The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [88]
“Mamres curse you, stand and fight!” Cazio bellowed. He was getting cold now. His bare feet crunched on snow.
Once again he chased after the elusive swordsman, panting dragon breath. His fingers, nose, and other extremities were numbing with cold such as he had never known, and he began to remember stories he had heard of body parts freezing off. Could such a thing really happen? It had always seemed absurd.
They burst from the maze and sprinted through a garden where a thinly clothed statue of Lady Erenda presided over a pair of marble lovers in a frozen basin. Ahead, Cazio could see a canal and the swordsman’s destination: a horse tethered in a small grove of trees.
He tried to redouble his speed, with limited success. The snow and his numb toes made it difficult to keep his balance.
The swordsman was trying to untie his beast when Cazio launched his attack. Giving up the task, the man turned to meet him. Cazio saw with surprise that he had pulled his mask down, probably to breathe better. The face was indeed Sefry, delicate and almost blue in the moonlight, with hair so fair that it looked as if he had no eyebrows or lashes, as if he were carved of alabaster.
He avoided Cazio’s rush, turning his body aside and leaving his point for Cazio to impale himself on. Cazio checked his headlong rush, however, and picked up the extended blade in a bind. He was unable to riposte, but pushed past instead, and they both turned to face each other again.
“I’m really going to have to kill you,” the Sefry remarked.
“Your Vitellian is odd, almost more Safnian,” Cazio said. “Tell me your name, or if not that, at least where you hail from.”
“Sefry hail from nowhere, as you must know,” the assassin replied. “But my clan plied the routes from Abrinia to Virgenya.”
“Yes, but you did not learn your dessrata in Abrinia or Virgenya. Then where?”
“In Toto da’Curnas,” he replied, “in the Alixanath Mountains. My mestro was named Espedio Raes da Loviada.”
“Mestro Espedio?” Z’Acatto had studied with Espedio. “Mestro Espedio has been dead for a long time,” Cazio said.
“And Sefry live a long time,” the fellow replied.
“Give me something to call you.”
“Call me Acredo,” he replied. “It is the name of my rapier.”
“Acredo, I no more believe you studied with Mestro Espedio than that you’ve hunted rabbits on the moon, but let me see. I attack with the caspo dolo didieto dachi pere—” He launched an attack to the foot.
Acredo responded by instantly countering to Cazio’s face, but that was anticipated, and Cazio changed his attack to countertime along the blade. Acredo receded into prismo, then cut over Cazio’s blade for a caspo en perto.
Cazio voided to his right and counterthrust to Acredo’s eyes. Acredo ducked and lunged to Cazio’s foot, ending the attack as it had begun, except that Acredo’s blade plunged through Cazio’s numbed foot and into the chill soil below.
“The correct response?” Acredo asked, withdrawing his blooded blade and returning to guard.
Cazio winced. “Nicely done,” he allowed.
“My turn,” Acredo said, and commenced a flurry of feints and attacks.
“The cuckold’s walk home,” Cazio said, recognizing the technique. He replied with the appropriate counter, but again Acredo seemed to know one more move than he, and this time the exchange nearly ended with Acredo’s blade in Cazio’s throat.
Z’Acatto, you old fox, he thought. The old man had left out the final countermoves of Espedio’s set pieces. That had never mattered before, because until now Cazio had never met anyone else who had mastered the old master’s style; he had always managed to make his touch halfway through them. That wouldn’t work here; in fact, it was an almost certain route to failure. Cazio would have to use his own tricks.
But for the first time in a very long time, he reckoned this was a duel he might lose.