Down another step he came and down another, moving as inexorably as an executioner approaching a victim on the block. His eyes had darkened except for a gray glint, and I marked that as the reflection of Shieldbreaker. The hammer-fall sound thudded through me, a bass counter to the staccato fluttering of my heart.
Perhaps I had somehow misconstructed my first destructive wish. “Wouldn’t it be lucky if your heart seized up and you suffered a stroke?”
He slowed not a whit, nor did the sound.
“It would be incredibly, unbelievably lucky for me if lightning would strike you.”
Nothing, not even a cloud on the horizon. Not a wisp of fog, not even a lightning bug. Nothing, nothing but his mechanical advance down the stairs. Barely a dozen steps separated us and I felt panic rip through me.
No! I forced myself to dominate my fear. I knew in an instant what I had done wrong, why the Sword refused me, and I named it hubris! I had dared claim its victories as my own. I had placed myself on the level of Fabio, and I had reveled in it. Coinspinner had chosen me because I had been an underdog in a hopeless situation. It had come to me to give me a chance at survival.
And why? Clearly it was so I could stand as an example to all who would otherwise despair and for that reason never realize their potential. Coinspinner, I imagined, wanted to give me the opportunity to overcome the sort of adversity that had beset me for all my days. Red Rinaldo obviously stood as surrogate for Fabio and all those like him who dismissed me because of my physical limitations. With the Sword of Chance in battle against Red Rinaldo and Shieldbreaker, I, we, would show humanity that the only true failure is to surrender to adversity instead of fighting it.
I took a step back as Shieldbreaker’s thunderous voice slammed through my chest. Red Rinaldo reached the landing, his long strides hungrily devouring the distance between us. I let him come on, even as he raised his right hand, elevating the Sword of Force for a blow that he doubtless believed would cleave me in twain. Unbridled confidence and battle-madness shone from his eyes-he knew he could not lose, and wanted me terrified of that fact.
I knew no fear. My left hand held Coinspinner’s scabbard rock still. I knew this battle had been predestined and the name of the victor had been written in stone since before the gods themselves were born.
Shieldbreaker started to fall, the cacophony building until it even drowned out the pounding of my heartbeat.
My right hand yanked on the hilt of Coinspinner. I slid the blade free of the scabbard, brandishing it with a flourish. I meant Rinaldo to see it and see the design worked into it. I wanted him to know he was vulnerable to my attack. Even as his blade arced in toward my left shoulder, I knew the Sword would not fail me and nothing could stop me from defeating Rinaldo.
Nothing but the fact that Coinspinner twisted in my hand and flew from my grasp! It shot out from within my clutching fingers, the pommel brushing my fingertips as the Sword rose into the air. I watched it become a black silhouette in the heart of the sun, then saw it evaporate as soon I knew my life would.
Many chronicles have noted the elastic property of time, allowing it to stretch to infinity in times of horror. It seems the gods, while tending to ignore the most fervent entreaties for long life or happiness, take a perverse delight in granting humans more than enough time to experience the mortification and embarrassment spawned when their dreams run headlong into reality.
The hollow ludicrousness of everything I had surmised about Coinspinner and its mission for me sucked my stomach in on itself. My arrogance tasted bitter in my mouth, and the truth about my pitiful condition filled me with disgust. The whole world would mock me, for once my head bounced down the steps Red Rinaldo would strike out at Newgrave, pillaging and slaughtering innocent people in payment for my audacity. The base stupidity of my thinking about Coinspinner likewise pilloried me-the Sword had no intention of using me as a lesson for humanity. The verse had said it all, exactly, that no Sword could stand against Shieldbreaker. Had I left it in my belt, Coinspinner would have survived me. Because I drew it, because I doomed it, the Sword of Chance had fled as I would have done were my luck not all run out.
Defeated and dishonored before I died, I collapsed in on myself. In that frozen moment, it struck me as laughable that I couldn’t even die properly, for Rinaldo’s blow struck me on the left shoulder and carried on down through my body to exit at my right hip. Anyone else would have dropped into two pieces, but not me. Bisected by the most powerful of all the Swords, I felt no agony, heard no angels singing, saw no visions of a glorious afterlife. Aside from the chill sea air pouring through the gaping rent cut through my clothes by the Sword, I felt nothing to confirm my death. There was not even a drop of blood. Though the irony of the thought would not occur to me until later. I decided that the failure that defined my life culminated in my failure to die.
Angry and resentful at Rinaldo for making apparent to all that last failure, I leaped forward, weaponless, and grabbed double-handfuls of his tunic. Clinging to his chest like a mad squirrel on an oak, I pushed him with one hand and pulled with the other. Rage at my ultimate humiliation fueled me, and I wrestled him around as if I were his size and he were nothing but a doll.
The rhythm of Shieldbreaker’s thunder broke as the frenzied pulse of my heartbeat pounded in my ears.
I knew men stood behind me and was certain they were laughing at my humiliating plight. I pulled Rinaldo toward me and turned to interpose his body between them and me. As I did so, my right hip caught his left and sent him spilling. Rinaldo’s heels went up and his head went down, smacking hard on the stone. Shieldbreaker started to fall from his nerveless grip, but my right hand stripped it from him before gravity could wrestle it free.
The hammer-thud faded as Rinaldo lay limp at my feet. Without a thought to the consequences of my action, I raised Shieldbreaker and prayed against the possibility that now I might succumb to the wound he had inflicted. I half-expected battle-madness to fill me, but as I looked out at the men gathered on the stairs and wharf, I did not sense a single foe among them. Supplanting the thunder I had thought I would hear, a great cry rose up from the men on the island. It took me a moment to sort it out, for I’d never heard my name shouted outside of a curse before.
“Hail Callisto, Corsair Supreme and Master of Pirate Isle!”
“What?” My voice revealed my surprise, but no one seemed to notice. “What do you mean?”
Marlin dropped to one knee before me. “It is the way of the pirates, m’lord. You have defeated their leader, and now they are sworn to your service. They know a great leader and fearsome fighter when they see one, and so do I, m’lord, I’m hoping me and my men can serve you as well.”
“Yes, yes, Marlin-Commodore Marlin, of course.” I slid Shieldbreaker home in the scabbard that had contained its brother, and I noticed a general lessening in the anxiety on the faces of the corsairs. All in all they didn’t look like a bad lot, and it struck me that I could convince my sister to raise enough of a tax from the Merchants’ Guild to let us rebuild the Devourer and turn the whole pirate company into Newgrave’s own Navy.
Then again, if we remained outlaws… I shrugged. There would be plenty of time to decide if I wanted my legend to be that of Callisto the Corsair or Count Callisto, Lord of the Sea. I had other things to do before that choice had to be made.
I forced my voice as low as I could make it and scowled fiercely. “Get up, you scurvy seadogs, and make this island ship-shape. I want everything ready for when Commodore Marlin returns from Newgrave. He’ll be bringing my sister Antonia with him, and her husband, and I want them even more impressed with Pirate Isle than they already are.”