It was no match, of course. Inigo was disarmed in less than a minute. But for the first fifteen seconds or so, the noble was uneasy. During those fifteen seconds, strange thoughts crossed his mind. For even at the age of ten, Inigo’s genius was there.
Disarmed, Inigo stood very straight. He said not a word, begged nothing.
“I’m not going to kill you,” the nobleman said. “Because you have talent and you’re brave. But you’re also lacking in manners, and that’s going to get you in trouble if you’re not careful. So I shall help you as you go through life, by leaving you with a reminder that bad manners are to be avoided.” And with that his blade flashed. Two times.
And Inigo’s face began to bleed. Two rivers of blood poured from his forehead to his chin, one crossing each cheek. Everyone watching knew it then: the boy was scarred for life.
Inigo would not fall. The world went white behind his eyes but he would not go to ground. The blood continued to pour. The nobleman replaced his sword, remounted, rode on.
It was only then that Inigo allowed the darkness to claim him.
He awoke to Yeste’s face.
“I was beaten,” Inigo whispered. “I failed him.”
Yeste could only say, “Sleep.”
Inigo slept. The bleeding stopped after a day and the pain stopped after a week. They buried Domingo, and for the first and last time Inigo left Arabella. His face bandaged, he rode in Yeste’s carriage to Madrid, where he lived in Yeste’s house, obeyed Yeste’s commands. After a month, the bandages were removed, but the scars were still deep red. Eventually, they softened some, but they always remained the chief features of Inigo’s face: the giant parallel scars running one on each side, from temple to chin. For two years, Yeste cared for him.
Then one morning, Inigo was gone. In his place were three words: “I must learn” on a note pinned to his pillow.
Learn? Learn what? What existed beyond Madrid that the child had to commit to memory? Yeste shrugged and sighed. It was beyond him. There was no understanding children any more. Everything was changing too fast and the young were different. Beyond him, beyond him, life was beyond him, the world was beyond him, you name it, it was beyond him. He was a fat man who made swords. That much he knew.
So he made more swords and he grew fatter and the years went by. As his figure spread, so did his fame. From all across the world they came, begging him for weapons, so he doubled his prices because he didn’t want to work too hard any more, he was getting old, but when he doubled his prices, when the news spread from duke to prince to king, they only wanted him the more desperately. Now the wait was two years for a sword and the line-up of royalty was unending and Yeste was growing tired, so he doubled his prices again, and when that didn’t stop them, he decided to triple his already doubled and redoubled prices and besides that, all work had to be paid for in jewels in advance and the wait was up to three years, but nothing would stop them. They had to have swords by Yeste or nothing, and even though the work on the finest was nowhere what it once was (Domingo, after all, no longer could save him) the silly rich men didn’t notice. All they wanted was his weapons and they fell over each other with jewels for him.
Yeste grew very rich.
Andvery heavy.
Every part of his body sagged. He had the only fat thumbs in Madrid. Dressing took an hour, breakfast the same, everything went slowly.
But he could still make swords. And people still craved them. “I’m sorry,” he said to the young Spaniard who entered his shop one particular morning. “The wait is up to four years and even I am embarrassed to mention the price. Have your weapon made by another.”
“I have my weapon,” the Spaniard said.
And he threw the six-fingered sword across Yeste’s workbench.
Such embraces.
“Never leave again,” Yeste said. “I eat too much when I’m lonely.”
“I cannot stay,” Inigo told him. “I’m only here to ask you one question. As you know, I have spent the last ten years learning. Now I have come for you to tell me if I’m ready.”
“Ready? For what? What in the world have you been learning?”
“The sword.”
“Madness,” said Yeste. “You have spent ten entire years just learning to fence?”
“No, notjust learning to fence,” Inigo answered. “I did many other things as well.”
“Tell me.”
“Well,” Inigo began, “ten years is what? About thirty-six hundred days. And that’s about—I figured this out once, so I remember pretty well—about eighty-six thousand hours. Well, I always made it a point to get four hours sleep per night. That’s fourteen thousand hours right there, leaving me perhaps seventy-two thousand hours to account for.”
“You slept. I’m with you. What else?”
“Well, I squeezed rocks.”
“I’m sorry, my hearing sometimes fails me; it sounded like you said you squeezed rocks.”
“To make my wrists strong. So I could control the sword. Rocks like apples. That size. I would squeeze them in each hand for perhaps two hours a day. And I would spend another two hours a day in skipping and dodging and moving quickly, so that my feet would be able to get me into position to deliver properly the thrust of the sword. That’s another fourteen thousand hours. I’m down to fifty-eight thousand now. Well, I always sprinted two hours each day as fast as I could, so my legs, as well as being quick, would also be strong. And that gets me down to about fifty thousand hours.”
Yeste examined the young man before him. Blade thin, six feet in height, straight as a sapling, bright eyed, taut; even motionless he seemed whippet quick. “And these last fifty thousand hours? These have been spent studying the sword?”
Inigo nodded.
“Where?”
“Wherever I could find a master. Venice, Bruges, Budapest.”
“I could have taught you here?”
“True. But you care for me. You would not have been ruthless. You would have said, ‘Excellent parry, Inigo, now that’s enough for one day; let’s have supper.’“
“That does sound like me,” Yeste admitted. “But why was it so important? Why was it worth so much of your life?”
“Because I could not fail him again.”
“Fail who?”
“My father. I have spent all these years preparing to find the six-fingered man and kill him in a duel. But he is a master, Yeste. He said as much and I saw the way his sword flew at Domingo. I must not lose that duel when I find him, so now I have come to you. You know swords and swordsmen. You must not lie. Am I ready? If you say I am, I will seek him through the world. If you say no, I will spend another ten years and another ten after that, if that is needed.”
So they went to Yeste’s courtyard. It was late morning. Hot. Yeste put his body in a chair and the chair in the shade. Inigo stood waiting in the sunshine. “We need not test desire and we know you have sufficient motive to deliver the death blow,” Yeste said. “Therefore we need only probe your knowledge and speed and stamina. We need no enemy for this. The enemy is always in the mind. Visualize him.”
Inigo drew his sword.
“The six-fingered man taunts you,” Yeste called. “Do what you can.”
Inigo began to leap around the courtyard, the great blade flashing.
“He uses the Agrippa defense,” Yeste shouted.
Immediately, Inigo shifted position, increased the speed of his sword.
“Now he surprises you with Bonetti’s attack.”
But Inigo was not surprised for long. Again his feet shifted; he moved his body a different way. Perspiration was pouring down his thin frame now and the great blade was blinding. Yeste continued to shout. Inigo continued to shift. The blade never stopped.
At three in the afternoon, Yeste said, “Enough. I am exhausted from the watching.”
Inigo sheathed the six-fingered sword and waited.
“You wish to know if I feel you are ready to duel to the death a man ruthless enough to kill your father, rich enough to buy protection, older and more experienced, an acknowledged master.”
Inigo nodded.
“I’ll tell you the truth, and it’s up to you to live with it. First, there has never been a master as young as you. Thirty years at least before that rank has yet been reached, and you are barely twenty-two. Well, the truth is you are an impetuous boy driven by madness and you are not now and you will never be a master.”
“Thank you for your honesty,” Inigo said. “I must tell you I had hoped for better news. I find it very hard to speak just now, so if you’ll please excuse me, I’ll be on my—”
“I had not finished,” Yeste said.
“What else is there to say?”
“I loved your father very dearly, that you know, but this you did not know: when we were very young, not yet twenty, we saw, with our own eyes, an exhibition by the Corsican Wizard, Bastia.”
“I know of no wizards.”
“It is the rank beyond master in swordsmanship,” Yeste said. “Bastia was the last man so designated. Long before your birth, he died at sea. There have been no wizards since, and you would never in this world have beaten him. But I tell you this: he would never in this world have beaten you.”
Inigo stood silent for a long time. “I am ready then.”
“I would not enjoy being the six-fingered man” was all Yeste replied.
The next morning, Inigo began the track-down. He had it all carefully prepared in his mind. He would find the six-fingered man. He would go up to him. He would say simply, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die,” and then, oh then, the duel.
It was a lovely plan really. Simple, direct. No frills. In the beginning, Inigo had all kinds of wild vengeance notions, but gradually, simplicity had seemed the better way. Originally, he had all kinds of little plays worked out in his mind—the enemy would weep and beg, the enemy would cringe and cry, the enemy would bribe and slobber and act in every way unmanly. But eventually, these too gave way in his mind to simplicity: the enemy would simply say, “Oh, yes, I remember killing him; I’ll be only too delighted to kill you too.”
Inigo had only one problem: he could not find the enemy.
It never occurred to him there would be the least difficulty. After all, how many noblemen were there with six fingers on their right hands? Surely, it would be the talk of whatever his vicinity happened to be. A few questions: “Pardon, I’m not crazy, but have you seen any six-fingered noblemen lately?” and surely, sooner or later, there would be an answering “yes.”
But it didn’t come sooner.
And later wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to hold your breath for either.
The first month wasn’t all that discouraging. Inigo criss-crossed Spain and Portugal. The second month he moved to France and spent the rest of the year there. The year following that was his Italian year, and then came Germany and the whole of Switzerland.
It was only after five solid years of failure that he began to worry. By then he had seen all of the Balkans and most of Scandinavia and had visited the Florinese and the natives of Guilder and into Mother Russia and down step by step around the entire Mediterranean.
By then he knew what had happened: ten years learning was ten years too long; too much had been allowed to happen. The six-fingered man was probably crusading in Asia. Or getting rich in America. Or a hermit in the East Indies. Or . . . or . . .
Dead?
Inigo, at the age of twenty-seven, began having a few extra glasses of wine at night, to help him get to sleep. At twenty-eight, he was having a few extra glasses to help him digest his lunch. At twenty-nine, the wine was essential to wake him in the morning. His world was collapsing around him. Not only was he living in daily failure, something almost as dreadful was beginning to happen:
Fencing was beginning to bore him.
He was simply too good. He would make his living during his travels by finding the local champion wherever he happened to be, and they would duel, and Inigo would disarm him and accept whatever they happened to bet. And with his winnings he would pay for his food and his lodging and his wine.
But the local champions were nothing. Even in the big cities, the local experts were nothing. Even in the capital cities, the local masters were nothing. There was no competition, nothing to help him keep an edge. His life began to seem pointless, his quest pointless, everything, everything, without reason.
At thirty he gave up the ghost. He stopped his search, forgot to eat, slept only on occasion. He had his wine for company and that was enough.
He was a shell. The greatest fencing machine since the Corsican Wizard was barely even practicing the sword.
He was in that condition when the Sicilian found him.
At first the little hunchback only supplied him with stronger wine. But then, through a combination of praise and nudging, the Sicilian began to get him off the bottle. Because the Sicilian had a dream: with his guile plus the Turk’s strength plus the Spaniard’s sword, they might become the most effective criminal organization in the civilized world.
Which is precisely what they became.
In dark places, their names whipped sharper than fear; everyone had needs that were hard to fulfill. The Sicilian Crowd (two was company, three a crowd, even then) became more and more famous and more and more rich. Nothing was beyond or beneath them. Inigo’s blade was flashing again, more than ever like lightning. The Turk’s strength grew more prodigious with the months.
But the hunchback was the leader. There was never doubt. Without him, Inigo knew where he would be: on his back begging wine in some alley entrance. The Sicilian’s word was not just law, it was gospel.
So when he said, “Kill the man in black,” all other possibilities ceased to exist. The man in black had to die. . . .