‘You have no choice,’ I said. ‘It’s the King’s Law.’
‘For matters of personal dispute, yes, but I don’t think killing you is going to make any difference to the Duchess, so I’ll have to settle for the wagons.’
I smiled at him and spoke loudly and clearly. ‘You’re absolutely right, Cunien. You have more men than us, and you’ll get your wagons. Of course, we’ll take out a few of your men. Brasti is the best bowman here by far, and we have a pistol. And Kest and I will take out a few before we go down. But what price is that compared to you having to fight a duel with me? You win, you get the wagons without a fight; I win, you let us go. But really, why take a chance on being beaten when I’m sure your men are more than willing to die to protect your pride.’
Cunien glared at me. ‘Gods, Falcio, you always were a talker, weren’t you?’
‘I think, if you give it a chance, you’ll find my blade speaks more eloquently than my tongue.’
He raised his longsword. ‘Very well, then. I always did want to see if I could beat the man who supposedly bested Kest in a fight.’
I let my rapier out of its scabbard and stepped into first guard. ‘I am at your disposal,’ I said.
Cunien didn’t adopt a guard position but walked casually around me, forcing me to change my position.
‘I have to be honest with you, Falcio,’ he said softly, almost soothingly. ‘I used to look up to you – but now all I see is a man who is a little too old and a little too soft for this kind of work. I don’t think you have the fire in your belly any more.’
‘Hey, Cunien,’ Brasti called out. ‘I don’t suppose you have an axe, do you?’
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
Cunien aimed his point low and walked straight towards me, spinning his sword up and around in a ribbon-cut at the last second. The blade came at my neck but I lunged forward on the diagonal to my left and let it pass by without parrying it. I tried an inside thrust to his sword arm, but he brought his weapon back with a hard downwards parry that almost knocked my rapier out of my hand.
Fine, then: he wanted to get the pleasantries out of the way.
I let the point drop down and continued its motion into a windmill, bringing the blade down on his head. His own sword snaked up on a slant and caught the cut, coming back down at my own head. I lifted my rapier up with the blade parallel to the earth and we locked blades. He grabbed my sword wrist so that I wouldn’t be able to free my blade and I did the same to him and we struggled against each other for a moment.
‘This is pleasant enough,’ Cunien said, ‘but if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with it.’
I lifted my left heel to kick his knee out, which forced him to step back and loosen his grip on my wrist. We separated again, and that allowed us to get the real conversation started.
He came at me with a harlot’s foible, a straight-on thrust that turns at the last instant to avoid the parry and returns to strike the same target. I wasn’t sure if he was serious about it so I let it through and stepped by to avoid the point. He did it again and so I circled my sword counter to his, which allowed me to envelop his blade for a moment and push it out of line. I struck side-bladed towards his chest, which would have given him a nasty cut and pushed him off-balance if he had let it through. The side-blade attack was a question, which he answered by ducking and slapping the blade up with the back of his gloved hand. So the answer was no, then.
I tried again with a feint-cut to his left thigh, pulling back the point just before his downwards parry to let his blade pass before I thrust in. The move is called the snake’s tongue, and he looked genuinely surprised by it. He responded with a half-turn, followed by several swift cuts aimed at my arms and legs, all of which I beat back easily.
And the conversation continued.
We went on like this for some time, and then I saw him leave a small opening on his right leg and I knew it was time to end this. I came in high towards his head and let him beat my blade aside with his longsword before making a hard horizontal cut at my neck. At the last instant I swung onto my back leg and dropped down into a low crouch and speared his exposed calf. He gave a yell and dropped his sword, which hit me on the top of the head. I almost stabbed him again for that, but I suppose fair’s fair.
‘Yield. It’s decided,’ I said, pulling the point of my blade out of his calf.
Cunien fell down on the ground and I saw his men tense up.
‘Stand down,’ he shouted. ‘Stand down. Fair’s fair, and this has been decided.’
His men, shabby and poor as they were, obeyed as quickly as any soldiers would have.
I sheathed my rapier and reached an arm down to help him up.
‘Damn, man,’ he said. ‘That hurts worse than I remember.’
‘You opened the target, not me. Besides, who drops his sword on another man’s head? I mean, truly, what kind of grace is that?’
Cunien smiled. ‘I couldn’t let you get away without a scrape.’ He turned and waved to Valiana. ‘Another day perhaps, my Lady! Don’t let Falcio seduce you with that fair tongue of his. If you must sleep with one of them, settle on Brasti. He has more experience.’ He turned back to his men and led them back into the forest.
‘I always liked him,’ Brasti said. ‘Good head on his shoulders.’
Feltock let out a sigh of relief and so did his men. They began moving the horses and packing up the wagons. Everyone kept their weapons out, though.
Aline was still standing there, looking at the forest, into which the brigands had vanished.
‘It’s all right, girl,’ Kest said. ‘They won’t come back.’
‘It’s not that,’ she replied.
‘What is it, then?’ I asked.
‘Well, at first I was scared – I thought you might be killed and we would lose the wagons.’
I chuckled. ‘Glad to hear you were so concerned for my safety.’
She ignored the comment.
‘But then the fight seemed to change – it didn’t look quite right to me.’
‘What do you mean?’ Brasti asked her.
‘I mean, it almost didn’t look like a fight at all. It was more like a conversation, like the blades were talking to each other.’
Kest, Brasti and I didn’t look at each other for a long moment.
‘And what do you think they said?’ Kest asked carefully.
She frowned. ‘It was hard to tell. At first it was like Falcio was asking questions and the brigand seemed to be saying “no”, and then they started going back and forth and it was too fast for me to follow.’
Brasti smiled and rumpled her hair. ‘Now there’s the mind of a silly girl at work,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave all this foolishness with swords aside and I’ll show you how to hold that bow of yours properly.’
She giggled for a second. ‘You can’t hold an imaginary bow properly or improperly. It’s just in your head.’
The way she switched from fearful to angry to childish so quickly worried me. What she had been through had been enough to drive a grown man or woman mad with terror, let alone a child, and I had no idea what this behaviour meant – or what we could do about it.
She and Brasti wandered back to the horses and Kest and I followed.
‘So,’ he said, speaking low, ‘what did Cunien have to say?’
THE PRINCESS AND THE PAUPER
‘Cunien’s looking for the King’s Charoites too,’ I said as Kest and I walked our horses behind the caravan. ‘He knew we weren’t supposed to be in this region. At first he genuinely believed we might have turned Duke’s Men.’
‘How many of us are left?’ Kest asked.
‘He didn’t know. He says he saw Quillata working a ship when he was in Cheveran.’