Part 32 (1/2)
”Richard-.
”Don't be a fool. He'll lead you straight to Lord Grey..
”Then it's a risk we must take,” said Erskine steadily. ”He's right, Culter. Let him go..
”Not until we have finished this..
Erskine was trying desperately hard to keep his temper. ”Listen. If that message gets through . .
Richard rounded on him. ”Are you relying on Lymond to stop it? Then you're a simpleton. Go if you want to. I'm not holding you back. But you're not taking him: I'll kill the first man who comes near him.” And he turned, his eyes sparkling in his white face, to his brother.
”You were too superior to attack? Then you can d.a.m.ned well attack now.” His sword was in his hand, a fine instrument of latent death, sparkling largo to larghetto with his dagger. ”The way to that door is through me. Take it, brother, if you can..
There was a pause. Erskine said sharply, ”Hob, Jamie: take your horses and try and pick up the tracks. We'll follow as soon as we can..
Lymond stirred. Sleek, cold, finely polished as his own steel, there was an air about him now that none of them had ever seen. ”Very well,” said the voice that sixty outlaws had known. ”Since you offer, I'll take it..
And he moved in straight to the attack.
It was as if some flawed and clouded screen had slid from the air, leaving it thin and bright; informing the white figures and pale heads, fair and brown, with an engraver's beauty of exact and flexible outline, and lending a weightlessness and authority to their art.
For the brothers were natural swordsmen. The slipping and tapping of the fine blades, the unfurling movements growing smokelike one within the other, showed no trace of the grim and gritty striving of a moment before. It was cla.s.sic swordplay, precious as a jewel, beyond any sort of price to the men watching, and concealing in its graces an exquisite and esoteric death.
They had always known Richard for a master. They now saw Crawford of Lymond grow before their eyes, the tutored power entering behind the elegance, the shoulders straight, the wrists of the temper which had withstood all the force of Richard's long aggression and which now adventured, strong and pliant, with every trained sinew in his body.
To the two men, existence was in the end the flicker of the other man's steel; his brown arms and wrists; a blur of white s.h.i.+rt and white face and the live, directing brain betraying itself through grey eyes or blue. The men watching, unable to breathe, heard the click and clash and slither of contes, froiss&s, beating and binding: saw first one man and then the other bring his art to the pitch of freeing his blade for the ultimate perfection, only to bow before the other's defence.
Lymond fought consistently within measure, intensely fast, with an attacking dagger: Erskine, his heart frozen by his eyes, saw him beating constantly on Richard's blade, moving it out of his way; out of line; pressing it down and opening the way for a lunge.
Tap, tap went the compound riposte, the soft feet slithered-and then Richard's blade moved, Lymond's right arm whipped stiff, and the fiat of his blade adhered to the flat of his opponent's. There was a glottal whine. The point, glittering, slithered down and down to Culter's counterguard until Richard, with all his compact strength. wrenched it free, slipping and flicking aside the automatic flight of his brother's dagger. He moved forward himself, and attacked.
He was possessed by one instinct: to wipe out the insult ot the last twenty minutes. In this soil there flowered a strength which lapsed sometimes, but never seriously, and which gained leisure, more and more often, to answer the astonishments of Lymond's attack. For here, perhaps for the first time in his life, Lymond also was stretched to the limit, his breathing raucous, his concentration a tangible and frightening thing.
Very soon after Richard, he made his error. He was at the end of a thrust, his right arm rigid and his bright point nearly level, when Culter caught the blade flat with his own, pressing on the steel and then dropping his own point.
Circling his brother's blade, Richard's sword adhered to it gratingly, the forte of his foil acting on the foible of Lymond's; and the intent blue eyes narrowed. This was the first step toward disarming and the Master knew it. His attention was for a second wholly concentrated on disengaging from the danger point and Richard with a single movement, took his slender chance.
He gave way suddenly with his right hand, moved quickly with his left and then with his supporting rapier; and trapping Lymond's dagger, whipped it from his hand to the floor.
With an answering, animal-like twist the Master leaped back out of close range, the sweat running down his face and into the hollowabove the collarbone, and covered himself with his single blade against the unleashed power of Richard's following attack.
The force of it drove Lymond the full length of the room; that, and the need to keep out of measure, out of the range of Richard's left hand. Corps ~ corps fighting was death to the Master now. Richard knew it and rose to his full, triumphant stature as a swordsman, the blades in his hands swooping like the many scythes of Chronos, driving the other diagonally back, into the rope and into the corner of the rectangle.
There was, throughout the room, the soft hiss of an intaken breath. Somerville, unconsciously looking away, found the palms of his hands were wet. Lymond, his back to the rope, allowed himself one fleeting glance to his side. As the skilled, tempted blade rushed toward him he dropped like a stone, left palm to the ground in a perfect stop thrust. Richard overshot, stumbled and whipped around: Lymond was already rising, his recovered dagger in his hand.
Lord Culter was shaken. Like his brother, he was breathing in retching gasps, his hair soaked, his wrists numb with the vibration of the blows. There was, for the first time, a moment of loose play. The men about them sighed, as if in an hour's suffocation they had purchased a little precious air, and Richard's eyes kept for a moment their look of bewilderment and appraisal. Then his head came up; beneath the thin s.h.i.+rt his muscles spoke a fresh conviction, and he turned on the fair, fastidious presence of his brother with a mighty and flagellant hand.
Lymond had recovered no such resurgence of energy. He was tired, the shadow of it dragging at his brilliance; but he fought like a fiend when Culter sought to drive him again across the length of the room. Somerville, watching, saw that he was fully aware of the ropes behind; of the small traps devised for him. But what he should fear and did not was the long wall of windows with their hard girdle of seats, and below them, the rough opened pack from which Erskine had taken the d.a.m.ning letter betraying the Queen.
Richard was aware of it; had had it burning behind the grey eyes for five long minutes; was beyond now considering the laws of the sword and the shallow lessons of courtesy and fair play. He drove Lymond like wind whipped by rain back from the ropes, back across the room, back to the windows, and finally back across the soft, shadowed litter of the pack.
Lymond stepped back into the trap. The cloth caught him; he stumbled, and Richard, with all the power of his shoulder, brought three feet of accurate death to cleave the fair, unsettled head.
It fell on a crucifix of steel.
Fully aware, stumbling with precision to the exact place he must occupy, Lymond had already launched his two blades on high. Fiery with light, they caught Lord Culter's sword between their crossed hilts and wrenched it from his grasp. There was one, sweet, invisible turn, an impact on the fine bones of Richard's dagger wrist, and the short blade in its turn jerked free, dropped, and followed the longer to the ground.
In a matter of seconds, astonis.h.i.+ng to him as anything that had ever happened in his life, Lord Culter was disarmed.
To stop was almost to faint, such was the strain. They stood very close, face to face, the breath shaking their ribs; and the rapier flared in one of Lymond's hands, the dagger in the other.
He raised them slightly, the blue eyes haggard and wanton.
”My victory, brother Richard. My chance. My choice, to sheath either or both in fat, brotherly flesh.” The long fingers whitened on the two hilts as he held them out. ”Handy Dandy p.r.i.c.kly prandy, Richard . . . Which hand will you have?.
No one spoke. Culter's gaze, at this ultimate moment, was steady and unafraid.
Lymond laughed. And laughing, hurled the rapier to the floor and leaped to the window seat, the baggage roll scooped in his arms. For a moment he was poised there, collected, elegant and fleetingly a.n.a.lytical. Then-”If you won't lead, try following!” said the Master; and in a storm of contemptuous gla.s.s swept the pack through the window and followed it himself. They heard, as they ran forward, the thud, the pause, and the quick recovery as he rolled on the soft gra.s.s below. From there, as they knew, it was a step to the horses.
And so they had to follow.
Gideon found Kate in the music room, her eyes on the road south. He put two hands on her shoulders. ”How good an Englishwoman are you?.
He felt her s.h.i.+ver. ”I don't know. Not very good, I'm afraid. It was Philippa who told them..
”I know..
There was a long silence. ”Did they fight?” asked Kate at length.
”Quite brilliantly,” said Gideon. And he took her below where theair blew soft through the tall panes, and where the fallen rapier, like the Master's discarded victory, lay unmarred among the gla.s.s on the floor.
They were riding into the yellow, grit-blasted socket of the sun, following the wisp of dust which was Lymond.
Somewhere ahead, presumably, was the man Acheson. Somewhere ahead, certainly, was the English army. A little down the road the two men Erskine had sent ahead joined them at a tangent from the moors, with no news except of a baked, and unprinted crust of hills, and it became certain that their only hope, as well as their greatest danger, lay in following the incalculable figure ahead.
Lymond flew before them like a honey guide seducing a vespiary, sparing them nothing: they jumped ditches and peat pits, scrambled up banks and old diggings and crossed streams where the shallow mud embraced pastern and coffin bone and left some horse shoeless. The dust of whin and seeding gra.s.s, of baked earth and broken pollen attacked and burned them until the freshest of their horses stumbled. The gilded head in front never dropped from their sight.
Richard was sitting heavily in the saddle. Erskine, watching him drop back from the lead, recognized that Culter was worn out, riding on will power alone, much as the man in front must be. It struck him that today's disastrous encounter between the two had done nothing so much as reveal how brilliantly alike the brothers were. It further struck him that if they did approach any closer to Lymond, his job was to prevent Osiris from being destroyed by brother Set. Until, at least, he had shown them the way to Acheson. He singled out Stokes, his best man, and edged him out of Culter's hearing as they galloped.
”If Lymond gets to Hexham first, I'm going alone after him: one man might just bluff his way through. Th~ rest of you will have to wait for me. Give me an hour or two, and then make your own way home. . . . And Stokes..
”Yes, sir?.
”Stop Lord Culter from following me..
The other man met his eye. ”Yes, sir..
They were riding uphill, over high ground: a cavalcade of a.s.ses after a bizarre and amorphous carrot. Then the rider ahead slipped out of sight down the other side of the hill. Erskine swept up after him and drew rein.
They were on the verge of a long and stony escarpment which ranas far west as he could see. Below the cliff, a track led through flat meadows to the broad and tranquil banks of the Tyne, crossed it by a humped bridge and after traversing a narrower strip, shot precipitously into the Alpine bosom of Hexham.