For several minutes I couldn’t stir, except to tremble violently, and when I had breath to spare from groaning and wheezing and lamenting my punctured gut, which was now more numb than painful, I know I babbled a blessing or two on his head, which I still maintain was natural. It didn’t suit him a bit, though; he stood looking vexed and then flung away the gasper and demanded: "Why the devil can’t you die clean?" to which I confess I had no ready answer. If I had a thought it was that having saved me, he was now bound to spare me, and I guess the same thing was occurring to him and putting him out of temper. But I can’t say what was passing in his mind—indeed, to this day I can’t fathom him at all. I can only tell you what was said and done that morning in that godforsaken salt-mine above Ischl.
"It ain’t a reprieve, you know!" cries he.
"What d’ye mean?" says I.
"I mean that it’s still the Union Jack for you, Flashman!" retorts he—the only time, I think, he’d ever used my surname formal-like, and with a sneer he added words he could only have heard from Rudi. "The game ain’t finished yet, play-actor!" Then he snapped something I didn’t catch about how if he had let me fall down the cleft I’d likely have found a way out at the bottom. "So you’ll go the way I choose, d’ye see? When you’re done pukin' and snivellin' you’ll get up and take that sabre and stand your ground for a change, my Rugby hero, ’cos if you don’t, I’ll … Wer ist das?"
My wail of protest was drowned by his shouted challenge, and I saw he was staring towards the tunnel mouth, suddenly on his guard, crouched like a great cat—and my heart leaped as I saw why.
Someone was standing just within the tunnel mouth, motionless and silent, a dark figure clad in close-fitting shirt and britches and peaked cap, but too much in shadow for the features to be made out. Seconds passed without reply, and Willem started forward a couple of paces and stopped, shouting again: "Who are you? What d’ye want?"
Still there came no reply, but as the echoes resounded from the cavern walls and died away in whispers, the figure stepped swiftly forward, stooped to retrieve my fallen sabre, and straightened again in a stance that left no doubt of his intentions, for he stood like an epee fighter at rest between bouts, left hand on hip, point inclined downwards above the advanced right foot. Willem swore in astonishment and shot a glance at me, lying bemused and bleeding, but I was as baffled as he—and my hopes were shooting skywards, for this mysterious apparition was Salvation, surely, issuing an unspoken challenge to my oppressor, and I was mustering breath to bawl for help when:
"Speak up; damn you!" cries Willem. "Who are you?" The newcomer said not a word, but tilted up his point in invitation.
"Well enough, then!" cries Willem, and laughed. "Whoever you are, we’ll have two for the price o' one, what?" And he went in at a run, cutting left and right at the head, but the newcomer side-stepped nimbly, parrying and riposting like an Angelo, so help me, tossing aside the peaked cap to clear his vision—and as the light from above fell full on his features I absolutely cried out in amazement. Either this was all a dream, or the horrors I’d endured had turned my brain, for I was staring at a stark impossibility, a hallucination. The face of the swordsman, fresh and youthful under its mop of auburn curls, was one that I’d last seen smiling wantonly up at me from a lace pillow five years ago: the face of my little charmer of Berlin: Caprice.
It was mad, ridiculous, couldn’t be true, and I was seeing things—until Willem’s startled oath told me I wasn’t. The graceful lines of the figure in its male costume, the dainty shift of the small feet, as much as the pretty little face so unexpectedly revealed, fairly shouted her sex, and he checked in mid-cut and sprang back exclaiming as she came gliding in at speed, boot stamping and point darting at his throat. It was sheer disbelief, not gallantry, that took him aback, for there’s no more chivalry in a Starnberg than there is in me; he recovered in an instant and went on the defensive, for that first lightning exchange when she’d turned his cuts with ease and came after him like a fury, told him that suddenly he was fighting for his life, woman or no.
I couldn’t believe it, but I didn’t care; it was my life in the balance too, and even my wound was forgotten as I watched the shuffling figures and flickering blades, clash-clash and pause, clash-scrape-clash and pause again, but the pauses were of a split second’s duration, for she was fighting full tilt with a speed and energy I’d not have believed was in that slight body, and with a skill to take your breath away. I’m no great judge, and am only as good a cut-and-thruster as the troop-sergeant could make me, but I know an expert when I see one; there’s an assurance of bearing and movement that’s beyond technique, and Caprice had it. When Willem attacked suddenly, hewing to beat her guard down by main force, she stood her ground, feet still and warding his cuts with quick turns of her wrist; when he feinted and bore in at her flank she pivoted like a ballet-dancer, facing me with her back to the lake, and I saw that the girlish face was untroubled; I remembered fencing against Lakshmibai at Jhansi, the lovely fierce mask contorted and teeth gritted as she fought like a striking cobra, but Caprice was almost serene; even when she attacked it was without a change of expression, lips closed, chin up, eyes unwavering on Willem’s, as though all her emotions were concentrated in point and edge.
Once I thought he had her, when her foot slipped, her blade faltered, and he leaped in, smashing at her hilt to force the sabre from her hand, the bully-swordsman’s trick that I favour myself, but he hadn’t the wit or experience to combine it with a left fist to the face and a stamp on the toes, and she escaped by yielding to the blow, dropping to one knee, and rolling away like a gymnast, cutting swiftly as she regained her feet. At that moment a sudden spasm of excruciating pain in my side reminded me of more immediate troubles; my head was swimming with that dizzying weakness that is the prelude to unconsciousness, and in panic I clutched at the oozing gash in my side—dear God, I was lying in a pool of gore, if I fainted now I’d bleed to death. I pressed with all my might, trying to stem the flow, dragging myself up on an elbow with some idiot notion that if I could bend my trunk it would close the wound, and sparing a stricken glance at the combatants.
Joy was followed instantly by dismay. Willem’s left sleeve was bloody where she’d caught him in rolling away, but she was falling back now, and he was after her relentlessly, cutting high and low as she retreated; her speed was deserting her, her strength, so much less than his to begin with, was failing under those hammering strokes. He had a six-inch advantage in height, and as much in reach, and he was making it tell. He was laughing again, harsh and triumphant, and as she circled, all on the defensive now, he spoke for the first time, the words coming out in a breathless snarclass="underline" "Drop it, you bitch! Give over … you’re done … damn you!"
My heart sank, for her mouth was open now, panting with sheer weariness, and she fairly ran back several steps to avoid his pursuit, halting flat-footed to parry a cut at her head before breaking away again towards the lake. Another wave of giddiness shook me, I could feel myself going, but as he wheeled and drove in and she was forced to halt, guarding and parrying desperately, I summoned the last of my strength to yelclass="underline"
"Look out, Starnberg—behind you!"
He never even flinched, let alone looked round, the iron-nerved swine, and as she took a faltering side-step that brought them side-on to me, her blade swept dangerously wide in a hurried party, exposing her head, and he gave an exultant yell as he cut backhanded at her neck, a finishing stroke that must decapitate her—and she ducked, the blade whistled an inch above her curls, and she was dropping full stretch on her left hand like an Italian, driving her point up at his unprotected front. He recovered like lightning, his sabre sweeping across to save his body, but only at the expense of his sword-arm; her point transfixed it just below the elbow, he shrieked and his sword fell, he tottered back a step … and Caprice came erect like an acrobat, poised on her toes, her point flickered up to his breast, for a moment they were still as statues, and then her knee bent and her arm straightened with academic precision as she deliberately ran him through the heart.