His father’s appointment with Duke Topo—Costa’s father—hadn’t been until noon, and the portrait his father was doing was well under way and needed no particular preparation from the apprentice, so Frank had strapped his foil and mask to the back of his saddle and ridden to Strand’s.
The place was just one room, but it was huge, a hundred feet by a hundred feet, with a ceiling so far above the floor that in decades no one had brushed the ropy cobwebs away from the very highest frames and trophies. A class was in session when Frank arrived, so he sat down on a bench between two of the tall windows and watched the sons of the aristocracy hop and plunge and flail about. He hoped it was a beginners’ class. The classes were getting bigger; a generation or two ago the young men were all taking shooting lessons.
When old Strand finally declared the lesson ended and told the students to pair off and bout with one another, and warned them which moves they weren’t to attempt yet, he walked over to Frank’s bench. “Hello, Frankie. Looking for a bout?”
“Yes sir. Is Tom around?”
“No, I sent the boy off on some errands. I’ll go around with you, though, if you like.”
“Well ... okay.”
It was always intimidating to fence with Tom’s father, for the old man would frequently halt a bout to point out, loudly, his opponent’s errors, and if the opponent managed to score even one touch against old Strand’s five it was a rare feat; but it was true too that one’s next opponent, no matter who it was, seemed much less daunting.
Frank was left-handed, and once they’d found a vacant strip, put on their masks and jackets, saluted and come on guard, he kept his blade well-extended in an exaggeratedly outside-twisted sixte position, for this pretty much forced the right-hander to attack into his inside line, and it was such a long way to reach that Frank could generally let an incoming blade come close enough to be totally committed before he parried, and thus he wasted a lot less effort—and exposure—trying to parry thrusts that turned out to be mere feints.
But it did little good against Tom’s father, who could, almost supernaturally, wait until the last split instant before deciding whether his attack was genuine, or just a feint to open Frank’s defenses for an attack somewhere else. Frank took four touches in two minutes, and his only consolation was that the old man once shouted “Not bad!” when a compound riposte of Frank’s nearly hit him.
After the fourth touch Strand stepped back. “Have you been practicing the Self-Inflicted Foot Thrust?” he asked. His voice, it seemed to Frank, was as relaxed as if he’d just now looked up from reading a book.
“Well,” Frank panted, “yeah—some.”
“Put me into it.”
“Okay.” Frank took a deep breath and then hopped backward, his sword raised; Strand beat it aside and advanced with a thrust; Frank caught the older man’s blade in a bind from below, whipped it upward with his own blade, and then flung it downward; but not only did Strand’s point fail to strike Strand’s own foot, as it would have if Frank had done the move correctly, but Strand’s blade had lashed back up, knocked Frank’s aside, and then darted in to flex firmly against Frank’s chest.
“Not yet, lad.” Strand laughed, flipping his mask back and stepping forward to shake hands. “But keep practicing it.”
“Yes sir.”
As Frank turned away he saw that Strand’s son Tom had returned sometime during the bout and was now grinning and shaking his head at him. “At least,” he called cheerfully to Frank, “you almost hit your own foot that time.”
“You want to fence,” Frank asked with a defiant smile, “or just stand there and criticize your betters?”
“Might as well play chess as fence with those foils," said Tom, nevertheless crossing to the weapons rack. “That kind of fencing’s got no bearing on real sword-fighting.” He spoke almost automatically, for this was just one more thrust in a long-standing argument between Tom and Frank. Tom was always emphasizing the combat aspects of the sport, and talking about edges and points and blood-channels. He insisted that, to have any real value, fencing should approximate as closely as possible the conditions of real sword-fighting: the weapons should be heavier, the boundary lines on the floor dispensed with, “off-target” touches acknowledged with some physical handicap like an imposed limp and a bleed-to-death time limit. Frank usually countered by pretending to agree enthusiastically and then going on to suggest that touched fencers be required to groan, too, and fall dramatically, and maybe splash some artificial blood on the touched spot.
Generally Frank refused to do any saber fencing with Tom, for the fencing master’s son tended to lean into the blows too much—even though Frank nearly always won, his back and arms would be welted afterward from hits that, though mistimed or delivered after valid hits of Frank’s, nevertheless stung; but today, with Tom still grinning reminiscently about Frank’s failure at the Self-Inflicted Foot Thrust, he wanted to beat him at something Tom considered worthwhile.
“Okay,” he said carelessly, “dig out a couple of sabers, then.”
Tom laughed in surprise. “All right! You want to lose at something that counts, eh?” He swerved toward the saber-and-épée cabinet, digging in his pocket for his keys.
“Something ... not too abstract,” said Frank. “Hell, you’d probably be good at chess, too, if you could always use pieces that were made to look like little people.”
Tom Strand had found the right key, and he unlocked the cabinet and swung its door open. “Well,” he began, his smile a little forced now, “at least—at least I—”
“And if they bleated when you knocked them over,” Frank went on, “like those little perforated cans they give to kids, where each one makes the noise of the animal whose picture’s on the outside. A bishop could, like, make praying noises when you tipped him over, and the queen could yell rape or something—”
Tom selected a saber and then looked at Frank. He was squinting in what Frank had come to recognize as his man-of-the-world style. “Take a flight a few thousand feet over Munson,” he advised. “The streets look as ordered and geometrical as a checkerboard. But then come down and look closer.” He whirled his saber through the air fast enough to make it whistle. “The universe is one big jungle, and you’ve got to—”
“I know,” said Frank wearily as he took a left-handed blade for himself, “become a jungle creature to survive. I bet you use camouflage-pattern condoms.”
Tom laughed delightedly, and then winked at Frank. “You think it’s my idea? They demand ’em.”
“Snake women you hang out with,” said Frank. “They’d like you even better with a set of rattles.”
The conversation deteriorated even further then as their friendship and humor smoothed over the momentary edginess, and soon they were masked and slashing enthusiastically at each other as they stamped back and forth along one of the fencing strips. Frank beat Tom in the first bout, and in the second one they lost track of the score and just fenced until Frank had to leave to meet his father and ride to the palace.
Tom Strand hadn’t, this time, wielded the saber as if he were trying to beat dust out of a carpet, and as Frank rode home he reflected that even Tom was beginning to realize that it could be a civilized sport.
SOMEONE in a nearby cell whimpered now in the darkness, and Frank wondered whether the man’s nightmare could possibly be worse than what he’d presently be waking up to. Frank remembered young Costa’s grunt of effort as he drove the blade of his dress sword into his own father’s belly; a civilized sport, he thought.