Traitor's Blade

THE ARCHERY LESSON

Every once in a while I manage to convince myself that there’s no such thing as magic, that it’s just charlatans’ trickery. But those next few days as we raced northwards along the Spear, I was reminded that at least some magic must be real.

My evidence was not the massive beast carrying us faster than any horse I’d ever ridden, for if one horse can be large, then surely another can be even larger. Nor was it even the City Sage and his calling of the names, for that might have been simply the product of senility. No, my proof that magic existed was that somehow Shiballe was managing to send men after us, and that they were ahead of us, a hundred miles after leaving Rijou.

The men could not have come from the city, for their horses were nowhere near as fast as Monster, and I refused to believe that Shiballe had placed guards on every road out of Rijou in case we actually managed to escape. No, somehow his mages were communicating with agents in the towns nearby, obviously promising huge rewards for our capture.

Monster could ride at speed without stopping, but we couldn’t. The effects of the Blood Week were taking hold once again. Ethalia’s ministrations had gone a long way towards healing my body, but I was utterly exhausted, deep in every fibre of my body, and I couldn’t ride without having to stop every few hours. And even if I had been able, Aline couldn’t. And so our journey north turned into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

When we did have to fight, Monster was deadly. The rage that defined her was not diminishing with her freedom, although she remained fiercely protective of Aline and only rarely tried to bite my head off. But anything else that got in our way was doomed: the Fey Horse just charged it down, her hooves and teeth deadlier weapons than my rapiers.

The attacks lessened as we put more distance between us and the city, but the very last one nearly ended in disaster. Four of them came at us from the sides, swords drawn. They’d obviously been waiting in the undergrowth lining the road, and they timed their attack perfectly, for Aline and I had been riding for hours and were near asleep in the saddle – if we’d had a saddle, that was.

Monster wanted to fight, but I kept urging her forward, and though she growled in frustration, she kept going straight. As we came over the rise, we saw a man standing in the middle of the road a hundred paces ahead of us, an arrow nocked and aimed at us. Monster roared a challenge and raced even faster, preparing to run the man down, but just a few paces later I recognised him and screamed, ‘Jump! Monster, jump!’ in her ear. Squeezing my thighs as hard as I could, I pulled back on her mane – I’d pay for that later, I was sure of it – but at the last instant the man calmly crouched down and Monster jumped over the top of him. I turned to see Brasti fire arrow after arrow into our pursuers, and by the time he was done two of the men had fallen from their horses and the other two were slumped over in their saddles.

All of them were dead, of course. Show-off.

Aline convinced Monster to stop and I jogged back to where Brasti was retrieving his arrows and searching the men.

‘Stop, Brasti,’ I said.

‘Look, Falcio, these men are mine. You had nothing to do with it, so—’

‘They were trying to kill me,’ I reminded him.

‘Well, you had nothing useful to do with it, anyway. So whatever they have is mine to do with as I choose, and if you don’t like it you can take it up with the local Greatcoat.’

I couldn’t help myself: the fact that he was so irate over my interference overcame me and I hugged him like a fool. ‘Ah, Brasti, Brasti,’ I said, laughing hopelessly.

‘Uh … there, there, now. There, there, Falcio. It’s all right …’ He patted me on the back awkwardly and this sent me into another spasm of laughter.

‘What in the name of Saint Birgid’s frigid cunt is that?’ he exclaimed. He must’ve only now taken in the size of the Greathorse as Aline walked back towards us, Monster in tow and following along as peaceful as could be.

‘That’s Monster,’ Aline said, ‘and I don’t think you’re allowed to say “cunt”.’ She walked past us and looked at the men lying dead on the ground.

‘How did you do that?’ she asked Brasti excitedly. ‘There were four of them and just one of you – you beat them so quickly!’

‘I’m an archer, little girl,’ Brasti said, casually checking his nails. ‘It’s like being a swordsman, only faster.’ He looked at me and added, ‘Come on, Falcio. I’ve been scouting the roads behind us in case you didn’t die. The others will be wondering what’s taking me so long and I don’t want to miss supper.’

‘What’s—?’

‘Happened? Nothing, really. Kest wanted to kill Valiana a few times, but he kept reminding himself that he swore an oath not to do so. I tried to reassure him that you were almost certainly dead, but for some strange reason he seems convinced that you’re unkillable. Trin wasn’t. Feltock caught her trying to steal a horse and ride back to Rijou to help you. Not sure what she hoped to accomplish. Valiana was furious with her but then gradually became ridden with guilt, which I find almost as annoying as when she’s being an arrogant bitch.’

‘Brasti!’ said Aline.

‘Right; sorry. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘Feltock’s in a bit of a strop, and that’s getting worse the further north we go. The rest of the men have softened up, but they do pick up on the captain’s moods. Frankly, the only person I can stand is Trin – at least she’s got a happy disposition.’ He looked at Aline. ‘Of course, there’s a bit more than that to tell – bandit attacks and deeds of derring-do and such. I don’t mind telling you I’ve been quite the hero while you were gone. And that’s not even counting this last bit of saving you and the girl. Ten men attacking on the road, spears at the ready, you screaming for mercy—’

‘Four men,’ Aline said. ‘Don’t lie: it was four men.’

Brasti looked down at her. ‘Little girl, you really don’t know anything about how to tell a story, do you? Well, don’t worry, Falcio, I’ll tell you all about my adventures after supper.’

He looked at me appraisingly. ‘What about you? Anything interesting happen?’

Over the next week we settled back into the life of the caravan, but it took me a long time to feel strong again. The monotony of the road and the lack of immediate danger carved out an emptiness in my thoughts that would have been welcome, were it not filled with a constant replay of my last moments with Ethalia. She had offered me happiness and instead I’d chosen – what? I couldn’t call it honour. Traitors can’t lay claim to honour. I couldn’t even blame it on the King’s final stupid request. I still had no clue where his Charoites might be, nor what I would do with them if I found them. Were they magical? Even if they were, I didn’t put a lot of faith in magic. It was always something other people used against me, not something I could ever wield as a tool myself. If the Charoites were precious, where could we ever sell them if we found them? And what were we supposed to do with the money – finance a revolution? Rally the people around … who? Us? My experiences in Rijou had emphasised how fractured a people we were. The crowd had supported me, but only because I had appealed to their sense of being unique, of being better than the rest of the country, and really, that made me no better than the Duke himself, except that he had overreached. If I ever tried to rally them to the cause of the Greatcoats, I had no doubt I would find myself with less support than if I tried to bring back the Blood Week.

So I spent my time on the road recuperating. Ethalia had healed my wounds in ways I couldn’t begin to understand, and yet, with her absence and my guilt over leaving her, I felt as if the effects of her ministrations were fading too fast; as if my own inability to take pleasure in my short time with her was nullifying her treatment. I think she would have been sad if she had known that.

I felt even worse that I couldn’t bring myself to talk about her to Kest and Brasti. A gulf was growing between us. Kest was still maintaining that he would put a sword in Valiana before she took one step inside Castle Aramor, and I was equally determined he would not. Brasti tried to make a joke of it by offering to put an arrow in the back of whichever one of us brought it up next, thereby solving the dilemma. We laughed at that, and pretended these arguments could be put aside for a while, but it felt to me as if every day our friendship was fading a little more. I sometimes wondered why Kest and Brasti even stayed with the caravan, except that there was only the long, straight road now, and nowhere else to go.

Valiana was the only one who behaved as if she were truly happy about our return. She took to Aline immediately, as if the child were a new pet, showering her with attention and making her ride in the carriage with her.

Aline herself became very changeable, her mood veering from giddy young girl to sullen, angry young woman, from happy to sad, to very quiet. She spent no time with me at all and for a while I thought she blamed me for our capture, despite everything else I’d done. But she stayed away from Monster too, though the great beast had saved her life. I felt an odd kinship with the Fey Horse. She wouldn’t stay near the other horses, much to their relief, and we often ended up keeping a distant vigil on the girl together.

‘You make an odd pair of guards,’ Trin said, eyeing Monster carefully as she brought me some hard bread and a piece of harder cheese. Monster and I were at the back of the caravan so perhaps that’s the reason why I noticed several of the other men with better fare in hand.

‘Thank you,’ I said as she was leaving.

She turned back to me. Does she think I’m mocking her?

‘I mean, for trying to help us,’ I said. ‘Brasti told me that you tried to take a horse back to Rijou.’

‘I was merely … It was nothing. A foolish impulse, quickly forgotten.’

‘Would you like to walk with us for a while?’ I asked.

‘If it would please you.’

We stayed quiet at first, watching the long stretch of the Spear laid out in front of us, the mass of close-growing trees and shrubs somehow making everything feel too closed in. I felt awkward, almost as if I were being unfaithful to Ethalia, despite the fact that I was unlikely to ever see her again.

‘You’re different,’ Trin said after a while.

‘Oh? How so?’

She looked at me, her eyes examining every part of my face. ‘You’ve lost something. There was something there before, in the folds of your eyes and the furrow of your brow. It seems lessened.’

‘You sound disappointed.’

Trin looked as if she had just realised she’d given some kind of insult. ‘No … it’s just that you’ve proven to be different from what I had expected when we first met.’

I thought back to the day at the market in Solat. ‘What precisely were you expecting then?’

‘Whatever it was, I can’t be faulted for underestimating you. Who could imagine men like you really existed?’ She smiled at me, her eyes locking on mine.

If I were younger and less cynical, or if I were Brasti, I would think that smile a sign of adoration.

‘I have to get back,’ she said. ‘The Princess will wonder where I am.’

As Trin walked away, Monster’s eyes seemed to follow her. So did mine. ‘Do you suppose that a beautiful woman half my age – and for no particular reason – is falling in love with me?’ I asked.

Monster snorted.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think so either.’

Was she simply playing the odds – looking for protection from whoever could give it to her? What else did I have that she could want? Perhaps it was simply a game for her – but from what I’d seen, she wasn’t really the type to play such childish games.

Kest came and joined us. ‘Am I interrupting something?’ he said, noticing the expression on my face.

‘Just calculating the odds,’ I said.

Kest raised an eyebrow. ‘Of a fight?’

‘Possibly. I don’t know yet.’

‘Is this about Aline?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Though I suppose that is another problem waiting to be solved.’

Aline’s situation was bound to become complicated. She was still a noblewoman, though it was unclear what that meant, given that she no longer had property or retainers. I wasn’t even clear on what her title was now. The City Sage hadn’t called it out; I supposed that meant Tiarren had been simply a Lord and not anything higher. Valiana was acting enthralled with the girl for now, but when we got to Hervor things would begin to change, and soon the child would be discarded. Would her enemies still pursue her? If so, how was I supposed to protect her? ‘I don’t think she wants anything to do with me,’ I said aloud.

‘She’s young,’ Kest said. ‘I think she just wants to be a normal girl for a while.’

‘She wants to be away from broken things,’ I replied.

‘In her heart she understands. In her heart, she might even love you and the horse. She knows you saved her life. But in her head she’s still reliving everything they did to her. It will take time.’

I patted Monster’s rough, scarred hide absently. She let me ride her more often these days, but I preferred to walk now that my leg had finally healed from the crossbow wound.

‘The King lied to me,’ I said, absently.

Kest looked at me. ‘How so?’

‘The soft candy – the girl ate it. When they took her, when she realised we were caught? She ate it, and yet she lived to endure the horrors they inflicted on her. I think she blames me for that too.’

‘Perhaps it just went off – it’s been years since they made it—’

‘The hard candy still works,’ I pointed out. ‘The King never wanted it made in the first place. He lied to me.’

‘I doubt it was the only time. Let it be, Falcio. The King did as he thought best, just as you did. The girl is alive, after all, and she will heal, as children do – but it will be in her own time.’

Aline might have nothing but disdain for me, and a slight wariness about Kest, but she had taken an immediate liking to Brasti.

‘Show me again! Show me again!’ I heard her squeal.

I could see Brasti’s broad smile. He loved to show off to a receptive audience. ‘Fine then, what this time?’

Aline put a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun and pointed. ‘Over there, on that tree – do you see it?’

He leaned forward on his horse. ‘What? I don’t see it.’

‘The apple, silly,’ she said.

Brasti peered at the crooked tree that half-encroached on the road far off in the distance. The rest of us watched them while we ate our bread and cheese and rested the horses.

‘There’s no apple there,’ he said after a dramatic pause. ‘Why, it couldn’t be bigger than a pea – a little red pea.’

Aline giggled. ‘It’s an apple, anyone can see that.’

‘Well, even if it is – and mind, I’m not yet convinced it isn’t a tiny red pea – it’s much too far.’ He rolled his right shoulder back and shook his hair out of his face. ‘What manner of man, what manner of great, great man, we must ask, would have the strength, the skill, the iron-forged courage, to attempt a target like that?’

Kest looked at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘Courage? You think the apple is going to try and bite you?’

Aline giggled.

‘Quiet, swordsman,’ Brasti said haughtily. ‘This is real man’s work.’ He rolled his right shoulder a second time and nocked an arrow. At first he sighted down the arrow and pulled back hard on the bowstring, then he lifted his point up and away to the left.

‘You’re aiming the wrong way,’ Aline said, concern in her voice, but Brasti ignored her and let the arrow fly.

At first I thought he might have overshot, but there was a light wind and as the arrow began arcing back down it veered a little to the right and took the apple clean off the tree.

Aline clapped excitedly. ‘You did it, Brasti!’

Brasti was checking his fingernails as he said, ‘Truly, what manner of man must do such great and terrible things?’

‘One who’s too lazy to pick the apple off the tree himself?’ I offered.

Aline ignored me studiously and focused her attention on Brasti. ‘But how did it work? You aimed too far to the left.’

‘Wind,’ he said. ‘You have to factor in the wind.’

‘But the wind isn’t very strong at all.’

‘Look at the small branches on that tree over there. You see how they’re swaying? This part of the road is protected by that ridge, but up ahead there, the trees are in the open.’

She looked at him with awe. ‘Can you—?’

‘What, hit something else? Uncle Brasti needs to save a few arrows for miscreants, sweetheart.’

‘No, I don’t mean—Well, what I’m wondering is …’ She swallowed hard, and with hope shining out of her eyes, asked, ‘Can you maybe teach me to shoot like that?’

Brasti looked down at her and then over at me. I shrugged. It wasn’t my decision.

‘All right,’ Brasti said, ‘but you learn my way, not yours. Agreed?’

Aline nodded very solemnly. ‘Agreed.’

‘You’re going to need a bow.’

The girl thought about it for a second. ‘I don’t have a bow,’ she said, ‘and I don’t have any money.’

Brasti crossed his arms and looked around at us, then he said, ‘I suppose if I’m to be your archery master then I should give you the bow my master gave me when I became his student.’

‘Really?’ she asked, her voice full of awe.

He walked over to the rear wagon several feet away and rummaged around in the back. When he returned, he held out his hands as if he were holding something incredibly precious. There was nothing there.

‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Your first bow.’

It looked like the joke had gone too far, for the girl looked as if she might start crying.

‘Oi, now, no need to be cruel,’ Krug said, waving his big bear arms towards her. ‘You come here, little girl. I’ll make you a nice wooden sword to play with.’

I could tell that Aline didn’t want to learn to play with wooden swords, but she started to turn towards the man anyway.

‘Is that your decision then?’ Brasti asked.

‘What?’

‘Have you decided that you no longer wish to learn the way of the arrow?’

‘You know that’s not true,’ she said. ‘Why are you being mean? Why are you all so mean?’

Valiana called from the carriage, ‘Come in here with me, Aline, and leave the silly men to their toys and games.’

Aline started to go, but Brasti stopped her. ‘Last chance,’ he said without a trace of humour in his voice.

‘You know I want to,’ she said miserably.

‘Say it,’ Brasti demanded. He still held his arms out in front of him as if a bow rested on them.

‘I want to learn the way of the arrow.’

‘Say it again.’

‘I want to learn the way of the arrow.’

Brasti knelt on one knee in front of her. ‘Then take this bow,’ he said.

She hesitated.

‘Take it.’

Gingerly she reached forward and pretended to lift the bow from his outstretched arms.

‘Now swear, Aline: swear that you will follow my lessons, always aim true, and above all, treat this bow as if it were the last you will ever own.’

She looked confused but she stammered out, ‘I swear it.’

Brasti rose. ‘Good. Go and put the bow away for now and then come back. You won’t need it for your first lesson.’

Aline ran off to one of the wagons and did a very good job of pretending to place the bow carefully amongst the supplies.

Kest looked at Brasti. ‘I must confess, I’ve never studied archery,’ he began.

‘Well, it’s a bit too sophisticated an art for your kind, Kest.’

‘Perhaps – but I admit to being confused as to the purpose of an imaginary bow.’

‘If you can aim and shoot with perfect form with an imaginary bow, you can do it with a real one.’

‘So this really is how you learned to shoot?’

‘My master did the very same thing to me when I was about her age. An archer needs to trust his form, not the feel of the bow. The archer is the true weapon; the bow is just a long piece of wood.’

A couple of the men snorted at that, but it was hard to question Brasti’s words when he never seemed to miss.

Aline returned and looked up at Brasti. ‘Could you teach me about the wind?’ she asked. ‘How can you tell how much it’s pushing?’

‘Well, you use your eyes first, of course, but then you have to close them so that you can use your ears.’

‘Your ears?’

‘Close your eyes,’ he said.

She did and so did I, and then I felt a little foolish.

‘Now listen. What do you hear?’

‘I hear you, and I hear the men moving around.’

‘Good. What else?’

‘One of the horses is snorting, and I think something is creaking – his bridle, maybe.’

‘Keep going,’ Brasti said. ‘Deeper.’

‘I hear the wind picking up the leaves.’

‘That’s right. You’re doing very well. Now try to listen past it. Try to listen to the sound of the wind coming up again. What does that sound like?’

‘It sounds like – it sounds like a cat, stepping on leaves.’

‘That’s right, like a cat, it’s— Oh shit!’

I opened my eyes and saw Brasti jumping on top of the forward wagon and pulling out his bow and arrows. The real ones.

‘What is it?’ Feltock asked.

‘Cats stepping on leaves,’ he said. ‘At this distance the only thing that sounds like cats stepping on leaves is a group of men trying to move quietly.’

Feltock didn’t hesitate. ‘Arm up – now, damn it! Get the horses back, get the wagons circled, carriage in the centre. Protect the Lady.’

As the men jumped to obey, Feltock asked, ‘Can you tell me how many?’

Brasti shook his head. ‘I can’t be sure, except it’s a lot more than us.’

It didn’t take long to find out, for as soon as the brigands realised that we were pulling out weapons they began to rush towards us. I could see movement in the forest on either side of us.

‘Damned trees,’ Feltock swore. ‘Can’t see a bloody thing – and we’re sitting ducks out in the open road like this.’

The men were forming up, using the cover of the wagons to prepare for a charge, if the right moment came. Brasti was looking for targets, sighting along his bow.

I saw Aline rushing to the wagon where she had put her own ‘bow’ and shouted, ‘Aline! Go to the Lady Valiana and stay there!’

I had to turn because a flurry of arrows hit the ground in front of me.

‘Do you have any more pistols?’ I asked Feltock.

‘They’re rubbish,’ he said. ‘They have to make a dozen of the damned things to get one that shoots straight. Besides, they’re single-shot; they take too damned long to reload.’

Brasti let fly an arrow and I followed its path into the forest where it hit a man in the shoulder.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ called out a voice from the trees.

‘Yeah? Why is that?’ Feltock called out.

Arrows rained down, lodging in the dirt in front of our feet. There must have been thirty of them.

‘Damn, Feltock – why didn’t you bring more men on this journey if it’s this bad up here?’

‘Her Ladyship’s orders: ten men, counting me, and no more.’

‘Why would Valiana do that when she knew she would be in danger?’

Feltock looked me in the eye. ‘It wasn’t her – it was her mother, the Duchess. She gave the orders.’

Kest and I exchanged glances; he looked as confused as I was – maybe even more so, in fact, because he was still planning on killing Valiana.

The brigand leader shouted out again: ‘Leave the wagons and be on your way. There’s no need for bloodshed here.’

An arrow flew out of the forest and lodged itself in Blondie’s shoulder.

‘Except for him. That’s for my man you took in the shoulder. Fair’s fair, after all.’

‘We can’t leave the wagons,’ I called out. ‘The road ahead is too long and too dangerous. We’ll starve.’

‘Better you than us,’ the leader answered. ‘Every man has the right to eat and to take a measure of comfort.’

‘Says who?’ Feltock muttered.

The brigand leader had good ears. ‘Says King’s Law, my salty old friend. You can look it up yourself if you can find someone to teach you how to read.’

‘Well, isn’t he well spoken for a bandit?’ Feltock said to me.

Well spoken indeed, and right on King’s Law. Interesting.

‘Negotiation,’ I called back. ‘Every man or woman has the right to negotiation before blood.’

There was a pause.

‘Very well,’ the leader said. ‘We’ll come out, twelve of us for twelve of you, but mark that I have more than enough archers here to put you down if you try anything, and we’ll have our weapons at the ready.’

‘Marked and fair,’ I said.

They came out of the forest: rough men, mostly, with ragged clothes and beaten iron swords or wooden spears for weapons, followed last by their leader. He carried a longsword that shone when the sun hit it: no rust on that weapon. On his head he wore a brown broad-brimmed hat, weather-beaten and worn. On his back he wore a Magister’s greatcoat.

‘Bloody hells,’ Brasti said.

Feltock looked at me through narrowed eyes. He had told me as much, that some Trattari had taken on brigand ways.

‘He can’t be a Magister. He’s just killed one and taken his coat.’

‘No,’ Kest said, ‘I recognise him now. That’s Cunien from Orison. He was a cantor.’

I marked him too now. Cunien became a cantor not long after I did. As a cantor, he settled matters of law when another Magister had failed. To be a cantor, you had to be ready to go back and mete out the justice denied when another Magister had been killed or captured.

‘Well now, isn’t this a fine reunion,’ Cunien said. He ambled over to us and surveyed our company. His eyes fell on Valiana in the carriage. ‘You’re a pretty one, aren’t you? Can I have a kiss?’ Then he noticed Trin next to her. ‘Oh, my. Two for the price of one – how delightful!’

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘No one’s been seriously hurt here yet.’

‘Why should that matter to him?’ Valiana said, leaving the carriage and striding towards us, Trin behind her.

‘My Lady—’ Feltock began.

‘Why would he care? He’s a Trattari – this is what they do, isn’t it?’ She turned on me and slapped me hard in the face. ‘That’s for all your high words and self-righteousness about what’s wrong with everyone else. You and yours are no better than anyone else – worse, even, because you look down on your betters.’

Cunien smoothed down his moustaches and smiled at Valiana. ‘Will this take long? I don’t mean to rush you, but I’d like to get a look in those wagons soon.’

‘I am the daughter of the Duchess of Hervor,’ she said, ‘and I’ll die before I let you take anything from me, tatter-cloak!’

Cunien’s voice was deadly cold. ‘That you will, girl, if you call me that again. But as much entertainment as you’re providing here, I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of our negotiations. When I saw you from the trees I was curious to see if you were really Greatcoats, or just some soldiers who had killed Magisters. But now I see you’re neither of those things. You’re just trained dogs working for the Duchess of Hervor: the bitch who had our King murdered. You’ve sunk low, First Cantor.’

‘Look who’s talking,’ Brasti said.

‘When there’s no law and no King, all you have left is a bit of food, the occasional woman and whatever small justice you can mete out in this world.’

He signalled to his men and they started to pull back towards the trees, leaving room for their archers. This was bad. He didn’t trust us, and I couldn’t speak to him with so many onlookers. I needed to know what he was doing out here with these brigands. I needed to know if any Greatcoats remained true.

‘Duel,’ I said quickly.

Cunien turned to look at me and smiled. ‘Duel? I don’t think so, Falcio. We’ll just take the wagons – feel free to fight, though. Knowing I’ve taken out a few of the Duchess’s men will keep me warm tonight.’

‘You have no choice,’ I said. ‘It’s the King’s Law.’

‘For matters of personal dispute, yes, but I don’t think killing you is going to make any difference to the Duchess, so I’ll have to settle for the wagons.’

I smiled at him and spoke loudly and clearly. ‘You’re absolutely right, Cunien. You have more men than us, and you’ll get your wagons. Of course, we’ll take out a few of your men. Brasti is the best bowman here by far, and we have a pistol. And Kest and I will take out a few before we go down. But what price is that compared to you having to fight a duel with me? You win, you get the wagons without a fight; I win, you let us go. But really, why take a chance on being beaten when I’m sure your men are more than willing to die to protect your pride.’

Cunien glared at me. ‘Gods, Falcio, you always were a talker, weren’t you?’

‘I think, if you give it a chance, you’ll find my blade speaks more eloquently than my tongue.’

He raised his longsword. ‘Very well, then. I always did want to see if I could beat the man who supposedly bested Kest in a fight.’

I let my rapier out of its scabbard and stepped into first guard. ‘I am at your disposal,’ I said.

Cunien didn’t adopt a guard position but walked casually around me, forcing me to change my position.

‘I have to be honest with you, Falcio,’ he said softly, almost soothingly. ‘I used to look up to you – but now all I see is a man who is a little too old and a little too soft for this kind of work. I don’t think you have the fire in your belly any more.’

‘Hey, Cunien,’ Brasti called out. ‘I don’t suppose you have an axe, do you?’

‘What?’

‘Never mind.’

Cunien aimed his point low and walked straight towards me, spinning his sword up and around in a ribbon-cut at the last second. The blade came at my neck but I lunged forward on the diagonal to my left and let it pass by without parrying it. I tried an inside thrust to his sword arm, but he brought his weapon back with a hard downwards parry that almost knocked my rapier out of my hand.

Fine, then: he wanted to get the pleasantries out of the way.

I let the point drop down and continued its motion into a windmill, bringing the blade down on his head. His own sword snaked up on a slant and caught the cut, coming back down at my own head. I lifted my rapier up with the blade parallel to the earth and we locked blades. He grabbed my sword wrist so that I wouldn’t be able to free my blade and I did the same to him and we struggled against each other for a moment.

‘This is pleasant enough,’ Cunien said, ‘but if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with it.’

I lifted my left heel to kick his knee out, which forced him to step back and loosen his grip on my wrist. We separated again, and that allowed us to get the real conversation started.

He came at me with a harlot’s foible, a straight-on thrust that turns at the last instant to avoid the parry and returns to strike the same target. I wasn’t sure if he was serious about it so I let it through and stepped by to avoid the point. He did it again and so I circled my sword counter to his, which allowed me to envelop his blade for a moment and push it out of line. I struck side-bladed towards his chest, which would have given him a nasty cut and pushed him off-balance if he had let it through. The side-blade attack was a question, which he answered by ducking and slapping the blade up with the back of his gloved hand. So the answer was no, then.

I tried again with a feint-cut to his left thigh, pulling back the point just before his downwards parry to let his blade pass before I thrust in. The move is called the snake’s tongue, and he looked genuinely surprised by it. He responded with a half-turn, followed by several swift cuts aimed at my arms and legs, all of which I beat back easily.

And the conversation continued.

We went on like this for some time, and then I saw him leave a small opening on his right leg and I knew it was time to end this. I came in high towards his head and let him beat my blade aside with his longsword before making a hard horizontal cut at my neck. At the last instant I swung onto my back leg and dropped down into a low crouch and speared his exposed calf. He gave a yell and dropped his sword, which hit me on the top of the head. I almost stabbed him again for that, but I suppose fair’s fair.

‘Yield. It’s decided,’ I said, pulling the point of my blade out of his calf.

Cunien fell down on the ground and I saw his men tense up.

‘Stand down,’ he shouted. ‘Stand down. Fair’s fair, and this has been decided.’

His men, shabby and poor as they were, obeyed as quickly as any soldiers would have.

I sheathed my rapier and reached an arm down to help him up.

‘Damn, man,’ he said. ‘That hurts worse than I remember.’

‘You opened the target, not me. Besides, who drops his sword on another man’s head? I mean, truly, what kind of grace is that?’

Cunien smiled. ‘I couldn’t let you get away without a scrape.’ He turned and waved to Valiana. ‘Another day perhaps, my Lady! Don’t let Falcio seduce you with that fair tongue of his. If you must sleep with one of them, settle on Brasti. He has more experience.’ He turned back to his men and led them back into the forest.

‘I always liked him,’ Brasti said. ‘Good head on his shoulders.’

Feltock let out a sigh of relief and so did his men. They began moving the horses and packing up the wagons. Everyone kept their weapons out, though.

Aline was still standing there, looking at the forest, into which the brigands had vanished.

‘It’s all right, girl,’ Kest said. ‘They won’t come back.’

‘It’s not that,’ she replied.

‘What is it, then?’ I asked.

‘Well, at first I was scared – I thought you might be killed and we would lose the wagons.’

I chuckled. ‘Glad to hear you were so concerned for my safety.’

She ignored the comment.

‘But then the fight seemed to change – it didn’t look quite right to me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Brasti asked her.

‘I mean, it almost didn’t look like a fight at all. It was more like a conversation, like the blades were talking to each other.’

Kest, Brasti and I didn’t look at each other for a long moment.

‘And what do you think they said?’ Kest asked carefully.

She frowned. ‘It was hard to tell. At first it was like Falcio was asking questions and the brigand seemed to be saying “no”, and then they started going back and forth and it was too fast for me to follow.’

Brasti smiled and rumpled her hair. ‘Now there’s the mind of a silly girl at work,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave all this foolishness with swords aside and I’ll show you how to hold that bow of yours properly.’

She giggled for a second. ‘You can’t hold an imaginary bow properly or improperly. It’s just in your head.’

The way she switched from fearful to angry to childish so quickly worried me. What she had been through had been enough to drive a grown man or woman mad with terror, let alone a child, and I had no idea what this behaviour meant – or what we could do about it.

She and Brasti wandered back to the horses and Kest and I followed.

‘So,’ he said, speaking low, ‘what did Cunien have to say?’