“Just a minute, dearest. Don’t you see, I’ve no one to drink with. I understand that you are busy, but all I require is a little company. I want to drink to the glorious guards, the destroyers of the defenseless.”
The innkeeper flinched: he understood quite well to whom this toast was directed. Muttering apologies under his breath, the kindly soul scuttled off, and just in time, for Egert too had heard the words that were meant for him.
Unhurriedly placing his mug back on the table, he looked the stranger right in the eyes. As before, they were calm, even indifferent, as though someone else entirely had spoken that disastrous toast.
“And just whom are you drinking to, my dear sir? Whom do you name so?”
“You,” the stranger said, undaunted. “I name you, Egert Soll. You are right to go pale.”
“Pale?” Egert stood up. He was in his cups, but far from drunk. “What the—” The words strained through his teeth. “I am afraid that someone may come tomorrow wishing to call me the destroyer of feeble old men.”
The stranger’s face changed oddly. Egert suddenly understood that he was smiling.
“A man chooses who he will be, what his reputation will be. Why don’t you slaughter, let’s say, women with that sword of yours? Or ten-year-old children? It’s possible they might have more success against you than your last victim did.”
Egert was rendered speechless; at a loss, he turned toward Karver. But Karver, who was usually so sharp of tongue, was now, for some reason, wrapped in silence. The customers of the tavern, the innkeeper, who had retreated to the kitchen doorway, and a small, snot-nosed scullion were all keeping their heads down as if they sensed that something extraordinary was about to happen.
“What do you want from me?” Egert forced out, looking into those large, limpid eyes with hatred. “Why are you trying to provoke me into drawing my sword?”
As before, the stranger stretched his long, dry mouth into a smile. His eyes remained cold. “I also have a sword. But I thought you preferred those who don’t carry weapons, eh, Soll?”
With great difficulty, Egert forced himself to unclench his fingers, which were fastened to the hilt of his sword.
“Do you like easy victims?” The stranger asked soulfully. “Victims who exude terror? That sweet feeling of power, eh, Soll?”
“He’s a madman,” Karver said quietly, as if confused. “Egert, let’s go, yeah?”
Egert drew a deep breath. The stranger’s words affected him deeply, painfully, and far more strongly than he liked. “It is your good fortune,” he uttered with difficulty, “that you could be my grandfather. And I don’t fight with old men, is that clear?”
“It’s clear.” The stranger again raised his mug, and turning to Egert, to Karver, and to all those who were listening to their conversation with bated breath, he declared, “I drink to Lieutenant Soll, the embodiment of cowardice, hiding behind a mask of valor.”
However, he did not manage to drink his toast, because Egert’s sword, flying out of its scabbard, knocked the mug out of his hand. The silver cup bounced along the stone floor and then stopped in a dark red pool of spilled wine.
“Splendid.” The stranger contentedly wiped his wet fingers on his napkin, and his enormous nostrils swelled. “Do you have enough courage to take the next step?”
Egert lowered his sword; its tip rasped along the stones, drawing a curvy line at the feet of the stranger.
“Good.” The grizzled boarder of the Noble Sword was satisfied, although his gaze, as before, remained entirely indifferent. “Only, I will not fight in a tavern. Name the place and time.”
“By the bridge beyond the city gates,” Egert forced himself to squeeze the words out. “Tomorrow at dawn.”
The stranger took out his purse, extracted a coin from it, and laid it on the table next to the wine-stained napkin. He nodded to the innkeeper and started for the door; Egert just had time to throw words at his back, “Who will be your seconds?”
The boarder of the Noble Sword stopped in the doorway. Over his shoulder he said, “I have no need of seconds. Bring someone for yourself.”
Lowering his head under the lintel, the stranger left. The heavy door swung shut.
* * *
A good half of all the duels in Kavarren took place by the bridge beyond the city gates. The choice warranted itself: walking only a few steps from the road, duelists found themselves in an unpopulated place, concealed from the road by a wall of old spruces; furthermore, in the early morning dueling hour, the road and bridge were still so deserted that they seemed long since abandoned.
The combatants got to the bridge at almost the same time. Egert arrived a bit in advance of the grizzled stranger, and he stared into the dark water while he waited.
The cloudy spring river carried swollen shards of wood, clumps of river grass, and lifeless shreds of last fall’s leaves in its current. Here and there small whirlpools eddied around stones, and Egert liked to peer into the very depths of their black funnels: they reminded him of the intoxicating sensation of danger. The railing of the bridge was completely rotten, but Egert leaned against it with his entire body as if tempting fate.
His adversary finally mounted the bridge, and it seemed to Egert that he was quite out of breath. At this moment, the stranger appeared truly old, much older than Egert’s father, and Egert was stunned: Would there really be a duel? But meeting those eyes, cold and clear as ice, he immediately forgot that thought.
“Where is your friend?” asked the stranger.
Egert had been beyond stern when he forbade Karver to accompany him. If his opponent chose to defy the rules and forgo a second, why on earth should he, Egert, behave any differently?
“And if I should suddenly attack you with a dishonorable maneuver?” asked the grizzled man, not taking his eyes off Egert.
Egert sneered. He could have said that he had little fear of pushy old men and their dishonorable ways, that he had little use for empty chatter, and that he had conquered numerous opponents in his short life, but he saved his breath, contenting himself with this eloquent sneer.
Without uttering another word, the duelists left the road. Egert walked in front, carelessly exposing his back to his opponent, by which action he meant to shame the stranger, to demonstrate his complete dismissal of any villainy. They passed by the spruce grove and came out into a clearing, circular like an arena and tramped down by the boots of countless generations of Kavarren’s duelists.
It was damp there from the river. Removing his uniform jacket with its firmly sewn epaulets, Egert regretfully thought that the spring this year had been extremely cold and long, and that the outing he had planned for the day after tomorrow would have to be deferred until the days became warmer. The dew weighed the grass down to the ground and rolled down the tree trunks in large drops. It seemed as though the trees were weeping for someone. Egert’s well-made boots were also covered in drops of dew.
The adversaries stood opposite each other. Egert realized with amazement that for the first time in his entire dueling experience he was contending with a rival about whom, all else being even, nothing was known. However, this did not bother Egert at all: he was about to learn everything he needed to know.
They both drew their swords: Egert indolently, his opponent calmly and indifferently, like everything else he did. The stranger did not hurry to attack; he simply stood and looked Egert in the eyes. The tip of his sword also looked Egert in the eyes, intently, seriously, and just by the way the stranger stood in his pose, Egert understood that this time he would have need of all seventeen of his defenses.
Wishing to test his opponent, he embarked upon a trial attack, which was repelled leisurely. Egert tried another, and in similar fashion the stranger deliberately repulsed the rather cunning strike that consummated Egert’s short, newly minted combination.
“Congratulations,” muttered Egert, “you’re not bad for your age.” His next combination was artfully composed and brilliantly execut
ed, but the grizzled stranger just as dispassionately fended off the entire series.
Not without pleasure, Egert realized that his opponent was worthy of his attention and that his victory would not be easy, but that would make it all the more honorable. In the depths of his soul he bitterly repented that there were no spectators around who could appreciate his brilliant improvisations, but at that very moment the stranger attacked.
Egert was barely able to turn the attack aside; all seventeen of his defenses were wiped out as he impotently switched from one to the next. Blows fell upon him one after the other, unexpected, insidious, unrelentingly intense, and as he furiously defended against them, Egert saw steel very close to his face more than once.
Then, just as suddenly, the attack stopped. The stranger retreated a step as if he wished to better examine Egert from head to toe.
Egert was breathing heavily, his wet hair was sticking to his temples, trickles of sweat were pouring down his back, and his sword arm was ringing like a copper bell.
“Not bad,” he gasped, looking into those clear eyes. “Well, you never said you were—what are you, a fencing master gone into retirement?”
With these words he sprang forward and, had there been any witnesses to this battle, they would have confirmed without reservation that the swordsman Egert had never before produced anything like these magnificent combinations.
He hopped like a grasshopper, simultaneously attacking from the right and left, from above and below, planning out his moves twenty steps in advance; he was fast and technically flawless; he was at the peak of his form—and yet, he did not achieve a single success, however small.
It was as if all his blows came up against a stone wall. A bull calf might feel something similar the first time he contended with an oak tree. Not a single combination unwound to its finish; his opponent, as if he knew Egert’s thoughts in advance, turned all his plans inside out, passing into counterattack, and Egert felt the stranger’s blade touch his chest, his stomach, his face. Egert recognized, finally, the game of cat and mouse that he himself had played with the student; it was crystal clear that Egert could have been killed a good ten times, but for some reason he remained among the living.
“Interesting,” he wheezed, retreating two steps. “I’d like to know to whom you sold your soul … for this…”
“Are you afraid?” asked the stranger. These were his first words since the beginning of the fight.
Egert studied this indifferent old man endowed with unprecedented strength; he studied his rugged, lined face and enormous, cold, lashless eyes. The stranger was not even breathing hard: his breath, just like his voice and his gaze, remained even.
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” Egert responded contemptuously, and as Glorious Heaven was his witness, it was the purest truth. Even in the face of inevitable death, Egert did not experience trepidation.
The stranger understood this; his lips elongated the way they had in the tavern. “Well…”
Ringing, their blades crossed. The stranger performed a subtle circular motion with his blade, and Egert shrieked in pain as his wrist bent backwards. His fingers opened of their own accord, and his hereditary sword flew through the steel gray sky in an arc, thudded into a pile of last year’s leaves, and sank from sight.
Clutching his injured wrist, Egert retreated, not meeting his opponent’s eyes. He was mortified that the feeble old man could have quickly disarmed him in the very first minute of the battle by this maneuver, and that the battle they had just had was nothing more than a farce, a game, like suicide chess.
The stranger looked at him calmly, without speaking.
“Are you just going to stand there?” asked Egert, outraged but not frightened. “What comes next?”
The stranger remained silent, and Egert realized that his own bravery and scorn of death were a weapon he could use to debase his conqueror.
“Well, go ahead and kill me,” he laughed. “What else can you do to me? I’m not some abject student who trembles in the face of death. You want to see the truth of it? Strike me!”
Something changed in the stranger’s face. He stepped forward, and Egert was shocked to realize that the other man really did want to strike him down.
Killing an unarmed man was, to Egert’s eyes, the greatest possible infamy. He smirked as scornfully as he could. The vanquisher lifted his blade. Not turning his eyes away, Egert gazed intrepidly at the naked edge near his face.
“Well?”
The stranger struck.
Egert saw how the steel edge of the sword swept through the air like the shining blade of a fan. He awaited the blow and death, but instead he felt a sharp pain on his cheek.
Not understanding what had happened, he raised his hand to his face. Warm liquid flowed down his chin. The cuff of his shirt was immediately stained with blood. In passing, Egert gave thanks that he had taken off his coat and thus saved it from being ruined.
He raised his eyes toward the stranger, and saw his back. He was sheathing his sword in its scabbard as he walked leisurely away.
“Hey!” shouted Egert, scrambling to his feet like a fool. “Don’t you have anything else to say, you long-toothed louse?”
But the grizzled boarder of the Noble Sword did not look back. And so he left, without turning around a single time.
Pressing a kerchief to his cheek, he picked up his family sword and tossed his coat over his shoulder. Egert was wholeheartedly grateful that he had come to the duel without Karver. A whipping was a whipping, even if the hoary stranger had been as skilled with a blade as Khars, Protector of Warriors. All the same, he was not Khars. The Protector of Warriors valued tradition; there was no way that he would have ended a duel in such a strange and absurd way.
Dragging himself to the shore of the river, Egert got on all fours and peered into the dark, perpetually rippling mirror of the water. A long, deep gash, reflected in the water, loomed on the cheek of Egert Soll. It ran from his cheekbone to his chin. At the sight of it, the reflection pursed its lips incredulously. A few warm, red drops fell and dissolved into the cold water.
2
When he returned to town, Egert really did not want to meet any of his acquaintances, which is probably exactly why he found Karver, who was extremely overwrought, at the first intersection.
“That graybeard returned to the inn as whole as a full moon. I was wondering … What’s that on your face?”
“A cat scratched me,” Egert spat through his teeth.
“Ah,” drawled Karver ruefully. “I was thinking about going down to the bridge.”
“What, to consign my cold, dead body to the ground?” Egert tried to stifle his irritation. The deep gash on his cheek had stopped bleeding, but it burned as if it were a red-hot rod resting against his face.
“Well,” drawled Karver equivocally and in the same breath added, lowering his voice. “The old man; he left right away. He already had his horse saddled.”
“What do I care? One less madman in town,” Egert hissed.
“I told you that right away.” Karver shook his head soberly. “A lunatic, you know? You could see it in his eyes. There was something completely deranged in those eyes, did you notice?”
It was obvious that Karver was not at all averse to discussing lunatics in general and the stranger in particular. Of course, he wanted to be privy to the details of the duel, and the next words out of his mouth would almost certainly have been an invitation to the tavern, but for the present, bitter disappointment awaited Karver. Without appeasing his curiosity even the slightest bit, Egert hurriedly, and somewhat dryly, said his good-byes.
* * *
The Soll family emblem that graced the iron-bound gates had been created to evoke pride in the family’s friends and terror in their enemies. The belligerent animal that was depicted there did not have a name, but it was furnished with a forked tongue, steel jaws, and two swords held in razor-sharp talons.
Dragging his feet with difficul
ty, Egert walked up to the high entrance, where a servant stood ready to accept the cloak and sword of the young gentleman, but on that unhappy morning Egert had one but not the other; therefore, the young gentleman simply nodded in answer to the deep, deferential bow of the servant.
Egert’s room, like nearly all the rooms in the Soll family manor, was decorated with tapestries that depicted various species of fighting boars. A few sentimental novels, interspersed with textbooks on hunting, languished on the small bookcase; Egert had never opened either the novels or the textbooks. A portrait hung on the wall between two narrow windows. The portrait was of Egert’s mother when she was young and beautiful; she was holding a curly-haired blond child snuggled in her lap. The artist, who had painted the picture fifteen years ago at the behest of the elder Soll, was nothing more than a fawning toady: Egert’s mother was excessively beautiful, with a beauty that was not her own, and the child was simply the embodiment of all that was good and wholesome. The eyes were too blue, the little cheeks were too sweetly chubby, and the little dimple on the chin was too cutely appealing. It seemed that at any moment this wondrous child might take flight and dissolve into the ether.
Egert approached the mirror that stood on the bureau next to his bed. His eyes were no longer blue; they were gray, like an overcast sky. Egert stretched his lips reluctantly: the dimple was gone as if it had never been, but the wound snaked across his cheek, long, stinging, and bloody.
At his summons the old first maid, who had long ago been entrusted with all the workings of the house, appeared. She groaned, chewed her lips, brought out a jar of ointment, and applied it to the wound. The pain subsided. With the help of another servant, Egert got his boots off, divested himself of his coat, and overcome, fell into his couch. He was exhausted.
It came time for dinner, but Egert did not descend to the dining room; instead, he informed his mother that he had already eaten at the tavern. Truthfully, he did want to go to the tavern; he already regretted the fact that he had not stayed and had a few drinks with Karver. He even stood up, planning to go out, but then he paused and sat down again.