His voice sounded oddly nasal. He must still be suffering from that headbutt the captain had dealt him. It was only logical, thought Alatriste, that Saldaña should take his escape and the deaths of those catchpoles as a personal affront, and it was only fitting that his comrade from Flanders should want to resolve it man to man.
“This isn’t the moment,” he said.
Saldaña replied in a slow, calm, reproachful voice:
“You seem to be forgetting who you’re talking to, Diego.”
The steel blade still glinted before him. The captain raised his sword a little, hesitated, then lowered it again.
“I don’t want to fight you. Your constable’s staff of office isn’t worth it.”
“I’m not carrying it with me tonight.”
Alatriste bit his lip, his fears confirmed. Saldaña was clearly not prepared to let him leave without a fight.
“Listen,” he said, making one last effort. “I’m very close to sorting everything out. There’s someone I have to meet . . .”
“I don’t care a fig who you have to meet. You and I never finished our last meeting.”
“Just forget about it for this one night. I promise I’ll come back and explain.”
“Who’s asking you to explain?”
Alatriste sighed and ran two fingers over his mustache. They knew each other too well. There was nothing to be done. He adopted the en garde position, and Saldaña took a step back, readying himself. There was very little light, but enough for them to be able to see the blades of their swords. It was, thought the captain sadly, almost as dark as it had been on that morning when Martín Saldaña, Sebastián Co-pons, Lope Balboa, himself, and another five hundred Spanish soldiers cried out “Forward, Spain!,” made the sign of the cross, and then swarmed out of the trenches to climb the embankment in their assault on the del Caballo redoubt, in Ostend, an assault from which only half returned.
“Come on,” he said.
There was an initial clash of steel, and Saldaña immediately made a circling movement with his sword and stepped away from the wall so as to have more freedom of movement. Alatriste knew who he was dealing with; they had been comrades-in-arms and had often practiced fencing together using buttoned fleurets. His opponent was a cool and skillful swordsman. The captain lunged forward, hoping to wound quickly and unceremoniously. Saldaña, however, drawing back to gain space, parried the thrust, then sprang forward. Alatriste had to move away from the wall—which had gone from being refuge to obstacle—and as he did so, momentarily lost sight of his opponent’s sword. He whirled around, lashing out violently, searching for the other blade in the darkness. Suddenly he saw it coming straight at him. He parried with a back-edged cut and retreated, cursing to himself. Although the darkness made them equal, leaving a great deal to luck, he was nevertheless the better swordsman, and it should simply be a matter of wearing Saldaña out. The only problem with that strategy was that there was no knowing how long it would be before, despite Saldaña’s intention to act alone, a patrol of catchpoles heard the sound of fighting and rushed to the aid of their leader.
“I wonder who your widow will hand the constable’s staff of office to next?”
He asked this as he was taking two steps back to recover his advantage and his breath. He knew that Saldaña was as placid as an ox in all matters but those concerning his wife. Then passion blinded him. Any jokes about how she had got him the post in exchange for favors granted to third parties—as malicious tongues would have it—quickened his pulse and clouded his reason. “With any luck,” thought Alatriste, “this will help me resolve the matter quickly.” He adjusted his grip, parried a thrust, withdrew a little to draw his opponent in, and, when their blades clashed again, he noticed that Saldaña already seemed less confident. He decided to return to the attack.
“I imagine she’ll be inconsolable,” he said, striking again, every sense alert. “She’ll doubtless wear deepest mourning.”
Saldaña did not reply, but he was breathing hard and muttered a curse when the furious barrage he had just unleashed slashed only thin air, sliding off the captain’s blade.
“Cuckold,” said Alatriste calmly, then waited.
Now he had him. He sensed him coming toward him in the dark, or rather he knew it from the gleam of steel from his sword, the sound of frantic footsteps, and the rancorous roar Saldaña let out as he attacked blindly. Alatriste parried the blow, allowed Saldaña to attempt a furious reverse cut, then, halfway through that maneuver—when he judged that the constable would still have his weight on the wrong foot—turned his wrist, and with a forward thrust, cleanly skewered his opponent’s chest.
He withdrew the blade and, while he was cleaning it on his cloak, stood looking down at Saldaña’s body—a vague shape on the ground. Then he sheathed his sword and knelt beside the man who had been his friend. For some strange reason, he felt neither remorse nor sorrow, only a profound weariness and a desire to blaspheme loudly. He moved closer, listening. He could hear the other man’s weak, irregular breathing, as well as another far more worrying sound: a bubbling of blood and the whistle of air entering and leaving the wounded man’s lung. He was in a bad way, that foolish, stubborn man.
“Damn you,” Alatriste said and, tearing a clean piece of cloth from the sleeve of his doublet, he felt for the wound in Saldaña’s chest. It was about two fingers wide. He stuffed as much as he could of the handkerchief into the wound to staunch the bleeding. Then he rolled Saldaña onto his side and, ignoring his groans, felt his back; he found no exit wound, however, nor any blood other than that flowing from his chest.
“Can you hear me, Martín?”
Martín replied in a feeble voice that he could.
“Try not to cough or to move.”
He lifted Saldaña’s head and placed beneath it the wounded man’s own cloak, folded up by way of a pillow, to prevent the blood rising up from his lungs to his throat and choking him. “How am I?” he heard Martín say. The last word was drowned in a thick, liquid cough.
“Not too good. If you cough, you’ll bleed to death.”
Saldaña nodded weakly and lay still, his face in shadow, his pierced lung making an ominous noise each time he breathed. He nodded again a moment later, when Alatriste glanced impatiently from side to side and announced that he had to go.
“I’ll see if I can find someone to help you,” he said. “Do you want a priest as well?”
“Don’t talk such . . . nonsense.”
Alatriste stood up.
“You might pull through.”
“I might.”
The captain moved off, but heard the wounded man calling him. He went back and knelt down again.
“What is it, Martín?”
“You didn’t mean . . . what you said . . . did you?”
Alatriste found it hard to open his mouth to speak. His lips felt dry, as if stuck together, and when he spoke, his lips hurt him, as if the skin on them were tearing.
“No, of course I didn’t.”
“Bastard.”
“You know me. I took the easy path.”
Saldaña was gripping his arm now, as if all the strength of his battered body were concentrated in his fingers.
“You just wanted to make me angry, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It was just . . . just a trick.”
“Of course. A trick.”
“Swear that it was.”
“I swear.”
Saldaña’s wounded chest was racked by a painful cough, or perhaps laughter.
“I knew it . . . you bastard . . . I knew it.”
Alatriste stood up and wrapped his own cloak around him. Now that his blood had cooled and after the physical exertion of the fight, he was conscious of the chill night air, or perhaps it wasn’t just the night air.