kicked under the ribs. Whereas his foil ended in a flat nub, Cormik’s rapier, although blunted, still had the weight—and the sting—of folded steel. He wondered how the Mayor could, in good conscience, have possibly agreed to let Cormik use his rapier, even with the practice sleeve. It provided Cormik a distinct advantage, but the Macallisters were nothing if not adept at getting their way, and Elias knew he shouldn’t be surprised. As his father was wont to say, not all fights are fair. Elias figured he had better stop dwelling on it and start figuring out a way to best Cormik, and fast.
Cormik paced in his corner, eager to begin the next round. With a tied score, Cormik knew as well as Elias that the next to land a hit would be in a much better position to win the race to three points, and the match. The rancher wanted to strike again while the momentum still tipped in his favor. He met Elias’s eye, winked, and sketched a mock half bow.
The gesture incensed Elias, and the distiller felt his fatigue burn away, leaving behind a consuming desire to defeat his childhood rival.
Cormik had an air of superiority that had ever rankled Elias. While Cormik had been tutored by the finest academes Galacia had to offer, Elias attended the provincial village school with the other children from Knoll Creek where he learned the basics of grammar, history, and arithmetic. Yet, his education did not end there. Padraic Duana schooled his children at home as well.
Padraic exposed Elias and Danica to a more comprehensive history of the continent of Agia and the seven nations that comprised it than they were taught in their modest schoolhouse. In addition, he introduced them to the higher mathematics, philosophy, etiquette, and composition, while his closest friend, Doctor Phinneas Crowe, taught them anatomy and basic alchemy. As a result, when Macallister and his son sauntered about boasting an expensive education, forays to court, and noble blood, extolling their superiority in every insolent roll of the eye and snicker, it nettled Elias to no end. Cormik thought he and his were better than other men, and while Elias tried to follow his father’s advice and ignore his childhood antagonist, at that moment he hungered for nothing more than to strike him down.
Perhaps Cormik saw something in Elias in that instant, for his smile faltered and he leaned back on his heels, as if repelled by a magnetic force.
Danica, who had kept a close watch on Elias, grew alarmed. She had been attempting to make eye contact with her brother, and offer him a reassuring wink or nod, but he seemed intent on ignoring the crowd. She recognized the change that stole over his bearing at once. His head bowed down between hunched shoulders and he leaned forward, standing on the balls of his feet, black eyes smoldering from under his pinched brow, and that meant one thing—Elias had the rage on him.
Though he was loath to admit it, her brother had a red temper. While Elias did not anger easily or often, when he did he became a force to be reckoned with.
As soon as the next round began Elias leapt at Cormik with a high slash angled at his head. Cormik scrambled away from the blow, startled by its vehemence, and retorted with a hasty swing, designed not to make contact but to push Elias back. Elias ignored the feint, skirting the wild attack with a sidestepping lunge, and continued to press the offensive. He could have easily driven Cormik from the circle and so scored a point, but Elias wanted the satisfaction of striking his opponent.
Elias’s incessant blows forced Cormik to adopt a defensive style, but the distiller began to tire from his heavy-handed offensive. It dawned on him that if he expended all of his energy prematurely it could cost him the match in later rounds. He drew back, feigning exhaustion. When Cormik assumed an offensive posture once again, Elias lunged. He cried out as he did so and stamped his forward foot onto the granite platform with an audible clap. Cormik, unable to dodge the attack, brought his rapier low to intercept Elias. But the thrust did not come. Elias had stayed his hand.
His overt, telegraphed lunge with the stamping foot diversion had been designed to startle Cormik into drawing back or trick him into a premature parry. Cormik realized his mistake mid parry and threw himself into a hasty strafe, but was too late.
After Cormik’s rapier swept harmlessly by, Elias had but to extend his arm and poke Cormik in the belly, thus ending the third round.
Danica hooted, the crowd buzzed with excitement. She hazarded a glance at Macallister who stood statue-still and looked on with a darkened expression. The wide brim of his rancher hat concealed most of his features, but she could see the angry set of his jaw and all but hear his teeth grinding.
Elias wiped sweat from his brow. His fury had cooled, but he had no intention of letting up. The taste of victory on his lips drove away any thought of exhaustion, and he eagerly anticipated the look on Cormik’s face when he realized that he had been beaten by a mere commoner. Needing only a single point to win the match, Elias figured Cormik would fight desperately, which would provide him with ample openings.
The fourth round began and the two men rushed each other. The sound of clashing steel rang into the night, accompanied by grunts of effort as the fencers thrust, parried, and riposted as fast as their bodies allowed. The villagers looked on, silent to a man, transfixed by the drama unfolding before them.
Elias sought advantage and opportunity by continuing to buffet Cormik with a rain of heavy-handed blows. Cormik, though, remained an adept swordsman, and, despite having underestimated Elias earlier, fought with skill and panache.
After some long-felt minutes of combat, Elias drove Cormik to the edge of the circle with his relentless offense. Cornered, Cormik fought like a caged animal. His face contorted into a feral mask as his lips drew back, teeth bared in a snarl. Elias, so close to victory renewed his efforts. He fell into a rhythm of strokes, yielding his conscious mind to instinct and waited for an opening.
Then, everything turned upside down.
Elias lay on his back, still registering out how he had gotten there. Cormik’s lips had moved all but imperceptibly as he breathed out a couple of barely audible words while gesturing with his free hand. He kept his hand low and close to his body, to cloak the gesture. Then Elias had tumbled backward as he was struck in the torso by an invisible force.
Cormik pounced, reversing his grip on his rapier, and stabbed down at Elias. Reflexively, the prone distiller caught the rapier by the blade with his left hand. Cormik leaned his weight onto the rapier, teeth clenched in effort, while Elias strained to hold it at bay. Elias cast aside his foil and added his right hand to the effo
rt. He attempted to push Cormik’s blade to the side so that he could regain his feet. Elias heard Ulric Bromstead screaming as he mounted the dais.
Elias was able to keep the rapier from descending any further, in a struggle that took mere seconds but to the beleaguered distiller felt an eternity. Then he heard a ripping sound. At first confused as to where the sound came from, his eyes focused on the rapier’s leather sheaf. The threads that held the sheaf together at the point began to snap under the pressure—the steel of the rapier was sliding through.
Elias saw a flash of red. The rapier tore from his hand. He rolled to the side and off the fencing dais, hands raised to ward off further blows. When no such assault came, Elias turned his attention back to the dais.
Elias’s mouth fell open in shock. The woman in the red dress that he had seen dancing by the gazebo, stood in the fencing circle with a boot on Cormik’s chest. Sensing eyes on her, she turned her gaze from Cormik to Elias for a beat and gave him a nod.
Danica and Asa rushed to Elias’s side, with Lar a step behind. Elias’s eyes remained fixed on the woman in the red dress, while their hands roamed over him checking for injuries. Roderick Macallister climbed onto the dais and demanded that his son be unhanded. The crowd roared. Elias, Danica, Asa, and Lar climbed the dais as well so as to avoid the pressing mob.
“Enough!” cried Ulric Bromstead.
Asa had once confided in Elias that she suspected her father’s success as Mayor was largely due to his voice, which could be heard from miles away and had the thunder to shatter glass. Incidentally, the villagers fell silent.
“Everything is under control,” said the mayor. “This was nothing more than a misunderstanding, so I would appreciate it if everyone would just calm down and go about enjoying the fair. This contest is over.” He waited a moment as the crowd lingered and then shooed them with a wave of his hand. “Go on! Get!”
With that the reluctant villagers melted into the night, many casting furtive glances over their shoulders. Satisfied they were on their way, Ulric turned his attention to those on the dais—Elias, Cormik, Roderick Macallister, Danica, Asa, Lar, and the woman in the red dress.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked, addressing no one in particular, before turning his attention, and ire, to Cormik. “I never should have allowed you the use of real steel, even with that ridiculous sparring sheath, Cormik. I don’t know what in the nine hells ever possessed me to agree to it in the first place, except that perhaps your Macallister whiskey has dulled my wits.”
Elias, who watched her with open interest, saw the woman in the red dress’s face darken at the Mayor’s words. She glared at Cormik, who ignored her with practiced nonchalance and, with smug expression, offered Bromstead only a shrug.
Bromstead made a disgusted sound in his throat and shook his head to himself, then turned to the woman in red. “And who in tarnation are you?”
“Indeed!” said Roderick Macallister. “This woman has accosted my son! Her involvement could have caused serious injury!”
“Oh, do shut-up, Roderick,” Bromstead said. “She might well have saved Elias’s hide.” He took the rapier from the woman and held it up. “It seems your son failed to notice his blade slipping out of his sheath.”
“An accident, I assure you, Mayor,” said Cormik, answering for his speechless father. “Furthermore, Elias really shouldn’t have grabbed the blade. Not only is touching the opposing blade with a hand a concession of a point, but doing so is what caused the sheaf’s malfunction.”
“That’s horse manure, and you know it!” Danica all but shouted. “You were intent on putting a hole in him!”
Danica’s words started an avalanche, as Asa, Lar, and the Macallisters all started talking at the same time, each vying to be heard. The situation soon devolved into a shouting match, with Bromstead trying in vain to intercede and cool hot tempers.
The enigmatic woman looked on stoically. She exchanged glances with Elias, for they were the only two not involved in the argument. With a shake of her head she turned to leave the dais.
“Wait a hot minute!” Macallister bellowed as her movement caught his eye. “Where do you think you’re going?”
This silenced the group, who had, to a man, forgotten the stranger in the heat of the moment. As one, they turned their attention back to her.
The imperious woman turned on her heels to face the villagers. She fixed her cobalt eyes on Macallister. “Roderick Macallister, I presume?”
Macallister straightened his vest. “Viscount Macallister. And who, pray tell, are you, who saw fit to accost my son?”
The woman arched an eyebrow. “Very well, Viscount. My name is Bryn. Lady Bryn Denar.” At her pronouncement of the surname Denar, Bromstead and Macallister blanched. “I am first cousin to your queen. Among my other duties at court I have been appointed to the office of Deputy Tax Bursar.” She flashed Macallister a honey sweet smile. “Men seem so much more willing to give up coin to a woman.
“I am here to collect Ogressa Duchy’s harvest tax. Fortunately for me I arrived in your hospitable town on a festival day.”
“Welcome to Knoll Creek, my Lady,” Bromstead said, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands, while Macallister, who for once had no pithy retort forthcoming, said, “Oh.”
“Oh, indeed,” Lady Denar said. “In answer to your query, Viscount, I saw fit to accost your son, because he doesn’t play fair.” She shot Cormik a significant look. “His careless disregard for the rules of engagement is ungentlemanly at best and unlawful at worst. Trained, as all high lords are, in the basic Arcanum, I was the first to see his treachery, and so reacted first. I trust you forgive my incursion, Mayor.”
“Naturally, my Lady,” said Bromstead.
A pregnant moment of silence fell over the dais as the implication of Lady Denar’s words sunk in. Then, Bromstead and Macallister stumbled over each other in an effort to welcome her Ladyship and express their gratitude for her intervention in a situation that was surely an accident, and wouldn’t it be best for everyone if we could just put this whole business behind us? The corners of her lips curled in a near smile and her startlingly blue eyes sparkled.
“Well,” she said, “I think I will take my leave, then. Mayor, expect a visit from me tomorrow, for there are matters of state to discuss. This concerns you as well, Macallister, for as viscount you are steward of Lord Ogressa’s lands in his absence, and viscounts have a fiscal responsibility to their county. I will gladly accept your invitation to the—what is it you call it in these parts?—oh, yes, shin dig that I hear you will be having in a few days. We can get better acquainted then.”
“Yes, my Lady,” said Macallister with a stiff bow, and an equally stiff smile.
Lady Denar turned her attention to Elias and gave him an appraising look. “And a good night to you, master. You fought well. I daresay you fence almost as well as I do.”
“You honor me, my Lady,” Elias said while bowing his head, “and may I say that you are a credit to your house.”
Bryn Denar raised a delicate eyebrow, her eyes lingering on Elias, before turning on her heels and striding away. She approached two men, wearing the crimson and gold of House Denar, who stood underneath a poplar tree, where they had watched the proceedings on the dais. She swept past them with nary a pause and they fell into rank behind her, without so much as a glance behind.
The woman was an arcanist, that much was sure, thought Elias, for she of all the onlookers had detected Cormik’s surreptitious spell. Elias watched the flamboyant tax bursar and her retainers melt into the night and wondered.
†
Padraic sat up, smoking in his arm chair, when his children came home.
He appeared unsurprised as they told their tale, although, in Elias’s experience, nothing ever seemed to catch his father off guard. Danica told most of the story, which suited Elias just fine, who paid only cursory attention to their conversation, for he was deep in thought. For all her protestations to the
contrary, Danica thrived on drama.
After Padraic rendered the obligatory fatherly wisdom, Danica, sufficiently calmed, went to bed. Elias sat up with his father and after ruminating behind three-fingers of knoll said, “Cormik used a spell on me.”
Padraic leaned forward in his chair. “You’re sure?”
“Without a doubt. I had him cornered at the edge of the ring. He was finished. Then he made a gesture with his left hand, but he kept it close to the cuff so I don’t think anyone else saw, and whispered a word or two in a strange tongue. The next thing I knew, I was laying on my back, feeling like a mule kicked me in the belly.”
“How bad is it? Do you think your ribs are broken?”
“Bruised at the worst. No, I’ll live, but I’m not looking forward to tomorrow morning, I can tell you that.”
“All the same, I think we better stop by and see Phinneas tomorrow, just to be sure. It’s high time we pay that old goat a visit anyway. Besides, I am sure Danica wouldn’t mind seeing the man that set her on her way to becoming a doctor.”
Elias agreed, knowing better than to argue with his father, and it would be good to see the doctor. A smile came to Elias despite his black mood, as he remembered his bit of good fortune. “It shouldn’t be too inconvenient,” he said slyly. “We can drop off the Knoll Barrels first, and then cut through Lurkwood to go visit the Doctor.”
“What’s this, then?”
Elias told his father about his chance encounter with a Merchant bound for Peidra. After they shared in the excitement of the windfall, the two men fell silent, each pondering the strange happenings of the night, and the ramifications. They had enough trouble with the Macallisters when they feigned civility, but now that they had been humiliated in public, and in front of a member of the royal family, each man could only guess at what the future would hold.
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 4
