'You,' someone yelled behind him. 'Turn and fight, you thieving bastard.'
Not the sort of voice he'd have expected: high, slightly shrill, a deep-voiced woman or a boy. No point speculating in ignorance; he turned round and saw a boy, maybe fourteen years old and tall for his age. He was wearing a mail shirt-fine quality, junior size, what the well-dressed nobleman's son was wearing to the wars these days-and a gilded helmet with enamel and niello decoration, all in excellent taste. And he was holding a sword-short-bladed, regulation length for concealed carry for a sword-monk, just the right size for a kid's two-hander. The boy was standing in a second-position upper-back guard straight out of the coaching manual, and scowling at him horribly.
Poldarn relaxed. 'Piss off,' he said.
The boy seemed shocked by the bad language, but not deterred from his grim purpose. 'I said stand and fight,' he piped, 'or I'll cut you down like a dog.'
It was the first good laugh Poldarn had had in a while, and he indulged himself. That didn't please the boy at all. 'Right,' he said, 'I warned you'. He took a big stride forward, sweeping the sword up and round his head in the approved circular movement.
It was at this point that Poldarn thought about something Gain Aciava had said; about being young sword-monks, and training at fencing since they were kids. The boy, he suddenly realised, seemed to know exactly what he was doing; and there Poldarn was, a nice large target for cutting practice, armed with nothing but a hatchet.
He jumped sideways in time, but only just; the sword blade sliced the air where he'd been just a moment ago, and if he'd still been there, it would have severed his leg artery. I wonder, Poldarn thought, as he danced out of the way of another pretty respectable cut, I wonder if I was this good when I was his age? No, because I was still at Haldersness. Aciava, maybe? Assuming he was telling the truth An inch-and-degree-perfect sixth-grade rising cut next, and Poldarn made a mess of the avoid. There was just time to block it with the handle of the axe (but clumsy and shameful; the block is the last resort, the admission of failure) and take a standing jump backwards without time to see what he was likely to be landing on. Unfortunate, since he pitched on a large chunk of flint, jarring his ankle and losing his balance; the boy was at him with a good clean middle cut and he had to block again, this time with the poll of the hatchet. He could feel the sword's edge cut the soft iron of the poll, and recognised that he'd been lucky not to have the axe knocked out of his hand.
Bastard, he thought. Go pick on someone your own size.
He could see the boy earnestly concentrating, as if the youngster was playing a difficult new flute piece for his proud mother and father. As Poldarn stumbled backwards, feeling his crocked ankle unreliable under his weight, he tried to remember; if he'd been a sword-monk he must have taken the same classes, learned the same drills, memorised the same precepts of religion, which set down in firm, definitive terms the infallible techniques for dealing with such a situation without killing or being killed. Defence is no defence; strength is weakness; resistance is surrender. He could almost hear the words, though where they were coming from was another matter entirely. Thought is confusion; the winning fight is no fight; wisdom is an empty mind. Wonderful stuff, but what the hell did it all mean?
The boy swung at him again, and Poldarn could see two circles in the air, his own and the boy's, about to collide. He scrambled backwards but his ankle gave way; as he slumped to the ground he instinctively put out his right hand to steady himself, and as his wrist took his weight he felt something give in his forearm, just above the elbow. At some point he must have shifted the axe into his left hand, because there it was; and there was a fine killing shot, a peck to the right temple, avoiding the space that the sword blade would be occupying, blocking the boy's right arm with his left elbow, he could see it as plain as a sketch in the manual of arms; but he couldn't do that, kill a thirteen-year-old kid just because of his own clumsiness in ricking his ankle on a stone. There had to be a non-lethal defence, he knew there was one but he couldn't, at that precise moment, recall what it was. I wish, he thought, I wish I had my memory back The boy cut him. For a thin sliver of time Poldarn panicked, but the moment didn't last. It was just a nick, the very tip of the blade tracing the skin over his cheekbone, a trivial scratch. Another hop-and-skip backwards, disentangling the circles; step back into safety, keep away, keep the danger out of his circle-and he could hear that same voice in his mind: safety is danger, danger is safety; if he can reach you, you can reach him. Let live and die; kill and live. Precepts of religion. There was an empty space in his mind, where the tallow had been melted out, but its shape defined all the other shapes around him, just as the past shapes the present and the present shapes the future.
The past shapes the future; action is self-betrayal. Poldarn stepped back once more, feeling the slimy mud of the stream under his heel, and at that moment he saw the boy shuffle forwards and sideways, toe leading, heel dragging; and at the same moment that he saw the lad lift his arms, he saw the cut as well, as though it had already happened; he saw the answer to the question at the same moment as the question itself, as if he'd broken into Father Tutor's study and peeked at the next day's test paper. The answer was one step forward, right into the middle of the opposing circle-safe as safe could be, because he could see the boy's sword coming down even as he was lifting it, and all he needed to do was edge out of its way, and In religion there is no in between; only the sword before and the sword after.
Poldarn hadn't known the answer, because the question and the answer were simultaneous; he made the move before he knew what it was, because in religion there is no moment in between knowledge and action. As the axe blade, sliding through the gap in the boy's guard, sliced through the youth's jugular vein on the push-stroke, the answer became apparent. Strength is weakness-Poldarn hadn't fought back, because he was older and stronger than the boy. Let live and die; kill and live.
It was a messy answer. Poldarn felt the heat of the blood as it splashed across his face like a duellist's glove. The light went out in the boy's eyes, and he stopped, like a mistake abruptly corrected; then he dropped straight down into the mud beside the stream, an untidy pile of joined-together limbs.
Shit, Poldarn thought. Made a right hash of that.
Not the first time, either.
He stepped back, felt his ankle fade and give way, and ended up sprawled on his backside, spine painfully jarred, a mess. Not the first time; I've done this before. Years ago, I killed a kid the same age as this one, in the same way exactly. That's how I knew what he was about to do before he did it; because I was remembering the last time. Precisely the same: the absolute precision of the drill hall (a floor divided into a grid by scored lines deeply engraved in the slate flagstones, each square and each junction lettered and numbered; Father Tutor calling out coordinates and the designation of each stance, ward, cut, move, his eyes shut, the whole duel worked out beforehand for both sides, so that in effect it had already happened before it began-)
(Suppose there's no such thing as learning, or intuition, or skill, or thought. Suppose instead that it's all just memory; suppose that every cut and counter-cut and parry and block is just recollection of the same fight fought out a lifetime ago. Suppose the draw is religion, the sword before and the sword after, because when the hand closes around the hilt, the sword has already been drawn and swung, and the skin cut open. Suppose that nothing is learned-languages, names, skills, facts-only remembered from the last time round, which was nothing more than a memory of the time before that, the same sequence of moves repeated over and over at the instructor's word of command until they're perfect, and that's religion.)