Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

Conn Materazzi pressed on and Cale blocked, high to this thrust, low to the next, always moving back. Finally Conn had forced him against the wall and there was no retreating for Cale. Now that he had him trapped, Conn stepped back, covering any movement Cale could make to either side.

“You fight the way a dog bites,” he said to Cale. But Cale’s expression, flat and without emotion, did not change. It was as if he hadn’t heard.

Conn moved from side to side and made a few elegant passes signaling to those watching that he was now preparing to kill. His heart surged, shocked by the ecstasy of knowing he would never be the same again.

By now another twenty soldiers, archers among them, had come into the garden and had been drawn up by the sergeant-at-arms in a semicircle a few yards back from the fight. The sergeant could see, along with everyone else, where this was going. Despite Conn’s orders, he knew very well there would have been trouble if any harm had come to him. He felt truly sorry for the boy pinned back against the wall as Conn raised his sword for his last stroke. But Conn held it there waiting-searching out the fear in Cale’s eyes. But Cale’s expression never changed-blank and absent as if there was no soul inside him anymore.

Get on with it, you little shit, thought the sergeant.

Then Conn struck. It is not possible to say how fast The Edge cut through the air-lightning moved slowly compared to it. Cale did not block the blow this time-he simply moved to one side, barely at all. The stroke of the sword missed-but only by the breadth of a gnat’s wing. Then another stroke and another miss. Then a jab that Cale sidestepped, snake-fast though it was.

Then, for the first time, Cale struck a blow himself. Conn parried, but only just. Stroke after stroke now pushed him backward until they were almost back where the fight started. Conn was breathing heavily now, and growing fear made him gasp the harder-his body, unused to the terror and presence of death, rebelled against his great skill and years of training; nerves frayed and guts melted.

Then Cale stopped.

He stepped back out of striking range and looked Conn up and down. There was a beat of a second or two, and then a desperate Conn struck once more, The Edge hissing as it cut the air. But Cale was moving even before the blow began, blocking The Edge with one knife and stabbing the other deep into Conn’s shoulder.

With a cry of pain and shock, Conn dropped the sword as Cale twisted him around and held him around the neck with his forearm, pointing the remaining knife at Conn’s stomach.

“Keep still,” he whispered softly in Conn’s ear, and then loudly to the soldiers as they moved to stop him. “As you are or I’ll butterfly the little creep,” and he gave Conn a sharp jab in the stomach to make his point. The sergeant, terrified now, motioned his men to stop.

Throughout all this Cale had been squeezing Conn around the neck ever harder so that he could not breathe. Again he whispered in his ear.

“Just before you go, Boss, something to take with you: fighting isn’t an art.”

With that Conn collapsed into unconsciousness and hung limply from Cale’s now loosening grip around his neck.

“He’s still alive, Sergeant, but he won’t be if you do anything courageous. I’m going to pick up the sword-so behave yourself.”

Taking Conn’s considerable weight, Cale slowly sank down and reached for The Edge. Once it was in his grasp, he stood up again, keeping a weather eye on the soldiers. More were coming in through the outer gates now, until there must have been nearly a hundred.

“Where are you going to go, son?” said the sergeant.

“You know,” said Cale, “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

It was then that Vague Henri shouted down from the roof.

“Promise you won’t hurt him and he’ll let him go.”

Startled, the soldiers responded to this first attempt at negotiation with three arrows in Henri’s direction. Vague Henri ducked and disappeared from view.

“Delay that!” shouted the sergeant. “Next one who moves without an order gets fifty and a year cleaning the shithouse!”

He turned back to Cale. “What about it, son? Let him go and you’ll come to no harm.”

“And after?”

“I can’t say. I’ll do what I can. I’ll tell them these boys were moithering you-whether they’ll listen… What choice do you have?”

“Cale! Do what he says,” shouted Vague Henri from the roof, careful this time to let only his head show over the roof’s edge.

Cale waited for a moment, although it was perfectly clear what he had to do. Taking The Edge away from Conn’s throat, he carefully looked around for somewhere to place it. He was in luck. Just two steps back, which he took with extreme care, there was an old part of the wall at just below knee height where two enormous foundation stones met. He slipped The Edge between the two stones to a depth of about ten inches.

“What are you doing, boy?” called out the sergeant.

And with that Cale dropped the unconscious Conn Materazzi to the ground, turned to the sword and with all his strength pushed it against the weight of the great stones. The Edge, perhaps the greatest sword in the history of all the world, bent then snapped with a sound of a bell being struck-PING!

There was a gasp from the soldiers as if from one person: Cale looked at the sergeant then calmly dropped the broken half of The Edge he was still holding. The sergeant walked toward him, taking a chain and lock from one of the soldiers next to him.

“Turn around, boy.”

Cale did as he was told. As the sergeant cuffed his hands, he said softly in Cale’s ear, “That’s the last stupid thing you’ll ever do, son.”

One of the physician soldiers-one to every sixty men in the Materazzi army-was checking the unconscious Conn. He nodded to the sergeant and then went to check the others. Now Arbell Swan-Neck burst into the ring that surrounded Cale and knelt down next to Conn, checking his pulse. Satisfied, she stood up and looked at Cale, now pinioned between two soldiers. He stared back at her, expressionless and calm.

“I don’t suppose you’ll forget me a second time,” he said, and with that he was dragged off by the soldiers. It was then that Cale had a stroke of luck. Vague Henri had not been alone on the roof. Just as curious, if less worried about what might happen to Cale, Kleist had followed Vague Henri. As soon as the fight had started Vague Henri had told Kleist to try to bring Albin.

Kleist had found Albin in the only place he knew where to look for him. In a moment he was out of his office door and calling for his men to go with him. And so it was that Albin arrived just as four soldiers were dragging Cale out of the garden and heading for the city jail, a place where he would have been lucky to make it through the night.

“We’ll take care of this now,” said Albin, backed by ten of his men dressed in their uniform of black waistcoats and black bowler hats.

“The sergeant-at-arms told us to take him to the jail,” said the most senior of the soldiers.

“I am Captain Albin of Internal Affairs and responsible for security in the Citadel-so hand him over or else.”

Albin’s commanding presence as well as the ten hard-looking “bulldogs,” as they were not at all affectionately known, had cowed the soldiers, who were rarely allowed in the Citadel and were instantly ill at ease when challenged in such a strange place. Nevertheless the senior soldier tried once more.

“I’ll have to ask the sergeant-at-arms.”

“Ask who you like, but he’s our prisoner and he’s coming with us now.” With that, Albin nodded his men forward and the disadvantaged soldiers uncertainly let Cale be taken. The senior soldier nodded to one of the others and he legged it back into the garden to fetch help-but by then the bulldogs had taken Cale and, picking him up, had started making their way into the labyrinth of alleys that wound in and out of the Citadel. By the time help arrived, they had vanished.