“Hold it, sirs, I beg of you,” said the young man. “I’m afraid it’s an affair, and there may be a bolt flying past. Might I beg of you to wait but a moment?”
“Oh. Oh.” Locke and Jean relaxed simultaneously. If someone was dueling with crossbows, it was common courtesy as well as good sense to wait beside the dueling ground until the shots were taken. That way, neither participant would be distracted by movement in the background, or accidentally bury a bolt in a passerby.
The dueling green was about forty yards long and half as wide, lit at each of its four corners by a soft white lantern hanging in a black iron frame. Two duelists stood in the center of the green with their seconds, each man casting four pale gray shadows in a crisscross pattern. Locke had little personal inclination to watch, but he reminded himself that he was supposed to be Leocanto Kosta, a man of worldly indifference to strangers punching holes in one another. He and Jean squeezed into the crowd of spectators as unobtrusively as possible; a similar crowd had formed on the other side of the green.
One of the duelists was a very young man, dressed in fine loose gentleman’s clothing of a fashionable cut; he wore optics, and his hair hung to his shoulders in well-tended ringlets.
His red-jacketed opponent was a great deal older, a bit hunched over and weathered. He looked active and determined enough to pose a threat, however. Each man held a lightweight crossbow—what Camorri thieves would call an alley-piece.
“Gentlemen,” said the younger duelist’s second. “Please. Can there be no accommodation?”
“If the Lashani gentleman will withdraw his imprecation,” added the younger duelist. His voice was high and nervous. “I would be eminently satisfied, with the merest recognition—”
“No, there cannot,” said the man standing beside the older duelist. “His Lordship is not in the habit of tendering apologies for mere statements of obvious fact.”
“…with the merest recognition,” continued the young duelist, desperately, “that the incident was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and that it need not—”
“Were he to condescend to speak to you again,” said the older duelist’s second, “his Lordship would no doubt also note that you wail like a bitch, and would inquire as to whether you’re equally capable of biting like one.”
The younger duelist stood speechless for a few seconds, then gestured rudely toward the older men with his free hand.
“I am forced,” said his second, “I am, ah, forced…to allow that there may be no accommodation. Let the gentlemen stand…back-to-back.”
The two opponents walked toward each other—the older man marched with vigor while the younger still stepped hesitantly—and turned their backs to each other.
“You shall have ten paces,” said the younger man’s second, with bitter resignation. “Wait then, and on my signal, you may turn and loose.”
Slowly he counted out the steps; slowly the two opponents walked away from each other. The younger man was shaking very badly indeed. Locke felt a ball of unaccustomed tension growing in his own stomach. Since when had he become such a damned softhearted fellow? Just because he preferred not to watch didn’t mean he should be afraid to do so…yet the feeling in his stomach paid no heed to the thoughts in his head.
“…nine…ten. Stand fast,” said the young duelist’s second. “Stand fast…. Turn and loose!”
The younger man whirled first, his face a mask of terror; he threw out his right hand and let fly. A sharp twang sounded across the green. His opponent didn’t even jerk back as the bolt hissed through the air beside his head, missing by at least the width of a hand.
The red-jacketed old man completed his own turn more slowly, his eyes bright and his mouth set into a scowl. His younger opponent stared at him for several seconds, as though trying to will his bolt to come flying back like a trained bird. He shuddered, lowered his crossbow, and then threw it down to the grass. With his hands on his hips, he stood waiting, breathing in deep and noisy gulps.
His opponent regarded him briefly, then snorted. “Be fucked,” he said, and he raised his crossbow in both hands. His shot was perfect; there was a wet crack and the younger duelist toppled with a feathered bolt dead in the center of his chest. He fell onto his back, clawing at his coat and tunic, spitting up dark blood. Half a dozen spectators rushed toward him, while one young woman in a silver evening gown fell to her knees and screamed.
“We’ll get back just in time for dinner,” said the older duelist to nobody in particular. He tossed his own crossbow carelessly to the ground behind him and stomped off toward one of the nearby chance houses, with his second at his side.
“Sweet fucking Perelandro,” said Locke, forgetting Leocanto Kosta for a moment and thinking out loud. “What a way to manage things.”
“You don’t approve, sir?” A lovely young woman in a black silk dress regarded Locke with disconcertingly penetrating eyes. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. “I understand that some differences of opinion need to be settled with steel,” said Jean, butting in, appearing to recognize that Locke was still a bit too tipsy for his own good. “But standing before a crossbow bolt seems foolish. Blades strike me as a more honest test of skill.”
“Rapiers are tedious; all that back and forth, and rarely a killing strike right away,” said the young woman. “Bolts are fast, clean, and merciful. You can hack at someone all night with a rapier and fail to kill them.”
“I am quite compelled to agree with you,” muttered Locke.
The woman raised an eyebrow but said nothing; a moment later she was gone, vanishing into the dispersing crowd.
The contented murmur of the night—the laughter and chatter of the small clusters of men and women making time beneath the stars—had died briefly while the duel took place, but now it rose up once again. The woman in the silver dress beat her fists against the grass, sobbing, while the crowd around the fallen duelist seemed to sag in unison. The bolt’s work was clearly done.
“Fast, clean, and merciful,” said Locke softly. “Idiots.”
Jean sighed. “Neither of us has any right to offer that sort of observation, since ‘gods-damned idiots’ is likely to be inscribed on our grave-markers.”
“I’ve had reasons for doing what I’ve done, and so did you.”
“I’m sure those duelists felt the same way.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Locke. “Let’s walk off the fumes in my head and get back to the inn. Gods, I feel old and sour. I see things like this and I wonder if I was that bloody stupid when I was that boy’s age.”
“You were worse,” said Jean. “Until quite recently. Probably still are.”