Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [178]
Zorzi said, ‘Let it drop! The child spat in your face! What sort of talk do you expect after that? You’ll never get this puppy to rest until you satisfy him. Why not fight now, and get it over and done with? He can have my sword.’ His fingers still gripped Diniz’s shoulder. He said, shaking him, ‘Is that what you want?’
‘Yes,’ said Diniz. He felt stunned. It had seemed certain that the man Zorzi would take the Fleming’s part. But he was exhorting him – almost shaming him into a duel. Diniz said, ‘My father was Tristão Vasquez. He was assassinated in Rhodes, because of a feud between this man and my mother’s brother. Queen Carlotta didn’t know that when she knighted him.’
The Venetian released him. He exuded pleasure. He said, ‘My dear Niccolò! Queen Carlotta made you a Knight of the Sword! I thought it was Zacco!’
‘There was a queue,’ vander Poele said. ‘I can’t fight him.’
‘Why not?’ said Zorzi. He had his sword unsheathed in his hand. ‘Show me yours.’
‘They’re not matched,’ said the Fleming. Against the scorch-marks his face was pale with what seemed to be anger. He moved, too late to prevent Zorzi from drawing his sword from the scabbard and holding it next to the other.
Zorzi said, ‘You are right. Then why not give the youth the advantage? Give him yours, and you take the shorter.’ And as he spoke, he held out to Diniz the pommel of the Fleming’s sword.
Diniz seized it. He turned, his breath coming short, and heaved the blade upright in his two hands, staring at vander Poele across the space that divided them. He said, at the second attempt, ‘Messer Niccolò. I have challenged you, on grounds that you know of. Take the sword and respond, or I will strike, and the law will absolve me.’
He waited only a moment. But at the first lift of his arm, the other man stepped quickly forward and grasped the weapon the Venetian offered him. He said conversationally, ‘Damn you, Bartolomeo. But I doubt, even then, if you could expect to be handed the franchise. Of course, you could try.’ Then, turning to Diniz, he saluted briefly and flicked his blade to invite the first blow.
Swordplay in a gymnasium or a paved exercise yard was different from the same thing in a yard deep in mud and littered with irregular obstacles, but Diniz had all the advantages he could have hoped for: of youth and energy and familiarity with the terrain. He also had the better weapon, not only in length, but in the sheer cutting strength of the steel. The work under his hand was Byzantine, but on the blade, the inscription was Arabic.
He remembered what he had heard, with such awe, from this man’s lips on the sail from Kolossi, and understood it as he had not understood it then. Vander Poele had fought in Trebizond, that was true. But vander Poele, the pandering servant of Zacco, had also learned in Trebizond the many ways of pleasing a master. It was what you would expect – his aunt Katelina had impressed it on him. The man was simply a base-born apprentice who had risen by wedding his widowed employer. And bastard upstarts didn’t learn duelling, whereas Portuguese noblemen did.
For that very reason, it would seem, the man was remarkably hard to pin down. He backed, and swerved and tapped, and swerved again without ever engaging. Diniz pursued him with angry pleasure. Feet trampling, sucking, dancing in the mud, he swung his sword with joy, changing angles, direction. He knew the yard. He knew where the cauldrons were, their fires barely out, their contents still between warm and hot. He avoided the grindstone, the buckets of paste, the baskets with tongs and bellows and ladles – but his opponent was clever enough, he could see, to read his movements and avoid them as well.
He wished it were dark. Once, misreading the other man’s intentions, he found himself wrong-footed and brought his blade down on the edge of a vat, half-cutting the rods with their skeins. Once the other man slipped, and Diniz, following through, leaned his weight on a wheelbarrow and found himself rolling