Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [197]
Lymond had not drawn his sword. For a second they confronted each other, Stewart’s blade descending already. Then the other man swerved violently, the steel grating on his protected shoulder, sparks glinting blue from the mesh; and disengaging, ran on into the shadows away from Stewart, deeper and deeper into the wood.
He had no chance of escape. The Archer’s long legs pounded behind him, losing ground sometimes a little, sometimes baffled by the echelonned trees; but always led, like a drumbeat, by the crackle and thud of Lymond’s light feet. Then, a long way out of earshot of the camp, where the trees thinned for a space and the moonlight fell like frost on the grass, Stewart overtook him, and Lymond turned, his sword drawn, at bay at last. For a moment the steel glowed in the darkness, caught in the queer opal light like green fire; then Robin Stewart raised his own sword and cut.
They breathed like animals, the sweat streaming down Stewart’s face, a moment ago so dry and cold. From the beginning, no word had been spoken. None was necessary. Lymond had expected him; Stewart knew that now. Equally, he supposed, Lymond realized that this was the end. The death of a herald could mean nothing to a man with nothing to lose. The chain mail couldn’t save a man’s legs. It couldn’t save his hands, or his head, or his eyes. It couldn’t save his neck. Using all the lying shadows, the floating beech boughs, the leaded moonlight, Robin Stewart, gaunt and invincible, crossed swords with his private devil at last.
He had never been brilliant, but he was thoroughly trained in a hard school. He knew the joy of the first sweet tingle of contact which taught you your enemy’s calibre. There was a long, fiery exchange, the sparks red in the darkness; a pause; and then a briefer one. Stewart fell back, the dried saliva stiff round his grinning mouth. They were matched. And he, who had nothing on earth left to fear, had the stronger will of the two. He paused, on an involuntary snort of pleasure that closed the back of this throat, swallowed, renewed his grip on the pommel, and began to play, delicately, for one thing only: the pale skin of the other man’s face.
And that, clearly, his opponent did not relish. An excellent parry suddenly appeared, to defend those thick lashes from a cut which would have sliced the bridge of his nose. Then Lymond’s blade swept low to save himself from being hamstrung. In dumb and desperate battle, Robin Stewart realized elatedly, the golden voice was silent.
It was silent, had he known it, because in the midst of these very real difficulties, Francis Crawford was also wrestling with an urgent desire to laugh.
Swordplay in a wooded clearing at night has its own special hazards: you must turn your eyes up as well as forwards, or the annihilating blade may sink deep in some curtseying bough. Creeper and rabbit hole await you; a shocked bird blunders, and the hair springs cold on your skin.
As it was, they pranced knee-deep like player-goblins, their breath in the silence like saws, the soft palate registering each truncated, tight-mouthed gasp. Stewart’s blade had touched once, near the beginning, and a thread of black showed from a scratch under Lymond’s bright hair. Stewart himself was unharmed.
Fern and knotted root pulling at their feet, they tired quickly. Between Stewart, with the boar’s marks on his skin and Lymond with his illness behind him, there was physically not much to choose. The ear became as important as the straining eye: where the enemy’s glance delivered no warning, you gleaned news instead from the rustling shift of his weight.
To Stewart, his body slippery inside his doublet, it seemed that his opponent was becoming unnecessarily nimble, but he felt no inclination to laugh. High, low, to