When you’re fighting a Knight, for example, you use their armour against them. Some people think this means you should make them move around a lot to tire them out, but that’s a mistake – your average Knight spends hours every single day training in full armour. If they can fight for an entire day on a battlefield, they can easily outlast you in a duel. No, with Knights what you want to do is get them turning around as much as possible, constantly shifting direction: every time they have to readjust their stance, they get a little more off-balance and their muscles get a little more tense. If you can do this without them being aware, they’ll get so stiff it’s as if they’d tied themselves up in knots. Then it’s just a matter of going for one of the gaps close to the knees. Every armoured Knight’s biggest nightmare is falling onto their backs and not being able to get up in time.
With a city guardsman, you use their (perfectly reasonable) fear of someone coming up from behind – a not uncommon occurrence in the streets and alleyways they patrol. With a Dashini, you have to turn their own mind-games against them.
With Kest? Well, with Kest you run into a problem, because he doesn’t have a single weakness as a fighter. His mind is always focused, his movements always swift and sure. He doesn’t make mistakes. In the middle of a duel he thinks twice as fast as you do, he can swing a heavy war sword almost as fast as I can thrust with a rapier, and he’s trained himself to learn new techniques so quickly that he need practise a new move only a few times to get it down perfectly, and then to use it without thinking about it.
And that’s how you beat Kest.
‘You really don’t seem to be taking this very seriously,’ he said, sliding the blade of his war sword along my rapier’s and suddenly circling his point underneath, only to flip it up an instant later. My own point was driven up high and out of line, opening me up for a thrust to my belly that was so fast and light I didn’t even feel it before I heard the King shout, ‘Fourth touch to Kest!’
‘Nicely done,’ I grunted. He hadn’t actually cut into me, but the pain from yesterday’s wound was intense. A few seconds later, spots of red started to seep through the bandage.
‘Yield, Falcio,’ Kest advised.
‘Here’s a thought: how about you yield instead?’
He shook his head. ‘If you’re hoping I’ll concede just to avoid hurting you, then you’ve miscalculated. The next Lord’s champion we face in trial by combat isn’t going take pity on you, and neither can I.’
I went to grab my other fallen rapier, took up a double high guard and smiled through the pain. ‘I haven’t miscalculated at all.’
‘One more touch and the match is over,’ the King said, winking at me.
For a moment I wondered if he had discerned my plan, then I dismissed that idea. King Paelis was clever, but even he couldn’t possibly have worked it out.
‘I’ll try to make it quick,’ Kest said, noting that more blood was seeping through my bandages.
We were at four to one in the match (I’d tripped, which was how I’d ended up with my single point). All Kest needed to win was one touch, anywhere on the body – hells, if he tapped my arm with the blade of his sword, I’d lose. For me to win, I’d either need four points in a row – an impossible task, given how tired I was – or to score what’s called a ‘master’s stroke’. I don’t know why it’s called a ‘stroke’ when it’s actually a thrust. To be First Cantor, I’d have to place my point perfectly at his throat, forcing him to concede. The odds of anyone doing that to Kest? Only one Greatcoat had wagered their coin today on that bet.
‘Vata!’ the King shouted enthusiastically.
‘Vata’ is archaic Tristian for ‘I’m a pompous arse of a monarch and don’t want to just say “go” like a normal referee’.
I had both my rapiers whirling in a swift figure-of-eight pattern before the King had even finished uttering the second syllable. I knew Kest would want to end this quickly and I couldn’t take the risk of trying to parry an attack that I probably wouldn’t even see coming. In case you’re ever in this situation, you should know that real fencers will mock you unmercifully for spinning your blades ‘like a child with a skipping rope’ – but ignore the insults; sometimes this is the only way to delay your opponent’s attack. No matter how fast they are, they still need to get into the right position to get past your defence.
There’s a problem, though, because you can’t really attack like that, and the moment you try, your opponent will see it coming. That’s why I didn’t thrust or cut but instead threw my left rapier at him. Technically, if it hit, I could count it as a point, but that wouldn’t do me much good since he’d counter-strike me within the measure and his point would count too. So as he beat aside my tossed sword, I dropped down low and swung my right rapier in a wide arc at his ankles. Kest leaped neatly over it, bringing his own sword up high in preparation for a downward cut, but instead of parrying, I came in close and punched him in the stomach with my left fist. His blade overshot, though I got a pommel in the back for my troubles. As he stepped back to regain the distance, I repeated a move from yesterday, diving into a shoulder roll on the ground to come up on his right flank, rising up so fast my head was swimming as I readied my rapier to cut at his unprotected side. I’d done it faster this time than ever before.
Not fast enough, of course.
Kest, annoyed that I’d punched him in the middle of a match, already had his war sword in line. His reflexes took over and he began his thrust even before he noticed that the buttons of my greatcoat had come undone and he was about to stab me through the belly from far too close. I think even he surprised himself when he managed to stop the thrust in time to not kill me. ‘Saints, Falcio! That stupid move of yours doesn’t work!’
I smiled at him. Kest rarely gets angry, and a man has to be pretty pissed off to not notice the tip of a rapier sitting a hair’s breadth from the ball of his throat.
‘Touché dei Maestre!’ the King shouted. That’s the pretentious way of saying I’d landed the master’s stroke.
Kest was now looking down at the blade of my rapier, eyes wide with disbelief. ‘How did you—?’
‘The problem with you, Kest,’ I said, carefully pulling my weapon back and dropping it on the floor so that I could devote both my hands into pressing against the now sopping wet bandage around my belly, ‘is that you’re almost as damned fast as you think you are.’
That part was a lie. Kest was every bit as fast as he believed. What he hadn’t yet figured out was that yesterday I hadn’t been trying different styles on him, nor figuring out which moves he was slower at defending, nor even trying to discern some broader weakness in his own style. I had been training him! I had spent the whole day schooling his reflexes – those same reflexes that let him master new moves so quickly – to stop short when he was about to thrust at my belly.
There was no way in any hell I would be able to defeat Kest on the day of the competition. So I’d defeated him the day before.
The King came into the circle, separating us. There was a good deal of cheering and yelling as my fellow Greatcoats tried to settle up bets or, more likely, dispute them (we may be judges, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to get out of paying our wagers just like everyone else).
‘You know,’ Paelis said, quietly enough that no one else would hear us over the racket, ‘if Kest weren’t, in fact, the best damned swordsman in the entire country, he would have ended up stabbing you right through the stomach, and you’d have wound up dead and bleeding all over my nice new duelling court.’