The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [125]
The knife was knocked from his hand.
It did not seem possible. He flung out his hands, whirling round, and struck the edge of a tub. There was nothing but flowers, and space, and blackness. He could not see: neither of them could see. He had made no sound which could have betrayed him. And yet his right arm had been found somehow and struck, so that the knife had fallen lost on the ground. A voice, distantly, said, ‘Not alike are the inmates of the fire and the dwellers of the garden: the dwellers of the garden are they that are the achievers.’
He was mocking him, the dog, by revealing his own whereabouts. A bird blundered into him and rose with a whirr to the rooftop, leaving a draught of scent from its jasmine-soaked wings. But the flute wailing was less, and for the first time you could hear plainly the quiet spray of the fountain. The birds were quietening. Delayed by a second, Vishnevetsky’s very competent brain followed suddenly a train of thought from that soft breeze of perfume. His tunic. His singed tunic must be signalling his presence as clearly as a drenching of ambergris. Raising his hands, he ripped down the fastenings and dropped the ruined cloth quietly to the ground. The warm air from the steam pipes touched the sweat on his brown, half-naked body. Then, struck by a better thought, he picked the taffeta up and moving noiselessly, one hand before him, found a little lemon tree and draped the tunic over one of its branches. Then, taking three steps back, he placed his fingers on the trunk and stood without moving, all his sharpened senses devoted to listening.
The birds were quiet. Once, high above, a leaf rustled and once, from across the pool, he heard the throaty sound of a dove, and the rasp of claws on the spars. But from below, nothing, Then the bark of the lemon tree shook under his fingers, and he sprang.
The Tsar’s foreign mercenary was there. Vishnevetsky’s hands gripped a right arm and shoulder and held, while he kicked with the full force of his iron-shod boot.
He heard the other man’s explosive grunt as it landed. But the Voevoda was already giving way before it. He did more. He used his rigid right arm as a fulcrum to swing his whole body against Vishnevetsky’s. The Lithuanian felt the sudden increase of weight in his grasp, and before he could recover was hurled backwards, the other man on top of him, among the wooden borders and tubs of the garden. Something cracked hard against the ridge of his spine and he roared, just as the Voevoda’s body landed with a crash half over him, winding them both. He kicked, and something caught his boot in both hands.
‘Bears,’ said Lymond, ‘have weakest heads, as Lions have strongest. When forced to cast themselves down from any rocks, they cover their Heads with their Feet, and lie for a time Astonished.’
More bombast. It didn’t worry Prince Vishnevetsky, who was beginning to get his opponent’s measure. He grinned, and pulled his foot out of the boot. As he rolled away, he felt the other boot dragged off as well, against the full power of his kick. Vishnevetsky whirled and got to his feet.
‘Now!’ said Lymond cheerfully; and jumped at him.
While no kin to Milo of Crotan, who carried a calf daily to season his muscles, and continued to carry it while it developed through heifer to cow, Dmitri Vishnevetsky was a formidable professional, unfairly handicapped by the caprice of his adversary. Once at grips with him, feeling for the eyes with his fingers or the back of the neck with his strong knotted arm, the Governor of Cherkassy was able at length to employ all the arts he used so liberally with his Cossacks, and to thank his trainers who had fought in Spain and in Sweden and in Germany, and had taught him to counter the kind of nasty clip he got now, as they staggered together, and how to somersault out of trouble, taking his enemy if possible with him.
The Voevoda, it seemed, had been soundly taught also. Both men back-heeled