Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda

by Joel Rosenberg

  “No, no, no,” he said. “At least try to take my blade. Or, if you are too clumsy to do that, just wave your blade around as vigorously as you can, and hope to connect. Such things can happen.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Again, please.”

  “Make yourself ready … and fight!”

  The boy tried again, with equally useless results. Pirojil counted five, no, six marks on the boy’s chest where Miron had scored. All but one of them were directly over the heart, and the other one was just under the rib cage, on the boy’s right side. Had they been fighting with real blades, Miron’s opponent would be five times dead, and the sixth time, the boy would still be lying on the ground, clutching with white fingers at his gut, trying to hold his body’s blood in.

  Interesting.

  Pirojil had fenced with nobles before; generally, they tried to score on the vulnerable arms and legs. Going for the torso required getting closer to your opponent; it was a soldier’s move, not a duelist’s. In a real fight, you couldn’t count on a superficial arm or leg wound stopping an enemy, and you couldn’t afford to leave one enemy who had merely been lightly injured at your back when you turned to face another one. Or two. Or twenty. You had to put them down fast, and hope you ran out of enemies before you ran out of luck.

  Of course, in a real fight, you couldn’t count on having solid-packed dirt underneath your boots, either, or be sure that if you retreated out of the range of a lunge, you wouldn’t stumble over something, and find yourself quickly spitted on a sword. Or a spear. Or get kicked in the head or the balls. Or …

  “Care to join us?” Miron pointed his button-tipped practice sword at the ground in front of him. “Since the Residence seems to be lacking a master of swords at the moment, I thought I’d give a few lessons.”

  “Certainly,” Pirojil said. “I’m always eager to learn from my betters.”

  Miron just smiled. “Then let us have at it — the day gets no younger, and neither do you.”

  Pirojil unbuckled his sword belt, shed his tunic, and picked up one of the practice swords. It was too light, more reminiscent of a dueling sword than of a soldier’s saber.

  Pirojil felt at the button tip. It was solid, properly welded on, not merely capped. Thin and narrow, the unsharpened blade flexed properly, showing no signs of breaking, although he wouldn’t have wanted to try to bend it much farther. It was much more elegant than the wooden practice swords that Pirojil had trained with.

  He tossed it underhand to Miron, who snatched it out of the air, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

  “I’d prefer to use your practice blade, Lord Miron — if you don’t mind.”

  He had to admire how quickly Miron adapted — Miron simply tossed Pirojil his own practice sword, and gave a casual shrug. “As you wish.”

  This blade flexed just as well as the other one had, but even Pirojil’s blunt fingers could easily detect that the button was loose. It would be a matter of a solid tug to remove it, instantly turning what was supposedly simply a practice weapon into something deadly.

  Pirojil didn’t say anything about that, or about anything else.

  “Make yourselves ready …”

  Pirojil raised the sword in a quick salute, and at Miron’s returning salute, Pirojil dropped into a fighting stance, advancing immediately when the decurion called out, “Fight!”

  They touched swords, and then Miron dropped his point and tried a tentative lunge, cutting over Pirojil’s sword and trying for a high-line thrust when Pirojil easily parried. He would have easily scored a point on Pirojil’s forearm if Pirojil hadn’t stepped back.

  Pirojil reengaged, extended his arm to offer it as a target, and whipped the side of his blade at Miron’s sword arm when Miron lunged.

  It connected with a satisfying smack. If Pirojil had been using his real sword, it would have cut Miron’s arm to the bone.

  “Your point,” Miron said, smiling. The red weal flared brightly on his arm, but if Miron was in any discomfort, he didn’t let it show.

  “Another?” Pirojil asked.

  Miron’s eyes were still on the tip of Pirojil’s sword. The button was still in place. “If you please.”

  “Make yourself ready … and fight!”

  This time, Miron’s attack was more tentative. His weight on the balls of his feet, he danced in and out of the live zone, quickly parrying Pirojil’s equally tentative attacks before retreating out of range. But Pirojil pressed forward, and Miron retreated, stopping only when the heel of his back foot touched the gravel surrounding the fencing circle.

  Miron started to lower his blade in surrender, but before he could complete the move, Pirojil lunged in, the tip of the practice sword catching Miron on the face. The covered point skidded along Miron’s cheek before he could raise his own sword to parry.

  “Halt,” the decurion called out, stepping between the two of them, his short staff ready to deflect a blow, be it reflexive or intentional.

  Pirojil stepped back and lowered his sword.

  “Very nice,” Miron said, wiping the back of his free hand against his cheek. “You are rather better at this than I would have thought.”

  “Another, please?”

  “Of course.”

  “Make yourself ready … and fight!”

  Pirojil raised the sword over his head and played with the tip, then advanced, his left side toward Miron, his right arm and the sword behind him.

  Miron hadn’t fooled him for a moment, letting Pirojil win two points. But keep the point out of view for a moment, then move the sword back and forth too quickly for Miron to be able to see the tip clearly, and Miron would have good reason to worry that Pirojil had removed the practice tip from the sword, and consider the thought of his own flesh being pierced, and perhaps Pirojil could see just how good this Miron was.

  Miron’s eyes widened fractionally, and when Pirojil whipped the sword around as he advanced, he wasn’t all surprised that Miron easily parried his slashing attack.

  Their blades moved faster than any eye could follow, including Pirojil’s.

  A real fight was different, but in a fencing circle Pirojil always had a detached feeling, as though he were outside his body, watching what was going on, realizing only in retrospect what he had been thinking, what he had been doing.

  That was the way of it. You practiced, as much as you could, working through combinations of attacks and parries and counters at first slowly, then faster and faster, until you knew the moves in your balls and bones, not in your mind, because when it was real — even as marginally real as a practice bout was — your mind was never fast enough, and never would be, never could be.

  Miron would, of course, try for a touch on Pirojil’s arm, or leg, to win the point, from as great a distance as possible, and —

  Miron feinted and lunged low through Pirojil’s defenses as though they simply weren’t there, and the tip of his blade caught Pirojil just below the sternum.

  Pirojil’s breath went out of him with a whoosh, and his traitor knees turned all liquid and useless. Pirojil tried to bring his blade up to protect himself from a continued attack, but his arms wouldn’t work, either. Unable to protect himself, he fell to the ground, the left side of his face pressed into the dirt. He wanted, as much as he had ever wanted anything, to pull breath into his lungs, not caring a whit if it brought dirt and dust along with it.

  But he couldn’t. All he could do was lie there and make choking sounds, and try to breathe.

  “Quickly,” Miron said, “bring over the healing draughts — and get him up. Quickly, now, quickly.”

  Strong hands brought Pirojil up to his knees, and the cold lip of the brass bottle was pressed to his lips, grinding the sand and the grit into his teeth.

  He pushed it away, embarrassed at how difficult it was. There was no point in wasting expensive healing draughts on something this minor, no matter how much it hurt.

  “He won’t —”

  “Well, then, leave
him be,” Miron said. “If he doesn’t want it, he doesn’t have to have it.”

  Two of the soldiers helped him to his feet, and held him up straight until his breath returned in ragged little gasps.

  Pirojil shrugged the helping hands away. He could stand by himself, or he could fall again.

  “Nicely struck, Lord Miron,” Pirojil said, cursing at the weakness of his words. A distant, heavy hand wiped at the side of his face, and he was only vaguely surprised to realize that it was his own hand.

  Miron nodded. “A good bout, at that. Perhaps some other time we could do this again,” he said. He stooped to pick up the rapier that Pirojil had been using, looked closely, too closely, at the still intact tip, then nodded. “Quite a good strategy, all in all, Captain Pirojil,” he said.

  Pirojil wondered if any of the others had realized what had gone on.

  It was just an accident, waiting to happen — on demand. Miron could honestly say, and could produce witnesses, that he had simply been practicing, properly practicing, with weapons that had been made safe, and that somehow the tip had worked itself loose, and, tragically, the suddenly live blade had buried itself in a chest.

  Pirojil didn’t have any doubt as to whose chest that was supposed to happen with.

  Miron nodded, genially. “I think you’d best take this to the blacksmith,” he said, feeling at the tip. “Inadvertently, no doubt inadvertently, it seems to have worked loose.” He gripped the tip between thumb and forefinger, and tugged on it, and then, when it didn’t come loose, pulled harder and harder, his smile only broadening when it didn’t come loose. “Hmmmm … I don’t seem to have quite the strength to pull it all the way, but we ought to be careful. Somebody might get hurt.”

  At the sound of footsteps behind him, Pirojil turned to see Forinel walking out of the garden. He was dressed in casual blousy pantaloons and loose, flowing shirt, but the image of the idle noble was shattered by the very utilitarian sword belt around his waist.

  He gave a nod first to Miron — good, good, he was acknowledging the noble first — and then to Pirojil.

  “Some sword practice?” Forinel asked, one eyebrow arched.

  Miron nodded. “I would say that I was just giving a quick lesson to Captain Pirojil, but in truth, I think I’ve learned more from him than he has from me.” He drew himself up straight. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my baron, I’ve promised to visit Lord Melchen today, and I’d best be off. As to you, Captain Pirojil, I’ll see you on Fredensday, in Dereneyl, and perhaps we can arrange another lesson.”

  “I’ll be ready for it,” Pirojil said.

  “Of that, I’m entirely sure.”

  Miron gave a slight, stiff bow, and then turned and walked away.

  At Pirojil’s gesture to the decurion, the decurion barked out a quick command, and each of the soldiers gave a quick bow and gathered up the practice gear before heading toward the barracks.

  Forinel looked at him. “Some problem?”

  Pirojil shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “I see,” Forinel said, although his eyes said that he didn’t. But it was the sort of thing that a nobleman should have said. Good.

  Pirojil didn’t like this at all. It was too clumsy for somebody as deft as Miron. Trying to explain to Parliament that he had accidentally killed his brother in practice? Could that explanation possibly fly?

  No. Pirojil had been wrong — it wasn’t Forinel that was the target; it was Pirojil.

  An accident where a newly promoted captain of march had died was not a parliamentary matter, after all. It wasn’t quite as easy to dismiss as slaughtering a peasant, of course, but it would be handled by Treseen, and Pirojil had no doubt that Treseen would simply set it aside as being nothing more than what it appeared to be. Whatever Miron had planned for Forinel could wait until Pirojil wasn’t around to be a witness.

  Pirojil couldn’t help smiling.

  For once, it was nice that in order to do his job, he had to protect his own hide.

  Forinel watched Miron walk away. “Leria is going over the inventory with Elda,” he said. “The whole Residence, from top to bottom. She says it will take some time.”

  Pirojil nodded. A good idea. He would have been surprised if some valuables hadn’t vanished during the many tendays that there had been no noble in residence here, but more than likely most of such would now magically return to their proper places in anticipation of this inventory.

  Forinel went on: “She thinks that I should spend the next few days just riding around and visiting the local villages, and perhaps calling on some of the lord landholders — I can get reacquainted with the rest, and some of the nobles minor, in Dereneyl on Fredensday.”

  Pirojil nodded. “See if the wardens are keeping up repairs and such?”

  That made sense. Not that it was likely. But it would be good to see things firsthand. That was something that both a real soldier and a pretend noble could agree on.

  “Yes. Do you feel like coming along? Or should I just ride out alone?”

  “Alone?” Pirojil shook his head. Yes, of course, Forinel had every right and probably the obligation, come to think of it, to prowl from one end of the barony to the other. But that still didn’t make it other than a stupid idea for him to do it alone. “You do need somebody to watch your back, Baron.”

  He smiled. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  And, besides, if Forinel was going to brace any of the noble landholders, it would be a good idea to have somebody handy to change the subject if the conversation turned to awkward matters.

  Forinel cocked his head to one side. “Could you tell me what just happened here?” He gestured at the fencing circle.

  “Later. We’ll have time,” Pirojil said. “You sit and have breakfast while I have the cook pack us some lunch, and have the boy saddle us a couple of horses. That gelding you were riding yesterday seems spirited enough, eh?”

  “Rather more than enough. If you can find a more docile mount, I’d appreciate it.”

  Pirojil nodded. “As you wish,” he said.

  Pirojil headed for the stables, not for the barracks. Thirien would insist on having them escorted by House Guard soldiers, and if the ones Miron had been practicing with were any indication, they would be useless in a crisis.

  That probably was unfair, but how could you possibly know in advance of seeing them in action? That was the trouble with peace; it was one thing to be a barracks soldier, and another thing entirely to keep your head about you when the screams of the injured and dying filled the air.

  Much better to have a spare horse or two, and be ready to gallop away from any difficulty. Besides, by themselves they could talk freely, something that they couldn’t do around an escort.

  There wasn’t any other reason, was there?

  Letting Forinel take a look at the lay of the land made sense. Until Forinel had explored the vicinity of the Residence more thoroughly, it would quickly be evident to anybody that his only familiarity with it was from the maps in the Residence study.

  It was, in a strange sort of way, like it used to be, when they used to accompany Baron Cullinane, doing the same sorts of things. Theoretically, it was a chance for crofters and peasants to raise issues with the baron — a noble landholder squeezing them for extra taxes, say — but, in practice, few would take the chance of doing so.

  After all, they would have to deal with the village warden or landholder later, and angering their betters was something that few would risk doing.

  Then again, when it came to angering his betters, Pirojil had just done the same thing himself with his little comedy with Miron, and only an idiot would feel good about it.

  Pirojil smiled to himself.

  Being an idiot seemed to be a recurring problem for all of them.

  ***

  A village? Pirojil sniffed. The presence of the square stone marker at the crossroads proclaimed that it was a village, at least technically. Pirojil would hardly have wanted to call it a village, or call it mu
ch of anything, actually.

  The roads, bad as they were, were about what Pirojil would have expected. Roads were what tied a barony together, and the roads between the Residence and this village were crooked and narrow, ill maintained at best, and would be hard going on foot or horse, and utterly impassable by anything on wheels for days after a rain.

  But there was no real point in maintaining roads between the Residence and a bunch of nothing little villages like this. It would be like using strong spidersilk thread to stitch together a threadbare peasant’s tunic. Why bother?

  The village, such as it was, was just a cluster of half a dozen one-story, wattle-and-daub shacks beside a stream. Other than the shacks and the barely occupied pigpens, the only man-made structure was a sagging log bridge, its timbers visibly rotting, that spanned the stream.

  Pirojil thought for a moment about going upstream to ford where the banks were shallower, but Forinel seemed eager to get across to the supposed village, so Forinel waited while Pirojil chivvied the spare mounts across the bridge. The bridge creaked frighteningly, and some of the dirt and pebbles that covered its surface sifted down through the old timbers to splash into the stream, but still it gave no sign of actually falling into the stream, so he dug in his heels and walked his horse across, Forinel following behind.

  By the time Pirojil had retrieved the spare horses’ leads, the fields were almost empty.

  The children who had been weeding the cornfield had raised their heads and fled in panic for the fringe of woods to the north; one of them, a dirty-faced blond girl who couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve, scooped up a wicker basket as she ran, the screams of the baby inside only urging her to pump her bare legs faster and faster — at that, she was barely able to outrun the adults, who had seized up their hoes and run away even more quickly than had the children.

  They were almost alone.