Pallid even at the best of times, Voord by rights should not have been able to grow much paler; but as Bruda spoke what little color there was drained from his face to leave it as white as chalk. An instant later he slammed his hand against the table-top—his maimed left hand— as if, needing in his rage to hurt someone, he resorted to the only person present he could hurt with impunity. Himself. It was a gesture redolent of such monstrous perversity that Aldric cringed inside as he saw it.
“
I will not
!” Voord’s voice was shrill and tremulous, though it was impossible to tell how much of this was caused by pain and how much by fury. “I will take no order from that… that fatherless son of a whore, that—”
However much he might have been accustomed to abusing prisoners and subordinates, Voord plainly had had no previous experience of high-clan Albans. Otherwise he might have been more guarded in his choice of insult, or at the very least been sure of how close he was standing to Aldric Talvalin when he uttered it. Instead he made both of those mistakes simultaneously, and had not properly drawn breath to say more when the still-forming words were smashed back into his mouth by a fist that was backed by all the focused power of a swordsman’s trained muscles.
Aldric’s face had frozen over as Voord spoke, and long, long before anyone could cry halt he had swivelled at the waist in a half-twisting movement which put all of his upper-body weight behind the punch. It didn’t quite lift the
hautheisart
off his feet, but it snapped his head back on his neck and staggered him so hard and fast that his feet shot from under him and he crashed to the floor amid a clatter of harness and weapons, with blood smeared on his face and chin from lips that had not so much been split as burst by the hammer-and-anvil impact between Aldric’s bunched knuckles and his own teeth. As Voord’s mouth sagged open and he gaped dazedly up at the Alban standing over him, splinters of one of those teeth gleamed whitely amid the blood.
“Sharp teeth,” remarked Aldric to no one in particular. “Though I doubt that they’re poisonous.” He sucked the oozing, ragged skin across his knuckles for a moment to ease the stinging, took the hand from his lips and stared at the wound for a moment, then worked his jaws and spat a mingling of blood and saliva onto the floor a bare inch short of Voord’s right hand. “But then, you can never be sure with snakes.”
“
Schü’aj
!” The obscenity was a clumsily articulated shriek as Voord scrambled upright and slapped hand to shortsword hilt—then jolted to a standstill with the blade still sheathed. Again he had miscalculated where Aldric and speed and distance were concerned, for in the time it had taken him to regain his feet the Alban had sidestepped to the bench which carried his gear and had snatched up just one very particular item. Isileth.
The fur of the wolfskin
coyac
that Aldric wore moved like wind in a field of wheat. “
D’ka tey’adj, Voord
!” he said softly, ominously. “
Cho taeyy’ ura
.” The longsword in his hand was levelled at Voord’s windpipe, so close that a handspan’s worth of thrust would let his breath from it to mingle once and for all with the air; and that hand was far, far steadier than the hand of a broken and defeated man had any right to be. Far, far steadier than the hand of any man whose eyes glittered with such a force of leashed-in violence. Voord looked at the blade, at the hand, at the eyes, and knew that in the sum of these three things he looked at his own death.
“Stop!” Goth’s voice, parade-ground harsh, slashed through the room and created for just an instant the necessary hesitation in Aldric which saved Voord’s life. Neither the Alban
eijo
nor the Vlechan
hautheisart
had moved, but something—some tingling, vicious thing— was gone from the air.
“You heard him.” Aldric did not take his eyes from Voord’s face, nor his
taiken-
point from the man’s throat; but at least he spoke instead of driving that point home. “You heard what he said. All of you. He is dead.”
“No. He’s too valuable.”
Aldric coughed a single humorless laugh at that. “Valuable! You mean, he’s an investment like me? Then, general, he should have invested a few seconds’ thought in what he said before he said it!”
“But look at his face, man—look at what you did! Isn’t that enough for one ill-chosen word?”
“No.” Aldric sounded vindictive. “Not yet.”
“Ach, let them fight!” Bruda’s words drew everyone’s attention, flying as they did full in the face of a superior’s direct command. “But let it be with wooden foils.
Taidyin
. I can see a sheaf of them yonder, in the Alban’s gear.”
“Or, at least,” he amended after the silence had grown heavy but before anyone else could speak, “since Voord is as you say worth more undamaged—so are they both, general, so are they both—then let Aldric fight with somebody else. Anybody…” That was as much a challenge as a suggestion, but no one reacted by so much as the flicker of an eyelid. “You say to him, look at Voord. I say to you, look at him: right now he’s wound up like a crossbow. He’s dangerous. Lethal. And besides…”
Bruda settled into the padded embrace of his chair and propped his feet up on the table, crossing them casually at the ankles; and suddenly he no longer looked approachable. Instead, in that single languid motion he was transformed into all that an Imperial
hauthanalth
and a Chief of Secret Police should be—something arrogant; sinister; menacing. “Besides,” and he tapped a folder cradled in his lap, “I’d like to see if he’s really as good as they say.”
“If you think for an instant that I’m going to entertain—” Aldric bit the words off short as
tau-, kortagor
Garet stood up.
“You talk of insults, Alban—the sort of thing your honor thrives on. Have you forgotten how you insulted me, aboard
Teynaur
? Because I still remember even if you don’t, and if you truly want a fight…” he spread arms sheathed in fine ringmail, “here I am.”
Aldric stared at him; this was the same youngster, the same baby-faced cadet who had seemed almost friendly as the warship came into dock. And yet he was not the same. If this was Drusalan friendship, then it was as transient as snow in springtime. No matter, if that was so, he had no need of such friends.
And he knew that Bruda had spoken no more than the truth about him, because hide it how he might for the sake of manners and his own self-respect, he was taut and hot and trembling with fury inside. Angry enough indeed to fight with anyone. That was the cumulative effect not merely of verbal insults, but of being used and abused by these so-called allies, of being treated like a chattel, like something bought and paid for, like an inanimate investment—lord God! how that word burned like vitriol—rather than as a human being who could be and had been bruised in body, mind and soul.
But the cold, cold killing rage shuttered behind his eyes was still reserved for Voord alone. Widowmaker whispered back into her black scabbard and was laid gently on the table. Aldric uttered no redundant hands-off warning, because it was unlikely in the extreme that anyone would dare to touch the blade in Goth’s and Bruda’s presence, and they had too much sense to permit it… he hoped.
Garet had already selected a
taidyo
and was whipping the four-foot length of oak from side- to side in what seemed a most experienced manner. It was unusual for anyone other than an Alban to be familiar with
taiken’ulleth, classical longsword play-his foster-father Gemmel was a notable exception, as in much else—and as he watched Garet’s posturing Aldric wondered if this too, like so many other things, had been arranged; another test which had merely waited a long time before the proper circumstances for its employment arose. He didn’t really care.
“I’m not allowed to damage you permanently,” Garet said as he stalked across the floor, “but you’ll remember how to address Imperial officers properly—next time you’re able to say anything at all.”
So was this set up by Voord? Aldric hefted one
taidyo
after another, seeming oblivious to the threats or at least selectively deaf. Then he chose one whose chequer-carved grip fitted his hands comfortably and tugged it from its canvas sleeve to test its weight and balance with a flex of his wrists.
Garet was still talking: threatening, boasting, casting doubts on Aldric’s ability and on the worthiness of fighting with sticks. But Aldric knew these “sticks” of old, and knew—intimately—the damage they could do; on an occasion, not so long ago that the pain of it had yet been forgotten, a “stick” just like those they carried now had snapped one of his ribs. That was why he laid his own
taidyo
aside and buckled on the sleeves of his battle armor—an action which provoked yet more scathing comment from the already-mailed Garet and a certain amount of muttered observation from the others present. It didn’t concern him; the long steel plates of the vambraces made a better shield against percussive impact than the best linked mail-mesh ever made, and if Garet was so inexperienced that he didn’t already know that, then he was likely to find out.
Lifting the
taidyo
again, Aldric raised it slowly in center line, low to high above his head, then equally slowly across at the level of his eyes. It was
achran-kai
again, the first and simplest form, but executed this time more to check the fit of the armored sleeves than for any other reason. Garet watched him, and Aldric could see incomprehension flit across the young Drusalan’s face. Now that was very interesting—enlightening, almost. If he failed to recognise an inverted cross in slow time, then maybe—just maybe—he didn’t know as much about Alban longswords as had first appeared. And if that was so, then…
Cramp suddenly stabbed at one shoulder-joint and Aldric gasped audibly as its silver bolt of pain bored down the marrow of his bones. A legacy of being unhorsed in Tuenafen perhaps, or of helping to propel the battleram
Teynaur
to port; the reason was of no account. But Garet had heard him gasp before he could silence the involuntary sound, and had seen him wince.
“I’m better than you, Alban,” the
tau-kortagor
said. “I’m better because I’m faster, and I’m faster because I’m younger. That’s why I’m going to really hurt you, Alban, and why there’s not a thing you can do about it.” As he spoke he shifted into a stance that Aldric recognised; it was one of the ready positions for duelling with the long Jouvaine thrusting-sword, the
estoc
—a weapon as different from the
taiken
as night was from day.
Only then was he convinced; only then did he allow himself a small, contemptuous smile, for only then was he quite sure who would win and lose. Who would be hurt—and who would do the hurting. Words came to his mind, heard or read somewhere far from here, a quotation from a play; not one of Oren Osmar’s classics but something modern, terse and striving for the new ideal of realistic speech. The sort of laconic line that often sounded so wrong—and yet, just once in a while, so very, very right.
“Garet,” Aldric said, “you talk too much.”
An instant later, there was a
taidyo
lashing at his face. He didn’t bother to block the cut—which was no true cut at all, but the kind of slash he might have expected from a man with a club—but merely sidestepped it without even bringing his own foil to guard. It was done with a studied lack of effort, and that was unusual for Aldric in such circumstances. The first rule—and the last—in any weapon-play was that to toy with an opponent of unknown capabilities was to invite disaster, and it was a rule he usually obeyed; yet now, though the opening for a devastating counter was there, he held back and instead merely grinned at Garet.
The Drusalan answered with a thrust—pure
estoc-
practice, that—aimed straight at the eyes.
Aldric said, “Idiot!” in a loud, clear voice that sounded almost annoyed, and did something he would never have risked with live blades unless in full armor. Enveloping the incoming point with a circular parry, he deflected it out to his left and then stepped inside the weapon’s compass to snatch it back in again—pinned now in the angles of left upper arm and elbow. All that was required and all that he did was to make an edge-handed chop across Garet’s fingers and a sidewise twist away.
The trapped weapon was wrenched from its owner’s hand almost as if he had presented it of his own free will, and Aldric grinned again. “What was that you told me? That you’re better?”
Prokrator Bruda clapped his hands slowly together in ironic applause, but whether it was at the swordplay or the dialogue Aldric didn’t know. At least he had proved his point—and proved himself as well, both as a skilled and as a restrained fighter. There was no purpose in continuing this farce and he turned away to return the
taidyin
to his gear.
Then a voice behind him said, “Garet.” Aldric scarcely recognised it as Voord’s once-so-urbane tones; but then, apart from a single shrill expletive he had not heard the
hautheisart
speak since… since silencing him. He looked back and saw the other escort—Tagen, was it?— on his feet with one hand resting negligently on the pommel of his sword. Aldric tensed for an instant, then saw that none of the attention here was directed at him. Instead Voord was staring at Garet over a bloodied kerchief that concealed most of his face, and though no further words were uttered by that muffled, mangled mouth, the young
tau-kortagor
seemed able to take meaning from his commander’s eyes alone.
Aldric too could guess easily enough what this little tableau was all about. Having volunteered—if he
had
volunteered—to punish this Alban upstart, ostensibly for his own reasons, Garet was not going to be permitted to stop. Not while he also fought on
Hautheisart
Voord’s behalf. Nor, Aldric fancied, would failure be well regarded; Voord did not look the sort of man who had a forgiving nature.
Altogether more serious now, he bowed courteously as he returned the captured
taidyo
to Garet’s hand, and was conscious of more attention along the conference table than there had been before. It was as if they all knew that the next exchange would be more than a mocking display of technique; and as if they knew still more—something of which Aldric was yet ignorant.