Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [125]
The Cornishman was now quite unarmed. But he had assets Thady lacked: a hug that could kill and an ungreased body to seize. Above all, he was a professional: a dangerous man, a thug, and not quick witted, but with all the tricks of the game sunk deep in his battered bones.
He advanced, feinted, and double-feinted. His solid, well-trained body answered him this time a fraction quicker than the abused one of Thady’s. Lymond guessed right once, but not twice; even so, dodging, his cudgel touched the other man’s shoulder. The resilient, thick-knotted muscles accepted the blow. The Cornishman grunted, but continued unshaken. The jaws of a rocklike embrace advanced, hovered and snapped shut. Then the Cornishman pressed; and Thady Boy, held tight as a parcel, was lifted slowly into the air.
It was a perfect move, spoiled by overconfidence in the end. In the instant before the big man drew breath to hurl him wholesale to the ground, Lymond flung his weight forward. His legs alone were quite free. With the last ounce of his breath, the ollave lunged with one foot and brought it sharply, heel down, on the back of the other man’s knee.
A lighter man would have fallen. The Cornishman stumbled, opaque surprise on his face turning to anger at the orthodox, classical reply. Already the ollave was half-free. Sheer rage lending him speed, the Cornishman recovered first. He could not, as he planned, smash his opponent flat on the ground. But he twisted, heeled, and diverted his own stumbling weight so that they collapsed together, the ollave underneath, shoulder pinned to the floor. Thady Boy had yielded first fall.
Then they were circling each other again. To win, Thady would have to throw the Cornishman twice. And he still had the cudgel.
He used it now, to keep the other man off. Although the lead-paned windows were flung wide to the night, the room was suffocatingly hot. It had a stuffy smell, left over from the liver and ginger and the pastries and the venison with Milan cheese; and the company, pressed back in their crumpled satins against the fine, split-oak wainscotting and watching in well-bred passivity, brought to mind nothing so much as a cageful of moulting sparrow hawks. Lord Culter, passing a box full of sugary sweetmeats, had to speak twice before Margaret even heard. Then he turned back calmly to watch.
Any wrestler in his senses would have made it his first aim to seize Thady’s club. The Cornishman set out to do it with no nonsense: after all, the ollave might be in poor trim, but the wrestler had fought one bout already. So, dodging and ducking the whirling wood, he took one swift step and, grasping Thady’s right arm, twisted. It was perfect. In inescapable reflex, the ollave’s hand opened and the cudgel flew out and hit the floor, skidding, as Thady wrenched himself free. In the same moment the big man turned and dived for the weapon himself.
As the sole of his receding foot came up, Lymond struck it viciously with his own, and the Cornishman, hand still outstretched, came down hard on one knee. Then the ollave’s hands gripped his ankle, found leverage, and heaved. Eighteen stone of Cornishman rose in the air and fell crashing to the ground. Second fall to Master Ballagh.
The pure shock of the experience held the wrestler prone, if only for seconds. It was long enough for Thady Boy, breathing wildly and dripping with sweat, to upend three boxes of marzipan, over him. Emitting a thick roar, the first voluntary sound he had made, the wrestler rolled over and got to his feet, closely covered in a kind of sparkling white suede. At last, with his oil coated in sugar, he was susceptible to his opponent’s mischievous hands.
In the utter silence, as they faced up again, the Cornishman’s whistling grunt was queerly disturbing. It continued, at the back of his throat, all the time that he circled. With one fall each, this