‘What’s your name?’ I asked the nearest of the three guards.
‘Silence!’ Shiballe said, before the guard could speak.
I ignored him. ‘My name is Falcio,’ I said.
‘You have no name, tatter-cloak!’ Shiballe said.
I kept my gaze on the guard. ‘My name is Falcio val Mond, and I am First Cantor of the Greatcoats. Do you know what that means?’ I asked.
The guard didn’t speak, but his mouth opened a little and, despite his efforts to stay still, he shook his head.
‘It means that no matter what else happens to me, no matter what happens to the girl, and no matter the little toy your fat friend is stroking, the man nearest to me when the light dies goes to whichever hell waits for men who would murder children.’
‘Stop talking to my men, tatter-cloak!’ Shiballe threw his nearly empty wine glass at me.
I congratulated myself on not flinching at all as it hit my right arm and fell to the street, shattering.
Shiballe’s men flinched, though.
‘My name is Falcio val Mond,’ I said again.
‘Say it again, I seem to forget,’ Shiballe snarled. ‘Come on, Trattari, what is your name?’
‘You know my name,’ I said softly, eyes still locked on the man in front of me.
‘No, really, I can’t remember it. Please do say it again.’
‘You know my name,’ I repeated.
The guard in front of me unconsciously mouthed my name. With the slightest of movements he shuffled back a few inches, putting him just slightly behind the second guard, who suddenly looked very uncomfortable. Good. They were scared. They’d be cautious when it started, and caution isn’t always a good thing in situations like this one.
‘The next man who moves a hair dies,’ Shiballe said, pointing his pistol at the second man.
‘Keep it on me,’ I said, and Shiballe jerked the pistol back towards me. I smiled just a little, for effect. ‘What’s my name?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember the names of dogs,’ Shiballe said.
‘You know my name.’
‘I’ll kill you right now, dog,’ he said, but it was largely an idle threat. No one in Rijou would violate the one law of the Blood Week, not even him. On the other hand, the last rays of the sun were just starting to fade out.
‘Girl,’ I said, ‘get six feet behind me and stay there until it’s done.’
She got up, and immediately started coughing, no doubt from the smoke she’d inhaled inside her home as it burned her mother and brothers to death, but she looked more dazed than scared as she shuffled a few feet behind me.
‘What’s my name?’ I asked the guards again.
‘Falcio,’ one of them muttered, and Shiballe almost used up his pistol on him right there, which would have made things much easier. But I knew I wasn’t going to be that lucky.
Shiballe looked over at the soft glow off the edges of the rooftops and smiled. ‘Another few seconds, tatter-cloak. Any last words?’
I smiled back at him. ‘Watch out for the arrow.’
And then the light winked out, a great bell rang, an arrow fell from the sky and all hells broke loose.
True to his word, Brasti had fired an arrow in my name when the sun died. I imagine he had stood up on the hill outside the first gate, hundreds of yards from where I now stood, and pulled Intemperance from the locking hook attached to his saddle. Intemperance was a greatbow, nearly six feet long and powerful enough to drive the head of an arrow deep into stone or brick, and more than enough to drive through plate-mail. It wasn’t suited to any kind of close fighting, but from a distance – well, from a distance it was like dropping thunderbolts from the sky.
Now I’ve said that Brasti almost never misses, but this was an impossible shot. To get the kind of distance required he’d have had to carefully factor the breeze and distance, and aim very nearly straight up into the sky, with just the tiniest tilt to ensure its giant arc would bring it down into the middle of the street in Rijou. An impossible shot, as I said, and I won’t try to turn legend into myth by telling you that he somehow managed to drop the arrow through Shiballe’s pistol hand (which would have been awfully nice.) But he did get it close enough to give the fat bastard a start so that Shiballe missed what should have been a sure shot. Instead, the ball from his pistol smashed into the ground between me and the nearest of the three guards, and the man very nearly fell into his neighbour as he lost his footing. I launched myself as high and hard as I could, my left elbow aiming for the first guard’s face even as my right hand drew a rapier from its sheath. If you’re wondering why I moved so quickly and didn’t so much as flinch first, the answer is simple: I’d spent the entire time standing there with Shiballe and his men, preparing for the unexpected. You see, it doesn’t matter how fast or skilled or clever you think you are; four armed men with their weapons out are always going to beat a single opponent, unless something happens to surprise them. Greatcoats carry a good number of things to surprise an opponent, but they don’t work very well if you can’t reach into your coat to get them. So if nothing unusual had happened, I’d doubtless have died before I got my first strike in. A small miracle came along, giving me the initiative, and I just needed to act.
The point of my elbow connected squarely with the bridge of the first guard’s nose. The other got his blade up in time to block my rapier, but he wasn’t my target. I let my point drop right under the guard of his war-sword and flicked it into the face of the third man. People always underestimate the reach of a rapier – trust me, it’s longer than it looks.
I heard the girl behind me scream and saw Shiballe reloading, but I ignored it. By the time he’d got that pistol ready I’d either have won or I’d be dead. I will admit that it’s a bit distracting to have someone a few feet away from you loading a weapon that would definitely kill you, but I had three other opponents to help keep me focused.
The second man – the one who’d tried to parry me – did a nicely professional job of spinning his block into a downwards vertical strike aimed at my left shoulder. Unfortunately for him, I tilted my body sideways and watched it sail down past my nose before stepping on it hard. Then I flicked the tip of my right rapier past the face of the third man again and drew my second rapier with my left hand, getting it out just in time to make an awkward parry against the first man (the one I’d elbowed in the face). He threw the weight of his own sword into a cut at my left side and I took it on the blade. The force of his blow bashed the side of my rapier against me, but it kept me from suffering more than bruised ribs. I pushed the guard of my rapier down hard to knock his weapon off balance.
Shiballe was pushing powder into his pistol when the girl foolishly tried to wrest it from his hands.
‘Aline, get away!’ I screamed, flicking the tips of both my rapiers up into the faces of my opponents to distract them.
The girl managed to spill Shiballe’s powder to the ground, but then he grabbed her wrists and flipped her around, getting his right arm around her neck.
‘Trattari!’ he shouted. ‘Drop your weapons, or I’ll snap her neck like a twig.’
Everyone froze. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that he’d do it, but this is where we get down to the mathematics of the situation. Think of it this way: Shiballe had three men; one, with a broken nose, was bleeding heavily and the other two were getting a little sloppy. Now, let’s say he breaks her neck right now: what happens? Well, I almost certainly launch myself at him, drive my sword into his fat belly and get killed by one of his men. Bad for me, bad for Shiballe – good for Shiballe’s men, but that’s poor consolation when you’ve got a sword buried in your stomach. The math doesn’t really suit Shiballe here.