Себастьян Кастелл - Traitor's Blade

‘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?’

‘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.’

‘Quillata? In Cheveran? Doesn’t she hate water?’

‘I’m not sure if he meant her or not, now that I think about it. It was one of the original twelve, and a woman – so he might have meant Dara. You know it’s not a very precise language.’

‘So has he found any signs of the jewels?’

I sighed. ‘No. He’s been moving steadily north and found himself in a bit of a jam when he was taken by that band of brigands.’

‘So now he leads them?’

‘He convinced them he could provide them with a better living than his predecessor,’ I said.

‘How did he manage that?’

‘He killed his predecessor.’

Kest’s eyes narrowed, but I put up a hand. ‘He swears the man was a butcher and it was a fair fight. Anyway,’ I said, and stopped to pull Monster away from what was left of the bush she’d taken a fancy to. She gave me one of those strange growls of hers to remind me that we had a truce, not a relationship. ‘Anyway, Cunien’s band has grown solidly since he’s been able to keep them better fed and less wounded.’

‘He has the makings of a small army there,’ Kest mused.

‘Forty men, well trained and armed. But he’s moving them further north as he searches for word of the Charoites. Since we don’t know what they look like, they could be anywhere, and knowing King Paelis, they’re as likely to be in a small village as a great city.’

‘Has he managed to find out if there are more than one of these Charoites?’

‘No, but I suspect there is. Paelis liked to spread his bets, didn’t he?’

Kest looked at the twilight sky. ‘Falcio, how are we supposed to find these things? Five years now, we’ve been living on rumours and gossip and hope. What are the chances, really , that we’ll ever find anything?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, ‘but we’d better do it before the Dukes finally solidify their hold on the throne. This “Council of Regents” isn’t going to serve them half as well as a genuine Queen in their pocket. With Tremondi dead, and the possibility of the Greatcoats becoming wardens of the trade routes with him, there’s really nothing stopping them.’

‘Then why not kill Valiana and at least slow them down?’ Kest asked. I admired him for using her name when he was talking about murder.

‘Has it occurred to you that she is not actually the best choice?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if you had plotted for almost eighteen years to take over the kingdom with a puppet Princess as the sovereign, wouldn’t you – I don’t know – train her a little better?’