Traitor's Blade

THE CARAVAN MARKET

I mentioned that my mother and I lived on the outskirts of our town, which bordered another town named Luth. There was a wooden marker between the two, and Kest and I met there as boys when we were both around eight years old. I was very poor, with no father and no prospects, other than a possible future as the village idiot. Kest Murrowson was the child of a wonderful mother who worked as a healer and a father who was the town smith. Kest told jokes all the time – thereby putting me to shame even for the role of village idiot – but he never made fun of me for being poor or not having a father, and that instantly qualified him to be my best friend. He was a gentle boy who didn’t like to hunt or fish and never wanted to play with swords. I, on the other hand, was going to be a Greatcoat one day, just like in Bal’s stories.

Kest’s father made some of the best swords in the region, and he had learned fighting ways in the wars with Avares, the country to the west that is populated by barbarians who occasionally gang up and make their way across the mountains and try to raid us the way they do their own people. They lose every time because our troops can fight war-style, in units, while theirs just sort of run at you shouting and pissing on themselves as they try to cleave your skull with whatever is handy.

Anyway, Murrow, Kest’s father, was a fine swordsman, and since Kest showed no interest, he thought he could induce him to jealousy by teaching me. He showed me how to fight with the broadsword, often called the war-sword these days because duels are now fought with lighter weapons. But the sword I most fell in love with was the rapier: straight, sharp point, lightweight – at least in comparison to a war-sword – and with an elegant style that felt like dancing with Death. I was a good student, and I loved spending time with the family. But strangely, Kest was never swayed by the jealousy his father had sought to create. He watched me, complimented me periodically, but never showed any interest in taking up the sword himself.

When I was ten years old, Murrow took me aside after practice one day and said, ‘Falcio, my boy, you’re going to be a fine swordsman one day. A fine one. I’ve never seen anyone take to it so quickly.’

A ball of warm fire lit itself in my chest. He had never called me ‘my boy’ before, and it made me feel something, just for a moment, that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I resented Kest, not for having a father, or even for not caring, because he did, but rather because he didn’t try half so hard to please his father as I had done to please mine. But I didn’t really hold a grudge with Kest over his disinterest. He was smart, he told jokes; everyone liked him. He was good at plenty of things. I was happy he had left the sword to me.

Years passed but I hardly took notice and before long we were turning twelve. My birthday had just passed and Kest’s was coming up. I won’t ever forget the day he came over to my mother’s cottage to tell me—

Well, here’s how it played: he knocked on the door. I came out with a half-eaten piece of bread in my hand and he said, ‘Falcio, I need to ask you something. Well, to be truthful, I need to tell you something.’

I placed the piece of bread down on the step and put my hands together in front of me, a nervous habit I had in those days. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Well …’ He hesitated for a second, but then he took a breath and said, ‘I’m going to take up the sword, Falcio.’

I let out my own breath all at once. ‘Damn, Kest, you scared the Saints out of me.’

‘I’m serious, Falcio. I’m going to take up the sword. I’m going to start today. I don’t want you to be upset or offended – it’s not because of anything to do with you. I just have to do this. I have to take up the sword.’

I looked at him. I wanted to ask why, but somehow I knew he would never tell me. ‘Does this mean we can’t be friends?’ I asked, confused and a little hurt.

‘No – of course we’ll always be friends. That’s why I’m telling you this now, so you won’t think it’s something bad between us.’

I thought about that for a second. ‘Well, okay then. That’s good. We can practise together. We can be the two best sword fighters in the town. People will come from all around to watch us. We can go see your father and start today!’ I figured I was being nice, since Kest was almost twelve and would never be able to catch up to me.

Kest grinned, and we went to his house. When Murrow saw Kest, somehow he knew something had changed, and he pulled down another sword from his shelf without anyone saying a word.

When Kest first picked up the sword, I thought it would be hard for him – sure, he had watched me train and he probably had a good idea about how the parries and strikes should go, but he was bound to be awkward, and he hadn’t built up his muscles the way I had from years of practise. And, for the first hour or so, he was, missing the parries and falling all over himself whenever he tried a cut. But he just kept at it, going back and repeating move after move, stroke after stroke.

By the end of the morning, he could beat me every time. By the end of that evening, he had beaten his father, and by the time Kest’s thirteenth birthday passed, there was no one on this earth who could best him with a sword. He never told me why he changed his mind about fighting, but he was the greatest swordsman in the world, and he never, ever told jokes.

‘Let it be, Brasti,’ Kest said, but Brasti shook his head and climbed down from his horse.

‘Right, of course, why bother complaining about it when we’re good and buggered no matter which way we go?’

All the main exits from town were sealed except for caravan traffic.

‘Hide, fight or flee?’ Kest asked me.

I started to think about it for a second, but Brasti didn’t wait. ‘I already told you, we can’t get out of here. They aren’t letting anyone but the Saints-damned caravans through, and we can’t fight them all. We have to hide out until things die down.’

‘Things won’t die down until we do, or until we find the assassin,’ Kest said. He folded his arms and went back to waiting for me to say something intelligent.

Whoever had killed Lord Caravaner Tremondi had worked out their plan perfectly. Everybody knew he was rich and everyone knew his bodyguards were Greatcoats. It wasn’t hard to believe that three Trattari would kill their employer to take his money. If we were caught, no one was likely to believe us, and if we escaped – well, that just proved our guilt, didn’t it? Either way, the murderer was completely free of suspicion. She was probably walking around the city right now, enjoying the rest of her day.

‘There’s no way we’re going to be able to track down the killer,’ I said. ‘We can’t possibly say we were right there in the room with her but can’t describe what she looked like. In a few hours the whole city of Solat is going to be looking for us.’

Brasti threw his hands up in the air. ‘So we run. Again. Like cowards.’

‘We’ve got fairly skilled at it,’ Kest pointed out.

‘You can get good at anything if you practise every day.’

‘We go to the caravan market,’ I said. ‘The constables are still searching for us in the city – they know we’ll try to hide out, so they’ll want to catch us before we go underground. But they won’t have alerted anyone in the caravan market yet.’

‘Brilliant,’ Brasti said, clapping his hands. ‘The caravan market – and I thought I was supposed to be the dumb one.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Kest said evenly, ‘you still are.’

‘I thought you didn’t tell jokes.’

‘I don’t.’

I let the two of them bicker while I considered our situation. Our best chance at getting out of the city and getting hold of some money was to be hired as guards or duellists at the caravan market. A warrior who could fight military-style or solo was a great asset on the roads these days. But other than Lord Tremondi, few caravaners were willing to hire Trattari, so that meant we’d have to take what we could get – and take it quickly – before the constables decided to search the market. I suspected it was the last place they would want to find us, though; word that a Lord Caravaner had been murdered in the city would spread quickly, and that wouldn’t do much for trade. Better for the city constables if they could keep it quiet for a while. Better for us, too.

‘We stick to the plan,’ I said at last. ‘We were heading out with Lord Tremondi because he was taking the southern trade routes and we needed passage to Baern, right? We don’t have any money, and even if we could sneak our way past the civilian gates, we won’t get far without coin. So I say we make for the caravan market, get ourselves hired with another caravan and follow them right out of the Market Gate. The constables don’t control that one anyway, so we’re less likely to get caught.’

‘What about Tremondi’s plan? What about the Greatcoats becoming the wardens of the trade routes?’ Brasti asked.

‘That’s likely as dead as Tremondi himself now,’ Kest replied.

I had to agree. ‘Even if someone does bring it up for a vote, they’ll never take a chance on us now.’

‘Well then, Falcio,’ Brasti said, his voice thick with anger and frustration, ‘let me be the first to thank you for ensuring that the three of us die in pursuit of a fruitless quest for your personal redemption!’

‘We still have a chance, Brasti – even Tremondi had heard rumours of the King’s Jewels in Baern.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘just like there were rumours about Cheveran and even bloody Rijou. “Look to the lowest of the noble families.” What in all the hells is that supposed to mean? None of them wants anything to do with us—’

‘If we can find—’

He turned away from me.

I didn’t need to, but I said it anyway: ‘It’s my geas, Brasti. It’s the last thing the King asked me to do.’

The week before the Ducal Army took the castle, the King met with each of his one hundred and forty-four Greatcoats individually, and he gave every single one of us a mission. He called it a geas – something he’d read in one of his old books, no doubt. Some of us he swore to secrecy, others he did not. My mission was to find the King’s Charoites. I’d never heard of any such thing before, but it wasn’t the first time the King had commanded me to do something without bothering to fill me in on the details.

Brasti threw his hands up in the air. ‘He gave all of us geasa, you idiot – you, me, Kest, and all the others too. But the King is dead, Falcio. They killed him, and we stood by and let the Dukes take the castle. And when they were done with him, they stuck his head on a pole in the courtyard, and we stood by while they did it. At your orders.’

‘You shouldn’t start this again,’ Kest warned, but Brasti was on a roll now.

‘And you, you bloody great ass – what was the fastest sword in the world doing while they took the King? Resting in its damned sheath, wasn’t it?’

‘I didn’t see any arrows flying, either,’ Kest replied calmly.

‘No, you didn’t, because I was a good little Magister, just like you were. But where does that leave us? We gave up our lives for a stupid dream, and now it’s dead, and we’re the only Gods-damned fools who haven’t figured it out yet.’

‘If it’s all such a joke, then why is it you’ve never told us what your geas is, Brasti?’ I asked. ‘It’s because he told you to keep it a secret, isn’t it?’

Brasti turned away, but I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him back around. ‘If everything he cared about died with him, then why do you still keep his secret? I’ll tell you why, Brasti, it’s because you know the dream doesn’t have to be dead if we keep believing in it.’ But even as I said the words, I realised I had made a mistake.

‘Damned Saints, Falcio, you’re the worst,’ Brasti shouted, and I couldn’t stop myself flinching. ‘You bought into all those ideas about justice and freedom just as much as Paelis did.’ He swung his arms wide. ‘Look around you, Falcio. People hate us – no, they despise us. They curse our very names. When a man does something so heinous that they can’t find a word bad enough for it, they call him “Trattari”. That’s not how I wanted to spend my life.’

‘You think life is easier on peasants? Or for that matter on anyone else living under the Dukes, the self-styled Princes? These men who rule their Duchies like Gods were only ever kept in check by the King and by us.’

‘Don’t start “The Song of the Peasants” with me, Falcio. I was born just as poor as you were and I saddled up and rode out there as much as you did. I risked my life plenty of times, and I was willing to die a hero’s death, too. But I won’t die a traitor’s death. It’s not right, it’s not—’

‘Fair?’ Kest asked.

Brasti stopped for moment, and I could see the pain inked across his face. When I first met him, he was one of the most contented people you could imagine. He wore the world like a gold cloak on his shoulders, and he walked about in the utter certainty that all was well with Brasti and all was well with the world. And in five minutes’ time, he’d put that mask on again and you’d never know the difference.

But that’s all it was now: a mask. Underneath he was so bitter, betrayed by everything and everyone, and probably me most of all. I wondered how long it would be before he stopped listening to me when I told him not to steal. I wondered how many of us had already turned to thievery or banditry just to survive. We had been heroes for a little while and now we were just traitors with useless pardons, no allies and no purpose. Maybe we really were tatter-cloaks now.

Kest said something else to Brasti and he answered back, but I didn’t really hear it. For five years I had been following the only clue the King had given me: I’d sought out his allies amongst the lesser noble families. Many were dead now, of course, slaughtered by the Dukes’ Knights on a variety of trumped-up charges, and the few who remained refused to deal with any Greatcoats. The one exception came in the form of a hastily scrawled note, handed to me by the servant of Lady Laffariste, once a confidante of the King’s; it said, simply, ‘Not now. They need more time.’ It was faint hope, and not nearly enough for Brasti, no matter how loyal he was underneath it all. The argument over the King’s last command was an old one between us, and one neither of us would win. Either the King’s Charoites were out there somewhere and we would find them, or we would end our days at the end of a noose.

I got back up on my horse and started down the cobbled streets towards the market. I assumed Kest and Brasti would follow eventually, but at that precise moment, I didn’t really care either way.

It took us an hour to make our way from the centre of the city to the caravan market without being discovered. I still reckoned our best chance was to head south for Baern, where Lord Tremondi’s rumours placed one of the King’s Charoites – supposedly ‘wandering around’ the coast near the city of Cheveran. Despite Brasti’s reasonable objection that we still had no idea what the King’s Charoites were, even he didn’t have a better destination in mind. We had to get out of Solat, and they hated us in the north from Rijou to Orison. Mind you, we weren’t particularly liked anywhere.

‘We don’t hire bloody tatter-cloaks here,’ the caravan captain told me, pushing my chest with a callused hand, ‘so just be off. Go try and screw someone else out of their money.’ The old man was a veteran; you could see it in his stance and wiry muscles. There were seven carts in his caravan, and the lead carriage was an ornate monstrosity which presumably housed the caravan owner. I looked it over critically. It would make a remarkably good target for brigands.

‘Look,’ I said as amiably as I could manage, ‘you’re short several men, and you’re not going to be able to find anyone as capable as the three of us, especially not for what you’re paying.’

‘I’m not paying horse droppings to you, Trattari.’

Even for an old man, he filled out his leather jerkin well enough to make a man hesitate before getting into a fight with him. I’m a cautious person by nature, so I turned to leave, preparing myself to try again with one of the other caravans, but a second later, he called out to me, ‘Why don’t you go and mount that King Paelis of yours one more time, eh? I reckon he’d be willing, and his body’s probably still lying where they left it. Of course, you’d have trouble finding the pole they put his tyrant head on!’

Now that was strange. Somehow my sword was in my hand and I was facing the caravan captain and I felt good. Really good. I was completely relaxed. I was going to follow the first rule and put the sharp end of my weapon through his mouth, and that was going to feel really, really good because, for the rest of my short life, I would always know there was one person less in this world spewing filth about my King.

Five of his men drew swords on me, and I spotted another behind the lead carriage with a pistol. Damn, that was going to require some fast work on my part. Once you get hit with the ball from a pistol, you really only have a few seconds to get the pointy bit into someone’s mouth before you fall down and die.

‘Now boys,’ Brasti said, drawing back his bowstring, ‘if I see your friend with the pistol so much as hold his breath I’ll end him. And trust me, the five of you against the three of us makes for very bad odds for you.’

The captain was about to give the signal to attack when a voice called from inside the carriage, ‘How about five against one, then?’ The voice was female, and it had a mocking quality buried under what would have normally been a seductive tone.

‘My lady—’ the captain began.

‘Peace, Feltock. You may be captain, but I own this caravan.’

‘Your lady mother does, anyway,’ he muttered as a young woman in a blue handmaiden’s dress exited the carriage and walked timidly towards the captain.

She had dark hair and delicate features, and she paused to collect herself before looking up at us shyly. ‘My lady commands that if the Trattari – forgive me, sir, the Greatcoat – can best five of our men, then she will employ you and your fellows at the full caravan guard rate.’

‘Trin, get back in the carriage with your mistress,’ Feltock growled. ‘It’s not safe here.’

Trin, her eyes lowered, ignored the command. Brasti favoured her with a sly smile and a wink before calling out to the carriage, ‘My lady, I thank you for your kind intervention in this matter, but we were just about to leave. Unless perhaps I could kiss the hand and gaze upon the face from which this beautiful voice issues?’

The captain was grumbling to the man next to him.

‘Five bested by one – what did you mean, exactly?’ Kest asked, and suddenly I had a terrible feeling. The only thing that really interested Kest these days was the opportunity to get into some awful odds and see if he could get me killed while trying out his latest sword technique.

‘I mean what I say,’ the voice from the carriage said. ‘Your leader against five of my men. If he wins and none of them are dead, I will hire the three of you. But for every one of my men he injures beyond use, you will provide me with one of your men at no cost.’

These kinds of market challenges were common enough – after all, how else could you assess the abilities of the men you hired? But five against one wasn’t a challenge, it was a beating – and even if I could take on all five of these road-tanned buggers, there was no way I could do it without injuring them. And if I injured three of them, we’d be working for free.

‘Forget—’

‘Agreed,’ Kest shouted back.

I turned to him, trusting Brasti to keep an eye on the caravan captain and his men. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I murmured. ‘I can’t take on five men and not injure them – no one can.’

‘It can be done; trust me.’

‘You’ve never done it,’ Brasti said, still watching the caravan guards, ‘and you’ve never been bested.’

‘That’s not true,’ Kest said. ‘Falcio beat me in a duel.’

Brasti’s eyes went wide.

‘It’s true,’ Kest said.

Well, it was technically true. The Greatcoats weren’t just wandering Magisters. We were trained to be the best duellists in the world. It sort of went with the job, since sometimes the only way to enforce the King’s Laws was to challenge the Duke himself and face his champion. If you won, the Duke would usually capitulate. If not, they sent home your remains wrapped in your coat. So our training involved competing with each other – and no wooden swords, either. A Greatcoat should be able to wound a single opponent enough to stop him without killing him. That’s how good we were – or how good we were supposed to be, as it didn’t always turn out that way.

So when the King held a tournament, the winner to become First Cantor of the Greatcoats, I really wanted to win– more than that, I decided I would win. I believed in what we were doing more than anyone else did, and I wanted to lead them more than anyone else.

And I fought through the rounds one after another until it was just Kest and me vying for the prize.

I suppose I had hoped he might slip up before it got to that point, or that he would have lost interest – that happens with Kest, when someone doesn’t meet his standard or the fight is too easy, he’ll sometimes just walk away from it. But this time he didn’t, so we fought and I won, and I’ll never tell another soul how I did it. Even Kest doesn’t know – which is probably why he likes to put my life in danger now.

‘Hells, Kest, you yanked a bolt from my leg just a few hours ago and now you want to send me off to fight five men – why don’t you go and duel bloody-faced Saint Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water?’

‘When the opportunity presents itself, I’ll do just that,’ Kest replied, looking strangely upset.

‘You’d fight the Saint of Swords? You really are completely mad, aren’t you?’

‘A Saint is just a little God, Falcio. If I meet him, rest assured, I’ll fight him.’

‘Oh Gods, you’re serious, aren’t you?’ I said, turning away. If Kest ever becomes a Saint, the transcendent expression of an ideal, he’s going to be Saint Kest-who-never-fucking-learns. Unfortunately, my need to live up to his expectations of me has always been slightly stronger than my desire to punch him in the face.

‘Fine,’ I said to the caravan captain. ‘Clear a damned space and let’s get it over with.’ I figured that if I could just put up a good showing, the caravan owner might still take us on.

The captain chuckled and moved some of the horses out of the way. He pointed out five of his men and they stripped to the waist and took up arms: two war-swords, a spear, double-knives and an axe. Damn, I hate fighting against axes. You spend so much time hoping they’re not going to hit your blade and shatter it that you forget to watch out for your skull. I had one advantage, though: these were all strapping young fellows, and they obviously wanted to show off their fine muscled chests for the ladies in the crowd that was starting to form. I, on the other hand, had no intention of taking off my coat, and that would give me some protection against these bastards.

I pulled out my rapier and drew the second, which was sheathed in front of my saddle.

‘Falcio?’ It was Kest.

‘What now?’ I asked.

He almost looked sheepish, which is an awkward expression for Kest.

‘Well, it’s just that they aren’t fighting in armour, so really—’

‘Just you shut your Gods-damned mouth right now, Kest, or I swear I’ll stick a sword through my own belly just to embarrass you.’ I turned on the five men in front of me. ‘Any of you want to wear armour, you go right ahead,’ I said.

They smirked at me.

Keep smirking, boys. At least a couple of you are going to have fine scars to show off to your children. Unless I cut off your balls first.

Brasti thankfully pulled Kest away, and I focused on my opponents and my two problems. Problem number one: how not to get killed; problem number two: how not to kill any of them. I chose to leave problem number two aside for a moment and concentrate on not getting killed. I was a good thinker when I set my mind to it. Being a Magister wasn’t just memorising the King’s Laws. You had to sift through the evidence or work out how to enforce the law, or figure out the best way to break out of some Lord’s jail.

I decided I’d rather fight one battle at a time than five at once. I wasn’t likely to get them all to agree to that, but my mouth has got me into enough trouble over the years that I’m pretty good at building up enthusiasm over who gets to punch it first.

‘Hang on,’ I said as the men started to circle. ‘We said five men. This isn’t fair.’

The caravan captain looked at his men, then at me. ‘There’s the five of them there – what’s your complaint?’

‘What, are you blind? We said five men. Men.’ I pointed with my left rapier at the smallest of the group, the one carrying the spear who looked a lot like the one with the double-knives. ‘That one’s barely a boy. His mother will weep, and I don’t need to have his drunken, cow-born half-piece whore of a mother muttering curses in my name at night. I have enough trouble sleeping without that on my conscience.’

The spearman swore at me. ‘Call me boy? You bloody tatter-cloak, I’ll show you who’s the boy here.’ He barrelled at me with his spear, not realising that the point of my left sword was already in line with his chest. I used my right blade to knock aside the tip of his spear as it came towards my belly and he stopped with the point of my sword six inches from his chest. He tried to pull back, but I used the same trick on him as I had with the constable earlier: I stepped on his spear. But he was a lot stronger, this one, so he kept a grip on it. Stronger, and dumber. I did a little stunt Kest and I used to practise as boys and ran right up the length of his spear, forcing him to drop it to the ground and letting me get within a foot of him, then I shifted my hands around so the points of my rapiers were aiming away from him and struck him on both temples with the pommels. I didn’t have to do it that way, but I had a plan, and that required that I really embarrass him.

Spear-boy dropped like night in winter and I started talking to his unconscious body. ‘Now don’t you go telling your whore mummy that you got beat up at the caravan today.’

I heard a yell from my right side and turned to see Double-knife coming at me. So I was right about that, at least, and now big brother was going to come and save the family honour. If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was that honour just gets you into trouble.

Double-knife had good technique, though. He had the look of a rigger, the one who keeps the wagons repaired. A lot of riggers tended to be former sailors who for whatever reason couldn’t get work on a ship any more.

He kept in close so I couldn’t make use of the reach of my rapiers. If you’ve ever seen a sailor really go at someone with knives, you know the idea of parrying is preposterous. The knives are moving too fast and by the time you’ve parried one thrust, you’ve grown four other holes in your belly. You have to thrust into the attack and take a few cuts to the arm. The only problem there is that you can’t do that up close with something as long as a rapier – thrusting becomes impossible. But I’ve been fighting double-rapier since I was eight, and I have a few of my own tricks. If you’ve got limber wrists and you’re willing to grow a couple of scars, you can windmill the blades fast enough to give your opponent twice as many cuts as he gets on you.

I’ll give the man his due: judging by the white scars all over his forearms he obviously wasn’t afraid of being cut. Or maybe he was afraid of being cut, but was also really clumsy. Whatever it was, he soon realised he was getting the worst part of the deal, so he changed his style, binding my right blade back and trying to come in under my left to get at my neck. It almost worked, and I had to take the pain of leaning all the way on my wounded leg. But then I saw my opening and since I was already putting all my weight on my bad leg, I decided to take a chance.

Knife fighters tend to ground themselves hard: they fight with both feet flat on the ground, and only move to step in on you. They never think about protecting themselves against anything but their opponent’s blades and the occasional head-butt, so it came as a complete surprise to him when I rammed the heel of my left boot as hard as I could just below his kneecap. I heard a crunching sound, as satisfying as the contented sigh of any lover, as his knee broke, and he tumbled down next to his brother. Bless you, Saint Werta-who-walks-the-waves; your children are as thick as boards.

The captain ran over to his man just as the two men with war-swords started towards me.

‘Leg’s busted,’ the captain said. ‘He won’t be much use to us now.’

The lady in the carriage laughed. ‘That’s one of yours for mine, Trattari.’

‘Damn, Falcio. You’re losing us money now, you realise that?’ Brasti said.

I muttered a curse in his mother’s name and tried to shake off the pain in my leg as the swords came at me. Fighting two swords is obviously more than twice as hard as fighting one, but that wasn’t what was bothering me; I was more concerned that the man with the axe didn’t come with them. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that I could keep baiting them into fighting me one at a time – so why would he not take advantage of the situation and come at me from behind?

I put the questions out of my head and focused on the two men in front of me. One was blond and slim, and the other was black-haired and burly, with a beard reaching halfway down his chest. I decided to call them Blondie and Blackbeard. Not very original, maybe, but I wasn’t planning on knowing them for long. They were both around the same height, which was good for me and bad for them. Fighting men of different heights means having to change your own stance all the time, which I couldn’t have done with my injured leg.

‘Ifodor, Falcio, use ifodor,’ Brasti shouted needlessly. Maybe he thought he was helping.

‘Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ I shouted back. Ifodor is a technique Greatcoats use to fight against two swordsmen; it literally means ‘enclose the blades’. It involves a lot of forearm strength, and you have to be ambidextrous to do it. I would have found the suggestion somewhat less insulting if I hadn’t been the one who taught Brasti how to do it.

Imagine two opponents, each of whom wants to outflank you, so they try to move apart from each other and circle towards you in an attempt to get either side of you. You, on the other hand, clever fellow that you are, don’t want to let them get on either side of you because it means you’ll get killed. So you step backwards, and occasionally follow the same circle towards one of them, so that the other is slightly out of reach of you, and now you’re only fighting one man for a moment and you have a chance to eliminate one enemy. Your opponents, on the other hand, bright fellows that they are, don’t want you to do this, so they keep adjusting their footing to keep you at equal distance from them, putting you in an arrow-head position with you at the point and them at the sides of the triangle. This sounds elegant, but in reality it mostly looks like two men jabbing repeatedly at one man who is trying his best to bat aside their blades with roughly the same amount of grace as a cow trying to step on a mouse.

And then we come to ifodor, enclosing the blades. You have to wait for the perfect moment, when both your opponents, through the natural rhythms that gradually bind all men together, suddenly try to thrust low at the same time, and when this happens, if your blades are in an upper guard position you can circle them downwards and enclose each of your opponents’ blades with one of your own. Now comes the tricky part: you’ve got both your opponents’ points out of line and your own swords on the inside. You flip your points up and step straight forward, keeping your blades in contact with the lower half of their swords – and thrust your points into their bellies.

Ifodor is a hard technique to perfect, but it’s devastatingly effective, and I was just about to do it when I heard Kest cough and realised I was about to kill two men and end up either dead myself or working for free. At the last second, I dropped the points lower to hit their legs. I got Blackbeard, but missed Blondie by an inch. Fortunately for me, he tried to sidestep and got his left leg tangled up in my blade. I pulled it hard and fast across his inner thigh and heard a collective gasp from the men in the crowd as I scored a wicked cut just below his nether region. I pulled my right blade out of Blackbeard’s leg with a twist that sent him down and got the point of my left rapier just under Blondie’s chin.

There was a sweet moment of silence when all I could here was my own breathing. Then I heard someone clapping. Blondie backed away, and I saw that the applause was coming from the axeman. He was smiling. He must have been six and a half feet tall, and he looked about twice as strong as me. I was already tired, and my right leg was ready to give out.

The axeman stopped clapping and started putting on armour. I swore a little curse in Kest’s name, that he should one day get to see the blood-red face of Saint Caveil. This man knew what he was doing. He had watched my style and he had seen that my right leg was wounded. He could tell I was tired, and he knew that rapiers weren’t much good against plate armour. The only way to stop an armoured opponent was to get your point up between one of the plates, and even then you would have a tough time getting through the chain-mail undershirt. Rapiers are duelling weapons, not war weapons, and he knew it. And that’s why he was smiling. The real question was: why was I smiling?

‘Damn,’ I heard Kest saying to Brasti.

‘What is it?’ Brasti asked.

‘I just wish he hadn’t smiled at Falcio like that, that’s all.’