“It’s not worth it,” he said, guessing what was in my mind.
I kept walking. The wound in my back was intensely painful, but I was still full of energy. I advanced farther. Malatesta shook his head as if in disbelief at my folly. Then he gave a faint smile, retreated another step, repressing a grimace of pain, and readied himself. Very cautiously I tested him out, the ends of our blades touching, while I sought some way of getting under his guard. He, the more experienced, merely waited. He may have been injured, but, as we both knew, he was by far the more skillful swordsman. I, however, felt almost intoxicated, enclosed in a kind of gray bubble that fogged my judgment. Here he was, and I had my sword in my hand.
He dropped his guard for a moment, as if carelessly, but I could see it was a trick, and so remained where I was, not attacking, elbow bent and the hilt of my sword on a level with my eyes, watching for a genuine opening. The rain continued to fall, and I was taking care not to slip in the mud, for I would not survive long if I did.
“You’ve grown prudent, boy.”
He was smiling, and I knew his intent was to draw me in. I resisted. Now and then, I wiped the rain from my eyes with the back of my knife hand, but always kept my eyes trained on him.
Behind me, amongst the trees and the scrub, I could hear someone calling my name. The captain was looking for us. I called out to him so that he could find us. Meanwhile, from beneath the hair clinging to his face in the rain, the Italian’s eyes darted to and fro, looking for some way out. In a flash, I lunged forward.
The whoreson was good, though, very good, and very skilled. He effortlessly parried a thrust that would have run a lesser man through, and when he counterattacked, he dealt me a back-edged cut so close to my eyes that had his injured leg not held him back, I would have taken a five-inch wound to my face. He managed to disarm me, however, sending my sword flying several feet. I didn’t even think to cover myself with my dagger, but stood there frozen like a startled hare, waiting for the coup de grâce. Then I saw Malatesta’s face contract in pain; he suppressed a howl of rage, involuntarily retreated two steps, only to have his bad leg fail him again.
He fell backward and sat down in the mud, his sword in his hand and a curse on his lips. For a moment, we looked at each other, me stunned and him shaken. It was an absurd situation. Finally, I managed to get a grip on myself and ran over to fetch my sword, which lay at the foot of a tree. When I stood up, Malatesta, still sitting on the ground, made a rapid movement; something whisked past me like a metallic flash of lightning, and a dagger fixed itself, quivering, in the trunk, only a few inches from my face.
“Something to remember me by, boy.”
I went over to him, determined now to run him through, and he saw this in my eyes. Then he threw his sword into the bushes and leaned back a little, resting on his elbows.
“I’m having a very bad day today,” he said.
I approached cautiously, and with the point of my sword checked his clothes, looking for concealed weapons. Then I placed the point on his chest, just above his heart. His wet hair, the rain dripping down his face, and the dark rings under his eyes made him look suddenly very weary and much older.
“Don’t do it,” he murmured softly. “Best leave it to him.”
He was looking at the bushes behind me. I heard footsteps splashing through the mud, and Captain Alatriste appeared at my side, breathing hard. Fast as a bullet and without a word, he hurled himself on the Italian. He grabbed him by the hair, set aside his sword, took out his huge hunting knife, and held it to Malatesta’s throat.
A rapid thought went through my mind—or, rather, I saw the captain and me in the woods, and remembered the count-duke’s stern countenance, the Count of Guadalmedina’s hostility toward us, and the august personage we had left behind us with only Rafael de Cózar as escort. Without Malatesta as witness, there would be a lot of explaining to do, and we might not have answers to all the questions. This realization filled me with sudden panic. I grabbed my master’s arm.
“He’s my prisoner, Captain.”
He appeared not to hear me. His stubborn face was hard, resolute, deadly. His eyes, which appeared gray in the rain, seemed to be made of the same steel as the knife he was holding. I saw the muscles, veins, and tendons in his hand tense, ready to plunge the knife in.
“Captain!”
I almost flung myself on top of Malatesta. My master pushed me roughly away, his free hand raised to strike me. His eyes pierced me as if I were the one he was about to stab. Again I cried out:
“He surrendered to me! He’s my prisoner!”
It was like a nightmare: the wet and the dirt, the soaking rain, the mud, the struggle, the captain’s agitated breathing, Malatesta’s breath only inches from my face. The captain again made as if to lunge forward, and only by dint of brute strength did I stop the knife following its inevitable path.
“Someone,” I said, “will have to explain to the powers that be exactly what happened.”
My master still did not take his eyes off Malatesta, who had his head thrown right back as he awaited the final blow, teeth gritted.
“I don’t want you and me to be tortured like pigs,” I said.
This was true. The mere idea terrified me. Finally, I felt the captain untense, although his hand still gripped the knife. It was as if the meaning of my words were gradually seeping into him. Malatesta had already understood. “Damn it, boy,” he exclaimed. “Let him kill me!”
EPILOGUE
Álvaro de la Marca, Count of Guadalmedina, held out a mug of wine to Captain Alatriste.
“You must have a devil of a thirst on you,” he said.
The captain took the mug from him. We were sheltering on the porch steps of the hunting lodge, surrounded by royal guards armed to the teeth. The rain was beating down on the blankets covering the bodies of the four ruffians who had died in the forest. The fifth, after his battering by Rafael de Cózar, had sustained a gash to the head and a couple of minor stab wounds and been carried away, more dead than alive, on an improvised litter. Gualterio Malatesta received special treatment. The captain and I watched as he departed, in shackles, on a miserable mule, guarded on all sides. He rode past, dirty and defeated, and looked at us with inexpressive eyes as if he had never seen us before in his life. I remembered his last words to us in the woods, the captain’s knife pressed to his throat. And he was right. When I imagined what awaited him—the interrogation and the torture to make him reveal all that he knew about the conspiracy—he would, I thought, have been better off dead.
“I believe,” added Guadalmedina, lowering his voice a little, “that I owe you an apology.”
He had just emerged from the hunting lodge after a long conversation with the king. My master took a sip of wine and did not respond. He seemed very tired, his hair disheveled, his face muddy and worn, his clothes torn and sodden after the fighting. He turned his cold, green eyes first on me and then on Cózar, who was sitting a little farther off, on a bench on the porch; he had a blanket draped over his shoulders and was smiling beatifically. His face was crisscrossed with scratches, he had a gash on his forehead, and a large black eye. He, too, had been given wine to drink, which he dispatched with alacrity; indeed, he already had three mugfuls under his belt. He was clearly very happy, bursting with pride and wine in his ripped doublet. He occasionally hiccupped, cried “Long live the king!,” roared like a lion, or else misquoted to himself fragments from Lope’s Peribañez and the Comendador of Ocaña: