sharp and precise movement. “Is this how you earned your reputation? By hiding in the dark and making grandiose threats?”
Fabris chuckled. “Not at all. I earned my reputation by killing men, better men than you. And also by serving my country and my king. I don’t make the mistake of dividing my service between masters. The church can buy its own swords if it needs them. As it often does.”
What now? He isn’t afraid of me, he won’t back down. And I can’t let him leave with my journal either. I have to fight him. And I have to beat him. Lorenzo said, “You’re a small man with small ideals. You kill people for money. Do you understand how pathetic and common that makes you?”
“I am the Supreme Knight of the Order of Seven Hearts.” Salvator strode forward onto the road, the hard mud cracking beneath his boots. “Have you heard of it?”
“I heard my stomach growl just now. I really need to get back for supper, if you don’t mind. So I can stab you a few times before I go, or not. It’s up to you, really. But I do need my journal back now, if you please.”
Fabris glared and quick-stepped into position, his blade raised. Lorenzo presented his sword in a mirror- stance. For a moment, neither man moved. Then Salvator lunged and Lorenzo shuffled back, swatting his blade away. As they studied one another, the hidalgo reached back with his left hand to pull his heavy coattails up and away from his legs, and then he slashed at the Italian’s arm. Salvator parried and stabbed at Lorenzo’s belly, but the hidalgo sidestepped the attack, grabbed the Italian’s sword arm, and drove his fist into the older man’s face.
Salvator stumbled back as a trickle of blood darkened his moustache. “What the hell was that? Are you a diestro or just some street brawler?”
“Who’s to say?” Lorenzo smiled. “I tend to do whatever feels right, in the moment.”
The Italian flash-stepped forward and unleashed a furious rain of slashes and thrusts at Lorenzo’s head, neck, and chest, and for several breathless moments it was all the diestro could do to parry and block them. Each flick of Salvator’s blade was aimed at some vital organ, at something Lorenzo knew he could not live happily without. And as he danced backward up the frozen road, grimly holding his defensive lines and angles, the story of the twelve dead diestros loomed up in his imagination.
Salvator threw a quick thrust at his shoulder and Lorenzo leapt forward to ram his elbow into the Italian’s stomach. He straightened up sharply and clapped the man’s head between his right elbow and his empty left hand. Salvator pulled back, slashing wildly with his right hand while clutching his bleeding ear with his left. His teeth flashed in a terrible snarling rictus. “God damn you, Quesada, fight like a man!”
“Meaning what, exactly? You’d prefer that I fence with open trousers?”
Salvator raced forward, slicing at Lorenzo’s legs with his blade flashing in the starlight. The hidalgo quick- stepped back, slapping away the few slashes that actually came near his feet, but he felt the slope of the road behind him steepening and when his retreating heel fell into a frozen wheel rut in the mud, he looked down to check his footing.
The rapier sliced through his right sleeve and seared the flesh of his sword arm even as he tried to parry. Lorenzo fell over the frozen wheel rut as he clamped his left hand over the cut. Fabris struck again and the hidalgo watched his espada fly across the road and clatter against the frozen face of a snow drift. The cold of the road beneath him stabbed up through his heavy coat to sting his legs and back as the Italian stood over him, his rapier hanging at his side.
Fabris exhaled, his breath dancing and swirling in the cold night air. “And where is your God now, Don Lorenzo?”
Lorenzo shrugged. “Everywhere, nowhere. Same as always. He hasn’t written lately. Some people are beginning to worry, actually.”
Salvator snorted as he pointed his sword at the hidalgo’s throat. “And what does a man of God think at a moment like this? Do you curse your lord and savior for abandoning you, for spurning your devotion? Or do you cling to your sad faith right to the last moment, praying for the heavens to open and a host of angels to save your worthless skin?”
Lorenzo shook his head slowly. God was the last thing on his mind. He kept picturing Qhora sitting by the fire, waiting for him to come home alive. And his students waiting for him to come striding through the door to tell them all was well. And poor Enrique with his cheeks weeping dark blood. And even the foreigners who had trusted him to lead them all to safety.
But mostly Qhora. Tiny, beautiful Qhora. As powerful and fearless as she was fragile and lonely. And with him dead, she would be utterly alone.
If only. Lorenzo winced. If only we had had a child, this might not be so horrible. At least I would have fulfilled the Mother’s commandment, and left someone behind with Qhora.
He said, “No, not at all. I just-” A movement in the shadows off to the right behind the Italian caught Lorenzo’s eye. “-I just find myself feeling very grateful. Grateful for all I’ve been given. For my life, my health, my friends. And for cats.”
“Cats?” Salvator frowned.
“Yes.” Lorenzo smiled faintly. “I’m feeling profoundly grateful for cats right now.”
Behind the Italian, Atoq padded softly across the covered bridge, his massive body weighing heavily on the old, frozen planks. The wood creaked and groaned with his every step. Salvator stepped back from the hidalgo to look over his shoulder at the enormous beast walking toward him. Atoq’s claws clicked on the ice and his long white fangs shone in the starlight as he emerged from the bridge and proceeded up the road.
“What the hell is that?” Salvator pointed his rapier at the saber-toothed monster.
Lorenzo stood up slowly, still clutching his right arm. “Call it fate. Call it luck. Call it a heavenly host. My wife calls him Atoq.”
Eight hundred pounds of carnivorous flesh and fang thumped up the road toward the two men. Atoq’s eyes flashed in the starlight, two bright silver coins in the dark. The cat ran a long black tongue around his mouth as he came alongside Lorenzo and butted his huge head against the hidalgo’s leg. He swung his head up on his massive, powerful neck to stare at the Italian, and then he sneezed.
“You fight with your fists and with animals. So much for Espani chivalry.” Salvator lowered his weapon and hid it behind the bulk of his coats, his eyes never leaving the cat.
“I’d rather never fight at all,” Lorenzo said as he retrieved his espada from the ground, wiped the snow and ice from the blade, and slipped it away inside his coat. “Killing you won’t make my life any better. And sending you away alive and angry will probably make my life slightly worse, sooner or later. Is there anything I could say or do that would settle this matter between us?”
“I’d be happy to leave your worthless students and your ugly wife in peace,” Salvator said. “Simply give me the skyfire stone and your Mazigh friends.”
“No.” Lorenzo shook his head. “A bit of advice, then. Atoq here will be in the village with us, and on the road with us, and everywhere we go. He knows your scent now. If you should ever meet him alone, he will kill you. And it won’t be a quick death.”
Salvator nodded. “I believe you.”
“My book. Now.”
Salvator tossed the leather-bound journal to him, and then the Italian melted back into the shadows and only the soft crunching of his footfalls on the crumbling ice betrayed his crossing back over the bridge to the far side of the creek.
Lorenzo knelt down beside his furred savior and looked into his bright eyes. “Atoq, give us a roar. A big one. Roar? Rawwww?” He pointed across the creek.
The great cat swung his head toward the bridge and roared a deep, throaty roar that sounded like thunder and fire crashing down a mountain side. And from across the creek, Lorenzo heard a man stumble in the snow, and swear.
The hidalgo smiled and began trudging up the road with huge cat padding softly at his side. His injured arm burned and stung, but the cold was already working its numbing magic on the pain. He wrapped his fingers around the familiar leather cover of his little journal, and he reached the inn with a bright smile on his face.
I won. I beat him.
Sort of.
