Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [210]
Very soon after Richard, he made his error. He was at the end of a thrust, his right arm rigid and his bright point nearly level, when Culter caught the blade flat with his own, pressing on the steel and then dropping his own point.
Circling his brother’s blade, Richard’s sword adhered to it gratingly, the forte of his foil acting on the foible of Lymond’s; and the intent blue eyes narrowed. This was the first step toward disarming and the Master knew it. His attention was for a second wholly concentrated on disengaging from the danger point and Richard with a single movement, took his slender chance.
He gave way suddenly with his right hand, moved quickly with his left and then with his supporting rapier; and trapping Lymond’s dagger, whipped it from his hand to the floor.
With an answering, animal-like twist the Master leaped back out of close range, the sweat running down his face and into the hollow above the collarbone, and covered himself with his single blade against the unleashed power of Richard’s following attack.
The force of it drove Lymond the full length of the room; that, and the need to keep out of measure, out of the range of Richard’s left hand. Corps à corps fighting was death to the Master now. Richard knew it and rose to his full, triumphant stature as a swordsman, the blades in his hands swooping like the many scythes of Chronos, driving the other diagonally back, into the rope and into the corner of the rectangle.
There was, throughout the room, the soft hiss of an intaken breath. Somerville, unconsciously looking away, found the palms of his hands were wet. Lymond, his back to the rope, allowed himself one fleeting glance to his side. As the skilled, tempted blade rushed toward him he dropped like a stone, left palm to the ground in a perfect stop thrust. Richard overshot, stumbled and whipped around: Lymond was already rising, his recovered dagger in his hand.
Lord Culter was shaken. Like his brother, he was breathing in retching gasps, his hair soaked, his wrists numb with the vibration of the blows. There was, for the first time, a moment of loose play. The men about them sighed, as if in an hour’s suffocation they had purchased a little precious air, and Richard’s eyes kept for a moment their look of bewilderment and appraisal. Then his head came up; beneath the thin shirt his muscles spoke a fresh conviction, and he turned on the fair, fastidious presence of his brother with a mighty and flagellant hand.
Lymond had recovered no such resurgence of energy. He was tired, the shadow of it dragging at his brilliance; but he fought like a fiend when Culter sought to drive him again across the length of the room. Somerville, watching, saw that he was fully aware of the ropes behind; of the small traps devised for him. But what he should fear and did not was the long wall of windows with their hard girdle of seats, and below them, the rough opened pack from which Erskine had taken the damning letter betraying the Queen.
Richard was aware of it; had had it burning behind the grey eyes for five long minutes; was beyond now considering the laws of the sword and the shallow lessons of courtesy and fair play. He drove Lymond like wind whipped by rain back from the ropes, back across the room, back to the windows, and finally back across the soft, shadowed litter of the pack.
Lymond stepped back into the trap. The cloth caught him; he stumbled, and Richard, with all the power of his shoulder, brought three feet of accurate death to cleave the fair, unsettled head.
It fell on a crucifix of steel.
Fully aware, stumbling with precision to the exact place he must occupy, Lymond had already launched his two blades on high. Fiery with light, they caught Lord Culter’s sword between their crossed hilts and wrenched it from his grasp. There was one, sweet, invisible turn, an impact on the fine bones of Richard’s dagger wrist, and the short blade in its turn jerked free, dropped, and followed the longer to the ground.
In a matter of seconds, astonishing