Egert grew angry. “You are going to chase after that man? You?”
Flushing, Toria took another step.
Egert blocked her path. “You are like a precious jewel that has chosen a rotten hunk of wood as her setting. Use your eyes! You were born to rule; you are a queen, a goddess, but you—”
The student escaped from the corner; he was red faced and disheveled, as if he had been scuffling, and it seemed likely that something unpleasant had happened between him and Karver, who leapt after him, shouting for the whole street to hear.
“Sir, you aren’t even married yet and already you’re playing the cuckold! If the woman wants to talk to a man in the street, a man who is pleasing to her, that is no reason for hysterics!”
An artisan passing by burst out laughing. The gray-haired guest, who had just exited the doors of the inn, slowly turned his head toward the group. Lieutenant Dron and the eternally gloomy Lagan emerged onto the front steps of the Faithful Shield.
The student flushed from red to purple; he turned toward Karver as if about to strike him, but then he thought better of it. He turned back and hurried over to the perplexed Toria. He took her forcefully by the hand. “Let’s go.”
Their route of escape, however, had already been blocked off by Egert. Gazing straight into Toria’s eyes, he asked softly, “Are you so submissive as to allow this … this creature to lead you away to the gray, spiritless life he has prepared for you?”
Karver shouted at the student, “But you still have time, sir, to fit yourself for horns! Not a week will pass after your happy little wedding before they adorn your learned brow!”
The student had begun to shake slightly; not even Toria’s hand, which was holding his wrist in a viselike grip, could restrain this shaking.
“Lord Soll, please allow us to pass.”
“In the event that a man should whip out his sword, you, sir, will be able to poke him with your horns,” continued Karver. “This should give you with a certain advantage.”
The student, as though blind, leapt forward right into Egert. Egert’s iron-hard chest repelled him back to his former position.
“What would you call that combat maneuver, master student?” asked Karver. “The Pouncing Pupil? Do they teach that at the university?”
“Lord Soll,” said Toria softly, looking Egert straight in the eye, “it seemed to me that you were an honorable man.”
Over the course of his, admittedly not very long, life, Egert had had sufficient occasion to study women; he had seen numerous coquettes, whose
Be gone!
meant
Come to me, my love
and whose
Foul rogue!
meant
We must talk about this later.
Married women in the company of their spouses had demonstrated their disinterest and then, once the two of them were alone, had thrown themselves on his neck. Egert knew and could read many shades of meaning, but in the eyes of Toria he read not only complete indifference to the splendor of his manliness, but also the furious power of antagonism, of rejection.
Lieutenant Egert Soll was cut to the quick. In front of the entire regiment sitting in the Faithful Shield, a student, almost a eunuch, someone who did not even carry weapons, had been chosen over him, a man who had heretofore never known defeat.
Unwillingly stepping to the side, he gritted his teeth and snarled, “Well, my sincerest congratulations! An aristocrat in the embrace of a sniveling bookworm: what a splendid couple! But perhaps your learned spouse is just a screen behind which you hide your many lovers?”
Drawn by the noise in the street, the maidservants and guests were peering out the windows of the inn.
The student released Toria’s hand. Ignoring her beseeching look, he drew a deep line in front of Egert’s boots with the dusty toe of his shoe: the traditional challenge to a duel.
Egert laughed condescendingly. “What? I don’t brawl with women! You, my dear sir, don’t even have any weapons!”
Drawing his hand back, the student quickly and audibly slapped Egert across his face.
* * *
The excited crowd—guards, guests of the inn, chambermaids, servants, and casual passersby—filled the rear courtyard of the Noble Sword; Karver was there, practically crawling out of his skin, hurrying to clear a space amidst them for the combatants.
Some kind soul had lent the student his sword, but in his hands even that decent blade looked ridiculous, like knight’s armor at a grocer’s stand. His fiancée seemed ready to break down into tears for the first time since Egert had met her. Toria’s cheeks, white as a shroud, were covered in irregular splotches; their jagged pattern concealed her beauty. Biting her lips, she threw herself at the spectators by turns.
“Stop this, you! Merciful Heaven, Dinar! Stop them, someone!”
To stop an honorably proclaimed duel was unlawful and also foolish: all the residents of Kavarren had imbibed that notion with their mother’s milk. They simply watched Toria with sympathy and curiosity, and many of the women envied her silently: Just think, to be the reason for a duel!
One chambermaid decided, with sincere goodwill, to comfort the poor girl. Throwing off her arms, Toria, despairing of being able to stop Dinar, decided to leave. But she returned almost immediately, as if on a leash. The crowd parted before her, politely giving way, silently acknowledging her right to watch all the details of the fight. Toria leaned against the wheel of a carriage and remained frozen there as if overtaken by stupor.
The adversaries were ready. They stood opposite each other, enemy against enemy. Egert grinned derisively: there was nothing better than love, except a duel. True, his rival was entirely worthless. Just look at how he wheezes, trying to stand in the correct position! It was apparent that he had taken a fencing lesson or two, but not enough to do him any good.
Egert cast his eyes over the faces in the crowd, searching for Toria. Would she watch? Would she finally understand that she had favored a tiny stream from an overflowing sink over a thundering waterfall? Would she repent?
Instead of Toria, Egert met the eyes of the middle-aged guest, that gray-haired man whose head rose above the crowd like a pine tree towering over an orchard. The guest’s gaze, steadfast but expressionless, displeased Egert; he tossed his head and flicked his sword at the student like a stern master flicking a switch.
“Hup, now!”
The student recoiled involuntarily, and the crowd burst into laughter.
“Lay into him, Egert!”
Egert grinned widely. “This is nothing more than a small lesson in good manners.”
The student narrowed his eyes, bent his knees as though he were in a fencing class, and sprang forward recklessly, as if he intended to chop Egert up into cabbage. Within a second, he was looking around in amazement, searching for his opponent, while Egert, appearing behind his back, reminded the student of himself with a delicate jab just below his spine.
“Try not to get distracted, now!”
The student whirled around as though stung. Egert bowed politely and retreated a step.
“All is not lost, lad! Gather your strength and give it another shot. The lesson is just beginning!”
The student stood as rigidly as a mast; the tip of his blade was not pointed at the eyes of his opponent, as it should, but rather at the sky. He lunged awkwardly, managing to hit Egert’s sword, but then the student’s blade swung wide. Its tip hit the sand, and he was barely able to keep his grip on the hilt. The spectators began to applaud. Egert, however, was already bored with this game. He could fence for a hundred hours without rest, if only his hopelessly feeble adversary would not fight so tiresomely.
Egert knew seventeen defenses and twenty-seven attack maneuvers. The entire allure of the sport consisted of connecting these maneuvers so that they created a mosaic tapestry that he wove with his sword, then scattered and reassembled anew. Egert was unable, afterwards, to repeat many of the improvisations that resulted from this weaving: they were born from inspiration, like verse, and they were usually crowned with a wound, if not death. Alas, with this student before him, even with a sword, Egert was limited to using one particular maneuver, a maneuver so simple and vulgar that it resembled smoked herring.
Turning away from yet another clumsy attack, carelessly fending off strong yet inaccurate blows, Egert turned his head in search of Toria. Once he saw her pallid, almost vacant face in the crowd, he mounted his own attack, and the student did not even have time to understand what was happening. Egert dramatically held the tip of his blade near the student’s chest, and the audience yelled out rapturously. Only the tall, gray-haired boarder maintained his calm.
This was repeated again and again. The student could have died ten times already, but Lord Soll prolonged the game, playing with the youth like a cat plays with a mouse. The student thrashed about, brandishing his sword. Pebbles skittered away from under his dusty shoes, but his enemy was like a shadow, ever-present and untouchable.
Egert’s intentionally pedantic, toxic voice never ceased admonishing the student. “So! Ah-ha! Like this! Why do you squirm so, like a snake in a frying pan? Again! And again! Ha! Yes, you are a lazy, indolent pupil! You must be punished! Now!”
Every cry of
now
was followed by a small jab. The student’s coat, lacerated in several places, hung in rags, and sweat poured down his drawn face.
The combatants once again stood facing each other. The student was worn out and bewildered, while Egert was not even out of breath. Looking into his opponent’s desolate, hate-filled eyes, Egert sensed his own power, an idle, unhurried power that did not even need to be used, only enjoyed.
“Are you afraid?” he asked in a whisper, and in the same breath he read the answer in the student’s eyes: Yes, he was afraid. Terror stood in front of Egert, whose sword was like a serpent’s sting pointed at the poor man’s chest. Egert’s opponent was defenseless against him; he was no longer an opponent, but a victim, and rage had long since given way to anxiety and the desire to ask for mercy, if only his pride would allow it.
“Should I show you mercy?” Egert smiled with just the corner of his mouth. He felt the student’s terror on his skin, and this feeling sweetly thrilled his nerves: all the more so since, in the depths of his soul, Egert had already decided not to penalize the boy too harshly.
“Should I show mercy? Well?”
Despair and terror forced the student into a new, hopeless attack. At the exact same moment, Egert’s boot came down in a puddle, forsaken by the rain, and lost its solid connection to the ground. The legs of the magnificent Egert splayed apart like the limbs of a newborn colt. He barely kept his balance, and the student’s sword grazed the guard’s shoulder, slicing off his epaulet. That proud military affectation hung by a thread, like a dead spider, and the crowd—that cursed crowd, always on the side of the victor—broke out into delighted howls.
“Ha, Egert! He got a hit!”
“Keep at it! Keep at it! He’ll fall back!”
“Bravo, student! Teach him a lesson! Thrash him!”
When guards who had been observed in some villainy or cowardice, or who had been convicted of treason, were expelled from the regiment, they suffered a shameful punishment: Their epaulets were publicly shorn from their shoulders. Without knowing it, the student had brought great shame upon Egert, who saw his comrades exchanging glances, smirking and whispering amongst themselves—for shame!
Everything further transpired instantaneously, in the space of a breath.
Forgetting himself in his fury, Egert sprang forward. The student, absurdly throwing up his sword, leapt forward to meet him—and froze, his astonished eyes staring into the guard’s. Egert’s family sword blossomed from his back; it was not lustrous as usual, but dark red, almost black. Standing for a second more, the student fell down as awkwardly as he had fought. The crowd became quiet; a blind man would have thought that there was not a single soul in the back courtyard of the tavern. The student slumped heavily onto the trampled dirt, and Egert’s unmercifully long blade slipped out of his chest like a snake.
“He impaled himself,” said Lieutenant Dron loudly.
Egert stood, his blood-soaked sword lowered down toward the ground, and stared dully at the form in front of him. The crowd shuffled slightly, letting Toria through.
She walked carefully, as if on a wire. Paying no heed to Egert, she approached the youth on tiptoe, as though she were afraid to wake him. “Dinar?”
The young man did not answer.
“Dinar?”
The crowd dispersed, averting their eyes. A reddish black stain crept out from under the lad’s dark coat. The innkeeper sniveled in a low voice, “Oh, these duels! Young blood is hot, everyone knows it. What should I do now? Well, what am I going to do?”
Egert spit to get rid of a metallic taste in his mouth. Glorious Heaven, why did it go so wrong?
“Dinar!” Toria gazed pleadingly into the young man’s face.
The courtyard emptied slowly; as he was leaving, the tall gray-haired boarder cast a glance in the direction of Egert, a glance that was intent yet incomprehensible.
* * *
The student was buried quickly, but with all the proper decorum, at the city’s expense. The city was flush with gossip for a week. Toria addressed a complaint to the mayor. He received her, but only so that he could express his condolences and lift his hands in dismay: the duel proceeded according to all the proper rules, and although it is extremely unfortunate that the youth died, did not he himself challenge Lord Soll? Alas, my dear lady, this unfortunate incident can in no way be called a murder. Lord Soll is not under arrest. He fought on the field of honor, and he too might have been killed. And if the deceased gentleman student did not carry weapons and did not know how to wield them, well then, this misfortune falls to the student and is in no way the fault of Lieutenant Soll.…
Four days had passed from the day of the duel, three from the day of the burial. In the gray early morning, Toria abandoned the city.