Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero (34 page)

    He stopped.

    “What is it?” asked Agnew.

    Drew grunted, and said, “The door, it’s stuck solid, as if it’s locked. That’s impossible. My key should fit this.”

    “Let me try,” suggested Uptil.

    Behind them, something heavy slapped down onto the wet stone of the floor.

    “A-hem! Gentlemen?” said Agnew.

    Drew and Uptil turned from the jammed door and saw the huge shadow that loomed behind them.

    Tantamout O’Bow slowly slid the hand-and-a-half sword from his belt.

    “Hello,” he said. “So nice to make your attainment.

    “Bye the bye,” he added, conversationally, “you’re all going to die.”

* * *

The door to the Processional ante-chamber swung open and de la Vega stepped in. He closed the door, carefully, behind him.

    “My Lord Regent,” said Lord Gull from the fireplace. “You have a key, then?”

    “I do not understand, Lord Gull,” frowned the Spaniard.

    “The last few times I’ve tried that door, it’s been locked fast,” Gull said with a shrug. “I supposed you to have a key, as you entered so easily.”

    “So I do,” nodded de la Vega, stepping forward. He stood next to Gull, and warmed his hands at the fire. “A cold evening, Lord Gull, is it not?”

    “Cold as death,” said Gull cheerfully.

    “Your quaint English expressions,” de la Vega said with a smile and a wag of his finger at Gull. He crossed to the drinks table and poured two large glasses of port. “One for you, my lord?”

    “My thanks, sir,” said Gull, not moving.

    De la Vega picked up the two brimming glasses and returned to Gull.

    “I regret that you and I have never had the time to converse much, Lord Gull,” he said. “We are alike, you and I.”

    “How so?” asked Gull.

    “Warriors born,” said de la Vega, handing one of the glasses to Gull. Neither sipped. “They say you are the greatest swordsman in the Unity. They say the same of me in Toledo.”

    “Two strong swords to serve Her Majesty are better than one,” Gull mused.

    “Just so,” de la Vega said, looking down into the contents of his glass. “I intercepted a steward you had sent to Cardinal Woolly. He claimed that you believed the Divine Jaspers was a danger to Her Majesty.”

    “That is so,” said Gull. “I trust you sent him straight to the cardinal.”

    De la Vega shook his head. He looked straight into Gull’s black eyes.

    “Well, Lord Regent,” said Gull. “I suppose then we are about to discover who really is the best swordsman in the Unity, aren’t we?”

    “Indeed we are,” said de la Vega, setting down his glass, “indeed we are.”

Of divers various
FIGHTS
.

Amid the thirty-seven thousand, one hundred and sixtythree people gathered within a mile of Richmond Palace, there were five fights in progress. It was four minutes after ten o’clock in the evening, which meant that was pretty good going.

    Fights one and two were happening outside the Palace walls. At the gate on the Green, members of the Militia were engaged in a rowdy brawl with some drunken Admiralty subalterns. The latter were insisting they had an urgent message to take to Admiral Poley, who was within, and the former were insisting that the latter should pull the other one. Fists were now being employed in this pulling, which was none too gentle, and the watching crowd had begun to go “oooh” and “aaaah”, until the Militia lost patience and involved them in the fight too.

    Out on the Shene marshes, sloping down beyond the edge of the Deer Park, the Hotchkine and Scubbold families had embarked on a physical altercation concerning the whereabouts of a bottle of musket. Apparently, at some point in the evening, said bottle had “rolled” out of the Scubbolds’ hamper and been half-drained by Grayham Hotchkine. As Grayham had lost most of his teeth, liquid refreshment seemed his only option, but the Scubbolds, to a man, a woman and a red-spotted setter, had deemed it unwise for him to finish the musket off.

    Bloody though both parlous disputes were, neither was as fundamental to the continued fortunes of the Unity as those that raged within the Palace walls.

    On the stage of the Royal Pavilion, Master Lucas of the Chamberlain’s men, Master Graves of the Oh and Master Cato of the Swan were in the middle of the carefully rehearsed “Battle of the Glorious Dawn” before the excited crowd. Prop swords swung and sparked and clacked, and there was a lot of grunting and oathing and straining, punctuated regularly by one or more of the combatants stepping forward and delivering a soliloquy to the crowd. Said crowd was particularly delighted when Master Lucas delivered a swinging slice to Master Graves, causing the latter to backflip off the stage onto a hidden crash-mat. They were so delighted, in fact, they thumped their tankards on the trestle tables until Master Graves got up, took a bow, and did it again.

    The Queen, it was reported, was tankard-thumping as loudly as anyone. It seemed she approved of this dramatic opening to the Masque performance.

    It is interesting to conjecture, therefore, how much the Gloriana, and indeed the crowd in general, would have clapped had they been able to witness the fight that was currently in full swing in the ante-room of the Palace’s North Processional.

    This unseen combat was distinguished by two key factors: firstly, it was between Lord Gull and the Regent of Castile, two of the most admired swordsmen in the Unity. Any display given by these two sword-masters would have ordinarily drawn crowds bigger than the Masque had.

    The second factor was that the fight was in brilliant, unrehearsed, bloody earnest.

    Consider yourself lucky, then, beloved reader, that you get a chance to witness this otherwise unwitnessed clash of Titans.

    It was an affair of the coldest, most steely nerves. Both warriors had more than his life to battle for, the fate of the Unity lodged in their hands. Yet both entered the fight methodically and correctly, drawing swords, nodding, appointing and saluting before it began. Vital though their fight was, neither saw fit to spoil it by rushing in with ungentlemanly haste before the other was ready.

    In truth, they both wished to savour the battle. It wasn’t often that either of them got to test his skill against an equal.

    Gull unsheathed his rapier. It had been made for him by a Dresden sword-cutler named Isaach Spaaatz, and its Sswept hilt and curled quillons were of blued steel, inlaid with silver wire and pique dots. In his left hand, Gull held the matching dagger.

   De la Vega’s sword was a cup-hilted bilbo with a guard of quite exquisite pierce-and-chisel work, demascened in gold and silver. His coat of arms was inscribed on the ricasso. The blade was of Toledo steel, and a good six inches longer than Gull’s. He held it with a Continental grip, his first and second fingers hooked over the quillons as if it were a hugely-needled syringe.

    He looked across at Gull.

    “I have no main gauche, seńor,” he said.

    Gull frowned and looked down at his companion dagger for a moment. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent it away. It thumped into the wall panelling, and reverberated like a recently vacated diving board.

“We are even,” said Gull.

“I salute your fair play,” smiled de la Vega.

    Gull nodded, a quick, perfunctory movement, and raised his sword so that he looked through the looped guard at his opponent.

    “Vivat Regina,” he saluted.

    De la Vega chopped at the air in front of his own nose twice.

    “God damn the Queen,” he said. “En garde.”

    Gull flčched immediately, a short, stamping run and thrust that de la Vega volted and parried.

    They broke and circled. De la Vega swung in with a return thrust that Gull met with a deft parade. De la Vega’s blade slid off this defence, but he brought it in again with a remise that struck twice against the forte of Gull’s blade. Slightly off balance, Gull sliced around, over de la Vega’s ducking head, and executed a balestra that made them clash together and lock blades at the coquille.

    They pushed away and broke again. De la Vega chuckled. “Now we have the measure of each other, Seńor Gull. Now we can begin properly,” he said.

    They exploded at each other, their blades moving faster than the eye could see: clashing, singing, sparking.

    It is safe to assume that only twice before in History had two such gifted swordsmen duelled. Neither of the other bouts matched this in splendour.

    One had been between Jovan Knekt of Dusseldorf, who had trained on the system of L’Épee under Girard Thibault for twenty years, and Clovis Pappenheim, who had been schooled in the Naples Method for seventeen summers. They were both recognised as the very greatest swordsmen of their age, and had each defeated at least two hundred experts in the run-up to the grand final of the Antwerp Fencing Tourney. This took place in 1843, and the final was over in three seconds, or twenty-nine strokes, whichever you care to measure it by. Both scored a perfect impale at the same moment. The fight is well documented, and ended with the cries of the Antwerp Judges, who exclaimed, “Fluke! Pure fluke!” as Knekt and Pappenheim hit the mat of the piste, simultaneously.

    The other had been between the samurai Go San Do and the ronin Chee Fu, in Feudal Japan, around about 1230. The fight lasted three days, and the carefully recorded steps of the grand masters now form a fundamental part of the weeklong Ceremony of the Clashing Swords in Otinawa. They both managed a perfect disembowelment and decapitation at the same moment. Documents show the reactions of the Shogun of Okinawa, who shouted, “Jo gon jo hona aky hu!”, which literally translates as, “Fluke! Pure fluke!”

    We can assume, gentle reader, that the duration of this fight will be somewhere between those two, lauded extremes. It has already lasted longer than the three seconds of the Knekt/Pappenheim clash, and it had better not outdo the Do/Fu battle, otherwise the civilised world may well be a profoundly different place by the time they have finished.

    Just forty seconds into the blistering duel, and Gull found himself consistently and energetically volting to avoid the extra, stabbing length of de la Vega’s bilbo.

    De la Vega’s onslaught was unstinting. There was no time to break cleanly and reprise. With his longer reach, the Spaniard had Gull on a permanent defensive.

    Fair play, thought Callum Gull sourly as he parried vigorously. I ditched my main gauche at your suggestion. Would you have snapped six inches off your foible if I’d brought it to your attention?

    De la Vega feinted with a stamping appel, and hooked a thrust in under Gull’s guard. The bilbo’s blade bit into the flesh of Gull’s right underarm. He cursed and leapt back.

    De la Vega broke off and circled, grinning.

    “Touché,” he remarked.

    Gull could feel the blood dribbling down inside his doublet. If nothing else, the wound was going to hinder his sword work. It had been a calculated and cruel blow, unsporting. That made him cross, very cross indeed. Only one thing, one man, made him crosser.

    For a moment, Gull thought about the man who made him crosser than anyone else.

    Huge, seething anger flooded his mind, but he harnessed it and set it to work for him, cancelling the pain and spurring his muscles on.

    He went for de la Vega like a tiger, a tiger that had been given a rapier and schooled to perfection by Thibault of Antwerp.

    He drove the Regent back across the ante-room until he crashed into the drinks stand, overturning it, and shattering its crystal contents. The strong smell of liberated brandy filled the room. De la Vega barked an eager curse, and tried to parade and sidestep, but Gull would not loosen his grip on the offensive. He turned aside de la Vega’s inquisitive, urgent blade, and thrust in hard. The entire foible of his rapier ran through de la Vega’s left bicep.

    Pain rattled up out of de la Vega’s throat, and he pulled himself off the Scotsman’s sword with a twist of his upper body and two rapid, backward steps, hacking with his weapon to prevent a remise.

    Gull kept the space between them to a sword’s length, prowling forward across the broken crystal on the mats. De la Vega backed away until he felt the cold marble of the fireplace press into his shoulders. He flexed his left arm, wincing.