He’s going to be killed, thought Damen, seeing the future in that moment with perfect clarity.
Govart engaged with negligent ease. Steel grated along steel as the swords of the two men came together in a burst of violence, and Damen’s heart jammed itself into his throat—he hadn’t meant to set this in motion, for it to end this way, not like this—and then the two men came apart and Damen’s heartbeat was loud with the shock of his surprise: at the end of the first exchange, Laurent was still alive.
At the end of the second also.
At the end of the third he was, persistently and remarkably, still alive, and watching his opponent calmly, measuringly.
This was intolerable for Govart: the longer Laurent went unscathed, the more the situation embarrassed him, for Govart was after all stronger and taller and older, and a soldier. This time Govart didn’t allow Laurent any respite when he attacked, but pressed forward in a savage onslaught of cut thrust attacks.
Which Laurent turned back, the jar of impact on fine wrists minimised by exquisite technique that worked with the impetus of his opponent rather than against it. Damen stopped wincing, and started watching.
Laurent fought like he talked. The danger lay in the way he used his mind: there was not one thing he did that was not planned in advance. Yet he was not predictable, because in this, as with everything he did, there were layers of intent, moments when expected patterns would suddenly dissolve into something else. Damen recognised the signs of Laurent’s inventive deceptions. Govart didn’t. Govart, finding himself unable to close as easily as he had expected, did the one thing that Damen could have warned him not to do. He got angry. That was a mistake. If there was one thing that Laurent knew, it was how to prick someone into fury and then set about exploiting the emotion.
Laurent turned back Govart’s second surge with an easy grace and a particularly Veretian series of parries that made Damen itch to pick up a sword.
By now, anger and disbelief were really affecting Govart’s swordsmanship. He was making elementary mistakes, wasting strength and attacking in the wrong lines. Laurent was physically not strong enough to weather one of Govart’s full-strength blows straight on his sword; he had to avoid them or counter them in sophisticated ways, with those angled parries and shifting momentum. They would have been lethal, if Govart had landed any of them.
He couldn’t manage it. As Damen watched, Govart swung, furiously, wide. He was not going to win this fight with anger driving him to foolish mistakes. That was becoming obvious to every man watching.
Something else was becoming painfully clear.
Laurent, possessing the sort of proportions that handed him balance and coordination as gifts, had not, as his uncle claimed, wasted them. Of course, he would have had the finest masters and the best tutelage. But to have attained this level of skill he would also have had to have trained long and hard, and from a very young age.
It was not an even match at all. It was a lesson in abject public humiliation. But the one teaching the lesson, the one effortlessly outclassing his opponent, was not Govart.
‘Pick it up,’ said Laurent, the first time Govart lost his weapon.
A long line of red was visible along Govart’s sword arm. He’d given up six steps of ground, and his chest was rising and falling. He picked up his sword slowly, keeping his eyes on Laurent.
There were no more anger-driven blunders, no more wrong-footed attacks or wild swings. Necessity made Govart take stock of Laurent, and face him with his best swordwork. This time when they came together, Govart fought seriously. It made no difference. Laurent fought with cool, relentless purpose, and there was an inevitability to what was happening, to the line of blood blossoming this time down Govart’s leg, to Govart’s sword lying once more in the grass.
‘Pick it up,’ said Laurent again.
Damen remembered Auguste, the strength that had held the front for hour after hour, and against which wave after wave had broken. And here fought the younger brother.
‘Thought he was a milksop,’ said one of the Regent’s men.
‘Think he’ll kill him?’ another speculated.
Damen knew the answer to that question. Laurent was not going to kill him. He was going to break him. Here, in front of everyone.