Johannes Cabal the Detective

brittleness. Still, he was already running out of room into which he could retreat. He needed to make Marechal think again if he were to stop this dreadful hail of steel. A poor feint, followed by a quick step back to give him the room for a stop hit with rassemblement, allowed him to pink the top of Marechal’s wrist. Cabal used the moment of surprise to run past the head of the table and gain more space.

The count didn’t follow him at first, but paused to pull up his cuff and check his wrist. “First blood, Count Marechal?” called Cabal as he returned to his guard position.

“Touche, Herr Cabal. A scratch,” he said, and Cabal could see that it was no understatement. “I can see that I’ve underestimated you again.” He saluted and allowed the wry smile to evaporate from his face. “But now I have your measure.”

“Really? Tell me, Count, how did you learn to fence? Correspondence course?”

Marechal said nothing, but moved to reengage, his face like thunder. This time, there was none of the brutal slashing that had accompanied the first attack. Cabal suspected that had as much to do with the count’s regaining his strength as anything else. He would certainly employ it again should he spy an advantage in doing so.

They traded attacks and parries for a few moments, the count clearly probing Cabal’s defences. Although he didn’t show it, Cabal was getting more worried with each clash of steel. His sword cane was outweighed by the sabre, his experience was outweighed by the count’s, and his aggression was a pale shadow in comparison. He was defending, Marechal was getting all the information he needed for a telling attack, and there was always the chance of guards wandering in at any moment. Cabal needed a way out of this situation quickly, and he doubted that it would hinge on his skill on the piste. He needed to look at the whole picture and find an escape. For the moment, however, it eluded him, and then Marechal launched an attack and Cabal didn’t have time to think about anything else.

It ended with a cutting blow that Cabal parried with difficulty, although he made it look easy — half the psychological game in fencing. He countered with a type of sabre riposte he’d seen the count make, from tierce to the head. Marechal parried it easily but made it look difficult — the other half of the psychological game.

Cabal had looked death in the face on numerous occasions, but he had always been careful to give himself some chance of survival. There were very few grounds for hope here, though.

“You look worried, Herr Cabal,” said Marechal. “Something on your mind?”

“There is, since you ask. I was just thinking that this is all a dreadful waste of resources. I appreciate that you intended to kill me whether I succeeded or not, but that was politics. But think! Nobody else knows about me. Wouldn’t it make sense for you to supply me with a laboratory and I work for you? I’m sure I could be of use.”

Marechal made no attempt to hide his sneer. “Are you begging for your life, Cabal?”

“Not at all. Just attempting to make something constructive of this debacle. By the same coin, if I were to kill you” — the count laughed contemptuously — “if I were to kill you, Count Marechal, this country would certainly fall to pieces. There’s nobody around to take your place. Think on it.”

The count reflected for a moment, their sword tips just touching. “I’ve thought about it. You’ve forgotten two important details. First, I’m not going to lose this duel. Second, I want you to die. Now.”

Cabal considered. “I suppose I could see my way clear to begging for my life as long as you didn’t insist on any outright grovelling?”

Marechal’s blade supplied his answer. Cabal tried to break ground and disengage, but Marechal covered the distance with an impressive fleche that Cabal had to dodge, followed immediately by a passata soto — known outside fencing circles as ducking — to avoid being decapitated.

This was an unwelcome development. Cabal had gained the impression that Marechal probably started duelling as a student, in the fashion of the Prussian schlager, a bizarre contest in which the combatants’ main goal is to supply each other with scars about the face which impress the ladies no end. Apart from the armour the two parties are covered with in order to reduce all wounds to a cosmetic level, its only notable feature is that the duellists never move from the spot. The count’s unexpected and unwelcome entree into the world of combat ballet — that damn fleche must have carried him the best part of ten feet — was just one more thing that Cabal didn’t want to have to deal with at this precise moment.

It was only when Marechal said, “Touche, Herr Cabal,” and smiled malevolently, that Cabal realised he’d been hit. His shirt was ripped high on his left breast, the thrust having penetrated the cloth, scored his chest, exited beneath the shoulder, and done the same to his left upper arm. Against the white linen, there seemed to be a lot of blood.

Cabal looked straight at Marechal. “You wouldn’t accept my offer, Marechal. Now let me tell you one thing you couldn’t know. I won’t let you kill me. There’s more at stake than you could possibly imagine in your blinkered little world. I don’t have time for your stupid games.” All the fear was leaving him. The doubts and uncertainties that had blurred his vision were going now, and the world was coalescing into a beautifully clear picture of what needed to be done and why. All that was left was a single motivation that glowed within him like white fire. His soul, his poor mistreated soul, tended him and directed him. Marechal stopped being the only thing in the world and became a rather pathetic man with a silly moustache who believed his puerile plans for grabbing a few useless square inches on the map actually mattered. “I am leaving here. If you attempt to stop me, I shall kill you. Is that understood?”

Marechal’s opinion of Cabal may have changed in that moment, but it certainly didn’t improve. “You insolent cur!” he roared, and launched a terrifying attack, culminating with a mollinaro that could have cored a rhinoceros. They found themselves momentarily corps a corps. Marechal called him a lowborn bastard and backhanded him so hard that Cabal spun away and rolled onto the table.

Cabal blinked, saw Marechal appear above him, his sabre held high like a meat cleaver, and rolled to his left, dodging the blade that swept past him like a guillotine. He quickly climbed to his feet as Marechal pulled the sword from the ruined surface and, as they seemed to be extemporising and as the table gave him a substantial height advantage, he kicked the count in the face and broke his nose.

The Count Marechal staggered back, rallied, and ran to the far end of the table, where he could mount it, using a chair as a step, without opposition. Cabal and Marechal faced each other along its length, blood on both of them. They paused: Cabal expressionless and cold; Marechal with teeth bared.

Now they knew each other. There would be no more talking. Marechal saluted, but this time it finished with a slash of the blade that left an almost tangible cut hanging in the air. Cabal saluted, and it was a staccato, precise thing. His sword tip travelled to precise points, his wrist moved through exact angles.

Then they fought.

CHAPTER 3 in which names are called and a fugitive takes flight

“Of course I have a reservation. A government reservation. Here is my authorisation.”

Gerhard Meissner was a low-ranking member of the Mirkarvian civil service and, as is sometimes the case, he had hugely inflated ideas of his importance. If he didn’t arrive in Katamenia on schedule with the incredibly important “Agricultural Land Remittance Discussion Papers (Third Draft)” — currently safely tucked away in his documents folder — well, it hardly bore thinking about. Unable to have the latest draft of the papers, civilisation would be at a loss to discuss the remittance of agricultural lands. The result … catastrophic. Thus, he had been issued with the necessary documentation to bypass the lesser folk at Emperor Boniface VIII Aeroport customs and pick up his ticket. He examined it now and was pleased to discover that he had a berth aboard the Princess Hortense, a brand-spanking-new aeroship of the Mirkarvian civil aeroforce, MirkAir. “You’re a lucky man, sir,” said the woman at the counter. “The Hortense was only commissioned a week ago — this is her maiden flight.”

Meissner sniffed. He wasn’t lucky, he was a civil servant, and this was no more than was due to a corpuscle of the body politic. Instead, he asked, “Why are all these people milling around? It’s like race day in here.”

“Some trouble in the city, sir. People panic. It’s only human.”

A well-dressed man, sweating and frantic, pushed by Meissner, who glared at him fiercely. “Please!” said the man. “Have you got any more berths available? Any at all?”

“I’m sorry, sir. All places aboard the Princess Hortense were booked in