Rix stepped away from the table and, at Murdac’s command, he saluted me with his beautiful sword, holding the hilt to his brow for a moment, before sweeping it into the first position of the serious swordsman: en garde!
‘Get over to Murdac,’ I muttered over my shoulder to Hanno, without taking my eyes off Rix. ‘Grab him; hold him fast; keep him out of the fight. I’ll handle this one alone — I made a vow to St Michael to cut down this long streak of shit, and I mean to honour it.’
I felt Hanno move away from me in the direction of the big bed and I took a step towards Rix. With no preliminaries at all, I swung my blade as hard and as fast as I could at his head. His sword leapt upwards and he parried my blow with a clang of steel. But I was already swiping low, aiming to sink my sword into his calf muscle. Miraculously, his long blade was there before mine, once again blocking my strike with ease. I lunged with all my speed at his chest; he nonchalantly flicked my blade out of the target area and it slid past his left arm into space.
Then he attacked: a feint at my body, then another, followed by a lightning strike at my throat. By God, he was fast; much faster than me. By sheer luck I managed to avoid being spitted on his sword, sweeping my own blade up just in time. I deflected his lunge into the air above my left shoulder and counterattacked, against his right, hoping for a score on his sword-arm that would slow his terrifying speed. But, once again, he swept my blow away almost contemptuously.
I could hear muffled thumps and yelps coming from the four-poster bed, but I dared not look away from Rix, even for a moment. I thrust again at his chest, and he swatted me away. I hacked low; he merely stepped back. Then he attacked once more, striking left and right, high and low, his weapon a lethal silver blur, and it was all I could do to keep his sword point out of my flesh. It occurred to me then, in a blinding moment of clarity, that I was going to lose this fight. He was the better swordsman; there was absolutely no doubt about it. I was giving ground slowly, making nothing of the fight; merely blocking, parrying, dodging and ducking. I was outclassed, overmatched — I was going to be cut to pieces.
We fought on almost in silence, the only sound the clang and clash of our blades, and the panting of my breath. As Rix stepped away momentarily and began to circle round to my right, I caught a glimpse of the four-poster. And saw my German friend, calmly sitting on the edge of the bed, the curtains drawn back, his arm curled around Ralph Murdac’s tousled little head, as one might carry a ball, his long knife at the Constable’s throat. Murdac was very pale, his crisp blue eyes under Hanno’s muscular arm were enlarged with fear, and a trickle of blood was leaking from his mouth. Hanno was frowning at me; he looked almost comically disappointed. But holding Murdac as he was, he could not easily release him and come to my aid against Rix. I could expect no help from that quarter.
I jerked my attention back to the fight just in time: Rix’s sword came lancing towards my eye and I parried and slashed at him wildly. He blocked and riposted, and I hacked again at his head with all the savagery in my soul. He merely ducked the blow. He was perfectly balanced, and as cool as a river trout. I, meanwhile, was red-faced and panting with exertion. I aimed another tremendous hack at his shoulder, which he blocked. His counter-stroke, a lunge at my heart, nearly skewered me, but I jumped backwards in the nick of time. My left foot landed on a fine bearskin rug, the rug skidded on the polished floor, and before I knew it I had landed painfully on my arse, and my sword was skittering and bouncing away across the shiny wooden floor to my right.
Rix stood over me. He smiled coldly, saluted me once again, and lifted his sword over his head. I was scrambling on my knees before him, staring up in shock and fear as his beautiful sword rose in the air, my hand reaching desperately for the bottom of my left leg…
My fumbling hand found the misericorde. The triangular blade slipped loose from its boot-sheath and I brought it up and struck like an angry viper, slamming it down in a hammer blow straight through Rix’s soft kidskin shoe, nailing his left foot securely to the wooden floor.
He screamed — he screamed one word, loud enough to wake the dead: ‘Miloooooooo!’
But I did not listen; I was scuttling away after my sword. I collected the weapon, regained my feet and, while Rix tried to turn right towards me, his long limbs tangled because of his pinioned foot, I stepped in to him, swung back and chopped the blade down hard into the angle between his neck and his left shoulder, giving it all my strength, and cutting a foot deep into his chest cavity. For a shaved moment, I caught a glimpse of grey flabby lungs deep in his gasping purple torso before the blood welled and filled his chest.
And he was down.
I tugged my sword loose from the shattered bones and meat of his thorax, and only just in time. There was movement from the far side of the room, a curtain was torn back — it was the heavy curtain that covered the entrance to Murdac’s privy — and out of that dank passageway stumped the ogre, Perkin’s killer, Adam’s assassin, walking on one good leg and one wooden one. The half-man whom I had believed I had stamped to death in the list in the outer bailey five months ago was resurrected. Milo was doing up his broad belt, and staring about him with bovine stupidity.
Time is a strange beast: some moments seem to last for ever, yet others go by in a flash. I felt as if I had been fighting Rix for hours, but I realized later that it can have been no longer than a hundred heartbeats or so, just the time it had taken for Milo — who was on the seat of ease in the privy — to finish his business, wipe himself, drop his tunic and do up his belt, and come to see what all the clang and clatter was about in Murdac’s chamber.
Milo saw me standing over the bloody dead body of his friend, blinked, scowled, gave a feral shout — and charged. And though his left leg, above the knee, had been replaced with a strappedon leather cup attached to the stump of his thigh, and a stout bar of wood to walk on, he moved at a pretty decent lick. I knelt quickly beside the tall swordsman’s gory corpse and picked up his lovely weapon with my left hand; then I stood to meet the ogre’s hobbling charge, a sword in each fist.
In the three heartbeats before he reached me, I had time to notice that he still bore the marks from our battle in the lists on his face. He had but one good eye; small and piggish, and glaring with bottomless rage, and his hairless head was a crumpled mass of scar tissue from the battering my boots had given him, all yellow and shiny and furrowed, with barely any recognizable features at all. A flashing image of Nur came into my head: and indeed they would have made a pretty pair. His head was like a ball of beeswax that has melted after being placed to warm too near the fire. He looked even more monstrous than he had before our battle. Yet I was amazed that he lived at all, for I had been sure that I had stamped his vital spark to extinction — but live he did, and now he sought revenge.
When Milo was a mere yard from me, I twisted to my right out of his path like the Saracen dancers I had seen in Outremer, twirling in a complete circle, fast, and hacking down hard on his outstretched left arm with Rix’s gorgeous sword. The blade sliced clean through the thick knotted muscle and solid bone just below his elbow, cutting away his forearm with a single blow and leaving him, roaring with pain, the blood jetting from the stump. But I wasted no time in gloating at his injury; instead, continuing my twisting manoeuvre, I found myself behind him and cut down with a smooth sweep into the slab of solid muscle of his right thigh using the plain old sword in my right hand. There was not enough power in my strike to cut through that knotted limb, but he did fall to his knees squealing with pain.