The Two of Swords, Volume 1

by K. J. Parker

  He could see his tent, and there was a man standing outside it, relaxed but on guard. Just for a moment he took him for one of his own officers, but then, as he got closer—One brother doesn’t need to see another brother’s face to recognise him; he knows him from a long way off just by the way he stands, the slight and subtle details of proportion that come from total familiarity. He slowed to a walk, then, ten yards away, he stopped. It was as close as they ever got, these days.

  “Shoot him!” he yelled; then he looked round. No Parrhasians behind him, they’d been slowed up or killed. Senza lifted his helmet on to the back of his head and laughed at him.

  “Boys,” he said.

  Five fish-men came out of the tent. Well, of course; get there first, and with superior forces, and Senza knew him so well, knew how much he loathed fighting. One against two maybe, just possibly one against three and sheer rage might be enough, rage and anger and thirty years of motivation. One against five, though; simple mathematics. Four would almost certainly have done, but Senza loved his margins.

  Then his father’s voice again, the time he’d burst into the hall and pulled Forza off the fencing master, a split second before Forza could smash his skull with a broken chair: What the hell’s got into you, boy? And then, after he’d seen the look on his son’s face: All right, you’ve made your point. Because, at that moment, his father had understood why his eldest son didn’t like to fight; because deep down, in a place neither of them ever wanted to go again, Forza liked hurting people a little bit too much.

  But what the hell.

  The first fish-man was a full stride ahead of the rest. Forza barged straight into him, trusting to the best armour in the world, took a savage thrust in the stomach, which the brigandine turned; because he wasn’t dead, as he should have been, he was able to reach over the fish-man’s arms and flick his sword under his chin, a light but firm scoring motion. While the man was dying, Forza kicked him straight at the man behind, then saw a tiny chance and cut off the hand of the fish-man on the extreme right. As he doubled up with pain (pain debilitates, said the fencing master, use it whenever you can) Forza skirted him, using him to block the remaining three—just for a second, but that was long enough to stretch out (he got hit on the head in doing so, but the fish-men didn’t know how much he’d paid for that helmet) and slid his edge purposefully over the unprotected tendons on the back of an outstretched leg. He drew his arm back smartly enough that the ferocious cut that landed on it wasn’t quite well enough placed to break the bone; the manica turned the edge, of course, and he was able to place a neat little jab into the gap between the bottom of the fish-man’s helmet and the roped neck-guard of his cuirass. All he’d achieved, of course, was to clear away the hindrance and clutter obstructing his last opponent and give him room to swing and move his feet. No matter; Forza was just nicely warmed up now, totally confident and enjoying himself more than he’d done for twenty years, and this time his father wasn’t there to stop him. He opened himself right up so the fish-man couldn’t help but be drawn in; the fish-man obligingly took his swing, and Forza winced as the blow hammered down on his pauldron. It should’ve smashed his collarbone, but the best armourer in the world understood the art of padding as well as the heat treatment of steel. Then Forza grabbed the sword hand before he could snatch it away and held it just long enough while he cut the fish-man’s throat.

  Then he looked up.

  Senza was staring at him, and he recognised that expression; so like the one his father had worn that time, but, then, Senza definitely had a look of the old man about him, especially as he’d got older. The same blend of horror and disgust; and, once again, it made Forza want to laugh. “Now if it’d been ten,” he said, and Senza slashed at his head.

  He felt it this time; he felt his brain move. But he’d learned this sequence, and how to counter it, from the same teacher as his brother; he gave ground, pivoting on his back foot, and gave himself a clear cut at the back of Senza’s neck, remembering as he launched the blow just why he’d chosen that specific armourer and no other; because he’d made a suit for Senza, and it was just as good. At least Senza staggered; his head was probably spinning, too, and he was probably seeing double. Forza cut low, Senza anticipated and stepped back, giving himself measure for the stop thrust; it slid off Forza’s double-proof chest-plates and exposed Senza’s right side, whose armour shrugged off his counter-thrust. But he’d felt something give, a rib maybe; he could read pain in Senza’s movements as he wound up for a cut to Forza’s exposed neck, then aborted and gave ground. A good move, and he knew exactly what Senza had in mind. In particular, Senza would know he wouldn’t risk a rising backhand cut to the chin, since, if Senza trusted his helmet and let the blow go home, it’d expose the unarmoured patch under Forza’s armpit. So he did just that; taken off guard, Senza’s head flew back, giving Forza just enough time to step in and grab for the sword arm—except that it wasn’t there, it was low, stabbing the sword point up into the tiny crack between the cuirass and the scale skirt. He felt a searing pain and immediately gave ground (how the hell did he do that, I never expected—) and Senza, stepping forward, kicked his exposed left knee sideways and dropped him neatly on the ground; and, as he fell, Forza glimpsed out of the corner of his eye a Parrhasian archer bending his bow, taking aim—

  “No!” he yelled, because Senza was directly in front of the tent, and the archer might miss or the arrow might glance off, and she was inside. He tried to push himself up off the ground, but all his strength had gone off somewhere; he pushed, and it was like arm-wrestling, the ground was pushing back and it won. “Don’t shoot,” he tried to say, but his voice didn’t work, and all he could see was the deep black hole he was falling into.

  Two of Arrows

  Senza saw the archers and realised he’d lost. It was a shame, a great shame, but there’d be another day. He backed into the tent and turned, and then the pain hit him. Nothing he’d ever experienced had hurt that much. He reached round and felt the small of his back for an arrow, but there was nothing there, so it had to be from when Forza hit him. Broken rib, he guessed. He gasped, and looked round. Needless to say, the tent didn’t have a back door. They’d be in after him any second. He blundered across the floor, bumped into a small table, knocked it over, maps and papers everywhere. He heard a faint whimpering noise, like a dog; but it was a dark-skinned woman curled up in a ball next to the bed—tried to crawl under it, he guessed, but it was too low. That must be the famous Raico. She lifted her head and stared at him. He heard the tent flap rustle behind him.

  His mind filled up with geometry: lines, angles, the shortest distances between points. The trouble was, she was in the way. The geometrical diagrams became a chessboard; he decided he was a knight. “’Scuse me,” he said politely, then jumped over the woman’s legs, hit the tent canvas, stabbed his sword into it and ripped upwards. The hole was almost big enough; his head and body got through, but his foot caught and he tripped and toppled forward into daylight. As he fell, an arrow swished past; if he hadn’t tripped, it’d have hit him. He twitched his feet free, scrambled up and ran like a hare.

  The pain stopped him about fifteen yards later, but by then it was all right; a dozen of his guards were running toward him, and they got between him and the archers. A sergeant helped him up. The pain in his chest and back made him feel like a log with wedges driven in it, just before the last blow of the hammer. He grabbed the sergeant’s shoulder to steady himself. “Where’s Dets?” he said.

  The sergeant shook his head. Damn, Senza thought. “Jortis? Major Asta?”

  “Major’s over there, sir.” The sergeant pointed. There was a battle going on, his guards against too many men with axes, and he hadn’t even noticed. “Hell,” Senza said. “Where did they come from?”

  The sergeant plainly didn’t know, and why should he? Once again, Forza had conjured armed men up out of thin air; he really shouldn’t be surprised any more. He didn’t need to look twice to know his
men were losing. He detached himself from the sergeant. “Get as many of them as you can out of there,” he said. “Then back the way we came.”

  One of the men of his personal screen was down; why hadn’t he brought archers, instead of heavy infantry? “Leave it,” he called out and the guardsmen backed away, not before another one dropped, twitching. “Move!” he yelled; the guardsmen turned and ran. He hesitated; what the hell, he thought. Then he darted forward and knelt down beside the man who’d just fallen. He’d been shot in the stomach but was still alive. Senza managed to get his arm under the man’s armpit and hoist him up; as he did so, the pain from his rib flared up like a barrel of oil catching fire. Bloody fool, he thought. He took a long stride, wrenching the guardsman with him, like pulling a tooth; the weight across his shoulders was going to split him in half any moment. The man’s cheek, next to his, was wet with sweat and tears. “Oh come on,” he said, and moved them another five yards or so. That was it; he was all done. Idiot, he thought; and then two guardsmen appeared out of nowhere, grabbed them both and hustled them away. He stumbled, the guardsman helping him barged into his side, and he screamed. More hands grabbed him, lifted him off the ground; he felt his feet dangling and swinging as they carried him along, and for some reason he thought of when he was a little boy. He tried to call up the maps and diagrams, but they wouldn’t come into focus; there was a mist between them and him, and he couldn’t see through it.

  A bump and a jostle; agony like he’d never known before. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” he roared, then noticed that one of the men carrying him had been shot; the arrow was through his elbow and into his flank, pinning his arm to his body. The man’s face was screwed up tight; he hadn’t said a word, and he was still keeping step. At least the man hadn’t apologised for jostling him; he wasn’t sure he could’ve handled that.

  They were climbing now, so they must be on the narrow path. He remembered he was a general. “Stop,” he said. They lowered him a little so he could stand, but didn’t let go, which was just as well. “Help me round.” The view below him came into focus, and he superimposed a chessboard. Then he looked round for someone to give orders to. There was a sergeant, face vaguely familiar; his name was, what, for crying out loud?

  “Sergeant,” he said. “Sergeant Lonous. Take ten men, hold this point. Don’t let them through. Got that?”

  The sergeant nodded. Maybe he wasn’t bright enough to realise he’d just been condemned to death, but Senza doubted that. Just a nod. “Right,” Senza said. “Onwards.” It was his pet phrase. The men liked it, did impressions: onwards, and an exaggerated flick of the head, like a nervous horse.

  A hundred and fifty yards up the path; had he remembered right, or just imagined it? No, there it was: no more than a goat track, for particularly small, agile goats. “Fifty men,” Senza said, hoping very much that he still had fifty men, “down that track. You’ll go out of sight over the rise, then come back on this track thirty yards below where we left Lonous and his lads. By the time you get there, there should be a whole bunch of bastards. Take it nice and quiet, they won’t see you coming. Then back up here along the main path, quick as you like.”

  They hurried off and were soon out of sight. Onwards. If Forza was leading the pursuit personally, they were all dead, naturally. But chances were that Forza would be back down below, comforting his wife or wiping out the main army. In which case, it wasn’t over yet. “Get a move on, lads,” he said. “We haven’t got all day.”

  On the top of the Hammerhead he let them stop and get their breath while he looked down at the main action below. As he expected; Forza’s men were right into his centre, tearing it apart, while the cavalry were sweeping round to take the Sixteenth and Twenty-Fifth in rear. Senza grinned. Forza definitely wasn’t down there attending to business. “Come on,” he said, “chop-chop.”

  It took rather longer than he’d have liked for them to reach the other path, the one that went straight down the east face of the Hammerhead. He glanced at it and knew there was no way he’d get down that, so he called over Sergeant Velsa, who he’d known for years. “Listen very carefully,” he said, and told him exactly what had to be done. Then he added, “Tell Colonel Pauga we’re running a bit late—my fault—so he’ll need to get a wiggle on. He’s got to get the auxiliary archers in place before Forza’s lot smash through the centre. That’s very important.” He paused. It was a lot for anyone to remember. “Got that?”

  “Sir.” The fate of the world hung on Sergeant Velsa’s memory, but Senza didn’t tell him that. “Good man,” he said, “off you go.” Then he gestured for his porters to let him sit down. His backside hit the heather and he squealed like a pig. For a moment he couldn’t see for the blur. Then his vision cleared and he got his breath back. He looked round for someone. “That man I brought in,” he said. “Is he all right?”

  They looked at him; someone shook his head. Oh.

  “Take me a bit closer to the edge,” he said. “I want to watch this.”

  Never watch a battle from an elevated position, General Moisa had told him once; you start getting delusions of godhead. Fair enough; but he reckoned the pain in his chest was a sufficient antidote. Another of Moisa’s pet sayings was that when a battle’s going well, it’s like a symphony made visible. Here are the main themes, the variations; the theme passes from one group of instruments to another, but the melody is unmistakable. A bit fanciful, he’d always thought—Moisa said some fine, resonant things in his time but he’d never been much of a general; on this occasion, however, he could see what the old boy had been getting at. A ripple on the strings as the auxiliary cavalry swept down out of nowhere; lots of noise from the brass as the archers came out of the dead ground, stopped and loosed three volleys that more or less disintegrated Forza’s mobile reserve. Then the big theme rolling out right across the orchestra, as Forza’s men turn and discover they’ve been caught like fish in a net.

  Well, maybe not. Too many fish, too small a net. Reluctantly he conceded to himself that it wasn’t going to be today; another bloody stalemate, withdraw, regroup, try again later. He tried not to think about how close he’d been, closer than since they were kids, practically. If only one of his hits had gone home—Senza shook his head. Dad had always said Forza had a mean streak, under that sweet surface. Don’t ever get in a fight with him, son, he doesn’t know when to stop.

  He’d lost interest in the battle now he knew how it was going to come out. He had to stay and watch, there was still so much he needed to take care of, but he let his mind drift a little. Did Forza really know where Lysao was, or was that just him being spiteful? Forza’s wife seemed like a nice woman. The thought suddenly struck him: the archers didn’t shoot because Forza knew she was in the tent. Hell. If he’d realised that, he could have had ten more seconds; maybe just possibly long enough—

  Too late now, no point beating himself up about it. A man like Forza didn’t deserve a nice wife like that. Probably he’d only married her for politics, and the legendary grand romance was all just publicity. She’d find out about him soon enough. They all did eventually, poor devils. Not for the first time, he cursed the wretched fact of his destiny—yes, someone’s got to deal with Forza, otherwise the world’s not safe, but why did it have to be him?

  Suddenly he remembered Lysao, that exquisite image of her combing her hair; clever Forza, to have put it into his mind, knowing it’d be there for days, spoiling everything. She always gave the impression of being overwhelmed by her hair, as if it was some monster that lived on top of her head and needed to be contained, lest it escape and cause havoc among the civilian population. He remembered how it got in the way—ouch, you’re pulling my hair—at the most inconvenient moments possible, how she loved and hated it, a glory and a burden and a dreadful tiresome responsibility, as though she was doomed to lug around a life-size statue by Teromachus everywhere she went. Once she’d threatened to give it to the nation, so it’d be up to the government,
not her, to maintain it. And the combing ritual—dear God, every night, an hour and a quarter, like some religious ceremony. It’s my duty, she’d say, and he’d think, yes, and Forza’s mine. My duty and my fault.

  He watched the last stages of the battle, but it was like reading a book you’ve read six times before. When he’d had as much as he could take, he called over a guardsman and sent him down with a message: that’s enough, fall back, give them room to withdraw; and get a sedan chair or something up here, quick as you like.

  The chair came quite quickly, and they were helping him into it when he glanced back one last time at the battle and saw something. “Just a second,” he said and looked again. Something wasn’t quite right about the way Forza’s men were drawing out. He leaned on a guardsman’s shoulder and superimposed the chessboard. Two, maybe three opportunities; if he’d been down there with a full staff of messengers, he could’ve had a world of fun with them, but up here he might as well be on the moon. Forza would never have left him openings like that, so evidently Forza wasn’t down there running things; in which case, where was he? After all that, had Forza outplayed him with some brilliant long-reaching mechanism, a hidden reserve or a really wide outflank? The thought made him shiver all over. He called a runner and sent him down with a message: get out of there fast. Then he looked again, to see if any of Forza’s capital assets were unaccounted for. No, but that didn’t signify; Forza could summon up armies out of thin air. Where the hell was he? He’s up to something, or else he’s—

  Surely not. I didn’t hit him that hard. Did I?

  The world stopped. What if he’s dead? What if I killed him?

  It was that empty feeling again; he knew it so well—the day his father died, the day Lysao went away, those dreams he had sometimes. He couldn’t be, surely; I bashed him on the head a couple of times, but those helmets just shrug it off; he was certainly alive and full of beans when I left—Concussion? Fractured skull, internal bleeding? I couldn’t have, could I?