nerve-wracking, as one soldier after another took position and the crowd grew fitful as children impatient to start eating.
Then the doge gave his blessing, the fanfare blared across the ice, and bedlam erupted.
Dared I presume I knew what would happen? Luca thought. Was I so stupid?
For nothing in her short life had prepared her for this. In truth there was a world of difference between regimented practice sessions with her trainers and the grand melee, a horde of grim-faced, sweating warriors in armour doing their level best to put each other down, their breath steaming on a chill winter's night as they struggled for purchase up and down a slippery, undulating plain which bucked harder than a mule.
Edges were blunted, yet still dangerous. A Bryndegaine soldier brought his great bastard sword down on Luca's shield arm and besides the pain and shock, she could see blood running through her mail. No-one offered her quarter if they saw she was young, or a woman: if someone would not yield in the grand melee, you forced them to surrender, or else beat them unconscious.
And yet, for all she was terrified, Luca realised in astonishment that her lessons had not deserted her: that her skill with a blade was telling, and her preparations had not been in vain. She knew how best to utilise her speed and size, and she carried a simple, sturdy blade she was well accustomed to, both of which helped immeasurably, at least in such a strange battlefield as this.
Luca hooked men's swords from their grasp, slung their blades across the ice and bid them yield. She smote one opponent across his helm and sent him reeling from the fray. The crowd roared when she tipped Jacobello Carara through the ice into the water tank, and once Luca finally thought to catch her breath she was greatly shocked to realise no more than thirty contestants remained out of near one hundred.
One of these was Anzolo de Bastian, now hemmed in by two limber blackamoors who swung great hardwood staves that hissed through the air.
Luca charged one of the dark-skinned men with her shield, and smashed him in the head with the flat of her sword as he staggered, while Anzolo seized his chance and cut the other's weapon clean in two. And then the doge's son smiled at Luca, and twice he tapped his breast in the sign he swore her fealty, if only for a while, and as Luca returned the gesture her heart leapt within her.
It works, Luca thought. The fighting grew fiercer and the victories more hard-won, yet the two of them cut a path through the other contestants. I had the right of it, she told herself. The sword works! Anzolo de Bastian might yet go on to win the tournament.
And yet a doubt persisted still: was she not arguably better than Anzolo, with or without the sword?
You cannot put down the doge's son, she thought. You cannot. To come this far, only to steal at the last moment the victory you know he deserves? Your duty lies in putting right what you first did wrong.
But to win Anzolo de Bastian's admiration, she told herself. Never mind the gratitude he was to show your gift. What if those ridiculous daydreams of upsetting Chiara Matelizi were not to be daydreams at all?
Distracted by this ill-advised reverie, Luca failed to anticipate Anzolo's next move, as the doge's son saluted the dissolution of their alliance, then sprang at her with the sword held aloft.
Yet Anzolo's cunning attack failed entirely to take Luca by surprise. Indeed, even without considering who it was had assaulted her and what she might or might not do in return, Luca's sword arm moved of its own accord. Before she knew it, she had begun to press the doge's son back across the ice, where try as he might he could not parry every one of her blows.
Stop this, Luca told herself. You cannot put down the doge's son. You cannot deny him victory. Cease!
Yet Anzolo's strength was failing him, Luca was moments away from the unthinkable, and she could not simply down her own sword for no reason. In desperation she looked about her. Again the artisans' machineries creaked and groaned, and the plain of ice yawned open around she and Anzolo. Closing her eyes, Luca sank to one knee and threw herself over the edge, into the water-tank.
Seeing a promising contestant quit with such ill grace, the crowd howled in rage, but Luca paid them no heed. Let Anzolo do as he would. Folly had it been to enter the grand melee; this was not the arena she had thought to compete in after all.
Luca slunk from the stadium, dripping wet and miserable besides. Tearful and self-pitying, she took up a flagon of wine by one of the bonfires and made to drown her sorrows in the shadows. There it was a cloaked figure sought her out at the edge of the firelight, and Luca, thinking this was a courtesan after business, made drunkenly to explain she was not interested, yet as the figure briefly lifted its hood, she fell silent.
Her visitor was no courtesan, but another girl several years younger, and Luca gaped as she realised she looked upon Chiara Matelizi.
“Why did you quit the melee?” the duke's daughter said in a whisper. “You might have won the day, had you but stayed on your feet.”
“I could not put down the doge's son,” Luca mumbled.
“Why not?” Chiara said. “Do you imagine he would thank you for it? It took him forever to convince his father he should be allowed to enter. Think you so little of the doge's heir you believe he would do this just to have his enemies throw themselves at his feet the moment he took the field? He wished for victory, but victory hard-won, the same as any soldier there tonight.”
“But I stood in his path,” Luca said. “And now I do not. What should it matter to you, either way?”
“Because,” Chiara said, “when you fought beside him, I felt together the two of you might well have cleared the field entire, had you the chance.”
“So?” Luca said bluntly. “The tournament will crown only one person the victor, not two.”
“I know that,” Chiara said. “So fight beside him 'til only the two of you remain, then do as you will. This is still more than anyone else could offer me. No other contestant would have brought Anzolo so far through the fray with no thought to put him down.”
“You want a nursemaid,” Luca said, “not a man-at-arms.”
“Not a nursemaid,” Chiara said, “but I desire he should come safely back to me. Is that so wrong? If you could but imagine the terror I feel on seeing my beloved in mortal danger, knowing I can do nothing save cower in fear on the sidelines!”
“You would not tell him this?” Luca said.
“I dread the thought of confiding in him,” Chiara admitted. “My father already tires of his weak and womanly daughter who bears little love for the sword. What if Anzolo were also to reject me? No. You are more than a mere man-at-arms. If you would be a shepherd just a little longer?”
“In truth I am certainly no man-at-arms,” Luca said wearily, and she took off her mask, and by the firelight she saw Chiara's eyes grow wide.
The duke's daughter said nothing for a long moment, as the festivities continued apace.
“You are the smith Fantin's daughter,” she said wonderingly. “But why then the mask? Sought you Anzolo's favour in my place?”
Now Luca understood that in truth this girl was someone who feared her, and the emotions this evoked left her undecided as to whether or not she approved of them. For she found she liked Chiara Matelizi, against her better judgement. For all the younger girl's woeful monologues about weakness and frailty there was a cleverness and considerate nature behind the things she said that spoke well of her, and made Luca wish to set her right.
“I did not,” she said at last, and her heart lurched within her to have told the other girl a lie, and then Luca asked herself if this really was a lie, and found she had no answer.
Chiara looked upon Luca intently.
“Return then to the tournament on the morrow,” she said. “Seek out Anzolo in the melee as quickly as you can, and I pray you, attend him for as long as you are able.”
“I make no promises,” Luca said slowly. “But I can try.”
“You will refrain, I take it,” said the registrar of the tournament a day later, “from fu
rther questionable behaviour which could be said to be against the spirit of the grand melee?”
Luca silently cursed her aching head, but she agreed that she would trouble the judges no further in this regard.
“Your chit, then,” the registrar said. “Fortune favour you, good soldier.”
With a sinking heart Luca realised she had been handed a slot far to the back of the queue, and Anzolo de Bastian was nowhere to be seen among the contestants who were yet to enter the arena. Yet as she climbed out of the tunnel to take her place beneath a pale and swollen moon, wondering where the doge's son had chosen to begin his last night on the frozen lake, she started as the crowd's cheers grew ever louder.
They knew her, remembered her, and welcomed her besides.
Would they still cheer for me, Luca thought, if they knew why I returned?
The third fanfare resounded through the stadium, and the final round of the grand melee began.
Unfortunately for Luca the crowd had not been the only ones to take note of her return, and once battle commenced she had a full ten of the other contestants determined she should forfeit the final night before the fanfare had even died away. Joy it was that Luca felt then, hard and fast and mean, but joy nonetheless, both that they judged her a threat and that she could live up to their lofty expectations.
Again, she was no savant. Had this been level ground then ten grown men and
The Heart Wants What it Wants Page 3