*
It took us an hour to make our way from the centre of the city to the caravan market without being discovered. I still reckoned our best chance was to head south for Baern, where Lord Tremondi’s rumours placed one of the King’s Charoites – supposedly ‘wandering around’ the coast near the city of Cheveran. Despite Brasti’s reasonable objection that we still had no idea what the King’s Charoites were, even he didn’t have a better destination in mind. We had to get out of Solat, and they hated us in the north from Rijou to Orison. Mind you, we weren’t particularly liked anywhere.
‘We don’t hire bloody tatter-cloaks here,’ the caravan captain told me, pushing my chest with a callused hand, ‘so just be off. Go try and screw someone else out of their money.’ The old man was a veteran; you could see it in his stance and wiry muscles. There were seven carts in his caravan, and the lead carriage was an ornate monstrosity which presumably housed the caravan owner. I looked it over critically. It would make a remarkably good target for brigands.
‘Look,’ I said as amiably as I could manage, ‘you’re short several men, and you’re not going to be able to find anyone as capable as the three of us, especially not for what you’re paying.’
‘I’m not paying horse droppings to you, Trattari.’
Even for an old man, he filled out his leather jerkin well enough to make a man hesitate before getting into a fight with him. I’m a cautious person by nature, so I turned to leave, preparing myself to try again with one of the other caravans, but a second later, he called out to me, ‘Why don’t you go and mount that King Paelis of yours one more time, eh? I reckon he’d be willing, and his body’s probably still lying where they left it. Of course, you’d have trouble finding the pole they put his tyrant head on!’
Now that was strange. Somehow my sword was in my hand and I was facing the caravan captain and I felt good. Really good. I was completely relaxed. I was going to follow the first rule and put the sharp end of my weapon through his mouth, and that was going to feel really, really good because, for the rest of my short life, I would always know there was one person less in this world spewing filth about my King.
Five of his men drew swords on me, and I spotted another behind the lead carriage with a pistol. Damn, that was going to require some fast work on my part. Once you get hit with the ball from a pistol, you really only have a few seconds to get the pointy bit into someone’s mouth before you fall down and die.
‘Now boys,’ Brasti said, drawing back his bowstring, ‘if I see your friend with the pistol so much as hold his breath I’ll end him. And trust me, the five of you against the three of us makes for very bad odds for you.’
The captain was about to give the signal to attack when a voice called from inside the carriage, ‘How about five against one, then?’ The voice was female, and it had a mocking quality buried under what would have normally been a seductive tone.
‘My lady—’ the captain began.
‘Peace, Feltock. You may be captain, but I own this caravan.’
‘Your lady mother does, anyway,’ he muttered as a young woman in a blue handmaiden’s dress exited the carriage and walked timidly towards the captain.
She had dark hair and delicate features, and she paused to collect herself before looking up at us shyly. ‘My lady commands that if the Trattari – forgive me, sir, the Greatcoat – can best five of our men, then she will employ you and your fellows at the full caravan guard rate.’
‘Trin, get back in the carriage with your mistress,’ Feltock growled. ‘It’s not safe here.’
Trin, her eyes lowered, ignored the command. Brasti favoured her with a sly smile and a wink before calling out to the carriage, ‘My lady, I thank you for your kind intervention in this matter, but we were just about to leave. Unless perhaps I could kiss the hand and gaze upon the face from which this beautiful voice issues?’
The captain was grumbling to the man next to him.
‘Five bested by one – what did you mean, exactly?’ Kest asked, and suddenly I had a terrible feeling. The only thing that really interested Kest these days was the opportunity to get into some awful odds and see if he could get me killed while trying out his latest sword technique.
‘I mean what I say,’ the voice from the carriage said. ‘Your leader against five of my men. If he wins and none of them are dead, I will hire the three of you. But for every one of my men he injures beyond use, you will provide me with one of your men at no cost.’
These kinds of market challenges were common enough – after all, how else could you assess the abilities of the men you hired? But five against one wasn’t a challenge, it was a beating – and even if I could take on all five of these road-tanned buggers, there was no way I could do it without injuring them. And if I injured three of them, we’d be working for free.
‘Forget—’
‘Agreed,’ Kest shouted back.
I turned to him, trusting Brasti to keep an eye on the caravan captain and his men. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I murmured. ‘I can’t take on five men and not injure them – no one can.’
‘It can be done; trust me.’
‘You’ve never done it,’ Brasti said, still watching the caravan guards, ‘and you’ve never been bested.’
‘That’s not true,’ Kest said. ‘Falcio beat me in a duel.’
Brasti’s eyes went wide.
‘It’s true,’ Kest said.
Well, it was technically true. The Greatcoats weren’t just wandering Magisters. We were trained to be the best duellists in the world. It sort of went with the job, since sometimes the only way to enforce the King’s Laws was to challenge the Duke himself and face his champion. If you won, the Duke would usually capitulate. If not, they sent home your remains wrapped in your coat. So our training involved competing with each other – and no wooden swords, either. A Greatcoat should be able to wound a single opponent enough to stop him without killing him. That’s how good we were – or how good we were supposed to be, as it didn’t always turn out that way.
So when the King held a tournament, the winner to become First Cantor of the Greatcoats, I really wanted to win– more than that, I decided I would win. I believed in what we were doing more than anyone else did, and I wanted to lead them more than anyone else.
And I fought through the rounds one after another until it was just Kest and me vying for the prize.
I suppose I had hoped he might slip up before it got to that point, or that he would have lost interest – that happens with Kest, when someone doesn’t meet his standard or the fight is too easy, he’ll sometimes just walk away from it. But this time he didn’t, so we fought and I won, and I’ll never tell another soul how I did it. Even Kest doesn’t know – which is probably why he likes to put my life in danger now.
‘Hells, Kest, you yanked a bolt from my leg just a few hours ago and now you want to send me off to fight five men – why don’t you go and duel bloody-faced Saint Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water?’
‘When the opportunity presents itself, I’ll do just that,’ Kest replied, looking strangely upset.
‘You’d fight the Saint of Swords? You really are completely mad, aren’t you?’
‘A Saint is just a little God, Falcio. If I meet him, rest assured, I’ll fight him.’
‘Oh Gods, you’re serious, aren’t you?’ I said, turning away. If Kest ever becomes a Saint, the transcendent expression of an ideal, he’s going to be Saint Kest-who-never-fucking-learns. Unfortunately, my need to live up to his expectations of me has always been slightly stronger than my desire to punch him in the face.
‘Fine,’ I said to the caravan captain. ‘Clear a damned space and let’s get it over with.’ I figured that if I could just put up a good showing, the caravan owner might still take us on.
The captain chuckled and moved some of the horses out of the way. He pointed out five of his men and they stripped to the waist and took up arms: two war-swords, a spear, double-knives and an axe. Damn, I hate fighting against axes. You spend so much time hoping they’re not going to hit your blade and shatter it that you forget to watch out for your skull. I had one advantage, though: these were all strapping young fellows, and they obviously wanted to show off their fine muscled chests for the ladies in the crowd that was starting to form. I, on the other hand, had no intention of taking off my coat, and that would give me some protection against these bastards.
I pulled out my rapier and drew the second, which was sheathed in front of my saddle.
‘Falcio?’ It was Kest.
‘What now?’ I asked.
He almost looked sheepish, which is an awkward expression for Kest.
‘Well, it’s just that they aren’t fighting in armour, so really—’
‘Just you shut your Gods-damned mouth right now, Kest, or I swear I’ll stick a sword through my own belly just to embarrass you.’ I turned on the five men in front of me. ‘Any of you want to wear armour, you go right ahead,’ I said.
They smirked at me.
Keep smirking, boys. At least a couple of you are going to have fine scars to show off to your children. Unless I cut off your balls first.
Brasti thankfully pulled Kest away, and I focused on my opponents and my two problems. Problem number one: how not to get killed; problem number two: how not to kill any of them. I chose to leave problem number two aside for a moment and concentrate on not getting killed. I was a good thinker when I set my mind to it. Being a Magister wasn’t just memorising the King’s Laws. You had to sift through the evidence or work out how to enforce the law, or figure out the best way to break out of some Lord’s jail.
I decided I’d rather fight one battle at a time than five at once. I wasn’t likely to get them all to agree to that, but my mouth has got me into enough trouble over the years that I’m pretty good at building up enthusiasm over who gets to punch it first.
‘Hang on,’ I said as the men started to circle. ‘We said five men. This isn’t fair.’
The caravan captain looked at his men, then at me. ‘There’s the five of them there – what’s your complaint?’
‘What, are you blind? We said five men. Men.’ I pointed with my left rapier at the smallest of the group, the one carrying the spear who looked a lot like the one with the double-knives. ‘That one’s barely a boy. His mother will weep, and I don’t need to have his drunken, cow-born half-piece whore of a mother muttering curses in my name at night. I have enough trouble sleeping without that on my conscience.’