Boundless

by R. A. Salvatore

  To kill on the draw.

  To be done with the fight before it had even really begun.

  Three times did Zaknafein practice that draw, double parry, and thrust, right hand over left, then three times in reverse, left hand over right, left sword backing, shortening, and thrusting straight ahead.

  Weapons sheathed, he retrieved the mushroom disk, shook out his neck and shoulders, and sent it spinning once more.

  Then again after six more draws.

  Basic movements, draws Zaknafein had executed thousands of times in his life.

  From there, he went to a series of same-hand, same-hip draws, where he brought forth the sword on his left hip with his left hand, right hand for the right. This was typically a reverse draw technique, reversing the hand over the hilt, drawing and executing a flip of the blades as the elbows rolled under, creating a reverse pincer movement with the swords, crossing in the middle between the extending arms and cutting outward in a short and swift sweep. This movement was far more awkward than the first, but with repetition, endless repetition, the muscles could be trained to safely begin the turn of the blades as soon as the sword tips exited the scabbards.

  Zaknafein had perfected three different executions of this technique, two to mirror the more usual cross-hand draw, one following through to the left and one to the right, but without the steps. And, if he was facing but one opponent, he would double parry with the reverse sweeps, shorten both, and thrust ahead with both following the sudden stop. He had become so skilled with this that he could even alter the angle of attack with those thrusts, every combination of putting the blades ahead, two high, two low, or one each way, alternatingly.

  Few drow warriors would attempt this type of draw in a real fight. It was too easy to hook a tip in the scabbard or simply be too slow to defeat an attack by the time a parrying blade was on its way. Zaknafein, though, could execute it as smoothly as the more typical cross-hand draw, and he found the looks on the faces of his would-be killers quite amusing when he immediately defeated them in this manner.

  He could almost hear them asking “How?” before falling over dead.

  The blades came forth several times, spinning, parrying, thrusting, then snapping back into their respective scabbards.

  Satisfied, Zaknafein nodded, wiped his sweaty hands on a nearby towel, and took a deep and steadying breath.

  Now came the same-hand, same-hip draw, simply grabbing the hilts and lifting his arms up, drawing the swords fully downward for a double vertical block, tips facing the floor.

  In this routine, that draw was a first move, only a first move, and after the block was initiated, one or both of the swords had to be moving quickly to a more normal, comfortable, and usable grip.

  This was where Zaknafein could separate himself from almost all others in the opening moments of a fight. Drawing his swords in this manner was the fastest and cleanest extraction from the scabbards—there was no reversal of momentum—and so could be effective in the very last eyeblink to defeat an incoming thrust or cut.

  This was also the hardest to improvise, the most limited in second movements, with both swords in a reversed grip.

  Zaknafein had envisioned many ways to change that, though of course it was always easier to see it in his mind than to actually execute such a maneuver.

  “A thousand times a thousand,” he whispered to himself as he repeatedly tried his newest continuation of the draw. That was his mantra, a thousand times a thousand, reminding him that repetition trained muscles, and that there was no shortcut or substitute.

  “A thousand times a thousand,” he said when he lost control of his left-hand blade and it went flying out before him.

  Undaunted, he gathered up the sword and replaced it in its scabbard, then took a deep breath and drew again, both swords.

  With the right, he let go ever so slightly as it rose and came free, letting the weight of the blade drop it to be recaught with the same reversed grip, but now with his arm slicing down and back.

  That was the easy part.

  When he drew with his left hand, he grabbed the hilt only with his pointer and middle fingers wrapping above, his ring finger and little finger going back against the hilt nearer the crosspiece. Up went the blade and as it did, Zaknafein let go with his thumb and pressed with his lower two fingers, redirecting the momentum of the lift to send the blade spinning under and then up, then up and over and turning tip-down as he brought his hand back down behind his shoulder.

  The sword blade began to sweep across to Zaknafein’s right even as it stabbed downward, intending to parry an attack from the rear.

  To an onlooker, it was a beautiful and swift movement, but Zaknafein growled in frustration, stopped short his final movements, and let the blade fly from his grasp out to the right and clank down to the floor.

  He had not reestablished a strong enough grip on the sword to block the cut of a child, and that with three more movements necessary to complete the counterstrike routine.

  Again.

  Jarlaxle and young Dinin Do’Urden came in sight of Zaknafein, with the weapon master’s back to them as he went through his practice routines in the house training room. His left arm up high, his sword swung through, tip-down across his back, and kept going up and around before him; his right-hand blade thrust backward suddenly, right behind the passing left-hand blade.

  Jarlaxle held Dinin back and silent as he watched the weapon master finish, with Zaknafein tossing his left-hand blade to reverse his grip and back-thrust similarly as he retracted the right, then executing a rather awkward turn, coming around with a look of frustration clear on his face.

  He noticed the visitors and stood up straight immediately.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came with business for Matron Malice,” Jarlaxle answered, truthfully, “and decided to see how my friend fared in what might be the last days of his life.”

  That brought a smirk to Zaknafein’s face. “Be gone, whelp,” he told Dinin.

  The young man, the younger son of Malice, straightened and sucked in his breath, obviously taking offense.

  Zaknafein laughed at him.

  Jarlaxle put his arm about the young Do’Urden’s shoulders. “It is never wise to show your anger to he who made you angry,” he whispered into Dinin’s ear. “And less so still to do it when that person could cut you into pieces before that scowl even left your face.”

  “Matron Malice told me to escort you,” Dinin argued.

  “And so you have.”

  “I’ll not leave you free rein of the house, rogue,” Dinin said.

  Jarlaxle slightly bowed, and he did respect the young one’s courage (though he figured it would get Dinin killed). “Wait for me in the hall, then,” he offered. “I would speak with my friend alone.”

  “Get out,” Zaknafein added from over at the side wall, where he had collected a dry towel to wipe away his sweat.

  Dinin moved back through the door, but didn’t close it.

  “How many imaginary foes did you just slay?” Jarlaxle asked, moving to his friend.

  “None; I fear he is still alive.”

  Jarlaxle considered the movements he had seen. “Then you are dead,” he reasoned.

  “Sadly.”

  “Practicing your draw and strike techniques?”

  Zaknafein nodded and wiped the towel over his face.

  “You understand that you will both begin your fight with your blades in hand?” Jarlaxle asked.

  “So?”

  “You will not need to draw.”

  “And?”

  “Do not be so obtuse. Why are you practicing something you will not need?”

  “I need it often.”

  Jarlaxle started to sigh, but Zaknafein quickly continued, “Not in the fight two days hence, no, but do you really expect me to surrender my days of practice for the likes of Duvon Tr’arach? Should I also practice my running in case I am assailed by a sewer rat on my way to your play?”
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  “My play?”

  “You should have simply let me kill him in the tavern, then and there.”

  “He is a weapon master of a powerful and long-standing house,” Jarlaxle reminded. “What consequence for House Do’Urden if you had done that?”

  “The same as after I kill him in the arranged battle,” Zaknafein replied without hesitation.

  “Not so,” Jarlaxle answered, though he really wasn’t sure what practical difference it might make. Either way, Duvon, or Avinvesa, seemed to be freelancing here, so his death at Zaknafein’s hands, whether in a bar fight or an alley fight, could bring some troubling questions Matron Malice’s way.

  “You do not have to kill him,” Jarlaxle added.

  “Says the man who is not Duvon’s target. He came to find me. He moved in order to incite an excuse to kill me, not you.”

  Jarlaxle had no reply to that. Instead, he said, “You would be dead, you know?” motioning his chin back toward the center of the room, where Zaknafein had been working on his drawing techniques. “The turn was awkward and too removed from the draw.”

  “Anything more than a second move is folly,” Zaknafein dryly replied, reciting the mantra of Melee-Magthere regarding that most important beginning sequence of any close combat. The draw and a single follow were the rule of thumb. Draw and strike, nothing more, then go to an even posture with your attacker, who previously held the initiative.

  “I counted a third and fourth, though that one failed. You are well beyond what is considered proper. The block, over your shoulder as it was, was brilliantly done, and the backward thrust would buy you time to disengage and come up square against whomever it was that tried to kill you. Why try to go beyond that when you are at such a disadvantage?”

  “You would have me play the counter to even?”

  “That is how you were taught.”

  “By warriors who would fall to me,” Zaknafein said.

  Jarlaxle conceded the point with a helpless laugh.

  “Why are you here?” Zaknafein asked.

  “I told you.”

  “You told me you had business with Matron Malice. Why are you here, in this room?”

  “To greet an old friend?”

  Zaknafein crossed his arms over his chest.

  Jarlaxle glanced back at the opened door, then moved closer so that the eavesdropping young Dinin wouldn’t see, and signed with his hand, Do you need me to facilitate your release from House Do’Urden on the night of the fight?

  Only if you can do so without implicating yourself in that release, Zaknafein signed back.

  Jarlaxle smiled too wryly.

  Zaknafein didn’t bother to ask.

  Soon after he left House Do’Urden, before he had even returned to the Clawrift, Jarlaxle was met by a Bregan D’aerthe courier who handed him a scroll.

  Curious. After a magical examination to ensure that it was not trapped, he unrolled it to find a betting ledger on the upcoming fight, with a note from Arathis Hune informing him that all the seed money had already been claimed in wager.

  Jarlaxle rolled the parchment and considered it. In less than half a day, all the bets on Zaknafein had been covered? Tr’arachs, he first figured. Dab’nay and Harbondair were not the only survivors of that house circulating within Jarlaxle’s orbit. Certainly they all knew the true identity of Zaknafein’s assailant and so would quietly cheer for Duvon to get revenge for what Zaknafein had done to their house that century before.

  But would they bet on Duvon? They knew Duvon best, and so knew Duvon’s limitations. Wanting someone to win and betting on that outcome were two very different things, after all.

  “Tell him to seed half again more gold today, and another full amount tomorrow,” Jarlaxle instructed the young courier. “Similar amounts regarded to each combatant.”

  The young man nodded and sprinted away.

  Jarlaxle considered the parchment again, even opened it to see if the amounts of each bet listed could give him some clue as to who was thinking that Duvon—Avinvesa Fey-Branche—would win. His first certainty, of course, was that someone expected that she could influence the bout. In the first encounter, Zaknafein had battled some poison as well as Duvon, Jarlaxle was positive. So who would be able to do so again?

  Or did any of these people actually believe that Duvon could defeat Zaknafein? Certainly Duvon would be superbly outfitted, and likely bolstered by magical enhancements to his body as well, but no matter how much they enhanced Duvon, could they hope it enough?

  Would they also try to wound Zaknafein? Poison again? Magic? He would be guarded against all of that, of course.

  Unless . . .

  A hint of a smile—he would not laugh aloud when he suspected, as he always suspected, that spying eyes were upon him—creased Jarlaxle’s lips as he considered someone else who might be very glad to see the fall of Zaknafein Do’Urden, and the unorthodox methods that might be available to that person to see that it was carried out.

  Jarlaxle veered in his course, moving instead for the raised alcove of the great cavern known as Tier Breche, which housed the famed Academy of Menzoberranzan.

  The sword came around over his right shoulder, rising as he swept it before him. He let go simply to reverse his grip and began his backward thrust as he turned.

  Zaknafein stopped and snarled.

  It was too awkward. The masters at Melee-Magthere had always taught the one-move mantra: in a sudden encounter, you had one move following a draw to make your attack, just one. After that, revert to a fighting stance and begin the formal combat.

  The weapon master shook his head. He was so close here, not just to the second move, but the third and fourth as well, and with all of them stealing from his attacker any choice except retreat, and leaving that assailant vulnerable if she wasn’t smart enough to immediately flee.

  Too close.

  But the balance was all wrong. He could get his left-hand blade around, could reverse and thrust, but that would accomplish nothing more than the initial thrust. It was a delaying tactic, designed to hold the fight static for one more eyeblink, one more turn.

  He could not execute that turn successfully. It didn’t work.

  Zaknafein pondered the sword movements and his footwork. Perhaps if he added a step to the left . . .

  “It is a ridiculous proposition, even for you,” Archmage Gromph Baenre answered Jarlaxle. The two sat in comfortable chairs before a blazing hearth in the chambers of the great wizard, an extradimensional mansion accessed through a secret closet in Gromph’s mundane quarters in Sorcere, the drow school for wizards.

  “But it can be done?”

  Gromph sighed and sipped the fine—the very fine—liquor Jarlaxle had brought to him, the price Gromph demanded for any and every visit from the mercenary leader.

  “Anything can be done,” he replied. “Not everything should be done.”

  “Why should this not be done? It seems a rather minor dweomer, and of little consequence.”

  “Because it is not worth the trouble.”

  “It is simply a variation of a minor spell,” Jarlaxle protested.

  “Then do it yourself.”

  It was Jarlaxle’s turn to sigh. “Why would I not ask the greatest mage in the city?”

  “Should I then ask Jarlaxle when I need a rat exterminated?”

  “If it is an extraordinary rat, I suppose,” Jarlaxle replied, then slyly added, “or even a mundane one, if you were willing to pay Jarlaxle’s fee.”

  Gromph snorted. “Tell me why, then.”

  “Because too many matrons know the properties from eye to eye.”

  “The Oblodrans, you mean,” Gromph reasoned. “You continue to deal with those strange creatures?”

  “They live in my attic, one might say.”

  “Then hire a rat-killer and be rid of them.”

  Jarlaxle arched his eyebrow at that remark, and Gromph shrugged and took another drink. Revealing his frustration, Jarlaxle knew, for even the mig
hty Gromph was unnerved by the foreign powers of Matron K’yorl Odran and her psionic clan.

  “A spell wouldn’t be of much use to you because of the time constraints. So you would have to cast it, and it would be no minor thing, as you claim. Unless, of course, you wish it to be permanent, and I warn you . . .”

  “Oh no, not permanent,” Jarlaxle interrupted. “Just a short duration.”

  “An alchemist would be a better choice than a wizard,” Gromph explained. “You have heard of daylight oil?”

  “Of course.” In fact, Jarlaxle had used daylight oil, coating the small stones encased in ceramic balls, to break up the fight in the Oozing Myconid.

  “Something akin to that, I believe,” Gromph said. “A temporary dweomer once applied, one that sets in place upon the item and does not bleed onto anything it touches. Not as simple as you might think, but probably possible.”

  “I have fine alchemists,” Jarlaxle remarked.

  “And I have finer ones,” Gromph said.

  “But more expensive ones.”

  “You are paying my fee either way, rogue,” the archmage said. “It was my idea.”

  Jarlaxle nodded and tipped his glass toward Gromph. “When?”

  “When do you need it?”

  “Two days.”

  “Double the fee.”

  Jarlaxle started to argue, but bit it back and nodded. He thought to offer Gromph the usual fee and tell the archmage how he could easily double it himself, but then deferred, not really wanting to involve any Baenres in this little fight he had arranged. Perhaps he would just bet that fee additionally himself.

  Either way, it didn’t matter. He would gain a useful item, salvage a useful ally, and make plenty of gold in the process.

  Chapter 5

  Fair and Not Square

  Wearing an eyepatch that did nothing more than hinder his vision in one eye, Jarlaxle watched from afar, well past the appointed time. Growing anxious, he went into the Oozing Myconid to find an equally anxious Arathis Hune leaning on the bar, rolling an empty glass in his hand.