To bluff was his only option. He emulated Dahlgren’s posture. What was the bastard looking at? His sword? No, his eyes. Reading the fear in them? Matthew stared also into Dahlgren’s eyes, which now held a spark of interest. With sweat oozing from his pores he waited for the next thrust even as he shifted carefully to the left.
Dahlgren’s sword struck. A feint. Too late, Matthew reached out to check it and was off-balance. The blade hissed in, twisted, and struck at Matthew’s face like a viper’s tongue. Matthew jerked his head aside and stumbled backward, but now Dahlgren was coming in on him with a death’s-head grin.
In panic, Matthew threw his sword like a spear even as he realized the action would stamp him as a rank pretender. Dahlgren reached out with his own blade and casually flicked the flying sword aside. It clattered across the silverware on the table. At once Matthew had bounded back to the array of weapons and pulled another one out. Dahlgren was almost upon him, the sword’s point rising toward Matthew’s throat. Matthew braced his legs-to hell with the form-and knocked the point aside. Dahlgren’s arm seemed to rotate with supernatural speed and again the rapier’s tip was a flash of steel, this time aimed at Matthew’s chest. Matthew dodged in an ungainly sprawl but was not quick enough, for the sword tore through the cloth of his right upper arm. When the point came out, there was blood on it but Matthew was beyond feeling pain. He stepped forward, his teeth clenched and his face a rictus of terror. He lunged at Dahlgren’s face but in the next instant his rapier was broken in half and his wrist almost with it.
Matthew pulled a third sword free. As he was turning to face the Count, the enemy’s rapier tip almost pierced his nose. He ducked down and scrambled away to give himself room.
Dahlgren followed.
Matthew tensed, his nerves screaming. Dahlgren made a quick feint to the right, but Matthew was too slow to respond and didn’t go for it. Then Dahlgren’s knees bent a little more, and Matthew knew the next attack was coming. He backed up and hit the table.
Dahlgren’s rapier tip moved slowly from right to left, with mesmerizing effect.
Matthew took an instant to dare a glance at the table. Dahlgren sprang forward, but Matthew had already seen and picked up Chapel’s silver pepper bowl with his left hand. He threw the contents into the swordsman’s eyes.
Dahlgren cried out and threw an arm across his face, the sword thrust went wild over Matthew’s right shoulder, and for a second Matthew had the clear image of a chessboard where his next move had to be offensive. He took a rapid measure of distance followed by a single quick lunge toward his opponent. The point of his sword pierced cloth and entered Dahlgren’s chest on the right side. It was not the same as striking a bale of hay; this was more like sticking a side of beef. Dahlgren wrenched himself backward off Matthew’s sword and kept going back, his own rapier thrusting left, right, and center in a blur and his free hand working to clear his eyes.
Matthew rushed upon the man. He swung with all his strength, intending to hit Dahlgren on the side of the head. There was a brittle clang as the two swords met and half of his broken rapier again flew across the room. Dahlgren blinked rapidly but his eyes though shot with red were cleared. He swung a backhanded blow at Matthew, who once more fell against the table with a grip and eight inches of rapier in his hand.
Dahlgren sneezed pepper from his nostrils. His chest convulsed. He spat bright blood upon the floor, and then settled himself into his formal combat posture.
Matthew dropped the broken blade, picked up a silver plate full of chicken bones, and threw it at him. The plate passed over the man’s head and crashed against the fireplace bricks. A second thrown plate glanced off his shoulder. Matthew reached to the table a third time and brought up a knife, still glistening with chicken grease.
Dahlgren retreated to the nearest array of swords and slid free a second rapier.
Matthew looked dumbly at his own little chicken-skinner. His fingers opened, it fell to the table, and he retrieved his original sword that lay amid the carnage of lunch.
The Prussian advanced, the two swordpoints making small circles in the air. Outside the house there was a third pistol shot, and now from beyond the corridor came the noise of fighting: the smack of a blow against flesh followed by a shrill cry of pain.
Dahlgren came in like a juggernaut, his face perfectly composed and a red thread of blood spooling from his lower lip.
One rapier thrust high while the second thrust low. Matthew parried the first without losing his own sword, but the other blade was aimed at his groin. There was no way to escape it without growing wings. He twisted his body for protection and was almost gratified when the rapier slid into the flesh of his left thigh. He’d thought he was beyond pain, but this nearly paralyzed him. A grunt escaped his lips, fresh sweat bloomed on his forehead, and he struck with his own blade into the Prussian’s face. Dahlgren jerked his head aside but his lung wound was telling; the tip of Matthew’s sword went through the man’s right ear and just that quickly Dahlgren gasped for air and stumbled backward. Matthew’s sword left the wounded ear and Dahlgren’s blade retreated from the wounded thigh.
Then Dahlgren began to circle, keen for another opportunity. His back was to the open door of Chapel’s office. He made feinting motions with both rapiers, watching for Matthew to react. Blood was welling up on Matthew’s breeches leg, and as he backed away he feared his strength was a short-lived proposition.
Dahlgren took a quick stutter-step toward Matthew with the tips of both rapiers crossed, and that was when a figure with a black and swollen face came screaming and staggering out of the doorway behind him and grabbed him around the shoulders in agonized supplication.
Matthew saw his chance while the Prussian tried to fight off the nearly deranged Miss LeClaire. He thinned his body in the way Greathouse had told him and lunged as best he could with one thigh feeling like a melon. Dahlgren battled his blade away even as the man struggled to get loose from his encumbrance. The swords clashed and rang and Miss LeClaire shrieked like a cat on fire. Matthew struck high and low and high again and always the two blades were there to defend, yet Dahlgren could neither shift his position nor attack with the baggage hanging off him. Then the Count threw one sword away, turned, and seized the woman. With a shout that might have been a Prussian oath, he ran her through stomach to back. He pushed her off his blade with a disinterested boot and still parried Matthew’s next strike. Miss LeClaire stumbled against Matthew, who swung at Dahlgren’s head and was rewarded by having his sword knocked from his hand. It spun away as the lady crumpled to her knees and pitched forward onto the remains of her beauty.
Dahlgren’s face was contorted, the blood coming up through his coat. Perhaps eager to finish his opponent, he now charged Matthew not with the cool logic of a swordsman but with the fury of a wild animal. The sword flashed at Matthew’s ribs. He sidestepped the wicked point, grabbed at Dahlgren’s rapier arm to pin it, and drove his fist into the man’s face. Bloody spittle flew from the mouth. They locked together and fought at close quarters. Matthew saw the green eyes, flamed with red, right in his face. He slammed his fist again into Dahlgren’s mouth, splitting the upper lip, and then he too received a stunning blow to the side of his head from the hilt of Dahlgren’s sword.
In this blurred and frantic struggle, as Matthew’s knees threatened to give way and he hung on to the sword arm for dear life, he saw Dahlgren’s free hand start to go up under the man’s waistcoat. And with that betraying motion he knew.
Before the hand could reach its destination, he gave Dahlgren an uppercut on the chin that rocked the man’s head back. He took another blow from the rapier’s hilt that made a red haze briefly blind him, and suddenly he was falling across the table and dragging the gentleman’s silverware with him in an ungodly crash of platters, trays, and soup bowls. He lay on the floor on his stomach amid the debris, his arms pinned up underneath. When Matthew sat up with bells ringing and beasts roaring in his head, Dahlgren was staggering around the table after him, his rapier ready for the kill and blood drooling from his mouth.
Matthew stood up.
He shoved a chair at Dahlgren but it was kicked aside. Then Matthew flung himself at the man even as the rapier thrust, its tip penetrating Matthew’s coat but luckily no flesh. Again he caught the sword arm and again they fought face-to-face, Matthew battering at Dahlgren’s head, Dahlgren trying to get in a blow with the rapier’s hilt and clawing at Matthew’s face with his other hand. They caromed off the table and went ’round and ’round like battling tops.
As Matthew fought for his life, he had one thing in mind.
Something Hudson Greathouse had said.
