The Tattered Banner (Society of the Sword Volume 1) (13 page)

‘I wanted to let you know that I am here as Reitz’s second purely because no one else would stand with him.’ He gave both weapons a looking over and exchanged them for dal Dardi’s, to which Jost had been doing likewise. ‘Good luck. I’ll signal when we’re ready,’ he said, before returning to dal Dardi.

‘Well,’ said Jost, ‘from here it’s just like duelling class. Except the pointy bit will hurt more if he hits you.’ He let out a forced laugh, and handed Soren the blades.

While Soren appreciated his attempted levity, it was unnecessary. He had felt the tension leading up to this moment; all of the expectation and having his choices dictated to him by a code that he thought ridiculous. Now however, he was in more comfortable territory. He could directly influence the events that would follow, one way or the other.

Ranph nodded to Jost, who acknowledged the signal.

‘Time to go,’ said Jost. ‘Remember, just like duelling class. Good luck.’

Soren walked forward to meet dal Dardi, but the two exchanged no words. Jost and Ranph stood to the side with the physician behind them. Part of Soren hoped that the physician’s services would not be needed, but he was confident that they would.

‘As agreed, the duel is to first blood,’ said Ranph. ‘Both combatants are duty bound by honour to cease fencing as soon as they become aware of a wound to either party drawing blood. I will call out the presence of a wound drawing blood as soon as I become aware of it, and if combat has not ceased already by that point, it is to cease instantly on my word. Are the rules understood?’

Soren said that he understood, dal Dardi did likewise.

‘Very good,’ said Ranph. ‘Begin.’

Dal Dardi came at Soren right away. His attack indicated the complete contempt with which he considered Soren. He was a little better than Soren remembered, but perhaps he had unintentionally been playing down dal Dardi’s ability in his own mind in order to boost his confidence. He settled into a nice flow of defensive strokes, alternating between rapier and dagger smoothly and Soren was content to continue defending until he had a better measure of him.

He had always been taken by flights of imaginative fancy and he found himself wondering what the scene must have looked like, the clashing of blades in a tree lined field before the morning haze had fully lifted. His wandering imagination nearly cost him as dal Dardi’s dagger passed perilously close to his midsection.

He focussed and took the initiative. He directed most of his attacks through his rapier, as he was not confident enough with the dagger to use it for anything other than defence. He forced dal Dardi back several paces before dal Dardi countered back hard, cutting low at Soren with his dagger and forcing him to jump back out of the way. It put him off balance, which was not something that had been done to him often. He recovered his balance quickly but his legs and arms felt heavy and slow.

Dal Dardi came at him again, and for the first time Soren began to feel unsettled. He did not seem to have his usual speed and the loss of that edge rapidly exposed his less polished technique. Soren allowed himself to be driven back as he attempted to rally.

He focussed hard and gradually it felt as though his body was coming back to life. His reactions seemed a little quicker and his body responded to his commands at the speed he expected of it. Dal Dardi had grown more confident as a result of his promising start and continued to come at Soren, seeking out a gap in his defence. It took Soren several counters before he regained the initiative, but he was beginning to feel back to normal. As the ease with which he usually moved returned, it seemed as though it had just required a little more concentration than was ordinarily needed. He did not want for the duel to go on any longer than necessary and risk another slump into weakness and possibly even the headache and nausea he had suffered two nights before, which still played on his mind.

Soren pushed in with a fast thrust that he followed up with his dagger. He had expected the dagger to strike dal Dardi on his right shoulder and put an end to the duel, but somehow he parried the secondary strike and countered. Soren’s surprise at the failure of the attack must have shown on his face as dal Dardi sneered and pressed forward with his own attack.

The sneer infuriated Soren and with a sudden burst of effort he deflected dal Dardi’s rapier with his dagger and thrust forward with his own sword, directly at dal Dardi’s sneering face. The sneer quickly changed to apprehension, and Soren’s heart leapt, as he feared that he was on the verge of delivering a killing blow. All the luck that had come his way, and all the hard work he had done to capitalise on it would count for naught.

He released a sigh of relief as dal Dardi managed to move his head out of the way enough to avoid the tip, but not the edge. He shrieked in pain and recoiled as Soren’s blade cut a deep slit across his left cheek and on past his hairline.

Soren heard both Ranph and Jost call out to signal the duel was over. Dal Dardi dropped his dagger and held his hand up to his face as he staggered backward, blinded by tears. The physician rushed forward to inspect the wound and Soren lowered his weapons, utterly drained by the whole experience. He had won.

C h a p t e r   1 4

ACCEPTANCE

T
here was something ignominious about walking back to the Academy after the duel, even if it was in victory. However he could not afford the price of renting two horses or a carriage and he had already prevailed upon Jost’s generosity twice in imposing on him to be his second and then again to borrow his sword and dagger. What made it worse was that Soren was completely exhausted. As soon as the duel had ended, weariness hit him like a hammer and each step closer to home felt like a thousand.

Dal Dardi had still been at the duelling field when they had left having the cut to his face treated. Ranph had confirmed that the duel had been fairly fought and Soren had confirmed that honour was satisfied, even if he had never given any thought to there being a slight on it. Dal Dardi had not made any eye contact with him, but Ranph had assured him that he would ensure the matter ended there and that life would be made very difficult for dal Dardi if he did anything to renew the hostility.

When they finally returned to River House, Soren was surprised to see that the entire house were waiting in the common room. Jost gave the assembly a nod of his head and a smile and they burst into a round of applause. The regard they were showing him came as a shock. While membership of River House had eased the isolation and sense of not belonging that he had felt when he had arrived at the Academy, he had been accepted by virtue of his sponsorship by the Count of Moreno rather than in his own right. Now they applauded him for his own deeds. It was one of the best feelings that he had ever experienced.

It seemed that dal Dardi had a reputation as a notorious bully. Many of the students in the lower years, and in particular the under cadets, had suffered his constant torment. Soren facing him down and beating him in a duel was something many of the other students had wanted to do themselves and went some way to explaining why dal Dardi had so much difficulty in finding someone to stand second for him. His victory in the duel had won Soren not only his honour, but also a great deal of regard amongst the other students, who would now cheerily greet him whenever they passed. He had gone from barely tolerated to popular in the space of one duel. Despite enjoying the acceptance he was experiencing, it was difficult to reconcile just how fickle his fellow students were. From being a pariah one day to fêted the next, he wondered if movement in the other direction could be as swift.

The duel, despite his success, had alarmed Soren in a number of ways. His first concern was that the speed which he had come to take for granted had seemed for a while at the start of the duel at least, to have deserted him. He couldn’t understand why but perhaps feeling unwell a couple of nights previously had something to do with it. Nonetheless, that had exposed his second concern. Stripped of his speed advantage, he was at best a below average swordsman. Dal Dardi, for whom Soren had no great regard, had shown himself to be more technically proficient. This was a matter that Soren needed to address quickly. He could not allow himself to remain completely dependent on something that he could not be certain of when he needed it most.

There was only one way he could see to achieve this. Hard work. He wasted no time, beginning with a trip to the library. His reading was coming along well, but was still far from the point where he could make sense of everything he came across. It was not of great importance for his current task however, as most of what he needed came in the form of diagrams and basic explanations of attacks and guards. He took a notebook with him and tried to make rough drawings of each of the forms and positions to help him fasten them in his memory, but also to have something to refer to when he was in the training hall, as it was forbidden to remove books from the library unless you were a member of the Collegium.

He went through a number of volumes, picking out positions, movements and treatises that caught his eye. As he read, it struck him that fencing was very much like reading, writing, and in a sense, speaking. The books contained, in their diagrams, all of the different words and phrases needed for a swordsman, who could pick from them to make a sentence. Like real words, they would not make sense unless placed in a proper order. Like real words, the same meaning could be conveyed in many different ways, but some would be more eloquent than others.

As with learning new words to read, by expanding his vocabulary of positions, strikes and defences, he would become a far more fluent swordsman. The realisation of how this learning could impact on his training seemed daunting at first, as though he had just built himself a mountain that he would now have to climb.

In that first study session in the library he made dozens of diagrams and added his own crude notes. It was late when he finished and he had to force himself away from the desk. Each book that he opened and each page that he turned seemed to reveal some new and intriguing perspective and only served to increase his hunger for more. Eventually, when he felt his eyes could take no more, he returned to River House, resisting the urge to pay a visit to the training hall to try some of the new material in his notebook.

Enduring classes the next day was torture, as all he could think about was starting his new training regime.

Autumn had given way to winter and the end of Soren’s first term at the Academy was approaching when he was told to report to Master Dornish’s office. Soren did not know how to react to this and if it might mean trouble for him. There was no reason that he could think of to precipitate the meeting, other than the duel, but as several weeks had passed since then he didn’t expect that anything more would come from that.