“You—run!” I directed.
The last thing I desire is for M. Dariole to suppose he can stab me in the back and collect a reward from these men . Which he may just be stupid enough to think he can do without suffering interrogation himself.
I glanced down at him. “At least you will be a diversion; split their forces!”
Dariole stood up beside me. A smile went across his white face. “You want me anywhere but behind you, eh, messire? That doesn’t surprise me!”
My fist clenched: I came within a hairsbreadth of laying him out on the sand.
He put up a restraining hand. “It’s not like they’ll leave me alive. Suppose we delay you blowing my head off until we’ve got rid of this lot?”
He spoke with a ridiculous buoyant optimism—and as if it were an agreed thing between us that I would not shoot him.
I shifted the pistol to my left hand and drew my sword. The hiss of metal against wood veneer brought him even more alert. I said, “Are you supposing that, in the unlikely event we survive, I would be reluctant to kill a man who had fought beside me?”
He grinned at me. “You’d be reluctant. You’d still do it. Or—you’d try, Messire Black Dog.”
Contradictory feelings threatened; I quashed them.
The first man was clear enough to see: sword clutched in his right hand, other elbow pumping as he ran, the bobbing heads of following men behind him. Perhaps a hundred yards away. A dozen of them. This is a death-trap.
“The matter may be purely theoretical, Messire Dariole,” I said lightly, and reached out and rapped the Andalusian stone horse in the ribs with my fist. “Down!”
He was not a war-horse, I would be at a disadvantage if I mounted. He sank down, hooves thrashing up sand, eyes rolling, and fell on his side, as I have trained him.
Hardly enough for a barricade, I realised. We are caught between them and the sea. Ironically, pistol shots will not be heard and bring help.
I will have time for one set of re-loads; not that that will help against twelve. They may have guns. There is nowhere to run to. If they miss, it will all be down to the sword. I cannot kill a dozen men!
Dariole dropped down on his knees in the churned sand beside me, ducking away from the jennet’s head. I heard a coughing sound. The “demon” from Nihon, on hands and knees, was dragging himself into the makeshift shelter of the horse: both afraid of death and clever enough to identify the nearest possible shelter. And therefore, I thought, definitively human.
“Not that this will last as a shelter more than moments,” I remarked, and lifted my pistol. The running men were all much of a muchness: in dark doublets and trunk-hose, modest ruffs, and high crowned hats with brims turned down to keep the sunlight out of their eyes.
A ball whined overhead; another smacked into the sea-weed. I dodged back, leaned over the jennet, shot one man—coolly astonished to hit a target at long distance—and shot off the other pistol, and missed.
Both shots served their purpose: there was a fusillade of fire from the running men, all of it going wild. Now let them realise they can’t re-load while they run!
“Teppo!”
It was a grunt from the Nihonese foreigner. He gestured urgently, where he lay, prodding at me with blunt fingers. I realised he was groping for my powder-flask and pouch of bullets.
“Teppo!”
One man in the oncoming group dropped down to his knees, I guessed to re-load a pistol. Urgently, I spilled the equipment into the foreign man’s hands, crouching down behind the jennet’s heaving chest. It is this or Dariole, and I will not trust that young man at my side with a pistol!
The Nihonese stranger re-loaded one pistol, expertly and quickly, and put it into my left hand. I shot it off as he re-loaded the other. For a handful of moments I did nothing but put the muzzle over the Andalusian’s saddle and pull the trigger, exalted at the rate of fire we achieved. I ducked down as cast lead bullets whined over us towards the sea.
Fifty yards . And there are still six of them coming close.
I slapped the foreigner’s shoulder. “Use the pistols. Teppo! Messire Dariole. Can you fight at a man’s side or are you only a duelist?” I got up onto one knee, poised to receive the charge.
The young man had his back bent low. His face was bright with excitement. He might have been a hunting dog anxious to be let slip at bear or wild boar. “I can fight; you watch me!”
“Then, since they have been kind enough to split themselves, we will kill these nearer men first.” I stood up coolly, and took my final shot at the nearest man. I missed. The man behind and to his right folded at the knees and plummeted into the sand.
I dropped the slim butt of the pistol into the Nihonese man’s hand. “Two wounded, at least; we are down to ten men against us.”
Dariole laughed loudly, but he sounded high and breathless. “Oh, that’ll make all the difference!”
“Now!” I sprang up onto my feet as the men came at us—and split to go around the stone horse.
I barely had time for the fierce rush of exultation at their stupidity. A pair and three: they have split their forces! I spun around, the Andalusian now all the guard I had for my back, stepping over the foreigner’s prone body and slamming my blade down hard on the first man’s rapier.
“Stay at my right hand!” I yelled to Dariole. “Use the horse to keep them from coming behind us. Let them come to you!”
Maybe they are not so foolish, I reflected, as the young man sent his rapier-point into an attacker’s face. They have room not to get in one another’s way, and the rest will be here within minutes.
I cross-drew my dagger, caught the second man’s blade, and wrenched it out of his grip; I think breaking his wrist at the same time. They used Italian guards, not badly schooled: prima guardia, seconda, terza. Madame Medici’s Florentines. The first man thrust at me and the second made a stab with his dagger.
I have two; Dariole has three; he’s untrained, he’ll get drawn off into single combat and slaughtered—
“Messire Dariole! Do you hear me!”
His boots made grooves in the sand as he leaped back, landing a fathom away on my right-hand side. The boy took one blade on his dagger and lifted it out of the way with that sliding push and blow that the Florentine schools call intreciata. He stuck his sword under the rapier blade and into the first man’s chest.
My half-disarmed man flinched for the merest fraction of a second as his compatriot choked and spewed blood. I whipped the edge of my dagger in a slicing cut across his chin, feeling the numb bash of a bruise as my fist caught his teeth. In the same move, I kicked the second man’s feet out from under him.
The screel and whirr of blades took my attention. A sharp crack startled me, and a solid thud. I had time only to realise that the Nihonese man had reached forward and shot at one of the men attacking Dariole. No one appeared to be staggering.
“They may have mail doublets or cuirasses: go for the throat or the face!”
One man stumbled; Dariole thrust at his face, and I cut down into the opening and chopped through the man’s hamstring. He fell back, mouth wide, screaming. I spun around for two short thrusts: into the chest and the eye of the men I had incapacitated.
One, two—it had taken bare seconds. Out of the salon, duels are brutal and brief. The men coming off the rocks had not reached the sand yet. As I flicked a glance their way, one threw up his hands and vanished. No sound of gunfire. Weed on the rocks; he’s fallen.
The two men fighting Dariole backed up a pace.
One, in a hat with a crimson plume, called, “Messire Rochefort!”
A Florentine accent. I remembered it. This short, squat man is the man who stopped me on the night when I was attempting to reach the Arsenal.
“Throw down your weapons!” he shouted. “There’s too many of us: you don’t stand a chance!”
With their pistols empty and the first men down, and with the crack of pistol-shot from our side, the next two or three men b
ehind him slowed, hesitating. With his every word, his men lost momentum. I saw that I could catch my chance now, before they paused and regrouped.
“I am not Maignan!” I called out. Now the next three were close, I recognised two more of them from that tavern room—the man who had held Maignan, and the one who had slit the vein in his neck; the latter a left-handed swordsman. Two down-at-heels courtiers, clinging to the coat-tails of someone rich and powerful; in this case the Queen Regent. Disgusted, I thought I might have been looking at mirrors of myself.
One yelled, “The Queen offers you a fair trial!”
Lying fool .
I stooped to put my hand flat on the Andalusian jennet’s neck, shouted out, “I’ll give her a fair trial of my cock!” and slapped hard.
The stone horse thrashed up onto its feet. I darted back. It plunged and reared around in widening circles, sending sprays of sand flying.
I had hoped that one or other of her courtiers would have been made angry by the obscenity. None displayed hesitation. I hoped the horse would incapacitate them: they dodged. Four men down on the sand, and I could not be certain that any one of them was dead; five men closing in on the two of us. Fools, but still enough to kill us….
Two more pistol shots cracked out. Even if bullets didn’t strike home, the fire kept our attackers demoralised. I took what advantage I could from the panicking horse; darted in on Dariole’s left hand, engaged two blades, and caught the third man’s point on my dagger.
I realised, too late, that the boy was not engaged in fighting two men, but only one. I cannot see the fifth man—
A coughing grunt sounded on my left-hand side.
Something hot but rapidly cooling splashed my left arm and face. No, it is not the sea. The water is too far away—and too cold in the spring to feel this warm.
A weight thumped down beside me.
The heavy object that rolled a few inches on the sand was a man’s head.
Movement in the corner of my vision resolved into the “demon.” He stood in the churned sand, ragged clothes trailing concealing weed, a bright curved sword in his hand, a decapitated body at his feet.
Dear God, if I’d guessed him armed!
In a heartbeat, I realised: He is a swordsman, he uses a curved scimitar blade like the Turks and North African emirs; he is barely recovered from having his lungs emptied; I cannot rely on him to defend that flank.
All that before the head stopped rolling, clogged with sand; before the fountaining arterial blood soaked tepidly into my doublet.
“The rest of them are on us!” M. Dariole yelled.
I glimpsed movement to the right. Two men were off the rocks and coming towards us: one at a dead run, the second limping behind.
Four and two of them left—fighting three of us now, if the demon can stay on his feet.
I glanced swiftly back to the approaching men and saw Dariole pressing ahead, away from me, into their group.
“Stay where you are!” I yelled, too late.
The man that Dariole dueled drew him out and away from me and the foreigner, all in a split second. I saw the boy’s sword and dagger flying, too quick for thought; he was focused, grinning, strung to the highest pitch of excitement.
The man he was fighting was a head taller and heavier than he was. M. Dariole is trying to trip him over the hamstrung man—
In a skirmish, acting alone gets you killed.
The two men off the rocks ran up to me as the four men split to circle Dariole. I had no choice but to swing around and engage them. “Dariole!”
The “demon” grunted and fell down on one knee.
One of the men fighting me tried to break off, backing towards Dariole. I drove for a kill on him, missed, caught the second man’s wrist and jerked him forward, throwing him over my hip. I stamped down, stumbling as I caught his throat, and re-engaged the second man, hampered by trying to take note of two things at one time: M. Dariole is about to get himself killed and therefore me along with him….
The deformed “demon,” down on one knee, slashed his heavy curved blade around at the height of a man’s ankle. It sunk deep into the foot of my attacker: I instantly put my point through the base of his chin and up into his brain. The second man rolled to his feet, choking. I caught his blade in the drop-hilt of my dagger, twisted hard, and could not hear the snap over the noise of men screaming and yelling, but I felt it all down my arm. Spinning, I thrust into the man’s groin, and as he folded and dragged my sword forward, I slashed my dagger’s edge across his eyes. His scream deafened me.
A thrashing body rolled past me: the Nihonese man, his thick arms wrapped around a bloodied European. One of the wounded. I stuck the sword-rapier down, piercing the man’s back at his kidneys, and he spasmed into stiffness.
Desperate, I swung around.
Dariole—too far away for me to reach in a half-heart-beat.
One cut at him from behind, one man thrust from the left, and two more men from the right.
Dariole spun, dropped his rapier inverted over his shoulder in a glissade and caught the first blade. Simultaneously, he stabbed the man on his left in the groin, and stepped away. One man out of the fight.
As the first wounded man dropped to his knees, Dariole twisted under a slashing cut on the right and continued his spin, and engaged the third man’s blade and licked his point in to take him in the face, through the eye and into the brain.
Dariole recovered his sword, dropped down on one knee, and thrust up simultaneously with rapier and left-hand dagger.
His sword cut through the throat of the remaining man on his right. Blood geysered across Dariole and the trampled sand. His dagger ripped up the doublet of the man behind him—and jarred across mail or plates sewn inside it. That man brought his blade up, feinted, and thrust, botta in tempo.
I sprinted towards them.
Dariole took no notice of the feint. He sprang up and brought his rapier down across the man’s sword-hand wrist, cutting forward at the same time as he moved back.
The edge hit so hard there was an audible sound above the wind and the yelling: a sound like a butcher splitting a pork knuckle.
The man’s sword fell away. His hand hung from his wrist by a tearing strip of flesh.
Dariole thrust perfectly into his throat, turned, and took the first wounded man’s blade, and deflected it by sheer force. Dariole slid his rapier up the other sword’s edge, and his point went into the man’s mouth, shattering teeth, and out of the back of the skull.
The noise and their shrieks were drowned by surf.
Two of us stood panting, staring at each other, dripping red onto the churned sand. The wind on the wetness soaking me, chilled me through breeches and hose.
I have seen that precision before. At Zaton’s .
Quiet: a deserted beach: no movement from the village or on top of the headland….
“We should have kept one alive,” I said, aware that my chest was heaving now, taking in air. “To find out if there are more. And where they have left their horses.”
The young man Dariole wiped his forearm across his face, and only succeeded in reddening the linen cuff at his wrist. “There’s one alive over there. I think he’s alive.”
Dariole stepped over one body and bent down to examine the next one: a blond man with a pearl at his ear. The sand was soaked dark under his face. Dariole’s teeth showed with a grin that had nothing to do with humour, but only with the exultation that comes after a fight: I live, you live, they do not.
“No.” Dariole straightened up. “He’s dead. I killed him. We’ve taken twelve men’s lives in as many minutes.”
There was a light in his eyes and a spring in his step. This is what makes bullies of some of us. The knowledge that we can take another man’s life. We can kill armed men. We can do what we please.
Four men at the one time . I shook my head. “I admit it, messire,” I said, with precise gravity. “You are—very good.”
He grinned.
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I looked down at the men, spread across the yards of sand, some dead, possibly some still dying.
“And you are very stupid,” I added. “If I tell you to stay somewhere, then stay where I tell you!”
His grin widened; he did not seem at all taken aback by the rebuke. “That’s helpful advise, messire—from the man who was about to shoot me!”
I confess I glared at him. To be witness to such bloodshed, to have come safe through a skirmish, to be rid of the Medici’s courtiers, and still to be faced with the ineradicable problem of his presence—it galled me more than I can say. It would have been remarkably convenient if he—and the “demon”—could have contrived to get themselves murdered in the course of this butchery.
“Besides,” Dariole added, “you can’t kill me. I’ve saved your life.”
“You? You saved my life?” I found myself waving my arm at the bodies on the beach. “What was I doing here!”
I would have added more, but the Nihonese “demon” wiped his mouth and got to his feet unsteadily, and made a motion that was strange to me. As I realised it might be some kind of foreign bow, he fixed his black eyes on M. Dariole.
“Truly,” he said in English, “you are very skilled, honoured mistress.”
My first thought was: He does not understand the language.
This sea-farer, who comes from who knows what Eastern country, no wonder he cannot make himself rightly understood in this mixture of languages from England, Spain, and Portugal.
The sea wind blew over the churned beach. It did not carry away the stink of blood and shit. The young man Dariole stood motionless, his messy rapier in his right hand, his dagger still jutting from a corpse. Blood dried dark red on his face and soaked ruff.
A light came into his eyes.
He laughed, recovering his dagger and swiping his blades on his breeches to rough-dry them against later rust. The sun was on his face, and the light showed every tiny flaw in his skin.
I saw, in that intense light, the shadow of hair on his upper lip. It was no more than a shadow—no more than a smear of dirt, put on and brushed off again, leaving a ghost of darkness and men see what they expect to see.
Mary Gentle Page 11