All of which went according to plan except for the last bit. For instead of rushing by standing up, Bob had planted his feet and dived forwards, so that his trunk was too low to receive Upnor’s dagger. The backhanded cut had flung his body into a twisting movement from his left to his right, and so as he hurtled past he was spinning to face his opponent’s legs. Bob’s left arm and shoulder went through first, extended to take his impact on the ground. Then his head, and the right arm and spadroon trailing along his body. As soon as his left elbow struck the peat he curled that arm around and caught Upnor’s right leg, trapping it against his body.
Upnor needed that leg to take his weight as he moved backwards, and thus had no choice but to fall down, even as Bob was getting his own knees under him. Upnor knew that to fall on his stomach was death, so he spun and landed on his arse and rolled up onto his back, his legs going straight up in the air. If this were a Parisian Salle d’Armes he might have turned it into a backwards somersault and come up fighting, but this was nearly impossible in a stiff cuirass. So Upnor’s legs and arse reached apogee and then came down again. He was going to come up forwards. He planted his right elbow to push off against the ground but kept his guard up with the left, keeping that dagger pointed in the air. Bob had now got up on one knee and managed to take a swing at it. He fully intended to take Upnor’s hand off at the wrist, but either his aim was bad or Upnor reacted with exceptional speed, because instead the blow struck the dagger’s handle just behind the guard, right where Upnor’s thumb and index finger gripped it, and ripped it loose from Upnor’s hand. It whirred off and vanished in gloom and mist.
Upnor did a sideways roll away from Bob and came up angry. “You are a cold, cold, cold-blooded knave!” he exclaimed. “I think you do not care about Abigail at all!”
“I care enough to win this.”
“You have been practicing against someone who knows the rapier,” Upnor said. “Tell me, did he show you this?”
Bob liked to sit in a meadow and throw bits of bread to the birds. He had done this once with a flock of some hundred pigeons who had, once they’d gotten the general idea, surrounded him and waited patiently for him to throw out each scrap. But presently a sparrow had come along and begun to collect evey last crumb that Bob tossed, even though it had been one against a hundred. Even if Bob lured the sparrow to one side, then threw the morsel to the other, the little bird would come across like a flash of light from a signal-mirror and wend its way among the stumbling pigeons and pluck the bread right out from under their open beaks, which would snap together on thin air.
Bob now learned that he was a pigeon and Upnor a sparrow. One moment he was certain that his spadroon was about to take Upnor’s leg off at the knee, and the next, the Earl was somewhere else, and the point of the rapier was headed for Bob’s heart. In desperation he pawed at it with his left hand and diverted it so that it got him just under the ribs on the right side and passed out his back. As Bob fell back, his flailing left hand struck the guard of the rapier, a swirl of silvery bars, and his fingers closed around it. This would prevent Upnor from drawing it out and stabbing Bob again and again as he lay on the ground. Bob landed flat on his back, preceded by that part of the rapier that had gone all the way through him, and found himself pinned, nailed like Jesus. Upnor was pulled forward and ended up staring down into Bob’s face from not far away.
“Lung?” Upnor guessed.
“Liver,” Bob said, “or else I could never do this.” He inhaled and then spat at Upnor’s face, but it came out as a feckless spray.
“’Twill be a slow-festering wound then,” Upnor said. “I will gladly supply you with a quicker death if you will be so good as to let go my weapon.” He glanced up for a moment, distracted by the sound of hurtling cavalry. “Sarsfield,” he pronounced. “Let us finish, I must go to them.”
Bob turned his head sideways, just to get Upnor’s visage out of his sight. He saw a queer thing silhouetted against the deepening gray sky above the hill: a fellow in a gray coat perched on a pole above a ditch, not far away. No, he was not perched, but swinging across it, a matted ponytail trailing behind him like a profusion of battle-streamers from a regimental flag. It was an Irish infantryman, pole-vaulting across the ditch. Coming to the aid of Upnor, his English overlord. He would probably have a dirk or something to finish Bob off with.
“When you go to the next world,” Upnor said, “tell the angels and demons that we know everything about your infamous cabal, and that we will have the gold of Solomon!”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about!?” Bob exclaimed. But before answering, Upnor peeled Bob’s hand off the guard, pinky first. He planted his foot in Bob’s stomach and stood up, yanking the blade out.
“You know perfectly well,” he said indignantly, “Now go and do as I have instructed you!” He aimed a death-blow at Bob’s heart. Bob put his hands up to slap it aside. Then a large object hurtled across the sky and smashed into the rapier’s guard, crumpling the bars and sending it spinning away.