The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [531]
“Watch yourself, young man! Turn your back on him and he’s like to give ye a clyster!”
“Better a clyster than a blade up the arse!”
The doctor ignored these and similar vulgar observations, holding his blade upright in readiness. Roger shot a glance at Jamie, who was leaning against the wall, looking amused. Jamie raised one eyebrow and shrugged slightly.
“Try the feel of it,” Jamie’d said. Well, and he supposed a duel with a drunken midget was as good a test as any.
Roger raised his blade and fixed the doctor with a menacing look.
“En garde,” he said, and the knot of onlookers roared approval.
“Gardez vous,” replied the doctor promptly, and lunged. Roger spun on one heel and the doctor shot past, rapier pointed like a lance. Moore the smith leaped aside just in time to avoid being skewered for the second time, cursing fluently.
“What am I, a friggin’ target?” he shouted, shaking a fist.
Disregarding the near miss, the doctor regained his balance and charged back toward Roger, uttering shrill cries of self-encouragement.
It was rather like being attacked by a wasp, Roger thought. If you didn’t panic, you found it possible to follow the thing and bat it away. Perhaps the doctor was a decent swordsman when sober; in his current state, his frenzied thrusts and mad flurries were easily fended off—as long as Roger paid attention.
It occurred to him early on that he could end the contest at any time, merely by meeting the doctor’s slender rapier edge-on with his own much heavier weapon. He was beginning to enjoy himself, though, and was careful to parry with the flat of the broadsword.
Gradually everything disappeared from Roger’s view but the flashing point of the rapier; the shouts of the crowd faded to a bee-buzz, the dirt of the lane and the wall of the smithy were scarcely visible. He grazed his elbow on the wall, moved back, moved in a circle to gain more room, all without conscious thought.
The rapier beat on his wider blade, engaged, and screeched loose with a whinggg! of metal. Clang and click and the whish of empty air and the ringing beat that vibrated in his wristbones with every blow of the doctor’s sword.
Watch the stroke, follow it, bat it away. He had no idea what he was doing, but did it anyway. The sweat was running in his eyes; he shook his head to fling it away, nearly missed a low lunge toward his thigh, stopped it close, and flung the rapier back.
The doctor staggered, thrown off balance, and feral shouts of “Now! Take him! Stick him now!” rang in the dust-filled air. He saw the expanse of the doctor’s embroidered waistcoat, unguarded, filled with silken butterflies, and choked back the visceral urge to lunge for it.
Shaken by the intensity of the urge, he took a step back. The doctor, sensing weakness, leapt forward, bellowing, blade pointed. Roger took a half-step sideways, and the doctor shot past, grazing the hock of the draft horse in his path.
The horse emitted an outraged scream, and promptly sent swordsman and sword flying through the air, to crash against the front of the cobbler’s shop. The doctor fell to ground like a crushed fly, surrounded by lasts and scattered shoes.
Roger stood still, panting. His whole body was pulsing with every heartbeat, hot with the fighting. He wanted to go on, he wanted to laugh, he wanted to hit something. He wanted to get Brianna up against the nearest wall, and now.
Jamie gently lifted his hand and pried his fingers from the hilt of the sword. He hadn’t remembered he was holding it. His arm felt too light without it, as though it might fly up toward the sky, all by itself. His fingers were stiff from gripping so hard, and he flexed them automatically, feeling the tingle as the blood came back.
The blood was tingling everywhere. He hardly heard the laughter, the offers of drinks, or felt the blows of congratulation rained on his back.
“A clyster, a clyster, give him a clyster!” a gang