I smiled. ‘Then I suppose it’s a very good thing that he is the best swordsman in the country, your Majesty.’
The King chuckled. ‘He’s going to be pretty pissed off when he figures out how you won.’
‘He’ll never figure it out,’ I said. ‘His mind doesn’t work that way. He’ll assume I got my point at his throat first – that it was some weakness in his style or some superior timing on my part. He’ll spend the rest of his life imagining different ways I could have won before he ever figures out that he actually had me first but his own reflexes stopped him.’
The King locked eyes with me. ‘You beat him using a strategy that will only ever work on him. What happens when you’re in the ring with the next swordsman who’s better than you?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ll figure out a different way to beat that guy.’
‘So damned cocky, aren’t you? I have half a mind to void the bout. What do you think about that?’
I grinned. ‘To be honest, your Majesty, I’ve always suspected you had only half a mind. It speaks highly of you that you can admit to it.’
He didn’t laugh at the joke, but he did grab my hand and raise it high overhead. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, duellists and magistrates one and all, I give you Falcio val Mond, an arrogant bastard and the First Cantor of the Greatcoats!’
While the other Greatcoats shouted my name – and Kest loudest of all – the King whispered to me, ‘Be careful, Falcio. The higher you rise, the greater the fall.’
*
I wasn’t thinking about King Paelis’ words as I circled the Magdan in the snow. I was thinking about the cold; it was a danger, but once we got moving I’d warm up quickly enough. I was also keeping track of the snow, which wasn’t especially deep, but would still be enough to throw me off-balance if I wasn’t careful. Finally, I was paying close attention to the Magdan himself.
In the old days, Morn had been a skilled fighter, if a little reckless and rough around the edges, but he was better now. Much better. He’d long since mastered the southern styles of pole-arm fighting, and he’d clearly been training in the Avarean way, which was vastly more elegant. Within a few exchanges I knew him to be twice the duellist he’d been before.
So was he better than me? He was probably a little faster, and quite a bit stronger – but my technique was still better, and more important than technique, my style was more effective. Whatever I might have lost by the years of rough living and being knocked around, beaten up, tortured and poisoned with alarming regularity, I’d made up for in experience and tactics.
The two of us were almost perfectly evenly matched, even factoring in the cold and the snow, which he was used to and I wasn’t.
Through blow after blow, attack, counter-attack, thrust, cut and parry, our eyes kept meeting, over and over, and that’s how I knew that the Magdan was fully aware of our relative strengths. I also began to realise that none of that mattered; there was no way he could beat me that day. That’s why he’d beaten me the day before.
‘Be careful, Falcio,’ the King had said that day, unaware how prophetic his words were. ‘The higher you rise, the greater the fall.’
The only reason I’d remembered the King’s warning was because I was starting to pass out, and I tend to get nostalgic when I’m about to fall unconscious. You see, the problem wasn’t the Magdan’s skill or strength, nor the cold or the snow.
It was the fucking altitude.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Unfair Duel
‘It’s nasty, isn’t it?’ Morn – the Magdan – asked, bringing his glaive back into a high guard, ready to attack with a diagonal slash that would be challenging to avoid while I was struggling just to stay on my feet. ‘The dizziness, the sudden fatigue . . .’
As I’d expected, his blade came crashing down towards my right shoulder and I tried to get my sword up deflect it, but I was moving too slowly and had to settle for falling back out of the way, losing my balance in the process. Trying to get as much distance between us as possible made me stumble, and I landed painfully on my back. ‘You forgot . . . the nausea,’ I panted, which was probably a bad idea. My pulse was far too fast and I was breathing too quickly.
‘Oh, Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears,’ he swore, laughing, ‘the nausea. I did, I almost forgot about that. First time I came to this place I couldn’t keep my food down for a week.’ He began walking towards me, the blade of his glaive resting lightly on his shoulder. ‘The good news is that it does pass, eventually. You become acclimatised to the mountains.’ He took in a deep breath, then puffed it out all at once. ‘Actually, I’ve come to enjoy it up here.’
He was almost within striking distance of me. Get up, I told myself. The problem wasn’t just that I was having trouble thinking straight, but that I knew he wasn’t planning to kill me. No Greatcoat had ever killed another. However confident the Magdan was in his -support from the others, he wouldn’t risk going too far – so my body apparently considered this an excellent reason to lie down for a nap.
With a huge effort, I forced myself back to my feet and held my rapier at full extension. The Magdan took a swipe at it with his glaive, but I’d been expecting that and brought my tip under in a semi-circular disengage, allowing the bladed end of his weapon to pass mine by while I kept my point on him. Foolish hopefulness led me to put everything into my lunge, hoping I might get lucky.
I’m not sure why, after all these years, I still kid myself that luck will suddenly come to me.
My lunge was not just slow, but clumsy. The Magdan barely bothered to sidestep out of the way. Then he laughed as I lost my balance and fell flat on my face.
‘You could stay down, you know,’ he said, standing over me. Struggling to lift my head, I snorted snow out of my nose. ‘Just lie there. It’s cold at first, but soon you’ll feel a wonderful warmth spread across your limbs.’ His voice sounded far away, muffled. ‘There are those who say that drowning is the most peaceful way to pass out of this world but they have never tried falling asleep in the snow.’
‘I think once you’re dead it’s hard to compare it to something else,’ I said. Only I hadn’t said it; I’d thought about saying it – but I’d forgotten to make my mouth move. I’d fallen unconscious for a brief second.
Get up, you idiot.
I kept expecting King Paelis to appear before me with some acerbic remark about getting my lazy arse off the ground, or my dead wife Aline to remind me that it was time to beat up the bad man, but neither of them showed up.
That was somehow fitting: all my illusions were being shattered now.